use real butter

Recipe: chocolate cloud cake

I hope you all had a good weekend. Mine, you ask? Well… you might say it was EPIC.

friday morning and still coming down

See that? That’s a newly cleared driveway. That driveway, which belongs to me, was ever so sweetly snow-blown by my dear neighbor who saw me desperately shoveling 18 inches of fluffy white at 7:30 am so I could go ski at the local hill when the lifts opened. My neighbor is going to get chocolate in the very near future.

knee-deep, dry powder

with my buds jason and jared atop a double black

Best. Day. Of. The. Season. And poor Jeremy was at a conference in South Africa all week. We got a total of 31 inches at my house over the course of 1.5 days, which ain’t too shabby in my book. Of course, being Colorado, you can’t keep the sun away for long at all.

a glorious saturday morning

pretty snowflakes

It seemed when I wasn’t skiing, I was shoveling snow. Kaweah was my little shadow as I dug paths through the thick white blanket. She used to go bounding into the deeps, but is too old to get herself unstuck these days. I keep her close and she has fun shoving her schnoz into the walls of snow and sneezing in delight. The neighborhood is winter white. Jeremy is back home. Things are right with the world.

kaweah eating the snow on the deck

And it’s February. Did you notice that too? I normally have nothing but scorn for Valentine’s Day. I don’t like pink and I think this sort of mass social pressure on men to do something nice for women is just plain stupid. Men should be nice to women all the time. And vice versa. Everyone just freaking be nice to everyone, will ya? I realize that’s a bit much to ask.

But this week I am feeling the love in the kitchen. Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s all of that powdery snow (and no winds – yet) putting me into the mood to make sweet treats. Maybe Valentine’s Day is just a coincidence. Who cares? We’re talking chocolate.

…and butter, sugar, eggs, booze, and orange zest

everything measured and prepped

line an 8-inch springform with parchment paper

I don’t love chocolate the way most of the world loves chocolate. We get along fine and leave it at that. However, I do enjoy baking with chocolate and distributing it to friends who give chocolate a better home than I can (in their tummies). Those quick and easy recipes attract my attention because no one around here is made of spare time.

whisk butter into melted chocolate

beat eggs, yolks, and sugar together

I made a chocolate cloud cake. The soft, white cloud of whipped cream caught my fancy at first, but then I liked how relatively simple the preparation was. It’s a flourless chocolate cake and I’ve blogged flourless chocolate cakes before. This one folds in whipped egg whites, which I was curious to try.

stir the chocolate into the egg mixture

add orange zest and some grand marnier

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pink grapefruit-champagne sorbet

Where I live is notorious for its winter winds. And by winter, I mean autumn, winter, and spring. Our NOAA forecasts gusts up to 45 mph as “breezy”. Up to 70 mph is “windy” and beyond is finally granted “very windy”. There was a pretty severe wind storm back in mid November… the one that clocked 115 mph at Breckenridge. I never found out what it was in our town, likely exceeding 100. Over the past few months as we’ve hiked, walked, and skied around our local mountains, Jeremy and I have seen evidence of that storm’s passing again and again. Mostly, it’s in the form of windfall: rooted, topped, or split trees. Not just dead trees, but plenty of healthy, large pines.

one of the smaller examples, trailside

It bums me out because I love trees. The wind here can be so oppressive, violent, and depressing. For me, I guess it’s depressing because when it’s “very windy” it usually means changing whatever outdoor plans we had. I’ll curse it more often than not, but it’s also responsible for some amazing atmospheric displays. Sitting just a few miles east of the Continental Divide, we get a lot of orographic clouds overhead.

lenticulars along a huge wave cloud paralleling the rockies

A lot of times, the winds will come when there is a big temperature swing like going from 40°F to 15°F or the other way around. So far, we’ve had some wind but mostly sunshine and warmth. It’s not that I’m unappreciative, but… I’m unappreciative.

the snow is crapping out – we need more pow

Okay, it’s not ALL bad. Had it been our typical single digits the other night, I might not have been as willing to stand outside scoping out the Quadrantids meteor shower in the lonely hours between moonset and sunrise. 20°F is all right by me.

two-fer

the brightest one of the night (that i saw)

Weather has such an influence over my food moods and this ridiculous (and completely unnecessary) heat wave in Colorado has me downing salads, cold noodles, citrus, and now… sorbet. You’d think it was summer.

all you need is some bubbly, grapefruit, and sugar

juice the grapefruit

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: pear ginger beer cocktail

Did you go to a Halloween party this weekend? It looked like everyone I know did! Driving through Boulder Saturday night on our way home, we saw a lot of zombies and other characters walking to their presumed social lives. I really love Halloween, but I don’t dress up for it anymore. In fact, the last time I dressed up was in college and I was a (very tipsy) white rabbit. Then the following year I went to a U2 concert at Dodger Stadium on Halloween night and made it back to campus in time for the pumpkin drop (see under annual events). I didn’t see a green flash, but I *did* run into a particular freshman I had been thinking about all day. We went to movie night in the dorm, made sure my housemate got home safely, walked around campus in the dark holding hands, and had our first kiss under the olive trees. Ah youth. Jeremy and I were so young nineteen years ago…

That’s one of the many reasons why I love Halloween.

As promised from my post cards over the weekend, I have some Yosemite photos…

sunset on half dome

fern springs

sunrise from gates of the valley

The whole set is on the photo blog. The snowstorm I missed while I was in California delivered a good 15 inches of snow to our house. This is the snow that will not melt away in the high country, setting up a base for us to play on through the winter and spring. We went to check it out this weekend and Kaweah wanted to come along. Some days she’s slow and stiff, but getting out into the snow always puts a spring in her step. It’s the same for me.

frozen lake and snowy peaks

sunshine, snow, and puppy dog

Winter is coming and my parents are heading back to Virginia soon. We had dinner with them Saturday, but they always want to do happy hour before dinner with us. Their definition of happy hour is wine and cheese, but I brought fixings for a new cocktail we really wanted to share with them. I’ve tried it on a few friends who have all given it a big thumbs up. It’s Jeremy’s new favorite cocktail which is saying a lot if it can unseat the Buddha’s hand citron lemon drop martini.

pear liqueur, a bundy, and lime wedges

Yes, it starts with pear liqueur and ginger beer. Beer not ale. It isn’t alcoholic, but it has a far stronger ginger taste than ginger ale. There are a few brands out there and some taste like cough syrup. My favorite mass produced ginger beer is Bundaberg, which comes from Australia. They call it a Bundy. Aussies are great, aren’t they? I get mine from Cost Plus World Market. They aren’t cheap. My favorite small batch ginger beer comes from Seattle and it is Rachel’s Ginger Beer. I met Rachel and sampled her ginger beer at Delancey when it was taking off. Her ginger beer is in huge demand for good reason – it’s the best.

fill a high ball with ice

pour in the pear liqueur

**Jump for more butter**