granita di caffe con panna

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: coffee

One of our favourite discoveries we travelled to Rome for the first time last year was the Tazza d’Oro, a small coffee shop that sits by the Pantheon and is famous for its coffee. There were some wonderful coffees on the menu, but Paul and I only had eyes (and taste buds) for one - the Granita di Caffe con Panna (coffee granita with whipped cream).

Consisting of layers of thick whipped cream and coffee granite (made with a deep, rich espresso), we had this almost every day that we were in Rome and it was one of the first things that Paul tried to create in our kitchen once we returned home. After a few tries, he's come up with a recipe that's pretty darn close. It's super simple to make, but still manages to be an impressive dessert - perfect to end a a meal on a warm summer evening.

pink pepper hot chocolate

The Missing Ingredient Challenge: pink peppercorns

Pink peppercorns look like regular peppercorns and have a peppery flavour, but are not actually related to regular peppercorns. These pinkish-red dried berries can often be found in gourmet stores or bulk food stores (where I found my supply) and are sometimes even found mixed in with regular peppercorns. When Erin from www.foodiepages.ca asked me to use pink peppercorn in my next post for the "The Missing Ingredient" series I was a little nervous - this was something I had never really even heard of before! I mean, I remember seeing a few pink/reddish peppercorns in my pepper mill, but I was supposed to create something with them?

I experimented with a few different tastes by taking recipes I've used before and substituting pink peppercorns into them as the main flavour. This one ended up as one of our favourites – it’s a savoury twist to the always popular hot chocolate.