Project Tasteless Challenge #4: The You Can Seriously Put Anything In This And It Will Taste Amazing White Hot Chocolate

Ahhh, Project Tasteless.

It’s been a good time.  The latest challenge is the It’s Okay To Come Early–The Holiday Spirits Challenge!

Now, since I do everything in my power to keep alcohol AWAY from my family during the holidays, I was worried that I wouldn’t really have anything to contribute to this challenge.  I tend to be a hard cider/wine drinker myself and I usually don’t get into the holiday drink spirit.  Every year I’m faced with the monumental task of eating everything delicious, and honestly, there’s not always room in my stomach for drinks too.

However, there is this one drink…

My best friend Miranda suffers from a chronic pain condition called Interstitial Cystitis which  is as awful as it sounds and to make matters worse, the disease requires her to be on an extremely low-acid diet, which includes no alcohol and wait for it…

No chocolate.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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I know, right?  Oh, the humanity.

Since Miranda’s always been a huge chocolate lover and loves Christmas treats, I set out to find a recipe for a Christmas drink that she could enjoy safely without worrying about a flare-up and guess who came to the rescue?

Hey, Y'all!

Source.

Insert jokes about drinkable butter and bacon here.

This recipe doesn’t include any butter or bacon (although I guess you could really work both of them in) but it is Christmasy-good and Miranda-safe!  It’s a simple white hot chocolate.  White chocolate is low acid because it’s not really chocolate at all and doesn’t have cocoa in it.  It’s made from cocoa butter (fat) extracted from the cacao bean and includes sugar and milk solids.  Cocoa butter has a high enough melting point that it stays solid at room temperature, but a low enough melting point that it melts well and has a similar texture and mouthfeel to regular chocolate.

Hey, who invited the nerd?

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This is a good time to mention that when I was an undergrad and had to take public speaking, I did my informative speech on the properties and overall awesomeness of chocolate.  My love knows no bounds.

This white hot chocolate is fucking good.  I made it at a Christmas party for Miranda thinking she’d really be the only one to partake, but the vultures at the party drained the pot and demanded more by slamming their mugs on hard surfaces and shouting into the night.

MOAR! MOAR!

Perhaps the best thing about this Christmas drink is that it is seriously versatile.  It tastes great as is but say you wanted to add a little, I don’t know…

Butterscotch Schnapps

Kahlua

Malibu

Bailey’s Irish Cream

Peppermint Schnapps

Spiced rum

Brandy

Cherry Vodka and Hershey’s SPECIAL DARK Chocolate Syrup (yes, it exists, and it is AWESOME!)

"I'll tell you when I've had enough."

Really, this list could go on and on.  You can seriously put anything in this white hot chocolate and it will taste awesome.  It’s like the wonderful little conformist at your high school who took on the persona of whoever she was hanging out with that month, but it’s awesome and delicious instead of annoying and cumbersome.

Recipe adapted from Paula Deen

You Can Seriously Put Anything In This And It Will Taste Amazing White Hot Chocolate:

Ingredients

1 cup white chocolate chips

1 cup heavy cream (c’mon, it’s a Paula Deen recipe, y’all!)

4 cups half-and-half

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whipped cream, for garnish

Festive sprinkles or sanding sugar, for garnish

Alcohol of choice, for getting crunk

Directions

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine the white chocolate chips and heavy cream. Stir continuously until white chocolate chips have completely melted. Stir in the half-and-half, and vanilla extract. Keep stirring  until heated through.

At this point, if you’re boozing it up, add the alcohol.  If you’re keeping it Miranda-safe, leave the booze out.  It’ll still be awesome.

Ladle into cute Christmas mugs or fancy glasses and garnish accordingly.

All dressed up for the holidays

I love this drink and I love being able to make a Christmas treat my best friend can enjoy, even if she does look stupid without a hat.

I can’t believe I used ellipses twice in a blog post.  I must be drunk.

Project Tasteless Challenge #3: The “I Have Two Useless Degrees and am $23K in Debt Because of Entenmann’s” Wavy Cake

We called it “wavy cake.”

You might know it.  It comes in a white and blue window box.  It’s chocolate.  It’s decadent.  It’s dangerous.

It's fucking Entenmann's

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When I found out that the third Project Tasteless Challenge was comfort-food based and appropriately named “The Girls Who Eat Their Feelings Challenge,” several foods came to mind–bread and butter was an especially heavy contender, as were chips and onion dip–but deep down, I knew that the comfort food nearest and dearest to me was wavy cake and that I would have to make one.

My mother always watched what I ate and I never shunned my vegetables.  As a kid, I was a pretty good, wholesome eater and I didn’t fuss, but I did always have a sweet tooth.  My mom didn’t deny us sweets, but she didn’t load us up on them either.

My dad on the other hand…

When tasked with feeding us breakfast in the morning (a rarity for a reason), my dad would take my brother and me to the corner gas station and tell us to get what we wanted.  I actually remember eating a package of Sno-balls (yes, those disgusting pink coconut-crusted chocolate marshmallow cakes) and a Yoo-Hoo for breakfast one day.  When asked to go to the store for milk, my dad would inevitably return with two half gallons of ice cream too.  I’ve heard one story many times about when I was three, before my brother was born; my mom had to work an overnight shift at the hospital where she worked and when she called my dad to ask if I ate my dinner, they had this conversation:

Dad: “Yeah, she ate her spaghetti, and then I gave her a doughnut.”

Mom: “A doughnut?”

Dad: “Maybe it was three doughnuts.”

Mom: “WHAT?!”

Dad: “She liked them!”

So yeah, my dad definitely wired me to have this sweet tooth.  I guess I never really had a chance of escaping it.  One of our favorite sweets to eat together was the aforementioned “wavy cake”–which is officially known as the Entenmann’s Chocolate Fudge Cake.  My dad could eat a whole one in one sitting, but he’d always share some with me.  There was something about the perfectly decorated topping and the way you could pull the fudge icing off and eat it separately that really appealed to me and I always got excited when my dad brought a wavy cake home.

Though I was always a pretty good reader, I wasn’t always a great speller.  I had trouble with my spelling words in first grade, so my dad struck a deal with me: we would study the spelling words together, and for every word I spelled right, I’d get a bite of wavy cake.

And I wasn’t supposed to tell my mom about this study method.

Uhh, trained to eat my feelings, reward with food, and secret-eat much?

The funny thing is that now–some 20 years later–my dad and I are the healthy eaters and exercisers in the family.  We both watch what we eat, we both exercise every day, and we both watch our weight, but that wavy cake–I think we could both still destroy a wavy cake.  And, of course, all that studying paid off and the cake-method worked.  I learned how to spell and I went on to be an English major and got a Master’s in Creative Writing.  Thanks to the power of Entenmann’s wavy cake–sorry, Chocolate Fudge Cake–I have two completely useless degrees and $23,000 worth of students loans to my name.

Okay, so maybe my degrees aren’t completely useless, but you try hearing “So what do you do with an English degree?  Teach?” every time you meet someone new.

And yes, I do teach.  Le sigh.

Now, these days, I’d be hard-pressed to buy an Entenmann’s cake since I’m pretty into making things from scratch, and I even think it’s a little odd that of all things, that’s what stuck out to me as a memorable comfort food, but my mind just kept coming back to it.  When I was a kid, a storebought cake seemed like a big indulgence and it felt special. I thought this cake was fancy, with its perfect topping and neat square shape.  My mom’s homemade cakes, while always delicious, never looks as pretty as those silly Entenmann’s cakes, so I didn’t think they were nearly as special.  This cake definitely makes me think of my childhood and even though I (almost) never dare to indulge in it, chocolate cake in any form is a definite comfort food for me, so lo and behold, for the Girls Who Eat Their Feelings Challenge, I present to you the “I Have Two Useless Degrees and am #23K in Debt Because Of Entenmann’s” Wavy Cake.

God, I rule. Look at this fucking thing.

It was a labor of love, I tell you.

I searched high and low for a copycat recipe, but I wasn’t successful, so I settled on a recipe for a chocolate fudge cake with fudge frosting and hoped for the best.  I’m pleased with the results.

Recipe adapted from Carroll Pellegrinelli.

For the cake you’ll need:

• 1-2/3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• —
• 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 1/2 cup water
• —
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1-3/4 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup milk (I used fat free milk and it was fine, though probably not as delicious)

For the icing you’ll need:

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 2/3 cup cocoa
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/3 cup milk (again, I used fat free and the world didn’t end)

To make cake:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a SQUARE 9×9 or 8×8 baking pan and whatever other pan you have for the leftover batter.  Yeah, this actually yields some extra cake, but you want the square one to be for the wavy cake.  Combine the first set of ingredients with a wire whisk and set aside. In a microwavable container melt chocolate with water.  This can be tricky, so keep an eye on it–chocolate burns! Microwave 1 minute and check chocolate. If not melted, continue microwaving for 10 seconds at a time. Set aside. It might seem a little thick and pasty, which is okay. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla and mix. Pour in the chocolate a little at a time and mix. Combine completely. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk until all is used. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for 27 to 35 minutes until tested with a toothpick and cake has pulled away from the pans.  Let the cakes cool completely before frosting.

To make the icing:

Sift together powdered sugar and cocoa. I actually used a whisk because I don’t have a sifter, but this method left balls of powdered sugar and cocoa in my mixture.  Melt butter. Add butter and vanilla to sifted mixture. Stir. Add milk to get desired spreading consistancy. If more milk is required, add by tablespoon at a time. If you have lumps or balls of sugar and cocoa in your frosting, load it into a mini food prep processor and give it a few pulses.  Ta-da! Smooth frosting.

Put that shit in a piping bag and pipe those waves on.  Get them right!

I’m letting this cake sit on the counter overnight in the hopes that the fudge frosting will set and be able to be peeled away from the cake just so.  I hope my coworkers are as stoked about wavy cake as I am, because this sucker is going to straight to the office.

I can’t be trusted with wavy cake.

Wavy batter

Smooth fudge frosting. Uh, let's not just eat that whole thing with a spoon, okay?

Look, homemade wavy cake with decorative fall fruit. That makes it healthier, right?

In the words of my friend Alex, “I’m gonna eat the fuck out of this.” Then I’m going to cradle my two degrees and my student loan bills and rock back and forth for awhile.  Then I’m going to call my dad and ask him if he remembers how he helped me learn how to spell.

Wavy.  W-A-V-Y.  Wavy.

Project Tasteless Challenge #2: Pizza Tricks For Treats featuring Joan Holloway’s C’est Magnifique Tomato Tart Pizza Margherita

This week’s Project Tasteless challenge truly couldn’t have been more perfect.

I love it when things just come together and fall into place.  I especially love it when things like Halloween costumes and delicious meals just come together and fall into place.  Months ago, I decided that for Halloween, I had to be Joan from AMC’s Mad Men.  Joan is easily one of my favorite characters on the show; I find her character to be wonderfully empathetic and of course, she’s insanely beautiful and elegant in a way I envy and admire.  I’ve never done any kind of sexy Halloween costume, but I felt like I could emulate Joan while keeping it classy–after all, Joan is a classy lady!

I mean, really. Look at her!

For the Mad Men season finale, a group of friends and I had a Mad Men party, complete with 1960′s-style party food.  We had chips and onion dip (remember Pete returning the chip-n-dip bowl for a gun in season 1?), cheese balls, deviled eggs, and this amazing tomato tart.  Ezra Pound Cake, where I found the recipe, recommended this dish for a Mad Men party, dubbed it Joan’s Tomato Tart, and described it as “An excellent vegetarian main course option or side dish, this tart is ripe and scrumptious and full-bodied, just like Joan.  No tart jokes, please.” Not only was the tart super easy to make, but it really was delicious.  Here’s a shot of my tart:

Pre-oven. We inhaled the post-oven tart before I got a chance to take a picture.

So, when Rachel announced Project Tasteless Challenge #2: Pizza Tricks for Treats, I knew I had to make a variation of this tart to go along with what turned out to be a very successful Joan costume:

My best friend dressed as Peggy! We were quite a hit!

The tart is essentially a margherita pizza (one of my favorites!) in tart form.  To make my pizza for the Project Tasteless challenge reminiscent of the tomato tart, I added chopped basil to the whole wheat pizza dough and I used full, ripe, juicy tomatoes and soft, fresh mozzarella cheese.

It may not be as pretty as Joan, but it was delicious!

I followed a really simple recipe for whole wheat pizza dough from Allrecipes.com.  You can find the recipe here:

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough

I added about two handfuls of fresh chopped basil to the dough when it was finished rising.  Then I assembled my pizza.

Joan’s C’est Magnifique Tomato Tart Pizza Margherita:

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (recipe above)

8 oz fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced medium-thin

2 medium ripe red tomatoes, sliced medium-thin, blotted with paper towels

2 handfuls of fresh basil, chopped and added to the pizza dough.  Reserve 1-2 tbsp to sprinkle on top of the hot pizza

2 tbsp olive oil

Kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste

Garlic salt to taste (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.  Roll out the whole wheat pizza dough on two cookie sheets into desired shape.  As you can see, I went with unidentifiable blob.  Drizzle olive oil over the surface of the dough and spread out with the back of a spoon.  Slice mozzarella and tomatoes into medium-thin rounds and blot the tomato slices with a paper towel.  Arrange the mozzarella over the pizza dough, then arrange tomato slices over the mozzarella.  Sprinkle with kosher salt (or garlic salt) and freshly cracked black pepper to taste.  Bake pizzas 18-20 minutes and let stand for 2 minutes before slicing.

This pizza is wonderfully flavorful and filling.  The whole wheat pizza dough adds an extra touch of sweetness that is balanced out really nicely with the fresh mozzarella.  The tomatoes are juicy, tart, and red–like Joan!

Yum.

Yep. "Marilyn is a Joan."

The costume, the tart, and this pizza were all wonderfully magnifique!  In case you don’t remember this haunting scene from Joan’s dinner party where she sings “C’est Magnifique,” here it is:

God, Mad Men, how do you do it?

Project Tasteless: The Naked Chef Challenge feat. Drag Queens, Harry Potter, and Why The Hell Not-Hot Buffalo Eggs Benedict

When Rachel announced Project Tasteless this week, I got stoked.  I’ve been needing some motivation to get back in the kitchen lately and I was really excited to try something new.   Challenge #1 is The Naked Chef challenge.  Since I don’t believe in wearing pants at home, this is a perfect starting point for me.  I racked my brain for a few hours (including the majority of a spin class) about what to make.  I knew I wanted to make a breakfast dish, because I can most often be found whipping up Sunday breakfast sans pants, because you know, who wears pants on Sunday?  I also thought about how delicious greasy breakfasts are when you’re drunk and/or hungover, which led me to think about how excited my friend Dustin gets about this Eggs Benedict dish that a local restaurant serves 24 hours a day.  We’ve been known to dine at said restaurant at 2 in the morning after dancing our little hearts out .  So, for The Naked Chef challenge, Dustin’s favorite Buffalo Eggs Benedict won.

First, a hypothetical story:

Hypothetically speaking, let’s say you had a group of awesome gay dudes who talked you into going to their favorite gay dance club one night, even though you’re not a dance club kind of girl.  Still hypothetically speaking, let’s say you ordered a margarita at said gay club, then another, then another.  And maybe one more.  Let’s also say, hypothetically of course, that the margaritas were doubles.  Strong, strong doubles.  Then let’s say that you got up during the nightly drag show and told the head drag queen that you love Harry Potter.  Let’s say you told the head drag queen you love Harry Potter into the microphone, in the spotlight, in front of a huge room full of hysterically laughing gay dudes and your friends, who did nothing to stop you from doing this.  Then let’s say you were walking kind of crooked and maybe looked like dumb, drunk asshole, so you got kicked out of the club.  Hypothetically.

But seriously, who DOESN'T love Harry Potter? Fucking losers, that's who.

This may or may not have happened to me.  No one can be sure.  What we are sure of, is that after any kind of night out, we like to go to the aforementioned restaurant right up the road from where I live that truly keeps the party going.  By day, this place is fairly standard; it’s called Bananas and they serve jazzed up versions of classic comfort foods.  By night, the menu remains the same, but the staff changes over from cleaned up hipsters to fabulous drag queens, who randomly break out into sing-a-long songs and bring you cotton candy with your checks.  It’s a good time for all.

Fun side note: when Bananas first opened, my friend Joey thought that it was a male wait staff version of Hooters.  It’s definitely not, but what a lucrative business idea!

Or not.

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One of the selling points of Bananas is that they serve breakfast all night long.  The food and the atmosphere totally beats Denny’s and there are choices for everyone.   As I mentioned, my fabulous friend Dustin loves the fuck out of that Buffalo Eggs Benedict, which I healthified and renamed Why The Hell N0t-Hot Buffalo Eggs Benedict, because really, why the hell not add buffalo sauce and bleu cheese to Eggs Benedict?

Now, I have to admit, I’m actually not a big fan of Eggs Benedict; I’d never order the dish for myself, but I know a lot of people REALLY love it, so I decided it was totally worth a try.  I had never made Eggs Benedict before, so I perused the Internet for recipes and ideas and ended up doing a bit of a healthier mashup of Alton Brown’s recipe and The Pioneer Woman’s recipe, sans ham, with buffalo sauce and bleu cheese, of course.  Dustin and I are both vegetarians, so when he orders the dish at Bananas, he obviously gets it without ham.  I nipped a bite of the Bananas EB the last time we went there together, so I had a good idea of what the outcome should be.

The outcome.

To make this dish for one, you’ll need:

2 whole eggs, 2 egg yolks

1 tbsp white vinegar

1 whole wheat English muffin, toasted

2 tbsp crumbled bleu cheese

5 tbsp butter, melted

2 tbsp Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Sauce

1 tsp cayenne pepper

Salt, and pepper to taste

Optional:

Ham, Canadian bacon, vegetarian Canadian bacon (Yves makes it), or vegetarian bacon (I used Morningstar)

Fresh chives for garnish

To prepare eggs:

Bring a pot of water to boil and add the vinegar.  The vinegar will help keep the egg whites from separating.  Poach one egg at a time; I found it easier to crack the eggs in a separate bowl and tip the egg into the boiling water.  Poach for about 3-4 minutes, then use a slotted spoon to remove the egg onto a plate .  Poaching eggs is one of those things that really just needs practice.  I had to go through a few eggs before I got it right, since this was my first real attempt at poaching.

To prepare Buffalo hollandaise sauce:

Put egg yolks and cayenne in a blender and blend those suckers up.  Heat the butter in a small saucepan or be lazy like me and microwave it for about 45 seconds.  While blending the egg yolks at a high speed, SLOWLY add the butter in the little blender hole.  Really drizzle it slowly so the butter doesn’t cook the eggs.  When everything is emulsified and creamy, add the Frank’s Red Hot.  Taste the sauce and adjust the seasonings accordingly.

To plate:

Assemble the poached eggs on top of a split toasted whole wheat English muffin and drizzle the desired amount of hollandaise on top.  I used about two tablespoons; I did not use close to the amount of hollandaise that I made, so I wasn’t too concerned about all that butter.  Add crumbled bleu cheese on top of the eggs and salt and pepper to taste.  Add chopped chives to garnish.

This dish is spicy, creamy, and decadent, but it’s also a lot healthier than your typical EB, thanks to the whole wheat English muffin and the use of Frank’s instead of the standard fatty buffalo sauce.  Of course, if you go nuts on the hollandaise or the bleu cheese, you might have to do an extra 20 minutes on the treadmill, but sometimes that’s worth it, right?

Right.

And of course, I didn’t forget the other requirement of the Naked Chef challenge, Rachel.  Here I am in all my pantless glory!

Who needs pants when you have a polka dot apron?