Truly Madly Deeply

I meant to post this yesterday, but it was a long and busy day so here it is, a day late.

Valentine's Day of 2011 was three days after my first date with Zac. While we didn't exchange valentines, he did tell me to check this video out. (The video must be viewed to understand anything else that follows). Zac thought it was funny and a good video to watch in the spirit of the day. When I first watched it I thought he was clearly just being blunt about how he felt, but according to him he had never watched the last 10 seconds or so of the video and totally missed the message it was getting across...I'm sticking to my version of the story and that's probably the story that I will tell the kiddos in the future. 

We watch this video every year over Little Caesar's pizza and Martinellis, which is, my very favorite way to spend Valentine's Day. 

Chinese New Year Celebrations

Zac and I celebrated Chinese New Year a day early this year and had lunch at the Four Seasons Hotpot in Provo. We heard about the place from Zac's colleague in one of the Chemistry labs he works in and were told that this place is authentic and indeed it was. We loved it!

We ordered The Xiao Long Bao and Shui Jiao dumplings which were delicious (we called in about two hours in advance since they make everything from scratch) and shared a hotpot. It was our first time and I was so excited to try everything that we ended up with SO much food. I would definitely suggest going for one or the other (dumplings or hotpot) not both.

If you have never had a hotpot before the concept is very simple.

Step 1: Choose your broth--we chose half miso, half spicy Szechwan. Your broth is brought to you and placed on a gas burner or electric burner to keep it nice and hot.
Step 2: Choose your veggies, seafood, meats, noodles, etc. We had tons of crab, prawns, mussels, cabbage, broccoli, bean sprouts, tofu, pork, chicken and mushrooms.
Step 3: Drop everything in the hotpot, mix with chopsticks (this step, according to the sweet lady that showed us how to do it, is vital).
Step 4: Allow hotpot to come to a full boil and cook to desired doneness.
Step 5: Devour with chopsticks, spicy garlic, and peanut sauce.

 Getting the first bite...I believe it was fish

Sauces and appetizers 

 These were the Shui Jiao dumplings with pork and cilantro. The wrapping was so thin and wonderful!

The veggies were excellent in the spicy broth

Happy Chinese New Year! Don't forget to eat noodles tomorrow...it will bring you good luck :) 

Chocolate Cake

When we were dating Zac claimed he preferred pie over cake for his birthday. Last year, however, when I told him I was making him pie he confessed that what he really wanted was chocolate cake and  so I made him one and the result was delicious. This year I made Ron Ben Israel's chocolate cake. He is suppose to be the king of cake and so I had very, very, very high expectations for his recipe. To his credit, the cake did not disappoint! He is in fact, a sweet genius! The cake is moist, decadent, and intensely chocolaty (I have not tasted a complete slice but have been nibbling here and there for some quality control). This batter was also the runniest batter I have ever worked with but just have faith it is suppose to be very, very soupy!

I think Zac will be very happy with the turn out of the cake and I am super excited for him to have it on Monday. He is turning 25 years old! That is a quarter of a century! 

Ingredients

Runny batter

cooling

6 layers of cake, frosted with chocolate mousse in between each layer

made pretty with big milk chocolate curls

My Adjustments

*I got his recipe from food network's website. He does not add the two cups of water the recipe calls for in the directions in the ingredients list, and thankfully I did not skip over reading the directions like I usually do and was able to catch it. 

*I also used cake flour instead of regular all purpose flour. Make sure to use 1cup+1T of cake flour for every cup of all purpose flour you are replacing. Cake flour is much finer and so need a little more of it to get the right proportion of dry to wet ingredients.

*I also used a combination of light brown and castor sugar (2 cups of each). 

*This recipe calls for 2 cups coffee that can be replaced with 2 cups of very strong postum (you can do any barely/wheat drink, or even just hot water --just avoid hot chocolate or anything of that nature because it will only make the cake sweeter).

*I filled the layers with Nigella's chocolate mousse. 

*I also did not use his ganache recipe but instead used Ree Drummond's. 

The result? Chocolate cake goodness! 

 tall and beautiful!