Celebrations: Super Bowl Sunday & Brit’s Birthday

I spent most of my life avoiding the Super Bowl at all costs. I did not care about the commercials and I cared even less for the game itself. Then I met my then-husband-to-be and that changed. His family has a Super Bowl party every year. I can’t say that my opinions have really changed, but I have watched the last five Super Bowls.  Still, for me it all about the food and this year was also about our niece Brit’s birthday.

The party this year actually took place at my BIL & SIL-to-be’s home. Everyone brought a little something. For the game we made pizzas. I made the crust using the crust recipe from Jim Lehey’s Pizza Patate. We use this crust often when making pizza. We have found, however, that if you are not making the potato pizza it is best to par-bake the crust for about 10 minutes before putting toppings on it and baking it again. It is much crispier that way. Rodney was in charge of actually making the pizzas. He made one half cheese/half pepperoni and he made the other one half pepperoni, sausage and mushroom (his favorite)/half sausage, onion and green olive (my favorite). I thought they turned out quite nice.

The pepperonis on top show what side is the pepperoni side. 

After several text messages and Facebook exchanges it was decided that for Brit’s birthday I would make a chocolate cake. The cake part itself was easy; I used the recipe for Dark Chocolate Cake from Food.Com. I made the recipe with no changes. I have never had problems with this recipe and it has a spot in our Tried & Chewed folder. My only suggestion is to use the best quality Dutch-processed cocoa you can find, because the better the quality, the better the cake. 

The frosting was a bit harder. I did not want to use cocoa powder in the frosting. Instead, I had some Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips on hand and I wanted to use those. After a lot of web-surfing I found a great recipe on the Williams-Sonoma site. The recipe called for unsweetened chocolate, but I used the milk chocolate mixed with a bit of Chocolove 77% chocolate. It came out really great. It was all Rodney and I could do to not just eat it out of the bowl! However, as you can see below, I was able to get the cake frosted. The cake and the frosting where a great combination! 

  

There was Neapolitan and Pistachio ice creams to go with the cake. 

The secret to to a tasty cake: 

homemade vanilla made with Calvert Whiskey.

Happy Birthday Brit!!

Today is her actual B-day. She is older than three!

Recipe Links:

Crust Recipe

Cake Recipe

Frosting Recipe

French Friday's with Dorie: Michel Rostang’s Double Chocolate Mousse Cake

This week for French Fridays with Dorie the selected recipe was Michel Rostang’s Double Chocolate Mousse Cake found on page 446 of Dorie’s Around My French Table. It is a wonderful double layered cake that is cleverly made by baking part of the mousse, cooling it and then baking it again with the rest of the mousse. It sounds like a wonderful trick. I, however, wouldn't know because I totally cheated and baked all of the mousse at the same time.

You see I am still feeling quite tired from my bout with the flu last week and the whole thought of all the extra steps just paralyzed me. I was considering not doing the cake at all. Then earlier this week I was watching French Food At Home on the Cooking Channel with Laura Calder and she made a Craggy Chocolate Cake. It sounded a lot like this cake. I compared the ingredients and they were similar, though there are some major differences. So I thought to myself, “Self you could just bake it all at once and use the whole spring form pan.” And I thought back, “Self that is a good plan.”

So what you see below is a cheated version of this cake. It tastes wonderful, but the magical layers are not there. Someday I will make it with the proper way. I am sure it will be fantastic. I am going to have to try Ms. Calder’s cake one day too, you know, just to compare…