Valentine's Meal for My Valentine

Today was a whirlwind adventure of cooking and baking for me.

I've been planning to do something nice for Tene (due to it being Valentine's Day) for a week now. You'd think, having plenty of time to prepare, that I would have everything in the kitchen, just ready and waiting. But I didn't. We lacked a few things called for in the recipes I chose (lemon juice, paprika, chicken bullion, strawberries, and chocolate chips). So in the early afternoon Tene and I went shopping to get the missing ingredients - and a few other things (I was baking a cake, and needed two round cakepans - 9", and they barely fit in the oven together. Have I mentioned my oven/stove is tiny? Because it is). Then we came home, and the cooking began.

For our one meal of the day (bruchinner? We don't eat much around these parts) I made Chicken Piccata, which was very tasty, used too much butter. Like way too much butter. Maybe because I only made one breast (cut in half) instead of four? But still ... It was swimming in the butter. It was tasty though, and the chicken was nice and tender. I also made, as a sort of warm salad, some Garlic Bok Choy (I left out the ginger [which neither Tene nor I are huge fans of], oyster sauce [again: we're not really fans], and the red pepper flakes. and I put in an extra tablespoon of the soy sauce to make up for the missing oyster sauce. I also wasn't precise in measuring the brown sugar), which was also quite good. I found I prefer the taste of the leafy bits of the bok choy, which is good to know for future reference. I added a few strawberries as garnish and there it was! A healthy, delicious meal!

Tene didn't like how oily the chicken was, so I also heated up some leftover rice and mixed in some garlic power and salt, it worked well.

Then came desert. I had two deserts planned - one Tene knew about (a chocolate cake) and one he didn't (chocolate covered strawberries). The strawberries came from a conversation earlier in the week, when I asked Tene what he would enjoy as a desert. He didn't know, and said that what he likes from deserts is a mixture of sweetness and tartness - which I knew, but it was nice to be reminded. I thought about it for a while and it dawned on me - chocolate covered strawberries are absolutely perfect for those requirements. And so I decided to make them.

First was the cake. I've never really made a cake before, let alone a two-tiered one, but this one was pretty easy. Everything was just mixed together in one bowl - the dry ingredients first, then the wet ingredients, and then some boiling hot water. It made a relatively thin batter, which was easy to just pour into my new, well greased, cake pans. Then into the oven it went.

Then I went on to make the frosting. I didn't want to use buttercream (the only other frosting I've ever made), so I decided to try out a chocolate ganache. I found one that was really easy - two cups of heavy cream, warmed, and 16 oz of baker's chocolate. I used some really-dark-chocolate-chips, because there was no baker's chocolate left at the grocery store we went to. Brought the heavy cream to almost boiling, poured it over the chocolate chips, waiting for a few minutes (I covered the bowl the mixture was in to help trap some of the heat) and then stir until mixed! Then I just had to wait for the cakes to be done and the ganache to cool to a spreadable consistency.

So I worked on my strawberries! Really easy - I melted a decent amount of chocolate chips on the stove over a very low heat, Tene stirred it all the while. I added some milk (ended up being too much, but at least I know for next time) to make it a little smoother. Then I dipped the strawberries and set them out to harden on a cookie sheet.

Time passed, I took out the cakes to cool, flipped their pans over and had them slide out perfectly. More time passed, Tene and I ate the strawberries (I didn't get a picture of them). More time passed and I finally got around to frosting the cake.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but the ganache spread very smoothly. I wish I had leveled the sides of the cakes, but now I know what to do next time. Once the cake was nice and covered in a decent layer of frosting I decided to decorate. At first I considered sprinkles, since Tene and I got a little bottle of them at the store. But then I remembered my strawberries, and so I put 8 strawberries all around the edge of the cake.

Finally I cut two slices - one for me and one for Tene - and brought them up to him so we could eat them together.

It was delicious. The cake was rich and moist and chocolaty - but not overly sweet, and the frosting was a very appetizing bittersweet. I was only able to eat half of my slice (the other half is in the fridge, I will finish it off tomorrow).

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my Valentine's day meal. I hope to do more cooking, and baking, in the near future.