Results tagged “chocolate” from It Ought to be Enjoyed

Luckily the New Year started with getting to spend time with friends.  Conversation, laughter, and catching up on what everyone has been up to.  Hopefully a good sign that the new year will have plenty of time set aside for just that.

I got to break out one of the multitude of new cookbooks and tried my hand (again) at an upside-down cake.  It seems that having a pan that actually is non-stick goes a long way in making the upside-down part of the cake...feasible.

So here is a Chocolate-Banana-Caramel Upside-Down Cake

It was a very light caramel, so you could still taste the banana.  And the cake was very light, and since it was made with buttermilk had a nice tang to it.  A good combo.

Hanging out, being geeks, getting to catch up...all makes for a fun day.  And when dinner rolled around the pantry was stocked well enough to provide a meal (mostly dairy-free even - for the non-dairy eater, but no meat for the die-hard carnivore).

A Relaxed Saturday Meal

And of course to snack on throughout the day, a very basic and homey chocolate chip cookie.

At the waffle party, the homemade butterscotch sauce, rum soaked raisins, and cinnamon coconut date (dairy free) ice cream were all stellar.  It is always great to see what folks bring and then how well all the different ingredients mesh (e.g. creme fraiche, lingonberry jam, and lavendar honey all go well together).

This week for the Tuesdays with Dorie, it is Chocolate Whopper Malted Drops.  Which I'd made before, but figured I would make with the virtual masses.  Especially since the housemate said he liked them the first go round.  I have to confess that these didn't really wow me either time, but they are fairly easy to throw together.  I did futz with the recipe some this time, nor purposefully but I had some extra margarine from making the waffles and figured instead of letting it go to waste, so I did the extra 3Tbsp that the recipe calls for as margarine instead of butter.  And since the bittersweet chocolate only came in a 4 oz bar, I threw in some semi-sweet discs to make up the remaining chocolate.

The recipe for Sept. 2 was Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters.  However I've just been calling them Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies...not much shorter, but it seems like a lot less verbiage.

I was reading that people had been having dry dough, stiff dough...breaking kitchen implements dough.  Not here.  It was great, very gooey but after several hours in the refrigerator it became perfectly manageable.  However I think I misjudged the size this were supposed to be, since the recipe said 60 cookies and I was lucky to get 30.  However this was a good, good mistake.  It took much longer for the cookies to bake, but when they were done they were big, thick and chewy.  And 30 cookies are more than enough to send out to the world and hopefully spread a little bit of happiness.