Brownie

For lunch with friends, I got a request for brownie. I made a huge pan, and topped it with a quick ganache of microwaved chocolate and cream. I originally wanted to pipe designs on the top of it with the ganache, but got lazy and ended up just wiping it back and forth as it poured out of the spoon.

Spinach Artichoke Dip

A meal between friends with a lot of different appetizers. I made this small dish of spinach artichoke dip to eat with chips or crackers.

I kind of eyeballed the quantities. Basically, it's just a package of cream cheese, strained pack of thawed frozen spinach, chopped up jar of artichoke hearts, some extra cream, and seasoning. Then I topped it with cheese and broiled it just to melt the cheese.

Vegan Strawberry and Chocolate Cake

For yet another hallway dinner, I opted to go through a really quick cake recipe. One of my hallway mates had recently decided to try veganism, so I went for this basic cake recipe I've been using. I added in some frozen strawberries I stewed and cooled into the batter,

I actually wanted to top it with a light ganache, but the only chocolate I had on hand contained milk. So I tried making some kind of vegan frosting by mixing random quantities of cocoa powder, icing sugar, and hot water until reaching a frosting consistency.

Unfortunately, I didn't think what would happen to the frosting after it cooled... it became pretty sticky but apparently people still liked it. Also unintended, the chocolate flavor came out so much stronger than the strawberry...