So, most of you who know me also know I am all about the food - and this includes eating it, enjoying it, savoring it, admiring it when it's someone else's work, and also buying it, chopping it and cooking it myself, so I can complete the cycle just outlined above and call it my work. Among the things on my mental to-do-list (you know, to do before I die...) is taking some cooking classes, the fancy kind without the CIA degree.
Now, I have my days. Some days, things go well. The gods of cooking and eating smile at me, and the creations coming out of my kitchen are pretty darn good, considering I'm not a chef. I can play Rachel Ray and do 30-minute meals, I can play Iron Chef and come up with something when there's virtually nothing in my fridge, and some days I think I can play Martha Stewart, but then that may be a bit too much (and it's more like Lucy Ricardo entered the kitchen...)
I had this small jewelry party at my house with a small number of moms from the daycare and their kids - kids went upstairs, where we hoped they wouldn't kill each other, and moms stayed downstairs with the baubles and the wine. And the food that I'd been thinking about and working on from the day before.
So let me say this - I had a decent level of success. And bless my husband, he did call me Martha Stewart. The reason? I decided it was time I tried my hand at my version of petit fours. I have learned my lesson since - they are a royal pain in the ass. I did take some shortcuts, so it looks like I also can play "semi-homemade". The end result was really delicious - I started with a vanilla cake, which I filled with boysenberry jam and a bit of Armagnac, and fudge. I then cut the blocks into strips and then cubes, and then I worked on covering them in sinful semi-sweet chocolate, which is when the pain-in-the-ass factor came in.
It was such a good idea. It looked so simple to implement. It was going to be my piece-de-la-resistance. It could've been better. Melting the chocolate will have to be perfected - not sure double boiler is the way to go. Not sure adding cream to thin it out is a good idea. Not sure I can afford the amount of chocolate that gets consumed in this process.
The petit fours, to my own credit, were sinful. And people loved them. And my husband called me Martha Stewart, which gave me more satisfaction than anything else. But let's face it, some things shouldn't be attempted without adult supervision... let's just say it took me a while to get the hang of it, and while they were delicious and the top of them was decorated prettily, the chocolate covering itself wasn't perfect (which so goes against my anal retentive nature).
So, why should you care? You shouldn't. I just had to get it out of my system.
