My dear husband, Dave, helped me with the arduous task of squeezing three boxes of frozen (now thawed but still really cold!) chopped spinach. Anyone who has ever squeezed even one box of spinach can certainly commiserate with the sheer tedium of this task. But Dave's not a big cooker man so I thought this would be easy if not boring. (And secretly I was doing cartwheels inside knowing I wouldn't have to do this--yeah!!!).
While the spinach was being prepped, I began heating the secret BCP ingredient--butter! Oh how Ina loves her butter. Actually this recipe only called for a tablespoon or two to saute an onion. Then the second rockstar ingredient--cream! Boil this with a pinch of nutmeg, some Parmesan cheese and the spinach and get it all gooey and yummy. Spoon it into a baking dish and top with more parm and Gruyere cheese. I took the dish over at this point and then just heated it when we were close to eating. I think we left it in a touch too long as it got a bit brown but it was soooooo good!!! I really don't like cooked spinach but I loved this--maybe my favorite recipe of the day!
Next was the Smashed Sweet Potatoes with Apples. Thankfully I glanced at this recipe early in the morning because I forgot that I'd have to cook and cool the sweet potatoes before actually assembling the dish. It took a good hour plus to fully cook the potatoes. Thanks again to my wonderful hubby for following the recipe and making the sweet potato portion of this dish while I worked on the apple element.
After scooping out the sweet potato meat, you add a touch of orange juice, cream and butter (hooray!), a bit of brown sugar and a pinch of both cinnamon and nutmeg. Using a mixer, blend this all together until creamy and smooth and spoon into a baking dish. Meanwhile, peel/core/slice a few apples and cook these in a skillet with butter and brown sugar. Place on top of sweet potatoes. When ready to eat, just pop in the over for about 20 minutes.
I liked the sweet potato portion of this dish but it is very sweet. Everyone said it tasted just like the filling of a pumpkin pie. The apples were okay. I don't think it added anything to the dish and I'd probably skip them in the future.
Bad news. I totally forgot to take a picture of the Chocolate Ganache Cake. It went very fast and was so good. The cake itself was not difficult to make even though it looks quite fancy. You do need a spring form pan though. The ingredients are fairly simple: butter, sugar, chocolate (actually Hershey's chocolate syrup!), and a mere one cup of flour. It's important not to over bake this cake or it will be dry and tough. That's one thing I hate about baking (in addition to having to really measure the ingredients!)--I can never tell when baked goods are ready. I'm a notorious under-baker because I hate dry cake, cookies, brownies, etc. I think I did well on this. The center was still very moist but it was definitely done.
The ganache is made from heavy cream (wee!), chocolate chips and instant coffee granules (I used a tablespoon or two of strong brewed coffee instead). Melt all this in a pan (it said to use a double broiler but I don't have one--really not necessary) and pour over the cake. There's a ton of extra ganache so we ended up using this as a sauce to go on top of the cake when sliced. Total heaven!
No comments:
Post a Comment