Iron Chef

Friday, one of the other librarians came up to me at the desk and said, "So there's talk of having a bake off between you and [other employee]." I'm not sure if I'm getting a reputation for my cockiness or my cooking, but I said I would absolutely love to do it. We have joked about having a distribution list to notify people when I've brought goodies to work.

I hope to have an Iron Chef competition next month sometime. I started spreading word in my social circles. Any closet blog readers (and I know you're there) who are interested in participating should let me know. Not sure on the date, probably on a Saturday evening. I want to wait until Wendy gets here so she can be my sous chef.

I have many ideas for running the contest. I think there should be a few teams of 2-3 people. Each team can nominate a theme ingredient for the teams to cook with, and there would be a drawing to choose it, so it would be random. Everyone would receive a text message revealing the theme ingredient, and they could decide on which meal course to prepare. I'm not sure how much time to give everyone, maybe two hours to allow for grocery shopping. The teams would describe their dish in a presentation to the judges. And I would keep my cutthroat competitive nature in check.

I was proud of myself for making a dozen cupcakes in under an hour this week. I got home from work and had to hurry to make it to dinner on time. I made my standard dark chocolate cupcake recipe and one-sixth of Martha's Chocolate Buttercream while they were in the oven. I used Callebaut 60% bittersweet chocolate. I popped the cupcakes in the freezer to cool them down before frosting. Working on my speed to gear up for next month's contest. Allez cuisine!