Homemade Dark Chocolate Shell

Dark chocolate shell over coffee ice cream = perfection

At this very moment, I am supposed to be hanging out with some fabulous southern food writers and bloggers in the lovely city of Birmingham. Alas, an ice storm got in the way of my travels. (Darn southern ice storms!) What to do, what to do? Other than mope around a bit...

On the bright side, I have these two days to get caught up on work and play around Charlotte unencumbered by my usual posse of 4 little people. My in-laws arrived in town before I knew that I would not be leaving town so the children are completely occupied with the grandparents. To give myself a little bit of a break from grading and writing, I decided to make up a little batch of dark chocolate shell to surprise the kiddos for dessert tonight.

Black Eyed Peas and Collard Greens Soup

Black Eyed Peas and Collard Greens Soup

My oldest kiddos are second graders in the same classroom (I know!! isn't that awesome?!) and they recently compiled a classroom cookbook to represent the different cultures in the class. This project made me realize that my poor children have a bit of an identity crisis going on - we are, as I have mentioned, meat and potatoes Irish Catholics, but we have lived in Ohio, Boston, and now, obviously, North Carolina.

This project was tricky for them... my daughter assured me that my Bailey's Freezer Pie represented her culture (true, but, uh-oh!) and my son said he felt that everyone should know about the importance of eating black eyed peas and collard greens for the new year. He wouldn't budge on his recipe choice. That boy misses snow but I am pretty sure he is going to be southern for the long haul... 

Gluten Free Red Velvet Cupcakes with Chocolate Chip Cream Cheese Frosting

I know that there are A LOT of food blogs out there with ridiculously amazing photography. This blog, certainly, is not one of them. I do my best but I know that the photos are often an afterthought. As in, AFTER my kids have devoured the food... Oops! It's hard to keep delicious food out of the hands of hungry kids.

Gluten Free Red Velvet Cupcake with Chocolate Chip Cream Cheese Frosting

For this blog post, I have one photo. Just one. One lonely, yet super delicious, gluten free red velvet cupcake sitting safely atop my old-school kitchen scale... away from 4 sets of grabby little hands. This recipe is just so, so good and really wowed all of my non-GF friends. Rich, moist, delicious. Very easy to make! I started with a Betty Crocker gluten free cake mix and added a few ingredients that you probably have on hand right now... Yup. That simple. Keep reading!

Irish Roast Chicken with Drunken Carrots

Happy New Year! For many, many years before I moved to the south, I was just a nice Irish Catholic girl living in and around Boston. We did not eat black-eyed peas on New Years Day. Nor had I ever, ever even heard of collard greens. (Collard what? Is that kind of like spinach?) For New Years Day, we cooked like it was any other important football day ... lots of finger food and a nice "Sunday dinner" spread. A slow cooked beef roast, pork tenderloins in the oven, or perhaps a lovely roast chicken - my personal favorite.

A couple of months ago, I agreed to be a part of a recipe telephone tag - food blogger style - organized by the great folks who put together Food Blog South. Every week or so, a southern food blogger would write up a recipe for roast chicken and pass it on the next writer. Each writer needed to add their special twist to the roast chicken recipe and pass it on again. My time has come! The last food blogger to write about roast chicken for this telephone tag project was Michal, a food blogger in south Mississippi, writing over at Oh, The Humidity. Friends, let's just say that she LIT HER CHICKEN ON FIRE. I am totally serious. Check out her blog and you can see it for yourself.