Thick and Creamy Hot Chocolate

Long time no see! Life has been pretty chaotic lately and the desk top computer has not been plugged in for a week. I rearranged the living room and we just haven't set it back up yet. Luckily, we just got our laptop fixed. I have some good things planned for the next couple of weeks too. Cookies, candies, crafts and DIY gifts are all on the agenda from now until Christmas and I'll be sharing as much as possible. Then come January, I want to start juicing again. I won't be doing it as meal replacements this go around, I'll just be doing it to get some of the fruits and veggies that I don't feel I'm getting enough of.  So, that's the plan for upcoming posts but lets get to the current business at hand. HOT CHOCOLATE time!!!!

 This hot chocolate is the most decadent hot chocolate I have ever had. It is super rich and creamy. It is intensely chocolate. I love the dark lusciousness of the semisweet chocolate but if you prefer milk chocolate you could easily switch it out or if you like the darkness of the semisweet, but prefer a little more sweetness add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to the chocolate at the beginning of the melting process. I made this little treat for my family yesterday while we relaxed in our jammies and watched cartoons. I added a little extra milk to my youngest's so that it wasn't too thick for the straw of his sippy cup. My oldest had his with whipped cream and marshmallows. I wanted whipped cream, but my husband preferred the unadulterated chocolate.  We all enjoyed our little treat that felt so decadent. Make it for your family and they'll believe you've crafted something amazing, but in reality its just a little melting and stirring. It can be our little secret. I'll be making it with white chocolate and peppermint on Friday, for just the hubs and myself, to go along with  Love Actually  for our date night and then we will be having again for our family movie watching Elf. 

Thick and Creamy Hot Chocolate

Serves four

8 oz semisweet chocolate chopped 

2 cups milk

1 tablespoons cornstarch

In a a saucepan, over med/low heat, heat your chocolate and 1/4 cup milk. Stirring often, do not let the chocolate burn. Once the chocolate is melted, whisk in 1 1/2 cup of remaining milk, making sure that all the chocolate and milk combine evenly. In a small bowl stir the remaining milk and cornstarch together, making sure there are no lumps. Stir it into the hot chocolate and let it cook until thickened, stirring often. Serve warm with whipped cream, marshmallows or alone. (I prefer unsweetened whipped cream)

Booooolicious Cupcake Minis {Dark Chocolate Dipped, Marshmallow Ghost Topped, Mini, Black Velvet Cupcakes}

Better late than never, right? These cupcakes were supposed to be up last week buuuuut I didn't get them done until this morning. I was going to finish them last night but at 10 pm, just as I was about to head into the kitchen, I felt the sudden urge to dress as Minnie Mouse for Halloween and scrambled around the house looking for costume pieces. Anyway, back to the cupcakes, I love love love these and they are delicious. This is my absolute favorite frosting to make and eat. And the ganache is so decadent tasting. It may look like a cute kiddie cupcake but it tastes like a grown up treat! My boys are all kinds of excited for trick or treating and I still have a LOT to do, so let's get to it!

For the Black Velvet Cupcakes:
1 3/4 cup a/p flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
3/4 cup hot coffee (I used hot water and a tablespoon of instant coffee)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Fill you mini muffin pan with liners and set aside. In a large bowl, but not the bowl for your mixer, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside. In the bowl for your mixer add, sugars and butter and mix well. Add you eggs and vanilla, mix for 1 minute on medium speed. Stir in your dry ingredients until just moistened. Slowly drizzle in the coffee while mixing on medium-low speed. Scrape down sides and mix until just combined. Do not over mix. Fill your cupcake pan up 2/3 of the way. Bake for approximately 12 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Allow to cool before dipping in ganache.
*Yields 4 dozen mini cupcakes.

For Black Chocolate Ganache:
6 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
4 oz half and half
a few drops of black gel food coloring

In a double boiler, heat all ingredients on low heat, stirring constantly until smooth and combined. Once smooth and glossy remove from heat. Dip the tops of the cooled cupcakes in, coating all visible cake.
*Roll in sprinkles if desired.
* I can not stress this enough, do NOT use black liquid food coloring

For the Marshmallow Frosting:
4 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups corn syrup
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In the bowl for your mixer, beat egg whites and salt until foamy. Gradually add sugar, continuously beating until soft peaks form. In small saucepan, heat corn syrup to boiling. Pour in thin stream over egg whites while beating on medium-high speed. Continue to beat until frosting is stiff. Beat in vanilla. Allow to cool slightly, fill a piping bag fitted with a large round tip and pipe on frosting in tall peaks. 
*I used mini chocolate chips for the ghost's eyes.
*I would wait to top with the marshmallow within a couple hours of serving since the ghost like to lean. 

Family Cookout

Well... Ok the title is a bit misleading. We did cookout on the grill that morning but about an hour before there was a huge downpour so we set up inside but luckily it stopped and we could eat out side and the kids could play in the pool. But it was still a bummer because we had a lovely table planned out and anddddd all of decorations clashed with my Mom's hideous wallpaper. (no that is not an insult to her it came with the house she just hasn't gotten it covered up yet) Thenn I went to print out my neon menus and they printed some wacky colors no where near what I designed but they still worked out. It's all good we still had amazing food and so much fun... Until my Granny had to go to the emergency room at the end but that's another story and no worries she is fine. She just gave us a bit of a scare.

You can see more shots on my Instagram feed, 

How about roasted veggie kabobs? Yum!

And I didn't take a good shot but COCONUT RICE y'all!!! 

So goood!

We had several homemade salsas for the chicken, pork tenderloin and sausages.

Pineapple Mango

Creamy Tomatillo

Spicy Red (Restaurant Style Salsa)

and 

Lemon

The "drink bar" had Sweet Tea

with Blackberry Syrup,

Peach Mint Syrup

and

Lemon and Lavendar Syrup

 and

Watermelon Coconut Cooler

For dessert we made S'mores.

We set up a S'mores Bar that had so many options and was a hit with the kids and adults. 

Cookie options were:

Graham Crackers

Chocolate Chip (crispy and soft)

Pecan Sandies

and Butter Cake

Marshmallow options were:

Extra Large Plain

Strawberry

Keylime

Chocolate and Other Goodies options were:

Milk Chocolate

Dark Chocolate

White Chocolate

Mini Candy Bars

Lemon Curd

Toasted Coconut

Strawberries

(We were supposed to have a caramel sauce too but I forgot to get it out, oooppsss. Just pretend its there on the otherside of the lemon curd, okay? Thanks.)

We made a list of suggestions but some of the best ones were one of a kind creations!

My little monkey had Chocolate Chip cookie with milk chocolate, a strawberry marshmallow and fresh strawberries.

This one is chocolate chip cookies (soft batch) a plain marshmallow, a mini 3 Musketeers and toasted coconut.

The one on the right was the same as Caleb's first one but minus the strawberries.

On the left was butter cake, a huge marshmallow, Lemon curd and toasted coconut. No chocolate at all.

It was my favorite!

 My cousin, Keith, created this, it was an open face s'more with butter cake on the bottom, a lime marshmallow, lemon curd and toasted coconut. He may have also added a piece of pork tenderloin to it. Not for everybody but that sounds pretty good to me.

My Momma about to try to stuff all of that in her mouth. Her's was butter cake, plain marshmallow, lemon curd, coconut and strawberries.

I'm pretty sure the cake, lemon curd, coconut, strawberries and lime marshmallows were the surprise favorites among the options. I really think we may have to recreate this idea, sooner than later!

Robot Birthday Party Part 3... The FOOD

The recipes I used for the party are...

Cosmic Cookies via Bakerella. 

I ♥ her so much!!! They were very butterscotchy! I loved them that way though. A few people thought we should cut back on the butterscotch chips next time. But honestly I loved them that way so I will probably leave them just the way they are.

Gear Gumdrops also from Bakerella. 

Told you I love her. These are a lot  of work but very much worth it. The orange were root beer flavored and the blue were bubblegum flavored. I did two recipes and wound up with left overs. Next time I think I will do a fruit flavor and cut down to one recipe. Maybe next time I will remember to put out the treat bags so guest can take them home too.

Gadget Gellies from Food Librarian. 

I used berry blue and orange flavors. I now have a major obsession with gelatin related recipes. I bought the tiny spoons from Bake It Pretty but now they have these spoons that I think I like better. They have everything you need and more! I bought the shot glasses from Oriental Trading.

Mechanical Marshmallows

These are pretty self explanatory. Just put lollipop stick in marshmallows then dip in melted chocolate and shake on the sprinkles let set until chocolate hardens. Easy!

Contraption Cupcakes

(mango lemonade cupcakes)

I'm not going to give you the recipe I used for the cupcakes. It was a new recipe and it was dry and had a weird texture. So I recommend using this cake just add lemon zest and reduce the milk but the amount of lemon juice you add. I would add 1/4 cup of lemon juice and zest of at least 3 lemons.

For the butter cream we still haven't perefected that either. It had an amzing flavor but the textuer was odd. We used...

2-3 cup powered sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 cup fresh mango puree

but next time I think we will strain the puree and maybe cook it down until it has thickened and let it cool. Then add it to a cream cheese frosting. Maybe! Who know what I will do.

Bionic Brownies

1 cup butter
2 cups cugar
1/2 cup cocoa
4 eggs beaten
2/3 cup AP flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup nut optional

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease 13x9 pan. Melt butter in medium saucepan over low heat. Add sugar and cocoa; stir to blend. Remove from heat, stir in eggs. Stir together flour, salt and baking soda; stir into chocolate mixture. Stir in vanilla, chocolate and nuts. Bake 30-35 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from pan.

Birthday Bot Cake

(chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling)
For the cake we used Hershey's Black Magic Cake. It is our most used chocolate cake.
 For the filling...
1/4 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 package of chocolate  cream sandwich cookies
Cook flour and milk together in small saucepan until thick and bubbly. Cool. In separate bowl cream shortening and butter. Beat in sugar. Beat in flour mixture and vanilla. Stir in cookies.   
 The filling for this cake can be used to make a wonderful chocolate filling, an amazing mint, coffee, caramel or peanut butter filling. Just omit cookies and add flavoring of choice.