January 12, 2014: Pitiful football! Glorious wings, truffles, and macarons! Gearing up for the Hot Chocolate Festival!

While I spent the weekend watching four disappointingly mediocre football games, Akemi put her time to far better use by expanding her two-day truffle output.  On Saturday, it was Bourbon and Tennessee Honey Whiskey truffles.  This morning, she woke up early and added Bourbon Vanilla, Orange-Cointreau, and Almond to her line-up.  She served them along with a side of dark chocolate ganache macarons…

Even though she was disappointed with the results (it was her first time baking them in the new oven), I thought they passed the all-important taste test.

Equally delicious was today’s main course, compliments of Chef Robert Cooper…

If he had told me the secret ingredient was cocaine, my reaction would have probably been something like: “Yeah, okay.  That makes sense.”

In addition to tempering, cooling, mixing, baking, and rolling, Akemi also took the time to produce this handy chart:

Which essentially breaks down our game plan heading into the upcoming 2014 Hot Chocolate Festival.  It runs January 18th through February 14th at 20 different locations featuring 60+ different hot chocolate flavors for everyone from the purists (Thierry’s 68% Ampamakia dark served with a dark chocolate dipped marshmallow) to the adventurous (Cocoa Nymph’s 64% dark chocolate with parmesan and nutmeg!).  Details here:

http://www.cityfood.com/hotchocolate/coming-soon-

Who’s in?

Back at it tomorrow!  I hit the 30 page mark of the horror script yesterday and spent much of last night lying wide awake in bed because I was breaking down the next twelve scenes in head – then spent more of the night lying wide awake in bed, creeped out by what I’d come up with.