Chocolate Pots de Creme

This is the first recipe that I've ever posted on the Newlyweds Next Door (shows what a cook I am!), but since the "Chocolate Pots de Creme" were such a huge hit at our dinner party and are pretty easy to make, I had to share the recipe with you all. And it's also "Dessert Week" on Kelly's Korner!

These Chocolate Pots de Creme are perfect for a small dinner party because everyone get their own little dessert cup!



Ingredients
1/2 cup whole milk
3/4 cup heavy cream
3 oz bittersweet chocolate
3 large egg yolks
1/3 sugar
Whipped cream for serving

Tools
Deep baking dish
Saucepan
Samme ramekins
Large glass measuring cup
Fine-mesh sieve

Directions
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Heat the milk and cream in a medium saucepan over medium heat until you see small bubbles start to form along the sides of the pan. Add the chocolate; stir to melt the chocolate. Set the mixture aside to cool slightly.

In a bowl, gently combine the egg yolks and sugar with a wooden spoon until the sugar is dissolved. Do not create too many bubbles as you mix. Slowly pour the chocolate mixture into the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly. Poor through a fine-mesh sieve into a large glass measuring cup. Spoon off any foam from the surface.

Arrange six 1/2 ramekins or custard cups in a deep baking dish or pan. Divide the chocolate mixture evenly among the ramekins. Fill the pan with water to reach about halfway up the sides of the ramekins and cover loosely with foil to prevent a skin from forming on the creams. Bake until the cream are just firm at the edges but still tremble in center when shaken, about 30 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven and carefully remove the ramekins from the water. Allow to cool completely before covering and refrigerating for at least 2 hours or overnight to set. Serve chilled with a dollop of whipped cream. Add chocolate shavings, if desired.

Recipe is from the William-Sonoma Bride and Groom Cookbook.
Image from Cooks Illustrated.

Monday Musings

Things on my mind...

• The dinner party on Saturday was huge success! I have fully redeemed myself from my cooking failures. Our guests loved everything and even complemented my cooking skills! The gazpacho (cold soup) was huge hit. The Mr. did a great job on the steaks over arugula. And the mini-pots of chocolate dessert was ah-mazing. I officially love that William-Sonoma cookbook. In all the stress of cooking I didn't take any pictures, but this is what the gazpacho looked like.

• USC Trojans lost to Washington. I almost cried. That's all I want to say about that.

• On Saturday night the Mr. slammed his hand in the door out to our condo balcony. He cut his finger really bad I'm we're pretty sure he fractured the top bone of his finger. We tried to go to the emergency room at 11:30 PM on Saturday night and the wait there was over 3 hours (there was also a crazy man in the waiting room barking like dog. I heart LA). Since we figured he didn't need stitches for the cut and since doctors can't do much for a broken finger, we immediately left and just went to Rite Aid to buy a finger splint. Poor guy.

• Like millions of other Americans we are officially "underwater" on our home loan. But we confirmed can't refinance to a lower interest rate through the government bailout plans, because we haven't missed any payments. I find that very ironic.

• I got my annual bonus today! Too bad taxes ate over 1/2 of it. Don't you hate that about bonuses?

• In less than four weeks we will be BOSTON! I'm so excited for our week vacation to New England!

Ok that's enough randomness for now. How was your weekend?

Dinner Party Planning

When I was engaged I had all these dreams of holding fancy-schmancy dinner parties at our condo complete with Hostess with the Mostess-style center pieces and "the good china."

Flash forward one year, and I think we've had about two dinner parties with two couples. Not to say we haven't had people over. We do poolside burgers & BBQs, football watching parties, dessert parties, and copious booze fests with friends at our home; just not real dinner parties. Why not so many dinner parties? Because I'm not exaccctttlly the next barefoot contessa (see here), but I think I may be getting better.

Well tomorrow night the Mr's old boss and his wife are coming over for dinner and I figured, "what the heck, let's give this dinner party cooking thing another go."

So I dusted off my Williams-Sonoma "Bride and Groom" cookbook



And tomorrow night we'll be serving...
- Appetizer: Veggie platter
- Soup: Gazpacho
- Main Course: Steak with garlic butter over a bed of arugula with crisp rosemary potatoes
- Dessert: Chocolate Pots de Creme

The Mr. is doing the steak and I can premake the gazpacho, veggie platter, and chocolate pots. So I don't think I'm setting myself up for complete failure. I promise I'll post on how it goes next week! Be prepared for some hilarity.

Do you have any tips for successful dinner party hostessing?

What do I want for my Birthday?

My birthday is coming up on July 6th!

I'll admit, I've always been really tough to buy gifts for. I'm very picky about clothes, purses, fragrances, and even jewelry... so the Mr. doesn't even try to buy those for me usually. And now that we're married and share money, we usually just tell each what we want for Birthday/Christmas gifts and take each other out for a fun dinner. Boring, I know. But very practical.

So when the Mr. asked me what I wanted for my Birthday I responded:

1. Sprinkles Cupcakes!

Sprinkles cupcakes are just amazing. So much better than all of the copycat cupcakes out there. My mouth is watering just thinking about their vanilla or red velvet cupcakes.


2. A Bose iPod SoundDock

I have a generic iPod docking station that I use all the time. It is time to upgrade. Does anyone have a Bose? Do you love it?

3. To deposit money into our "Europe Trip" ING Account.

We're going to Europe next summer! Definitely to Italy and Germany and maybe to one other country. So my new favorite thing to do is to transfer money over to our ING "Europe Trip" Account that I set up especially to save money for an amazing trip!

PS- If you're a July Birthday, head over to Lis Loves.

Feeling Blue

If you haven't noticed, my blog is generally really upbeat because I am actually a really upbeat person. I'm usually smiling, laughing, telling an animated story, and generally loving life. I think I laugh more at work than is generally considered normal.

But today I am feeling sad and I don't want to hide it.

Last week I found out that my Grandmother has breast cancer. She is my only living grandparent and is so dear to me. Although the prognosis is not horrible, it really hit me hard when my Mom told me this weekend that we're likely cancelling our family Christmas Cruise because this could be her last Christmas and she won't be able to come on the cruise with us now. She's been there for almost every Christmas of my life and thought of her not being there is just so sad.


(My Grandma, Dad, and me on her 90th birthday last summer)

Also this morning I found out that my friend from High School's Dad passed away yesterday. Are we really old enough to be losing our parents yet?


Also this isn't even in the same ballpark as those reasons, but on Monday the Mr. and I spent all afternoon making a clam chowder with clams that he himself clammed in Oregon and brought back home for us, and the chowder turned out just awful. Somehow the cream base tasted really yucky. The Mr. hid it well, but I think he was really sad. It made me realize that I am, in fact, a really horrible cook. I finally faced it, I'm just bad. Ladies there is a reason I don't do "Menu Mondays." I know it's 2009, but I feel like a failure as a wife due to my complete lack of culinary skills.

Oh and, our kitchen still has a faint clam smell to remind me of the disaster. Lovely.

And finally, the blog URL migration is still in progress, so I know that some things are bit funky and maybe your links to the Newlyweds Next Door have not migrated yet. Sorry about that. Worse is that somehow in the migration I lost my entire "blog role"/links list. Not cool, blogger. Not cool.

Ok, I'm done. Upbeat blogging starts back up again tomorrow.

Oh Costco

Dear Costco,

I love you so much, but why can't I visit you without spending over $100?

Yesterday I went to you for a:


and some:


And a couple of gallons of:


Yet somehow spent $130??!

I'm torn because I feel like I'm saving money shopping at you, but I also feel like spend MORE money when I shop at you. I even made a list this time to avoid the $200 boondoggle from a couple of weeks ago. But alas the siren call of your amazing/gigantic products sucked me again. This needs to end.

Yours truly,
The Newlywed Next Door

Show Us Where You Live Friday - Our Kitchen

My favorite blogger, Kelly is doing a fun feature called Show Us Where You Live Friday.

This week is "Kitchens". So I though I'd share mine and join the fun!

This is what you see when you walk into the front door of our condo through the entryways and to the kitchen. Our granite is greenish/grey/black.




If you know me at all, you know I love turquoise so I have my Le Creuset Tea Pot on the stove for color. Also in the background you can see our espresso machine. An awesome wedding shower gift from my granny.




This is my favorite part of the Kitchen. The wine part! I installed the wine rack myself and those are our sweet Crate&Barrel Wine Glasses. We also collect corks in that jar and when the jar fills, I make a medium-sized corkboard and give it to a friend. Good wine memories should be shared!




Here is the island where the sink is. I love having an island in a kitchen. It makes space so much more efficient!




To the right of the island is the pantry that I had installed. I love this pantry, and yes I always keep it this clean.




Here is our dining table which is adjacent to the kitchen. We have an extender for this table to make it seat 8 for dinner parties. It's an espresso table from Crate & Barrel (The "Madison Table" I think).




Judah was in the kitchen with me helping me take pictures and I managed to capture him with this totally possessed face! Love it!



I try to keep the kitchen uncluttered as possible by clearing out junk that can pile up and keeping non-every-day-use appliances in cabinets (like the blender and mixer). Everything that is out on a counter in the kitchen I use at least 2x a week.

I love seeing people's homes! If you linked you blog over at Kelly's, leave me a comment to let me know and I'll check it out!

Current Crushes and Cravings

I'm starting a new sporadic blog series called "Current Crushes and Cravings".

Why? Because I love seeing this kind of stuff on other peoples posts because it gives me ideas for things to check out. AND I think it will be fun to capture the things I'm into at this point in my life for posterity.

Current Crushes:

My black pashmina. The perfect spring accessory. Good for cold offices and covering up for a night on the town after the sun goes down.

The Book "Outliers". I read this a couple a months ago and find instances to cite it almost daily! It's such a good book to help explain social/economic phenomenon. Great for sounding witty at cocktail parties.


Direct TV DVR. How did I live this long without DVR? I have no idea. I was stuck in the stone age. No longer am I tethered to particular timeslots or subjected to endless commercials. Note: On DVR an episode of American idol can be watched in like 30 minutes.


Multi-string beaded necklaces. I have a bunch of cute necklaces that I picked up shopping last month (many for like $4 at Forever XXI). I've got white, black, green, purple. The really make a simple outfit a lot more fun, funky, and hip.


Pandora. I know Pandora is not new. But I got sick of my iPod and I love Pandora. Favorite playlists? "Journey", "John Mayer", "Rascal Flatts", "David Crowder", and "The Cure". What can I say, I'm eclectic!



Current Cravings:

Ceviche. I LOVE ceviche. It's 9 AM and I could go for some ceviche. And to think a year ago was the first time i tried the heavenly dish. Crazy. (Note: Ceviche is a form of citrus-marinated seafood appetizer, popular in mainly South American. Both finfish and shellfish are used; finfish is typically raw while shellfish is typically cooked. If you like sushi and citrus, you'll like ceviche.)


Viogner. Nothing beats a good wine. For years I've been very into red wine -- Cabernets, Zins, Pinots. But while wine tasting in Santa Barbara I discovered an amazing white wine, Viogner. It pretty sweet but goes great with spicy Thai or Chinese dishes which I love.


What are you currently crushing on? Craving?

WWW and Diet Soda

I know I've slacked the past couple of weeks in doing Weight Watchers Wednesday... but I'm back!



I went to my WW Meeting on Monday and in two weeks I'd lost two pounds! Yay! I'm now only about 2 lbs from my goal-weight. Those stubborn last few!

At the WW meeting we got in a discussion about beverages and the WW points in various beverages. Eventually we ended up debating diet soda.

Diet soda has zero points, but according to our leader there are several studies that say that the fake sugar in diet soda that sets you up to crave real sugar and you end up eating more sugary things and gaining weight. Some ladies in the meeting strongly disagreed with these studies and some had anecdotes of losing weight just from cutting diet soda.

I'm not a big soda drinker, but I have a personal anecdote about fake sugars... about a year ago I quit putting artificial sweetener in my daily coffee (I put non-fat milk in only) and quit eating my daily non-fat yogurt with aspartame in it (now I eat the more natural low-calorie yogurt). My sweets cravings were noticeably reduced and I lost about 5 lbs around that time.

So what do you guys think about fake sugars? Diet Soda - friend or foe?

Party in My Pantry

We finally got the long-awaited kitchen pantry installed in our condo! I love it! It makes our kitchen so much more organized and makes it much easier to buy food and stock up (which could actually lead me to cook more).

Here's the story of the pantry ...

In the the kitchen area of our condo there was a coat closest. I'll give you a minute to process that... A COAT closet in kitchen area of Southern California condo. I don't even wear A coat in Long Beach, let alone enough coats to necessitate a coat CLOSET.

The useless coat closet:


So we hired a carpenter to put in shelving to convert it into a pantry.

His finished product:


And then I stocked the pantry and added spice racks.

Our FINISHED Pantry:


So to recap our food when from being housed like this:


To this:


Talk about an easy improvement! And my Mom said a pantry raised the value of our home as well!

So now that I have a pantry to store my kitchen goods, I want to have items "on hand" for meals, so that I basically just have to buy fruits/veggies/dairy on a weekly basis. What items are your "must stock" items? Items that you always have on hand in your pantry or kitchen cupboard?