Death by Chocolate

I hate cooking.

Well, I wouldn't say that I hate it so much as I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy baking. I love baking. I adore baking.  If my pants were stretchy enough, I'd probably bake every day.

I try to keep myself in check by only baking when we have a specific party or person in mind.  That way the extras don't end up sitting around at my house. Hmm. That's just the thing. The left overs don't end up sitting around for long.  And I end up with a sugar-induced stomach ache.

I have no self control.

I could have jumped for joy with my friend, Adrienne, asked if I would bring some treats to her Halloween bash.  I made my usual homemade oreos, but also got into the spirit of the season with these gravestone cupcakes.  I like to call them "Death by Chocolate:" devil's food cake, dark chocolate milano cookies, chocolate cream cheese frosting, dark chocolate lettering, and oreo crumble on top.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have The America's Test Kitchen Baking Cookbook to lust over and holiday baking to plan.  I love this time of year.

A shower for Destiny

There's nothing I love more than a chance to celebrate a friend - especially when there's a baby involved. 

Adrienne and I planned a shower to celebrate the much-anticipated arrival of Destiny's little one.  Destiny is being stalwart and is not finding out the gender of her baby until the birth, (I know for a fact that I'd never be able to wait that long...I'm way too impatient) so we kept the colors fairly gender-neutral and went for a "nesting" theme. 

I was happy to finally get a chance to use my bird chocolate molds to make little bird toppers for my double-chocolate-pumpkin cupcakes.  I had Blake take photos of everything with his nice camera, but I have yet to load those onto my computer, so these iphone photos will have to suffice.

We also decorated onesies for little baby Bachman and I was impressed by the talent all of the ladies possessed for turning a plain-old white onesie into an Etsy-worthy baby outfit. 

Decorating onesies ended up being so much fun that I made several of the peter pan collar onesies pictured below and am planning to send them to my friends that are currently expecting baby girls.  I never could resist a peter pan collar...and in newborn size?  Forget about it.  I'm smitten.

CCCDDFCC

It's not quite as beautiful as the original, but I'm pretty darn proud of the Chocolate Chip Cookiedough Devil's Food Cake Cheesecake that Anna and I produced last night.  As it turns out, the key to making spreadable frosting is butter.  Lots and lots of butter.  Three sticks of butter.  Who knew?

I think all-told there is close to two pounds of butter in this cake.  Don't judge me.  I was just following the recipe.

Pinsperation

Ahh.  That sweet, sweet sound of opening a can of diet coke on a Tuesday afternoon.  I usually try to stay away from my weakness of battery acid disguised as netar of the gods, but I just couldn't do it today.

It's Tuesday and I'm too tired to hold out.  My back is too sore from sleeping in a weird position (don't you hate that).  And I'm simply too weak to hold out against my colleagues when they propose a quick coke break. 

A friend and I are making this Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Devil's Food Cheesecake (say that all in one breath!) tonight for a Pinterest party:

Although my decorating skills are somewhat lacking and I doubt it will look nearly half as beautiful as it does in this photo, I rarely meet a sweet that I don't enjoy, so it'll be good no matter how it looks.

I'll leave you now with a watering mouth and a promise to post pictures of the final product tomorrow.

Goût Français

I bought a large bag of lemons on sale a couple of weeks ago, and didn't end up using as many as I thought I would for salad dressings and drinks.  A couple minutes on the google machine and I'd found my lemon surplus solution:

French lemon curd.

Theses miraculously tasted exactly the same as they do in France.  I doubled the recipe, but it still wasn't enough.  We went through one large tarte and a whole platter of mini tartes au citron in two days. 

I think I've found my new obsession.

For the Love of Chocolate!

I won third place with these bad boys (Homemade Oreos) in the For the Love of Chocolate competition at work last week.

What's For the Love of Chocolate, you ask?  It's only the single best day at Georgetown Law each year.  It's a fundraising event for a student scholarship fund.  You can pay $5.00 for all-you-can-eat chocolate for three hours.  Or, you can enter a homemade chocolate dessert in the competition and not have to pay the entry fee.

I didn't win first prize (which was a dinner cruise for two on the Potomac), but I did win third prize, which was a new set of measuring cups from Sur la Table.

Mostly I just came home with bragging rights.  And an uncomfortably full-of-chocolate stomach.  Maybe eating five of these plus two full plates of other chocolate desserts was a bad idea?