I will sum up my quietude of late with seven words: Brainiac's doctor has ordered a chest x-ray.
She is merely being cautious in light of his
history and none of us is particularly worried but the directive is indicative of the general state of affairs around here. Between what looks like a mild (but still) secondary infection for him, an on-pins-and-needles situation for me and the general schedule-busting mayhem that comes with spring break we're all a bit spent. As I type this it's nearly a quarter to nine at night - the first night in three that I've been awake to see this time tick-tock past. That I'm still up and energetic enough to start a load of laundry and cruise the blogs a bit, I'd say that things are looking up.
None of this is to say that I haven't managed the odd burst of household productivity. The children's au pair turned 25 years old on Monday night and we celebrated with this:
O.K., you know, that doesn't look so hot all big and blown up on my screen like that. Trust me when I tell you that it was really quite yummy. Yummy makes up for a number of aesthetic issues, yes?
The essential idea came from
Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate and Zucchini cookbook, after the blog of the same name. Because I can never leave anything alone I made some changes to the core recipe, gilded the lily a bit and ended up with what seemed like the very essence of indulgence.
Instead of Clotilde's
pate sable I used a regular old American-style pie crust - I had no time for a learning curve and knew my recipe to be perfectly acceptable. Over the crust which had been baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, I poured a caramel of dark brown sugar (the original recipe called for light brown sugar). This was allowed to set for several hours.
Over top the caramel is a bittersweet ganache made with heavy cream and nine ounces of dar-ar-ar-ar-ark chocolate. After
that set I topped the whole thing with sweetened whipped cream. The original recipe doesn't call for such tarting (ha!) up, but I don't need heavy cream just sitting about the house begging to take a swim in my coffee.
You can see from the pictures that this tart/pie was strictly amateur hour. Unlike the wildly talented Clotilde I will not be offered a book deal on the basis of my capacity for turning out delicious
and beautiful confections. It
was wonderful to eat, though, smooth and creamy and just sweet enough between the caramel and whipped cream. The very dark chocolate added a deep note that kept the whole thing from being too cloying. Best of all, the celebrating recipient loved it as I hoped that she would.
