Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes- the Missus found this recipe and, of course, my initial reaction was: 'Shit, I gotta make these things- stat!' As it turned out- it was extremely simple to do. I already had a recipe for Guinness Chocolate Cupcakes and I had leftover Bailey's Frosting from the Coffee Chocolate Cupcakes so two out of three elements came together pretty quickly. The final element was the Whiskey-Chocolate Ganache. (For those that don't know: an Irish car bomb consists of dropping a shot of Bailey's into maybe a half-pint, 3/4 pint of Guinness. If you can drink it all down before the Guinness curdles the Bailey's, it's quite delicious.)
Needless to say: I'd never made a ganache- ever. I only vaguely knew what one was, but obediently got the bittersweet chocolate and Irish whiskey ready to go. I thought I'd have to do something idiotic to heat the chocolate- but it turns out that I was going to chop the chocolate and then pour heated cream on top of it to melt it all. And you know what- that worked nicely. It was yum-tastic and although I think I need practice excavating holes in my cupcakes for filling, my first time out wasn't too bad. Except for one tiny snag.
I've discovered that I lack patience when it comes to frosting especially. I either don't let the cupcakes cool enough, thus making the frosting all melty or I don't let the frosting thicken up enough, so it's a little runny. Needless to say, I ran into the latter problem with these cupcakes so I snuck them into the fridge quick to try and cool 'em down for a bit to stiffen up the frosting. Unfortunately, I didn't reckon about the ganache. Chocolate and cream when combined is delicious. When cooled, however, it hardens right back up so the ganache was less the exciting filling than it was supposed to be than a hard chewy core. So that was unfortunate...
But all in all, it was delicious! The cupcakes will, I expect, continue...
[No, there's no picture for the tofu. I forgot to take one when it was fresh and it definitely loses luster when you keep it in the fridge and re-heat. Doesn't mean it doesn't taste good- just that it doesn't really look all that good.]
What the hell do I do with tofu? Tofu is one of those things that you see in the Supermarket and you think: 'tofu's healthy, I should get me some of that' and then you do and then you've got this big ass block of stuff and you have no idea what to do with it except maybe, Asian stir fry- which isn't bad sometimes, but I wanted to find something a little more creative to do with it.
Enter this recipe. Easy, quick marinade followed by a good sautée and you've got a pretty good appetizer- I whipped up a garlic Sriracha mayo and grabbed some Asian Sweet Chili Sauce for dipping sauces and overall, it scored a B+ from everyone. And given the fact this was my first time doing something like this, I'll take it.
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