Can you say chocolate?

My dad went to Aldi the other day and bought an entire box of chocolate. Not like a gift box box, no like those cardboard boxes you get from Costco that used to hold apples or oranges. Big boxes. Needless to say, it was a lot of chocolate which meant a lot of baking involving a lot of chocolate.

 First up: chocolate frenchness.

Alrighty recipe time. Problem is I don't what to call this, it looks like a brownie but it is cake or some version of it. My friend gave me the recipe and he called it fondant but it's not icing. Apparently fondant is french for something but it doesn't mean cake :/ Sooo I googled it and still nothing, which leads me to believe I'm either crazy or just spelling it wrong. Regardless, it is delicious and it is the richest thing I have ever eaten in my life.

Ingredients
- 2 bars (~4 oz each) of dark chocolate
- 4 eggs separated
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup of butter ( 1 stick)
- 1/8 cup of flour

Melt the chocolate and butter on low heat. Take off the stove to cool.

Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. [alright funny store time. the first time I made this with my friend, I separated the eggs too fast and the yolk fell into the eggs whites. Even though I made a a very diligent attempt to scoop out the yolks, it wasn't enough and the egg whites wouldn't whip up even after 10 minutes. mini fail.]

Mix the yolks, sugar and flour into the chocolate mixture and then fold in the egg whites.

Pour into a buttered pan. Everyone I know uses Pam but there's something about a zero-calorie butter spray that kind of freaks me out so I stick with good old butter. Thanks for the influences Paula Deen.

Bake at 350 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes or until the edges start to pull away from the pan.

Next up truffles. And that means another story. Ever since I was 12, I always made truffles for my dad for Christmas because 1) he the hardest person to shop for since he detests sports 2) making truffles doesn't deplete my bank account and 3) it is the one tried and tested dessert that I konw my dad will eat.

The firs time I made them, it was the most difficult cooking adventured I had ever attempted. Mostly because the cookbook made it seem like dipping ganache into melted chocolate was the easiest thing in the world. wrong. the chocolate kept melting the ganache and I wound up with a big pile of chocolate goo. After a few tries  I finally learned how to actually melt chocolate properly, how to get the right ganache consistency and how to dip them into chocolate. Except then I got lazy and started dipping them into coco powder. heh.

Crushed walnuts, shaved dark chocolate and coco powder.

Mad the ganache with tempered chocolate and hot cream. (pouring hot cream over chocolate thereby melting the chocolate). I think I used 1 bar of chocolate with 1/2 cup of cream.

Chilled the ganache in the fridge for about 1 hour

Scooped out the chilled ganache and rolled into balls. Unfortunately, we don't have one of those fancy scoopers so I used a tablespoon and my hands.

Dipped into the dippings and voila!

Into the tissue paper they go.

I wanted to make some with a green tea filing but I left the macha powder at school. harumph.

Alrighty last recipe. Good old chocolate chip cookies. I was all baked out but my friend still wanted to make cookies and she had never made anything from scratch (!!!). So I made her made these while I gave directions. Used a simple recipe from smitten kitchen and they turned out prettyy yummy (find the recipe here).

Only problem is my parents don't eat cookies and I still have a dozen and a half of cookies sitting in the cookie jar. My solution? ice cream cookie sandwiches. tasty and they last! But I will have to wait until tomorrow to make the sandwiches since all of the stores are closed today.

Some extra large cookies for a not so large cookie sheet :p

And the last (but I think best) part. Took some more foodie pictures the next day with all of the desserts. We have this sun room that's all windows which is just amazing because it is just loads and loads of natural sunlight (even when its yucky and cold out). So whenever I have any food pictures to take and its still daylight out, I take all of the food over, plop it on a chair and snap away.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday break! And thank you to my amazing pledge sisters for all the holiday wishes :)