Alton Brown's Mac and Cheese

I know you're all thinking it....how could KTC possibly ever execute an Alton Brown recipe? she's so lazy! she wants everything to have a shortcut! she hates measuring things! she hates dirtying excess dishware!  But my friends I managed to find the simplest Alton Brown recipe ever created: stove top mac-n-cheese.

The ingredient line up.  Eggs were also involved.

I added some broccoli florets to make it a well rounded meal.  Sometimes I like to consider my health.  I'll refrain from informing you about the embarrassing freakout I had about not being able to fit everything in the pot.

Let me just tell you it's 10pm.  My flight home was delayed almost 8 hours.  I am crazy tired.  But I would kill to have some of this mac and cheese right now.  It was a great success, unlike my journey home from Florida.

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

I got this amazing recipe idea from Crepes of Wrath.  Her recipe for chocolate covered strawberry chip cookies can be found here.  For mine, I just used a regular chocolate chip cookie dough recipe that was on the bag of chocolate chips because who can be bothered with browning butter on a Friday night when you already had a freak out while cooking dinner in front of your boyfriend and The Wonder Years is waiting in the other room.

Here is the oh so delicious dough:

And here are is the nicely balled up dough thanks to my awesome cookie scoop that I don't know how I lived without for so long.

Annnnnnd because I was having stress filled freak-outs this particular Friday night, I failed to take a picture of the finished cookies!  I actually think my plan was to wait until the morning to get some nice natural light on the delicious babies, but that didn't happen.  So I'll let you see a lovely photograph from Crepes of Wrath.

Yeaaaa my pictures are never going to look that good.

Happy Father's Day!

Let us first explore the dessert portion of tonight's meal.  I used this Betty Crocker recipe for triple chocolate stout whoopie pies.  The only thing I changed was not using two sticks of butter for the filling.  It just seemed like such unnecessary excess.

Here is a good portion of the ingredients:

The cooling cookies which were so lovely and puffed up when in oven, fell so unattractively once removed from the oven.

The pies all filled up:

For dinner I used a  Rachel Ray recipe for spinach pasta with asparagus pesto.  I used basil and parsley fresh from the garden.

Add in some olive oil, cheese, salt and pepper, and crush it to oblivion in a food processor.  Much to my surprise the asparagus does not get cooked prior to adding it to the pesto.

I only used half of the asparagus in the pesto.  The rest I chopped, roasted, and mixed into the finished pasta.

I found some roasted garlic ciabatta bread and good god that made some seriously delicious garlic bread.  Head to your local Stop and Shop and see if you can find this bread.

Happy Father's Day!

Triple Chocolate Cake

Not one, not two, but THREE chocolates!  Delicious Meliscious dubs this recipe double chocolate brownie cake, but I count three chocolates so there.

There they are, all three of the beautiful chocolate ingredients.

With three chocolates this cake hardly needs anything more than a little confectioners sugar dusted over it.

This is quite possibly the tastiest jazzed up cake mix recipe I've ever had.  I made it for some birthdays at work and we ate the whole thing!  I'm definitely going to need to make this again when I don't have to share it with so many other people.

Egg-ceptional

I used this recipe for herbed-baked eggs from Ina Garten to make my family a little breakfast for dinner last week.

This is the herb mixture that I topped the eggs with: dried thyme, fresh basil and parsley, garlic, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper.

Loving this new use for ramekins!

Fresh outta the oven.  Ina suggests to have some nice runny dippy eggs, but I don't like my eggs like that so I made sure the egg was cooked all the way through.

I served the eggs up with hash browns and toast.  These were so delightfully simple, easy, and delicious.

Show-stopper

I'm going to do a lot of bragging so just be prepared.  This dinner was amazing.  It was so amazing that I have not stopped thinking about since it happened.

We used two recipes from the Williams Sonoma cookbooks we got for Christmas: tiny roquefort popovers and a balsamic reduction with shallots and prosciutto that we put on some chicken.  I am sorry to say I cannot find the recipe online. This recipe is similar, just put the prosciutto in with the shallots and forget about all the lamb directions.

Here are the shallots and prosciutto browning for the balsamic sauce.

And now you can catch a glimpse of the murky balsamic reduction.  Never before has something so unattractive tasted so good. You're going to have to trust me on this one.

The popover batter frightened us because it was incredibly lumpy and made much more than the recipe claimed.

But have no fear they came out amazing!!!

Just look at this damn thing of beauty!

We sauteed the chicken in some oil on the stove and poured the sauce on when it was done cooking.

Here we have my well-balanced plate.

I'll let you kids in on a little secret, I ate about 10 of those popovers throughout the course of the evening.  I cannot impress upon you enough that this meal was spectacular and you need to make it.  Seriously, go dazzle someone with this meal, they will be quite grateful.