Week Two (January 17th)

So this week's challenge, as I announced last week, was dark chocolate soup with cinnamon-pound cake croutons and ice cream. And it went... okay. Surprisingly. See, this was one of those recipes that has that certain note saying something along the lines of this: "Stir and do this and this.... BUT IMMEDIATELY TRANSFER RIGHT AFTER THIS HAPPENS OR IT WILL FREAKING BURN.

Ahem. Yes, this is obviously an overexaggeration; but these kind of recipes always put me so on edge that I usually just opt to make some culinary-affectionate cookies- the ones that will always love you no matter how much you stir its dough or drop in a forgotten ingredient (for me, it's usually eggs) later than you should have.

However, a deal's a deal and, quite frankly, the soup looked delicious in the picture. As it happens, it did indeed turn out fantastically good with a rich, creamy texture (look at me, trying to be a food-snob judge from Iron Chef, haha), but I had my scares. The first came when I had just created the "caramel" of the recipe, when it's supposed to be boiling and turning into a different color (yes, this was the moment I was talking about above) and I have to then transfer and quickly stir in half-in-half. Just I was pouring in the half-in-half, it hissed, and the liquid caramel shot up and made this souffle... thing that I couldn't stir. I thought I had actually screwed up the recipe, and kind of stood there in shock wondering what I should do. Luckily, the caramel melted and broke apart in the pot when I heated it, so that returned me from panic-mode to normalcy. Then I had a little bit of impatience when the chocolate was melting, as the soup didn't look oh-so-pretty and "SCMG" as it was in the picture- part of this was due to my suspicion that I used normal expresso powder as opposed to instant. Anyways, the soup was pretty darn yummy, just really rich- a true chocolate-holic's dream :)


The pound cake I made the day before for the croutons. A very good recipe, but took a little longer than the book said it would. The author said I could have just bought one, but that would go against one of my new rules below....

The cinnamon-croutons before I put them in the oven. They would have been great without the soup, too.

Aaand the soup itself. Yes, it's blurry, and trust me, I'm beating myself up over it. Hopefully next week, I'll be able to photo shop my pictures to make them as appeasing as they really are :D

Family Rating: 4

That's all.... Next week: Churros with "Outrageously Thick Spanish Hot Chocolate"

Bye! <3