My Travel Journal

It's been awhile since my summer travels, but I figured there are things, especially food related that I should post.

I started my journey with a train ride from Paris to Amsterdam. In Brussells, I had breakfast with horse in a zebra suit. He was kind and inviting except the table falls right a the level of his privates which were very detailed. He also talked a lot...in French...and I kept getting the feeling that he was looking down at me.

I had a stereotypical latte avec pain au chocolat. It was simple but delicious and you could be staring at the single chocolate croissant that pushed me to resolve that I would make my own chocolate croissants one day.

Or maybe it was this one that I got with my 1st class seat (2nd class was sold out, and this was only $5 more).

Summer Tomatoes

I have come across a variation of this recipe in a bunch of different places. It's always a mixture of cooking together bread and tomatoes, along with some variation of cheese and different herbs, especially basil. Thus, from a mixture of different sources, that's kind of what I did. It especially fit because I must say that my recent trip to Italy left me craving Italian food and just cooking without recipes. I added some of our day old bread, tomatoes, basil, Italian herbs, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese that I imported direct from Bologna, Italy. They were thrown together in Cocotte, and 30 minutes later, voila!

It looks sloppy, but oh my was it amazingly delicious!

Junior Mint Cupcakes

Triple chocolate cake (I decreased the amount of eggs to make it a brownie consistency) with a mint and chocolate filling.

Topped with vanilla mint frosting and two junior mints.

Le peche au chocolat

I went a little overboard with the chocolate to croissant ratio.

Each of these were a little sin of chocolate.

Malt ball Birthday Cake

Here's a birthday cake that David and I made for our good friend, Dave S.

He once told me that he loved malt balls, so we made him a chocolate and vanilla malt cake.

The secret is malt powder and fine chocolate shavings incorporated into a butter dough as well as a vanilla bean-based frosting.