a beautiful disaster.

Disclosure: This blog is about food, yet again. It's not my fault, I swear. If you'll kindly notice, the two people from my family that blog ONLY blog about food*. It's in my blood. I can't help it. I've tried changing, but it's not worth it. Life is just not as fun without delicious food and wonderful people to share it with.

Last weekend we were going to make a Peppermint Fudge Cake I found in Bon Appetit to bring to a friend's house for a nice holiday dessert. We didn't end up needing it, but I had all of the ingredients (mostly just the whipping cream) that I needed to use, so I attempted (yes, attempted means I failed...) the cake this weekend. Well, everything was going fine and dandy until I had to remove the cakes from the pans. As usual in the Dumas household, they stuck like glue. Bummer!! I didn't know what to do, so I took them all out and cooled them in hopes of piecing them back together into some form of cake...and quickly realized that there is no way that cake would ever resemble a cake. SO Ry suggested I make a trifle....and oh a trifle I did make, thanks to the inspiration of the cake. I pulled all the parts from different recipes:

Layer One: Peppermint White Chocolate Mousse found on Epicurious.com (Bon Appetit)

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/White-Chocolate-Mousse-103355

When I whipped the cream to fold into the white chocolate/cream mixture I added one tsp. of peppermint extract. OH - I opted for this mousse because it was much quicker than the mousse suggested in the original cake recipe...

Layer Two: Chocolate cake found on Epicurious.com

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Peppermint-Fudge-Cake-103935

This cake was light and fluffy and REALLY tasty. It would have made a great cake had I properly prepared the pans...but I still haven't figured out how to do that. Oh - this made way too much cake for the trifle and we have an extra layer and a half...but again, this was an unintentional trifle, so that's okay.

Layer Three: MAJOR CHEATER ALERT. I didn't have time to make real chocolate pudding, so I used a box. SHHH don't tell jaq and dodd, the wonderful friends who shared this dessert with!

So I layered those twice and topped it off with some peppermint whipped cream:

1/2 cup whipping cream, 1 TBS confectioners sugar and 1/2 TBS peppermint extract.

WOAH. maaaaaaajor mistake turned into one of the most delicious desserts I've tasted. I love it when that happens. And the real reason I'm blogging about this is so that I can find the parts of this trifle when I go to make it again :)

*My Uncle's Blog: http://mealsfromtheroad.blogspot.com/

My Cousin's Blog: http://fortheloveoffoodandmyfather.blogspot.com/