Adventures in Cooking

Admittedly, I am not a fantastic cook, and I am more than FAR from being a great baker. In fact, I rarely bake; it scares me. This summer, I decided that I would make at least one new recipe each week to broaden my horizons. I scoured all of my cookbooks, categorized recipes by protein, and made lists of recipes that sounded good. Slowly, I've been making my way through the lists.

This week, I attempted two new recipes. Thursday, I made whole wheat crepes for dinner. I love breakfast for dinner! I've made crepes before, but this was a new recipe, including using ricotta cheese as filling. Needless to say, the crepes themselves were a disaster. They didn't flip well (I need to learn to flip things without a spatula like I see all the t.v. chefs do!). By the time I was finished, I had about a million crepe pieces piled on the plate. We made do. Another brilliant meal by me!

Then, last night, I made a Chocolate Covered Mango and Vanilla Ice Cream Bombe. Boy was that an adventure! It included pureeing mango to blend with ice cream, five hours of freezer time (running up and down stairs to get to the deep freezer in between layering ingredients), and one frantic call to a dear friend (Em C.) asking how to fix my clumpy, separated ganache (put it in the blender!). Coincidentally, Em was making the SAME dessert last night! Bet hers wasn't such an adventure! =/ And here were my final and exhausting results:

The second picture doesn't quite capture the layers. My knife was no longer clean during cutting, so the layers ran together. But, if you click on the above link, you'll see what it should look like ala Take Home Chef.

Not gorgeous, but delicious. Next time, I am going to try different ice cream flavors.