I have a problem.
I write one post a day, usually. Sometimes, I don’t write a post at all. But I make dinner every day. And lunch most days. And pretty much everything I make is something that I want to blog about, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it. Throw in the fact that I worked for a month, during which I barely had the energy to eat what I had made, much less blog about it (ugh… remind me never to work again), and you have quite an archive of unblogged recipes.
This, of course, is how I end up blogging about Alex’s birthday, which is at the beginning of February, more than halfway through March.
This meal was definitely blog-worthy. After discussing whether we wanted to take his friends out on the town, we decided we would much prefer having a party at home. This, of course, meant that I was cooking. After Alex made a series of odd requests, like “meat cake” (which I took to mean meatloaf, something he had never heard of but now desperately wants me to make), we settled on pasta with bolognese sauce. For me, of course, this was a challenge: I was going to make real Bolognese, and I was going to follow all the rules.
The recipe I followed is outlined, in detail, here, at FX Cuisine. A very large majority of the recipes on this site have made their way onto my list of things to try, but I’ve never attempted any of them before. They always look so gorgeous, but I’ve always been afraid that a) I’d mess them up, or b) they wouldn’t be worth the hours it takes to make them properly.
I needn’t have been afraid. (Wow… I just used needn’t in a sentence. Crazy.) I followed the recipe to the letter, chicken livers included (something I had never tried to use before, but I really liked in the sauce.) It was incredible, and everyone agreed. My only regret is that I didn’t make it for someone who truly appreciates slow-cooked Italian food, like my brother or my dad. Oh well… they’ll be getting a taste of the Neapolitan Meat Sauce soon enough… like next Christmas.
I think what my guests truly appreciated were the chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. I knew immediately that I would have to do something with peanut butter for Alex. I almost did something with Marshmallow Fluff too, a little piece of Americana that my Frenchman, somehow, absolutely adores, but I figured the rest of the French boys in my apartment wouldn’t take too kindly to liquid marshmallow in a jar. Instead, I went for this peanut butter and chocolate cake that Deb over at Smitten Kitchen made for her Alex for his birthday. I decided to make it in cupcake form, because big things like roasts and cakes scare me.
The cupcakes were a huge success (although this is the embarrassing excuse for a picture of the final product that I found on my camera… this is what happens when I try to tackle Bolognese and cake in the same afternoon). I’ll have to try the full cake someday, when I’m not so scared.
This is chocolate peanut butter ganache.
It is incredible in every sense of the word.