Everything Bark

I had a bunch of different kinds of chocolate lying around so I decided on a cleaning-out-the-cabinets dessert. What better than chocolate bark which can literally consist of anything! Here is what I had in the house:

Dark chocolate
Milk chocolate
White chocolate
Slivered almonds
Chopped walnuts
Pretzels
Cornflakes
Rice crispies
Craisins
Golden raisins
Malted milk balls (not pictured)

I plumped the raisins and craisins in hot water first. Then I melted the chocolate. Usually I will use a double boiler, but I was feeling a little lazy so this time I just threw all of the chocolate together in a pot and heated it on low. I haven't had a problem doing it this way, but you have to keep a close eye. After the chocolate was mostly melted, I dumped everything else in and stirred it all up, then dumped it out on a baking sheet when it was all coated. I left a little of the white chocolate out and melted it at the end to drizzle on the top.

Put it in the fridge or freezer until it sets up and then chop it up into little hand-held blocks of goodness.

Really, this is a no-lose recipe. As long as you are putting good stuff in, you will get good stuff out. Just don't burn the chocolate. Also, don't try to make ganache, it gets too thick for stirring stuff into, just stick with straight up chocolate.

Caramel Apple Croissant French Toast

This is another recipe inspired by the things that I had no idea what to do with in my house. The leftover caramel sauce from the brownies was taunting me from the fridge and I had an inspiration.


Ingredients
croissants
egg
milk or cream
cinnamon
nutmeg
apple
caramel sauce
maple syrup


Whisk the egg, cream, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a bowl. Slice the croissant in half, and dip the halves in the egg mixture.

The croissant didn't soak up the egg mixture very well, as you can see from the dry-looking croissant in the pan. I am not sure if they were not fresh and soft enough, or if the egg mixture was too thick, but it would have been tastier if they were more absorbent.

I fried up the bread, but watch out because the outsides brown really quickly. On the second pair I tried putting a little brown sugar in the batter, and it was good but I should have gone a little heavier and they wouldn't have even needed syrup!

I mixed the caramel sauce and maple syrup together, and they were a great compliment to the chopped apples and French toast. All in all, this was very good, but I don't think croissants make ideal toast candidates. It was kind of just like crispy croissant toast, which while awesome, doesn't have the same character as French toast with it's creamier center.

Thanksgiving sandwich

My company gives us a free turkey in December.  Because we were travelling for the holidays, I didn't have a chance to make the turkey until this past weekend so we're eating Thanksgiving sandwiches in February.  Wheatfields Bakery in my hometown makes this amazing sandwich with turkey, mixed greens and cranberry sauce on their Walnut Sage bread that is truly a work of art.  We don't have a Wheatfields here so I made my version of their sandwich and it turned out pretty well.















Ingredients:

Turkey breast
artisan bread (this is La Brea Rosemary Olive Oil bread I found at Kroger)
mayonnaise
spicy brown mustard
Ocean Spray whole berry cranberry sauce
baby spinach

Warm up your turkey so it isn't fresh-from-the-fridge cold.  Spread mayo on both slices of bread and the brown mustard on one of the slices.  Put the turkey on the mayo/mustard slice, then cranberry sauce and baby spinach.  Put your other slice of bread on, slice it in half and devour.  This is one of those super simple dishes that packs quite a bit of flavor.  And it was nice to have the sandwich in February because I had some time to de-turkey a bit from the holidays.