Tag Archives: chocolate

A wedding shower- The food!

May 18, 2009

Flowers and bees

The day of the shower was beautiful. Sunny, breezy, warm.  And the morning of the shower, my parents and I ran around finishing all of the last minute details for the shower. Starting with these:

Bee pops!

Inspired in part by Pioneer Woman’s “Springy Flower Pot Desserts” and by Bakerella’s infamous “Cake Pops,” I combined the two into these adorable little desserts. I spent the evening before the shower making the bumblebee cake pops.

Bumblebees

I simply followed Bakerella’s instructions to make cake pops… and then dipped them in yellow melting candy, added chocolate chips to one end for their stingers, brown candy coated sprinkle chips for the eyes and painted on their stripes and smiles with a toothpick dipped in melted chocolate candy.

Bees

Aren’t they cute??

Then my mom and I made these:

Flower pot

Using the smallest sized terra cotta pots we found at Hobby Lobby, we made this ice cream desserts.  We placed a vanilla wafer in the bottom, spooned some softened vanilla ice cream into the dish around a plastic straw and covered the top with crumbled oreos (which, with the filling left in the mix, really looks like potting soil!). We froze them like this overnight and the morning of the shower, we wrapped them in bright red and green napkins and tied with a black ribbon. (the wedding colors!)

Dessert

The napkins kept everyone’s fingers from freezing and made the flower pots look like they were wrapped as gifts from the floral department!

We placed cut, artificial flowers and the bumblebee cake pops into the straw immediately before serving.

laughing-bride

And the bride (and everyone else!) loved them.

The bumblebees were pretty time consuming, so I used the rest of my cake balls to make these:

Cupcake Bites

Again, I used wedding colors… and had one of the bridesmaids ask if I sold desserts as a business! I answered, no, but Bakerella should! (have to give credit for genius ideas where credit is due)

We even sent everyone home with a cupcake bite…

Cake boxes

…in their own mini-cake boxes!

Cake of boxes

Mom’s digital craft cutter was responsible for these wedge shaped boxes-

Cake

And the adorable decoration they created when arranged into a layer cake! (Notice that one layer is “vanilla” and the other is “chocolate”!)

Dessert table

As if we didn’t already have enough sweets, we also served some lime bars, heart-shaped elephant ears, and HAMBURGER cookies (vanilla wafers, thin mints, red and yellow icing and green dyed coconut layered together- yum!) which fit our “outdoor”/”summer camp” theme.

We did serve lunch too…

Lunch

Salads and sandwiches!

And for good measure…

Champagne Punch

Champagne punch! Hey- we were all 21! Well, except for this little sweetie…

baby!

But she didn’t get to have any.

It was a beautiful, tasty afternoon. And the leftovers made the next day pretty sweet too!

Leftovers

Choose joy,

E

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My most favorite dessert- ever.

February 13, 2009

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Chocolate mousse.

I love pie, cobbler, and brownies. Cookies, cakes, and ice cream are great too. Creme brulee is delicious. But nothing beats chocolate mousse in my book.

Growing up, we had it in our house once a year. Valentine’s Day. It was almost enough to make good ol’ V-day my favorite holiday. (almost)

And now that I’m “the mom,” it’s up to me to carry on the tradition started by my mom- and Z is quite happy about that! He was introduced to mousse last year at my parents’ house. And his life will never be the same again. Which is good for me, because now I have an additional justification for making this ridiculously delicious (and easy!) dessert.

Here’s how you too can enjoy it!

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This is all you need! 1 cup of chocolate chips, 4 eggs at room temperature, 1/3 cup of HOT coffee, and 2 tablespoons of creme de cacao (which is totally optional!)

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A note about your chips- make sure they aren’t frozen. They should be at room temperature- it just doesn’t work right if you take them directly out of the freezer. (Z really likes to keep them there- even in the winter)

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Throw them into your blender.

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Pour in 1/3 cup of REALLY HOT coffee. (I brewed it fresh and poured it in right away!)

Then blend it ’til smooth. The hot coffee makes the chocolate melt.

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Then you need to separate your eggs. I have this handy-dandy egg separator but you can also just use the two halves of the shell.

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Put the 4 egg YOLKS into the blender with the chocolate and coffee.

Blend.

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Add 2 tablespoons of creme de cacao.

Blend.

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Then throw all of the egg whites into your mixer and beat until stiff peaks form. (This is why the room temp. eggs are so important. Cold egg whites don’t whip very well.)

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Pour the well blended chocolate over the whipped egg whites.

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And fold it all together gently by hand until it is well blended. (There shouldn’t be any big lumps of egg whites or streaks in the mixture.)

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Spoon the mix into wine glasses. My mom always uses stem ware- but we just have these stemless wine glasses.

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I only filled 4 glasses but you can get up to 8 depending on how much your egg whites whip up and how large your servings are!

Cover the glasses and refridgerate overnight.

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(Check out that fluffy, mousse texture… mmm)

Serve with plenty of whip cream and make sure there is someone to share it. Otherwise you’re liable to eat all 4-8 servings by yourself. And that way, there is someone around to revive you if you faint after the first bite. It’s that good.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love,

E

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Bite Sized Decadence

February 7, 2009

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Apparently it’s a fad to have cupcake shops now. We have one in our little downtown district that sells gourmet cupcakes, chocolates and cocktails- pricey but a sweet indulgence when Dad is visiting and wants to take his daughters out! :)

Well, now you can fool people into thinking that you bought these babies at one of those fancy shops because these mini cupcakes are amazing. I can’t take credit for the recipe but they’re so good that it is definitely worth sharing this recipe! Mini chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese and chocolate chip filling and a raspberry buttercream frosting… it’s a good thing that Z was distracted for most of the time that I was making these today or they wouldn’t have lasted long enough to be photographed!

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This little “cupcake deck” is full of unique cupcake and frosting pairings… including a recipe for tomato soup cupcakes with minute fudge frosting! (I haven’t been brave enough to try that yet but maybe someday…)

This recipe is my favorite by far and it calls for flour, sugar, baking cocoa, baking soda, cider vinegar, water, vegetable oil and salt for the cupcake part. Add 8 oz of softened cream cheese, 1 egg and some chocolate chips for the filling. We’ll get to the frosting in a minute…

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Add the softened cream cheese, egg, and 1/3 cup of sugar to the mixer and blend it until it’s nice and smooth.

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mmmm… Set it aside. It’ll be important later.

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After you’ve cleaned the bowl and beaters (or switched to a different bowl- we only have one!), throw in 1 and 1/2 cups of flour,

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1/4 cup of cocoa,

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1 cup sugar,

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1 tsp of baking soda,

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and 1 tsp of salt.

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Mix them together,

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add 3/4 cup of water,

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1/3 cup of vegetable oil,

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1 tablespoon of cider vinegar,

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and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.

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Blend well. (It’s pretty good to eat at this point if you’re the bowl licker type but hang in there because it just gets better!)

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This is the time intensive part… Spray or line your mini muffin tins with paper (I can’t find them anywhere so I sprayed the tins!)

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And fill each cup 3/4 full of batter. A cookie scoop (mini ice cream scoop) works really well and saves you from getting lots of gooey chocolate batter all over fingers (unless you like that kind of thing!)

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Now they’re ready for the really good part…

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Take a heaping 1/2 tsp full of the cream cheese mixture you made earlier,

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And dollop (is that a verb??) it right on top of the chocolate…

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Do that to all of them before you begin the next step (which tends to end with lots of cream cheese on your fingers…)

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This is the most fun part- poke 2 chocolate chips into each dollop of cream cheese.

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NOW, they’re ready to bake.

Put them in a 350* oven for 14 minutes.

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When they come out of the oven, a toothpick inserted into the chocolate part should come out clean and the cream cheese part should be kind of firm- not really soupy.

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Eat one now if you can’t wait for them to cool and to be topped with the frosting. I recommend waiting because they’ll just keep getting better… Now for that raspberry buttercream frosting!

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I halved the recipe out of the book and it made just enough… so if you double this, you’ll end up with extra to use on something else. So, you need 1 cup of soft butter, 1.5 cups of powdered sugar, 1 egg yolk, 1/2 tsp of vanilla, and 1/2 tsp of raspberry extract.

Blend the butter and powdered sugar til light and fluffy. Then gradually add the yolk, vanilla, and raspberry.

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There it is. Yum.

Now, slather it all over the cupcakes.

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And try not to devour them all at once.

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And keep them in the fridge. Buttercream is like that.

And take them to a family party so that you don’t eat all of them by yourself and so that you can become the new favorite in-law. That’s my plan anyway…

… or maybe I’ll just try to eat them all tonight. We’ll see.

Choose joy and chocolate!

~E

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