Archive | February, 2012

Dark Chocolate Sorbet

13 Feb

In case you’ve been living in a dark hole, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day <3 To me, Valentine’s Day is a special time for all things chocolate and all things overly romantic and cheesy. I don’t need flowers or breakfast in bed, but I best get the most gushingly awesome romantic card from my husband :) Chocolates are nice, but I don’t mind getting those for myself.

If chocolate is your thing, then you MUST try this dark chocolate sorbet. I adapted Ina Garten’s recipe and tried a spicy version and a cinnamony version. I think I like it somewhere in between, but closer to the spicy version. It had a little too much kick for my husband, but I was a fan after the initial punch in the back of the throat. This recipe is so simple, easily adaptable, involves few ingredients and is insanely decadent. I highly recommend you give this one a shot! Enjoy!

Dark Chocolate Sorbet

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup very good cocoa powder (I used dutch process from King Arthur Flour)
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon (or more, to your liking)
1/8 teaspoon cayenne *optional* (and you do not need more than 1/8 tsp, even this will make it super hot!)
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups water
1/4 cup brewed espresso (I used 1/4 teaspoon espresso powder mixed with 1/4 cup water)

Directions:

  1. In a large saucepan, mix the sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, cinnamon, (cayenne, if you choose) and salt.
  2. Stir in 2 cups water and the espresso. Cook over low heat until the ingredients are dissolved.
  3. Transfer to plastic containers and refrigerate until very cold.
  4. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions (I put it in my Cuisineart for about 15 minutes).
  5. The sorbet will still be soft; place it in a plastic container and freeze for 1 hour or overnight, until firm enough to scoop.

Birthday Cake Truffles

8 Feb

Thank you, Pinterest, for introducing me to Birthday Cake Truffles. My life is a little more complete now!

One of my co-workers celebrated his birthday yesterday, so I decided that an adaptation of these Birthday Cake Truffles would be the ideal celebration treat. I bake something for each co-worker on my team every year for their birthday. My team is comprised of mostly men – men who don’t have people to bake them sweet treats very often – so it’s something I’m happy to do!

The best thing about these Birthday Cake Truffles is that they’re no-bake :) Could you get any easier? Not really. The second best thing is that you could play around with pretty much any combination of flavors. I opted for yellow cake with sprinkles, and covered some in white chocolate and some in semisweet chocolate. Both were great. I usually avoid white chocolate at all costs, but it really worked well with these. And it looked nice :)

Unfortunately I didn’t get a good photo of these because they disappeared so quickly! I get a new phone in three months, so I promise that when I don’t have time to snap a good pic, the quality should still be better than this!

In any case, please make these. They’re so addicting! Enjoy :)

Cake Batter Truffles
Yield: About 3 dozen

Truffle Ingredients:
1 ½ cups flour
1 cup yellow cake mix
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3-4 Tablespoons milk
2 Tablespoons sprinkles

Truffle Coating Ingredients:
16 ounces white or semi-sweet chocolate
4 Tablespoons yellow cake mix
sprinkles

Directions:

  1. Beat together butter and sugar using an electric mixer until combined.
  2. Add cake mix, flour, salt, and vanilla and mix thoroughly. 
  3. Add 3 Tablespoons of milk or more if needed to make a dough consistency (it took me 4-5 T).
  4. Mix in sprinkles by hand.
  5. Roll dough into one inch balls and place on a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet.
  6. Chill balls in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to firm up.
  7. While dough balls are chilling, melt chocolate in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. (Stir between intervals.)
  8. Once melted, quickly stir in cake mix until incorporated completely.
  9. Using a fork, dip truffles into chocolate and shake of excess bark by tapping the bottom of the fork on the side of your bowl.
  10. Place truffle back on the cookie sheet and top with sprinkles.
  11. Repeat with remaining balls until finished.

Madonna: Still Got It?

6 Feb

So what did you all think of Madonna’s halftime performance at the Superbowl? Does she still have it, or no? I vote no.

Man, I wanted Madonna to be awesome. I’ve loved for as long as I can remember. I’ve danced around my room to the Immaculate Collection more times than I can count. I laid on a beach during vacation listening to nothing besides Ray of Light. Madonna is iconic. She’s simply amazing. So, I figured her performance would either be incredible or horrible. It was by no means incredible, and I shudder to say it was horrible, but truth hurts sometimes.

Where to begin? How about with something positive? That’s nice. I liked the Vogue beginning. Love the song, loved  what they did visually. All around WIN! Oh, one more WIN = Madonna’s makeup.

 

OK, now to get into everything else. First up, her shoes. I didn’t mind them. I didn’t think they were too high, too provocative, or overtly anything. They went with her gothic get-ups and generally, I was a fan. What I was not a fan of was the fact that she couldn’t walk in them. Dear Madonna, this is why we have dress rehearsals – to practice such things and make adjustments if things aren’t working. Madonna stated that much attention to detail was taken when designing her wardrobe for the performance so as to avoid a wardrobe malfunction. Well, not being able to walk in your shoes is a malfunction in my book. FAIL.

At one point, there was a tightrope walker. Generally, the idea is kind of cool. Who doesn’t love Cirque du Soleil? Despite him doing some pretty cool tricks for about 15 seconds, this little bit just didn’t have enough for me to consider it a strength in her performance. For one thing, why was the guy wearing a dress? I could see a Greek robe type thing, but this costume was severely dress-like. And why did he have a curly ‘fro? I didn’t get it. Was he supposed to be androgynous? I just didn’t understand what the point of this part of her show was. FAIL.

Nicki Minaj, MIA, and Madonna. Interesting, but OK. Pom-pons? Really? Why? How does that make sense? I kept asking myself why on earth Madonna was dancing around with pom-pons, looking as juvenile as she was acting. The least you could do is straighten your arms! As an ex-dance coach, this repulsed me. The entire bit wasn’t all horrible, though, since Nicki’s rap was good, and MIA managed to flip off the camera. Overall, though….FAIL.

LMFAO. I love LMFAO! How cool for them to collaborate with Madonna. The biggest oddity I found was Madonna bouncing up and down on their shoulders. Really? Madonna used to be able to dance. Like for real dance. Now she’s bouncing around like a kid looking like an idiot? Cool for LMFAO, pitiful for Madonna. Sorry. FAIL.

I heard a rumor that Cee-Lo Green was supposed to help revive Madonna’s career – make her more relevant. If this was supposed to be relevant…then….
…anyway, I think Cee-Lo is generally great. I can get past the fact that he looks like a T-Rex and has super short arms and just an oddly shaped body. Really, I can. I have even grown to expect sparkly robes such as the one he wore during the halftime show. My confusion (although I guess I shouldn’t really be confused) lies in Madonna’s wardrobe choice. What was with the long gothic robe? I swore she was going to rip it off at some point, and actually found myself disappointed when she didn’t. Meh. FAIL.

Finally, the ending. Did anybody else feel like Madonna slipped into the underworld at the end? She’s singing Like a Prayer (awesome jam), which is all religious and godly, yadda yadda yadda….and then she disappears by falling beneath the stage in the a puff of smoke….while wearing a strange dark cape. One can really assume that the devil rescued her from this epic failure of a show. Wait. It did end with “World Peace” lit up. Meh. Underwhelming. I still vote FAIL.

I’m not even going to get into the fact that Madonna was clearly lip-synching the entire. I’ve grown to expect that sort of thing from live television. I can’t really fault them for this so it was a non-issue for me. And because I still respect Madonna as the Material Girl, I’m going to refrain from posting more pictures of her embarrassing herself by “dancing” or “walking.” But if you ever read this, Madonna, please go back to your roots. That’s when you rocked it.

Everyone else, what did you think of the show?

 

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