Fun food items coming up

 

Hello, hello.

We have some fun food items coming up.  This coming weekend you can order vanilla macarons and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  And the following weekend you can order a mixed nut brittle and mascarpone cream roulades with raspberries.

This weekend saw gougeres and Swedish visiting cakes come out of the kitchen, and also multiple chocolate snack cakes, and a potato dish, and a third batch of mac and cheese, and even more than that.  It was a busy weekend for cooking.

I wanted to do a little more, but I also spent a lot of time slicing up melons, and preparing other various things.  A fun weekend.  A busy weekend.

And then I ran out of my 4-inch snack cake baking cups (see pic above).   I wanted to do another batch of a different cake, and realized as I prepped for it that I was already out.  I have more on order, but they haven't arrived yet.  So I decided to bake it as a large 13x9 inch cake.  It will slice up nicely but I really wanted the little baking cups.

I have plenty more food prep to do this week as I work through my to-do list which has grown quite a bit over the past while.  But this month a lot of those items are being worked through.  My wife has passed out some food at her workplace, too, so I am taking enjoyment seeing more people enjoying what comes out of my kitchen.

One of the cakes that I made this weekend was a very delicious chocolate cake flavored with melted milk chocolate and also dark chocolate cocoa powder.  When I make this, I always melt butter and then drop in the chunks of chocolate and the cocoa powder and let it simmer for a while.  I mention this because I had a question recently about how this comes out so rich and chocolatey.  Well, that's how.  A high quality milk chocolate and very high quality cocoa powder are both very important. But melted butter and adding those to the butter before mixing up the cake makes a huge difference.  Don't just toss everything in to the mixing bowl on it's own.  And you can always add actual melted chocolate to cocoa powder when making a chocolate cake.  It's well worth it.

Stay cool, and have a great start to your new week.