Long Lost Cooking Challenge

I have been slacking on my posts more thank I have been slacking on my recipes. I have not kept up with the 5 recipes per week, but I will still accomplish my goal of all recipes in 50 weeks. So what have I completed in the last month??? Cream cheese frosting, Chocolate toffee cake with chocolate mouse, toffee, and ganache, Creme caramel, Apple crisp, and quite a few repeats of recipes I have already completed. Once people try something they want me to make it over and over again. While I enjoy making things that people enjoy, I need to get back on track with the challenge. The weight loss is going well. I have lost almost 20 lbs! Christine came to visit from Virginia and she chose two different cakes. I went grocery shopping and came home with fat and sugar!
I thought I would be ambitious and make them both for her, but a fever had other plans and I did not want to cook when I was sick...for obvious reasons. I did manage to make the Chocolate toffee cake and it got rave reviews. It was too sweet for me but a winner in teh cookbook challenge because it took 4 total recipes to make the cake!!!


I made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting...the carrot cake was my usual recipe rather than the one from this cookbook, but I did make the cream cheese (mmm mmm mmm) from the book!


I used Apples in the Fruit Crisp recipe and it was very easy to make and I could see myself making that recipe over and over again!!! I used my apple peeler, slicer, corer on the apples and had enough apples for the recipe in no time!


I made Creme caramel for Friends dinner and Matthias was my photo subject of the evening. The recipe called for whole egge whereas creme brulee is just the egg yolks. I thought the creme caramel tasted too much like eggs and was blan other than that. Some people, who also like flan, really liked the recipe. i might try the caramel at the bottom of the creme brulee and see it that is better!!! The concept of creme caramel is cool though. You put the liquid caramel in the bottom of the ramekins and then pour the custard over the top and baked. The longer you let the custard cool, the more caramel that spills over the custard when you take it from the ramekin!!!