In August we are making our way to Asheville, North Carolina for the Asheville Wine and Food Festival. The three day event kicks off August 21 with ELIXIR a cocktail mix-off by over twenty of the best bartenders in town. The event location is a secret, creating lots of buzz around the buzz.
I told you a little bit about the chefs competing every week until the big event in this post with a good old fashioned Southern recipe, but on this one special night, ELIXIR, it’s all about the bartenders.
The dialogue surrounding crafted cocktails, vintage cocktails, craft beer, local wine, and mysterious ingredients has created a new bar culture beyond Cheers and far beyond pick up joints. The cocktail has been reborn and vintage cocktails have been reinstated with gusto. Heading to the bar has now become an experience, sometimes quite pricey with $12 cocktails and $15 wine by the glass, but delivering an experience of food and drink you didn’t get ten years ago.
What hasn’t broken the bank yet, however, is bar food. It still remains the best place to get great eats at reasonable prices.
The vintage cocktails and crafted culinary cocktails have made their way across America, creating excitement, and making plenty of room for fun food items to appear on the menu. Staples now include truffle fries, deep-fried brussels sprouts, falafel, roasted broccoli, baked oysters, country ham, and brisket tacos. The shared plate was born through this new bar culture and bar food has gained new respect.
Desserts, however, aside from cookies are not often so hand-held and you need some hand held desserts when you’re eating at a bar.
If I had a bar, I would, of course, have innovative, fun food to accompany these great crafted cocktails, making sure to use the local farms as one of my sources. A hand held dessert taco is one of my more exciting ideas. I picked blueberries this week and the corn was picked the day I got it from Burns Farms.
Fresh corn and hand-picked blueberries were stuffed into a taco with some cream cheese and then dredged with egg and crushed cereal. This is accompanied by a blueberry old fashioned (recipes for berry cocktails coming Wednesday).
I could easily see several dessert tacos in my mind, piled on a shared plate and served with a variety of mini cocktails.
Isn’t it genius to eat a dessert taco that’s not so sweet that it could be just the bite you’re looking for.
The idea for this dessert taco came to me the way good food ideas should be born, from fresh, local ingredients from local farms. I had picked the blueberries at the blueberry farm next to us on Wednesday and my friend picked the fresh corn a few days ago. The Creative Cooking Crew’s challenge this month was tacos. I knew I wanted a dessert taco, something fun, different and addicting. A full round of creative tacos will be presented on Lazaro cooks on Monday and you can also view all the recipes the Creative Cooking Crew has done on our Pinterest Board.
The blueberries and corn bring sweetness and texture and the honey-kissed cream cheese holds it together. Here’s a great part of this. I used crushed cereal (honey oats) to dredge the tortilla in before frying, for a sweet crunch.
- 4 six inch flour tortillas (adjust for larger sizes)
- 4 tablespoons cream cheese
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 egg
- 2 cups crushed sweetened cereal (honey nut oats)
- 1 cup blueberries
- 1 fresh corn
- ¼ cup oil for frying
- Mix honey and cream cheese until incorporated well.
- Use a food processor to crush the cereal.
- Spread one tablespoon cream cheese on one side of tortilla.
- Add ¼ blueberries and corn on cream cheese. You can use more or less of these. Just make sure the cream cheese is covered.
- Fold Tortilla.
- Dip flour tortilla into egg.
- Dredge with crushed cereal.
- Fry in hot oil (350 degrees) until golden brown on each side.
- Drain on paper towels.
Super excited for the Food and Wine festival here next month!My fiancé and I really enjoy sampling some great bites (like these really delicious looking dessert tacos) and fantastic pairings, and there isn’t a better location for these events than in Asheville. We actually have most of the ingredients for this dessert taco, so I might have to take a stab at it this weekend! Thanks for the recipe Angela!
Hey Angela, didn’t you use the blueberry corn combo before? In any case, I can almost taste the creamy crunchy tartness of these dessert tacos right from my computer! Am loving all of these ideas, wish we could sample them all together!
Love this summery dessert taco! Blueberries and corn are so perfect together. What a creative concept, and I love the execution.
What a great idea for a dessert taco! I would’ve never thought of it – yet, now I can’t get it out of my head! Yum!
Fun tacos…very creative. My sin just got back Asheville and loved it there. Can’t wait to hear about it. Have fun.
I’m loving the sound of these dessert tacos! Not just practical but delicious too 😀
These look soooooo good. Crispy, blueberries, corn…wonderful idea.
Have so much fun. I spent summer camp near Ashville as a kid and long to to see it again. GREG
Thanks I can’t wait.
What a fun idea! Unusual to combine the corn and blueberries but it definitely sings of the season — and creativity!
Great and original dessert taco, unusual to see it fried with filling like that. And cheers with the mini cocktails!