We're talking about food today, I promise, but I just have to rant about Top Design for a second.
First, Todd is improving. Better hair, better overall, but still a little herky-jerky annoying with the delivery. But thanks for letting us shop somewhere other than PDC. And for the record, I loved, like in a want to have one for my backyard kind of way, Goil's cabana. It was FABULOUS.

Second. The sound bites have not been kind to the skinny-bitchy club.

Dear Margaret. No one is fooled. A pretentious, artificial snob who says rude, bitchy things with a fake smile on her face is still a pretentious, artificial snob. Deliver the criticism, yes, but lose the passive aggressive fake nice before I barf, please.

And will someone PLEEZE tell Kelly that this is reality TV, not the runway, and that runway couture anywhere other than the runway, particularly when it's paired with runway hair and runway makeup, looks like a Halloween costume.

Now that we have that out of the way, here's the food porn:
Grilled Ham and Cheese Sandwiches with Curly Fries


Molten Chocolate Cake with Fudge Sauce and Vanilla Ice Cream


Ahh, the molten chocolate cake. Perhaps it has become a dessert cliche, but it does pack a ton of bang for the dessert buck for both cook and diner, because it's all of four ingredients, takes five minutes to throw together and is insanely delicious. Plus they're highly do ahead-able. I've even frozen the unbaked batter in its' ramekins before.

I've tried a few different recipes, and I like this one the best. Make the sauce as well, but leave out the peppermint extract.

The kind of tricky thing about the molten chocolate cake is getting the perfect degree of doneness. You want to bake it just enough so that the whole thing holds together when you turn it out of the ramekin and onto the plate, but not so much as to lose all of the delicious moltenness that is the whole point of the thing. Because there is nothing worse than a molten chocolate cake without any molten.

So the key to the whole thing is really to know your ramekins. With this recipe, I divided the batter between six IKEA ramekins and baked the refrigerated cakes for 15 minutes at the instructed 450 degree temp and got an absolutely perfect result. Obviously, bigger or thicker walled ramekins= more baking, and unrefrigerated batter= less baking. You want the tops of the cakes to puff up a bit but still be jiggly when you shake them.

I hope you all had a nice day. The tiny wrench in our works was that Boy arrived home with a bag full of groceries and the intent to cook ME dinner. Now, Boy has cooked for me a grand total of THREE times in the nearly decade that we have been together so it didn't even occur to me that I should have announced my plan for the evenings' activities to him. Nor did it occur to me that I should have asked him if he was planning something....because he just doesn't do that whole cooking thing, like ever. And since I didn't get the memo, I had dinner all prepped and ready to go on the fire when he came home.
So anyway, he's at the stove tonight with my dinner surprise, and don't worry, there WILL be pictures!

Labels: WFDW