Gorgonzola Risotto

You’ll notice a little something different about today’s post. No pictures of food! Now don’t worry, I am giving you a recipe (a very delicious recipe in fact!). However the pictures of the food weren’t nearly as pretty as my pictures from New York City last weekend! You might remember that I met my mom in New York last weekend to celebrate her birthday. We had three girls-only days in the big city.

I’ve been to New York a many number of times and know my way around pretty well. Of course, it’s pretty tough to get lost when you’re in Midtown, all the streets are numbered. Once I get to the East Village is when I start to get all turned around, especially after coming out of the subway. I think all I need is a compass, then I wouldn’t go the wrong direction nearly as often as I do. It’s too bad the compass on the iPhone doesn’t work in New York. The signal bounces off the buildings and your GPS thinks you are inside of a building three blocks away, not helpful.

So what did we do in our weekend in the city? We went shopping, we saw the sights and we watched a show. We also ate a lot of cupcakes. Seriously, we had cupcakes every single day that we were there. Rather than heading to just a single bakery, we decided to check out a couple of different ones. You know, we had to compare and contrast the product, right?

Personally I fell in love with my peanut butter cup cupcake from Crumbs, although I was covered in frosting when I finished eating it. I was licking it off of my elbow, I’m pretty sure there was frosting in my hair too. I was a little wired that night! Mom liked her vanilla cupcake from Eleni’s Bake shop, located inside of Chelsea Market. They also served up a mean raspberry cupcake, super delicious.

It was a great weekend, full of history, culture, shops and sugar!

Chocolate Butterceam truffles

I think it’s time for more candy! Last week’s Turkish taffy is now safely out of my house and in the hands of my mom and dad. I decided that taffy would be an excellent birthday present! So, I gave a big bag of taffy to my mom while we were in New York City this weekend. Although, I’m feeling like I need to make more since I only ate one piece!

This week we’re heading back to chocolate land! I decided to make some very fancy, artisan chocolates this week. I can call them artisan because I made them with my hands, right? This week it’s time for truffles. Since we are only in week four of Candy Challenge 2011, I decided to start with a simple chocolate truffle. Get the basics first, then try to launch myself into a wide array of truffle flavors rivaling that of See’s candies.

Here is what I have learned in making this first set of chocolate truffles…

1. Chocolate truffles are basically balls of hardened buttercream frosting. Delicious, yes. Healthy, no.

2. If you want to flavor dark chocolate truffles, you have to use some powerful flavors. (these were supposed to be orange truffles, the flavor was masked by the chocolate)

3. Do not make truffles on a warm day. In fact, you have a friend with a really cold apartment/kitchen. Go there. Bond over making truffles.

4. You will be covered in chocolate, invest in an apron. Not a cute one with ruffles, a black one. Reserve the cute on for less dirty tasks.

5. Rolling truffles in straight cocoa powder, following the recipe directions, will lead to a bitter outside, contrasting starkly with the sweet truffle. This might be a good thing in your opinion, I got mixed reviews from my taste testers. Although all of the truffles were eaten at the end of the day.

There we are, truffles are a little finicky and they took a full evening to make. However, if you are looking for a shot of chocolate in the afternoon, these will not let you down. They are rich and creamy (because they are made out of chocolate and butter). Be prepared for more truffles in the coming year, I’ve got some flavor combinations that are itching to be made!

What’s your favorite truffle flavor? Mine is Key Lime, yum.

Coconut Panna Cotta & Key Lime Gelee

This month’s Daring Bakers consisted of two recipes that I had never made before. In fact, these recipes had never dawned on me before. I’m not a huge fan of chilled desserts. I like my desserts warm from the oven, topped with ice cream. You will rarely find puddings, gelatins or flans in my fridge. Two factors of this particular challenge seemed serendipitous. First, I’ve been working with a lot of gelatin in the past few weeks. I had just stocked up on Knox gelatin before our February challenge arrived. Second, I actually had panna cotta, for the first time in my life, on January 28th.

Boyfriend and I were in New York City four weeks ago apartment hunting. After a long and fruitless day of looking at either mediocre apartments or overpriced ones, we headed to the Meatpacking district for dinner. It was the beginning of restaurant week and we decided to try Ajna Bar on Little 12th Street. The most recent snowfall had made crossing intersections (in cute shoes nonetheless) very, very difficult. Also, if you are familiar with this particular section of Manhattan, you know the streets are cobbled. Cobbled streets, covered in several inches of slush, are a cute shoe-wearing girls nightmare. Boyfriend also refused to carry me across the street. Bad boyfriend.

We made it to Anja bar and were greeted with a burst of warm air and dark corridor. Once we were seated we had to take a minute to absorb all of the things going on around us. The restaurant is huge, with an equally large wait staff. There are huge columns, carved into dragons, candles galore and what I’m pretty sure was an aquarium filled with jellyfish. All the crazy décor aside, the meal was actually pretty delicious. (I’d highly recommend their shrimp curry.) The perfect ending to the meal was their Thai tea panna cotta. Smooth and creamy panna cotta buried beneath a layer of cool whipped cream and chocolate crunch.  Perfect.

For my panna cotta, I decided to go a little more south, and less east, for my influence. Key lime is one of my favorite flavors and with this being the season of citrus I was able to get some good ones! Just don’t skimp on the fat in this panna cotta recipe. If you go with lite coconut milk you will likely wind up with a panna cotta that won’t set. Give this a try and enjoy a little summer on a plate.

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestlé Florentine Cookies.  Since Giadas recipe called for honey, and I hate honey, I went in another direction.  The florentine cookies weren't anything to write home about, so I omitted the recipe.  You can find it on the Nestle website.