For the first time in what seems like ages, I had some people over for dinner last night. Nothing too fancy for the most part: guacamole and chips, salad (provided by guests). tamale pie, and wine (also provided by guests).
I have all my Halloween decorations up and decided I should get into the spirit of things by having at least one Halloween dish. I checked out the internet for suggestions and here’s what I ended up with:
Guacamole with blue corn chips
I kept the main dishes simple because I decided to make a rather complicated dessert: Chocolate-Pumpkin Crepe Cake. This was really a bit ambitious for me as I have never even made crepes before and this recipe calls for 20 of them. Also there were a lot of mixing and then chilling steps involved. Fortunately, it’s best made a day ahead, so if I messed it up I had time to recover.
However, in spite of all the horror stories I have heard about making crepes, the process was actually quite easy. I didn’t have any trouble flipping the crepes or getting them out of the pan. In fact, it went so well, I am going to try my hand at “real” crepes (these were chocolate with pumpkin pie spice) sometime soon. I believe part of the reason things went well is that the crepes were small: I used an 8-1/2″ non-stick skillet.
I got 19 crepes out of the recipe plus enough of a 20th one to give mom and I a taste. The recipe said it served 12, but as I stood there looking at my little pile of crepes I was a bit dubious. Then I started spreading out the pumpkin-whipped cream filling. 19 crepes and 18 layers of filling later, I called it a night, put the cake in the fridge, and went to bed. Took about 4 hours, which was less than I had initially estimated.
Pulled the well-chilled cake out of the fridge in the morning and made a delicious chocolate ganache to pour over it. Also tried my hand at marshmallow “spiderwebs”. That part did not turn out particularly well. At any rate, here’s the result:
It did make 12 decently-sized servings. I am contemplating making another one sometime but perhaps with something like a raspberry cream-cheese filling.
Hope you all have a fun and safe weekend.
Tuples and Attributes 