smoked gouda fondue + a fondue party!

in , ,

for the past few weeks, on evenings when we don't have volleyball games or music things or figure skating to watch, we've been plopping ourselves in front of the office with a stack of guidebooks for our honeymoon. eggboy hasn't totally figured out trip advisor yet, so we're going with guidebooks for now :) we'll be spending some time in vienna with a day trip to budapest before tinkering around the alps because to be totally honest we have just not gotten enough snow up here in winterfell and i need moarrrrr. 

my ideal vacation consists of staying in a mountainy lodge/castle, eating hotel breakfast until i get kicked out, looking at mountains, maybe doing a somersault in the snow or going in a sauna, basking in areas of no cell phone reception, and then eating schnitzel or fondue, depending on what side of the swiss/austrian border we're on. eggboy's ideal vacation consists of walking around a city and seeing historic things, especially as they pertain to alban berg, hence the vienna part. i hear they have good cake there though, so i am v excited.

perhaps the most amount of excitement for our honeymoon that i've had thus far was when we had our little fondue party last week. i was swirling the melty cheese and eggboy was playing a mahler 9 record and our friends came wearing the cutest sweaters and it occurred to me that next month we're going to be eating fondue in the alps and hearing the cowbells that mahler heard when he wrote his 6th symphony and maybe even skiing!!!!! i can't contain my excitement. this fondue party was like a little amuse bouche to our trip, it was so fun.

here was our menu:

smoked gouda fondue // with pretzel rolls, salami, grapes, broccoli, and apples for dipping

matcha white chocolate fondue and dark chocolate fondue // with strawberries, cake, marshmallows, and pretzel rods for dipping

kendall-jackson grand reserve pinot noir 

-yeh!

thanks so much to kendall-jackson for sponsoring this post!!!! all opinions are my own!!

goodies pictured in this post: fondue pot // wood board // tiered plate 

matcha white chocolate fondue

in

today is our one month anniversary!!! only 11 more to go before we get to eat our cake. this first month has been so much fun: i've doubled my cheese intake, we've planned our castle-y honeymoon, and even though i haven't officially changed my last name yet, my favorite thing to do is sign us both in at the town fitness center under nick and molly hagen. (i'm afraid that if i use molly hagen for anything more official than that i'll get arrested or something so i really relish in the gym sign-in.)

i've yet to get my dress preserved and there are still sprinkles strewn about our yard. the other day when we were at the ice skating rink and "boom clap" came on, we giggled a little giggle because that was one of our wedding dance songs. 

ok i'll stop being mushy now. 

this weekend we had a fondue party! i've somehow ended up with a surplus of fondue pots and since we're leaving for the alps in less than two weeks (!!!), we figured that a fondue party would be an appropriate way to get excited. this matcha white chocolate fondue is creamy and white chocolatey with a nice green tea vibe and i'm posting it before our cheese fondue because dessert first always. 

matcha white chocolate fondue

ingredients

1 tsp aiya cooking grade matcha

1/2 c heavy cream

8 oz white chocolate, chopped

dipping things: pretzel rods, strawberries, marshmallows, cake 

clues

sift matcha into a saucepan and add 1 tablespoon of the cream. whisk together until no lumps remain. whisk in the remaining cream. add the white chocolate and heat over medium low heat, stirring, until the chocolate melts. pour into your fondue pot and enjoy! 

 

-yeh!

this post is sponsored by aiya matcha! all opinions are my own.

chocolate hazelnut cake with vanilla hazelnut buttercream

in ,

sometimes living on a farm feels like living in one great big jungle gym. there's tons of exploring to be done, secret forts (err-- cake houses) to be built, rogue patches of rhubarb to pick, and things to climb on. a small round bowl-cut 1993 version of myself would have given anything to hang out on this farm. i was always getting into trouble climbing on our piano and on the fancy statues at ravinia. (in junior high this manifested itself in an indoor rock climbing phase and the aol screen name of roxclimber1. *i know*)

these days it's usually eggboy and eggdad that do the climbing. they climb up into grain bins and onto trucks and tractors for all sorts of reasons, but by far the coolest climbing thing on our farm is a 110 foot grain leg. (here's a visual. the tallest part is the leg, and the things around it are bins.) there are stairs all the way up, and currently there are christmas lights on it to make it look like a candy cane.

but when i say it's the coolest climbing thing, i actually mean it's the scariest climbing thing. i went up there once and it was enough. it was super windy and it sort of felt like being at the top of a roller coaster, only on a roller coaster you're strapped in, so...

the eggparents love it though! they climb up and down when they're preparing for hiking trips, and sometimes they use it as some sort of nutso party trick. i'm pretty sure that some of our wedding guests went up there past dark. oh goodness, i could never do that.

since the lights are up this year, apparently climbing up at night is a hotter ticket than normal, so eggdad commissioned me to make this cake for a darned grain leg climbing party. apparently he's having friends over and we're (they're) going to put coveralls on, climb the grain leg all together, and then come back down and eat cake. sounds horrifying. but you know me: any excuse to make a cake.

squirrels climb, squirrels like nuts, i've never eaten an acorn though, so here's a chocolate hazelnut cake with a marzipan squirrel! it's super lovely and nutty and it has a vanilla hazelnut buttercream filling. it's totally half-able or cupcake-able, and if you'd prefer another marzipan critter, mr. squirrel will be sad but he'll get over it.

chocolate hazelnut cake with vanilla hazelnut frosting

makes one 2-layer 8-inch cake

ingredients

cake:

1 c roasted unsalted hazelnuts, plus more for decorating

1 3/4 c sugar

2 1/4 c flour

1/2 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 large eggs

1 c milk

1/2 c vegetable or canola oil

1 tb vanilla extract

3/4 c boiling water

frosting:

1 lb unsalted butter, softened

4 2/3 c powdered sugar

a good pinch of kosher salt

1 tb vanilla extract

decorating:

marzipan kneaded with food coloring, cut into cute shapes

clues

cake:

preheat oven to 350.

grease two 8-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.

place the hazelnuts in a food processor and grind them until you have small crumbs. measure out 1/4 cup of the crumbs and set them aside for the filling.

pour the remaining crumbs into a large bowl and whisk in the rest of the dry ingredients. in a medium bowl, whisk together all of the wet ingredients except for the boiling water. whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and then stir in the boiling water. it will be a very thin batter. pour into cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking for doneness at 28 minutes.

let the cakes cool in the pans for 10 minutes, and then turn them onto a greased cooling rack.

frosting:

use an electric mixer to beat together the butter, powdered sugar, salt, and vanilla until smooth. measure out one cup of the frosting and transfer it to a small bowl. fold in the reserved 1/4 cup of ground hazelnuts. 

assembly:

level your cake layers and spread the top of one of them with the hazelnutty frosting. place the other layer on top, and then frost all over with the remaining frosting. decorate with marzipan cutouts, crushed hazelnuts, sprinkles, or whatever else you'd like!

enjoy!