I decided to walk on the wild side and reinvent the classic mashed potatoes and gravy side dish as an entree, and surprisingly, it works. Not only that, but I managed to put my newly learned pasta making skills to the test.
So, one day when I was shopping at my mothership, the restaurant supply store, I saw this candy mold and knew that filled chocolates would be in my future. I only just now bought it and last night I made a test batch – because I have to learn to temper the chocolate, too, and I was made to understand there is a learning curve there – and this is the result. Guittard bittersweet couverture on the outside, San Francisco Chocolate Co milk chocolate ganache on the inside with a few drops of orange oil. The coating has the gloss and snap I was looking for which means my tempering was a success (at least on the top, I think I let it get too cool when I was doing the feet) but my ganache didn’t set up quite the way I would have liked, it was a bit too soft so when you bite into them, the shell snaps as it should but the ganache won’t support it so it just sort of squishes out. Gonna have to use less cream next time. Anyway, I am not proficient enough for a full report so I’ll just say I love the way these look and taste and I am looking forward to trying all sorts of variations.
from our fine friends at Food Network Magazine.
Also known as lemony fish with greens and taters, which is why I do not work in marketing. The actual recipe calls for escarole, but after going to 5 grocery stores in search of it, I made do with curly endive – escarole is endive though a different and supposedly less bitter variety. I read that radicchio is virtually indistinguishable from escarole in taste but I had this awful fear that the red color of it would bleed onto the fish and that just did not sound appealing to me at all. Anyway.
recipe snagged from the amazing smitten kitchen
Carrot cake is one of those great mysteries, like zucchini bread or pumpkin rolls, that does not taste like the ingredient for which it is named, and it’s probably because of this that it’s so tasty. After all, no matter how good some maple-glazed roasted carrots can be, they are not something I want for dessert.
Carrot cake is also one of those fine desserts that not only allow but encourage you to be delusional about what you’re shoving in your mouth in totally unacceptable portions because, hello! there are vegetables in it! Everyone knows that a vegetable-based dessert automatically negates any unhealthy qualities that, say, 2 cups of sugar or a cup of oil may contain, let alone a frosting based on entirely too many fats and sugar.
So, join me in my delusions (that giant slice you see? that was for me) and make a moist, delicious, totally 100% healthy (in my head) carrot cake that does not taste like carrots.
Continue reading ‘Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese frosting’
Pardon my extended absence, I was busy giving birth. Meet my newest future kitchen slave:
This is Ethan, and I am pretty much in love with him. Conveniently my other future kitchen slave, Greyson, is pretty much in love with him too.
This does not, however, lend itself to extended kitchen time so I missed my Daring Bakers post, and I had some pregnancy-related health issues that kept me from cooking much lately anyway.
I do have a strawberry meringue pie to share with you soon, and I think I’m going to start a once-a-week feature on making the most of quality prepackaged foods, like what we did with Zatarain’s red beans and rice tonight.
Til next time.
