Death By Chocolate Cake & a torch (Part 1)

My boss's all time favorite cake, which I've heard him rave about for months, is Death by Chocolate. Recently I emailed the restaurant,  La Trellis, to see if they would FedEx us a cake. They said no.

Then, I thought about buying the La Trellis cookbook; but after googling I found several recipes online including this recipe from food.com http://goo.gl/NXAds and this blog post from ButterYum - http://goo.gl/yqsvi

At our training dinner this past Monday night my boss asked what, if anything, I'd be making for the group. You see, I've made something for every training group since I started 8 months ago (at first, just to use the massive amount of eggs sitting in my fridge but eventually it was to try new recipes).

The last group had Creme Brulee :)

During dinner our conversation turned to everyone's favorite recipes and the boss mentioned that cake..again. So, I did what any good cook would do - I googled it (yet again) and decided to try making this massive cake with an equally massive 6 pages of directions.

I could have simply made Cook's Illustrated's Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake ... for the 4th time this year, but, no I thought I'd be adventurous....

So following our dinner, I headed to the store to pick up heavy whipping cream and dark rum - I thought I had everything else I might need. When I finally got home around 8pm I realized I was short unsweetened chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate. So, off to the store again.

Then, I returned home and made the first two layers: coco meringue and chocolate mousse.


The coco meringue went surprisingly well and I even had the piping supplies to make it look neat. I used a round cake pan and not a cardboard cake round and LOVED when I realized I didn't have to cut out the traced circle. I also thought I'd be creative and pipe the left over meringue into ramekins. The recipe probably makes double (anyone have a 6- inch deep 9-inch spring-form pan?) but, I should have just made two 9-inch meringue circles -- the meringue in the ramekins crusted nicely but the inside was a gooey mess.

The chocolate mousse was going well until I decided not to rinse the mixer bowl between the whipping creme and egg white steps. (Note: milky eggs do not peak) So, I had to start over. And, then I noticed I was short some eggs...

Check back later for part 2 :)

Cooking up a storm....

This past weekend I made the following

Chinese-Style Chicken Skewers with Hoisin-Sesame Dipping Sauce
Coconut Shrimp
Enchiladas Verdas (x2)
Chili Fixings for Slow Cooker
Classic Stuffed Pepper Fixings
Berry's & Cream (once with Cool Whip and Once with the real thing)
Eggs Benedict over Jowl Bacon


I have also competed the second week of 'meal' planning with my Uncle Dave and thought I'd share the worksheets i'm using.  Week 1 & Week 2

Last week the Soups were not made and the Turkey was never purchased but we (Uncle Dave, Mom, & I) all made an honest effort. This week I've prepped everything but the peppers for chili & I'm returning tonight to take care it... So Mom & Dave need only to use the slow cooker and warm up prepared meals for the rest of the week. To make sure things were heart healthy we are using Laura's Lean Ground Beef (on sale at both Target & Marsh) it has less sodium than the turkey and Uncle Dave will eat it. We are also adding in some poultry with chicken REALLY well cooked because mom and Uncle Dave both like texture (aka over cooked chicken) Also, when a recipe calls for salt, or cheese, or any other ingredient full of sodium, we are not using it (salt) or using low sodium/organic main brand substitute. WARNING low sodium store brands are FULL of sodium and are not good choices.


Here are some photos -- and I promise recipe links for those missing above sometime later this week.