...and real pain for my sham friends. Or something like that. I mentioned before (I think) how my resolution was to be more social. Well, I'm keeping up with this new behavior. It could even be a new pattern. My good friend (he of Real Good Food fame) Devin had a house party this past weekend. The theme? Mardi Gras. And to keep things cosmopolitan the hosts included a bit of French culture by having crepes at the party. What goes well with crepes? Champagne my friends. So of course I had to take it to the next level and pull out the ice cream maker... That's right. I made champagne flavored ice cream. Did I just blow your mind? I hope so. The recipe was super easy!

CHAMPAGNE ICE CREAM
1 1/2 c heavy cream
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c champagne/sparkling wine
2 TBS corn starch
2 pieces of lemon zest

Technically I guess what I made was sparkling wine ice cream b/c the stuff I bought at Trader Joe's was not from the Champagne region of France. My bad for misleading you. But Neo Griot, you ask, how did you get it to freeze?! Well, I added the booze to the cream mixture and let it come to a boil. Then I took the heat down to low added the sugar, let it dissolve... then I added a bit of cornstarch slurry to thicken it up. Ta-Da! I passed the mixture through some cheese cloth and put it into the ice cream machine. Less than 20min. later I had a nice sized batch of ice cream.

Unfortunately there are no pictures of the dynamic duo of crepe and ice cream together. I'd hard to take pictures of food in the middle of a house party post midnight. But, it was good. At least that's what I heard through the wine grape vine. Picture it in your head...

The day after the party just happened to be my birthday so my friends and I celebrated by going to brunch. Why? Because that's what classy adult types do on a Sunday afternoon. As you know I'm all about tokens of appreciation and sentiment that take the form of food. So I HAD to make a lil' something to give my friends. Luckily, the week before my birthday is Valentine's day. I made some whoopie pies for the occasion but I didn't plan to post about them b/c I was leaving on a plane the next day and had to pack. I didn't have time to take pictures of the process. I DID end up with some leftover cake scraps though and you know what? Cake freezes pretty well. Upon my return home I pulled those scraps outta the freezer and got to work on some cake pops. Food on a stick is always a viable option b/c its portable! The original vision was a chocolate cake pop, dipped in caramel, and then dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt. So here's a mini tutorial in pictures on how to make cake pops if you don't already know.


Step 1.) Know your flavor profile. Mine was caramel, dark chocolate and sea salt.


Step 2.) Crumble up some cake. When it's nice an crumbly add in some frosting, mix well. I bought some caramel frosting to go w/ the flavor profile. (I was too lazy/cheap to use butter to make my own butter cream. There would be some left over and frosting does not keep as well as cake in the freezer.)


Step 3.) Have a ball... mine were chocolaty. Take the frosting/cake mixture and roll it into balls. I used a cookie scoop for uniform sizes. Afterwards set them in the fridge to firm up for a bit so you can more easily manhandle them later.


Step 4.) Remove balls from the fridge and make them into pops. I used shorted lolly sticks b/c that's what I had in stock. For a bit of extra security you can dip the sticks into some melted chocolate/candy coating before sticking them into the cake balls.


Step 5.) Dip, baby, dip. This is a shot of me attempting to put on the first coat of caramel. In the end I had to ditch it b/c the caramel was so heavy the cake balls kept falling off the sticks:( So I back tracked and just dipped them in the melted dark chocolate instead. As the chocolate shell dried I gave the pop a little spin and sprinkled a bit of sea salt on it.


Step 6.) Make it pretty! A little scrap paper, a stamp, some ink, and curling ribbon was all it took!

Hey yo! So I got myself a couple new pipping tips this month. I've been wondering why my #10 tip wasn't swirling the way I see on cupcakes in the bake shops. A little internet research enlightened my I've been using the wrong size pipping tip! A #10 isn't BIG enough. So I went out and bought myself a 1M star tip and a 2D tip.I got to practice my pipping skills on a set of cupcakes for my friend Sarah's birthday.

I decided to keep things pretty simple. I made a plain yellow cupcake that I stuffed with cookie butter and topped with a white chocolate ice cream. Whoa..... What's cookie butter you ask? It's awesomeness in a jar. It's this European treat kinda like Nutella but not. I think the brand name is Speculoos but because Trader Joe's doesn't really carry brand names they call it cookie butter. It's the taste of a spiced cookie (here in Michigan we have Windmill cookies) in a jar. So delicious... so evil. I wonder if there's an oxymoron that described that oppositional relationship?

Ta-Da!!!! I brought a few of these along with some bourbon I'd infused (with ginger, cinnamon and vanilla) to Sarah's house and we had a little mini-party full of food and laughter. It was good times.