My only weakness

bullets... oh and chocolate cake too!

I know I say 'sexual chocolate' a lot, but seriously... sexual chocolate.

So as promised, I've come back to wrap up the last bit of break I had remaining. Again, when you live in the suburbs and it's freezing outside, there's not much for me to do aside from baking. First up was the chocolate cake. My family has a terrible habit of buying way more than we need whenever things are on sale, and this year's purchase consisted of oatmeal. Imagine a fully stocked shelf of oatmeal at your local supermarket... now that's what my pantry looks like (I think we actually purchased some 60 odd pounds of it). Seeing as I have, as my mom puts it, 'womanly cravings' for chocolate cake, I combined our surplus of oats with my love of cocoa and baked it into a layered cake. Despite the odd sounding combination of oats with chocolate cake, the outcome was a decadently moist cake that cut cleanly. In fact, there was no hint of oatmeal in the cake batter since it was soaked for 30 minutes and beat to oblivion in the batter. Once filled with cream and covered with icing, it was as the pictures show, a fairly successful bake job.



Part two concludes with my zucchini bread! My lovely parents also bought a surplus of zucchini, of which they decided to only use one, so the task fell on me to dispose of the... er... extras. Now contrary to the idea of many, my kitchen pantry is not well stocked. Yes, we have tons of oats and zucchini, but I often find myself without simple things, for instance, cinnamon and eggs. I had already started to process the zucchinis when I realized that I only had two eggs remaining in the fridge, so I was a little bit worried that the loaves would come out not as bread, but as bricks. Furthermore, I opened the cupboard to see no cinnamon, no nutmeg, no all spice... what was a guy to do. Improvise! haha, I just continued mixing, going by ratios of the all too familiar banana breads that I've done in the past, and substituted a 'secret chinese ingredient' in place of what would normally be cinnamon... (五香粉) *wink* for those that understand Chinese. I popped the loaves in the oven, 50 minutes at 375, and after 50 minutes of anxiety, I was greeted with this...



A pair of beautiful golden brown breads that are curiously moist for lack of eggs. There is a touch of unexpected sweetness on the first bite (not me, I mean... I was the one who added the sugar) and a slight kick from the spice. For what it's worth, I've only gotten to eat two slices, one loaf disappeared before cooling, one loaf was eaten by the next day, and a few slices remained to bring to school... (so come knock if you would like zucchini bread).

I know I mentioned a peanut butter banana oat bar that I made with whey, but they're not very photogenic, which isn't to say they aren't delicious, but I'd rather not sully my blog with 'food un-porn.' I've pretty much summed up winter break, so with my last bit of posting, I'd like to wish my friend Chris a very happy 21st birthday. Yes, I know I'm a day late on this posting (or is it a week early based on the timestamp?). So I'm done until Friday, where we'll pick up with 'Restaurant Week,' at AJ Maxwell's Steakhouse.