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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: chocolate crackles (cookies)

Hey! Did you catch the lunar eclipse Saturday morning? I spent all day Friday watching the weather reports online as well as out my door. I had every intention of waking up early to watch the eclipse, but it goes without saying that if I could shoot the moon, I would. Toward evening there were blobbish clouds overhead and mildly gusty winds. Where I live, 55 mph is what we start to call “windy”, but 25 mph gusts are generally mild conditions… except when you want to photograph a lunar eclipse. I got my gear ready and tried to get to bed before midnight.

full moon

My alarm went off at 4am and I quietly bundled up in layers, tip-toeing around in the dark. I popped my contacts in, told Kaweah to go back to her bed (she didn’t, she waited at the door until Jeremy woke up), and stepped outside the bedroom. On the deck it was in the teens. To my delight, the clouds had moved out and the wind had periods of calm between gusts. I could live with that. Due to my location on the planet, the moon would set before I could witness it reach totality. Due to my local geography, the moon dropped below the Continental Divide before that! But, you make the most of what you get. It’s a beautiful phenomenon to witness regardless.

composite of the lunar eclipse

pink rays of sunrise on james peak not long after moonset

Back in August 2007, I attempted my first capture of a lunar eclipse. I totally didn’t know what I was doing, but we all have to start someplace or else we can’t ever expect to get anywhere. And it’s sooooo cool!

august 2007 total lunar eclipse composite

I can’t say I know all that much now, just that I have screwed up sufficiently in the past to have learned what not to do today. Every time I shoot, it’s a learning experience. I must thank my friends at Pro Photo Rental for the use of their lovely 200-400mm f4 Nikkor lens. Sometimes size DOES matter…

can you have a crush on a lens? because i think i do

It’s crunch time over here which means all manner of cookies and confections are marching their way through my kitchen. Each year I try to add one new recipe because I like variety and it keeps me on my toes. Jeremy reminded me that people who are gifted cookies once a year generally don’t get upset if you have some repeats. In fact, he said, his administrative staff request the lemon-ginger cookies each year. I waved him off and said I had a new recipe in mind to try and that it should be easy.

let’s get crackin’

In case you are looking for ideas, here are links to some of the goodies I like to gift this time of year (I tend not to make French macarons over the holidays because they don’t ship easily and have a rather finite shelf life):

cookies:
almond crunch cookies
chinese almond cookies
coconut macaroons
cranberry oatmeal cookies
espresso chocolate chip shortbreads
lemon ginger cookies
lime meltaways
macadamia shortbreads
mexican wedding cookies
pistachio sandies
raspberry cream cheese cookies
snickerdoodles

brownies, bars, cakes, quick breads:
chocolate chip banana bread
cream cheese brownies
friands
macadamia nut chocolate chip blondies
rice crispy treats (with sprinkles)
zucchini nut bread

candies:
candied lemon slices
chocolate truffles
macadamia nut orange brittle
orangettes
pepita brittle
peppermint bark
vanilla bean caramels

boozy infusions and other goodies:
buddha’s hand citron vodka
membrillo (quince paste)
pear liqueur
sugar plums
homemade vanilla extract

And here’s the newest addition to the repertoire… chocolate crackles.

sugars, cocoa, eggs, butter, chocolate chips, milk, vanilla, flour, salt, baking powder

mix the dry ingredients

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate pots de crème

This was supposed to be a rip-roaring weekend at the House of Butter (or rather, outside of the House of Butter, but you know what I mean). Unfortunately I dashed those plans on the Rocky Shores of Disappointment because I got an infection. Nothing that antibiotics won’t take care of, but it’s a bummer nonetheless. Since I am not supposed to be exposed to direct sunlight during the course of my meds, I worked through the weekend as best I could and managed to discover the surface of my desk. Whoa! That’s a good feeling, especially when I had resigned myself to living with Mount Disaster until mid-November. Jeremy kept me company and worked on his research (and even did some massive internal maintenance on this blog). Kaweah was bored out of her gourd.

le sigh

We have had a few spates of fall-like bordering on wintry weather around here. New snowfall in the high country has painted the high peaks with a light coat of white. Per Colorado’s typical cycle, the next day was sunshine and blue skies – you know, to make the snowy peaks even prettier. Fall around here is less of fall and more of a tug-of-war between the last vestiges of summer and the raucous arrival of winter with some beautiful golden aspen littered throughout the mountains. Fall is also when I can tolerate chocolate again. I can’t deal with chocolate in summer. Don’t want to work with it, don’t want to eat it. But as soon as the weather cools down, my thoughts around chocolate become less hostile… more friendly like.

chocolate, milk, eggs, vanilla bean, sugar, cocoa powder

split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out

pouring milk into a saucepan with the vanilla bean and seeds

When I was making these chocolate pots de crème, Jeremy asked what it was. I replied they are chocolate custards.

jeremy: Like crème brûlée?
me: No, there is no burnt sugar on top.
jeremy: Like flan?
me: There is no burnt sugar on the bottom.
jeremy: So it’s like crème brûlée without the burnt sugar?
me: Uh, sure.

two eggs, one yolk

whisk sugar into the eggs and egg yolk

temper the hot, steeped milk into the eggs

**Jump for more butter**