Carnage in the Kitchen

So today after the Ghirardelli contest, Kenda had to go straight to work and said she was taking all her leftover items from today and bringing it in with her. "I don't need to add to the carnage in the kitchen" is what she said.

I couldn't have said it better myself! I gave her my leftovers to take with her too. She has three people baking for the Fair at her house so I can only imagine the amount of food she has there. We all have leftover competition food and practice food and food that just didn't work out.

Some of my leftovers

 Whatever I have left tomorrow that is still edible is going to work with me.

Fancy Dog Treats

I also figured out last weekend, the day after I turned my cookies in, that I had made a HUGE mistake. I made most of my cookies on Thursday for the Saturday turn-in. Instead of putting them in air-tight containers I left them sitting out on my baking rack. On Sunday I was getting a box of cookies together for my neighbors when I bit into a piece of biscotti and discovered they weren't crunchy. Ughhh... won't make that mistake again. This is how my cookies ended up doing...

Coconut Pistachio Biscotti (biscotti category) - no placing

Pecan Pie Cookies (nut cookie category) - no placing

Honey Pecan Bars (other honey cookie category) - 2nd

Brickle Bars (dairy cookie category) - no placing

Other stuff I turned in last week...

Caramel Corn - honorable mention

Honey Oatmeal Bread - honorable mention

Loaded Potato Rolls - 1st and Yeast Roll Sweepstakes winner

Cinnamon Apple Pull-Apart Bread - no placing

German Chocolate Cake - 4th

Aztec Cake - 3rd

Honey Applesauce Cake - 1st

Last night started out OK and disintegrated into chaos. First I made my original yeast bread item for the first category of Fleischmann's. I made Asiago Rolls. It was a one shot deal. I had dreamed up the recipe a couple days ago (driving home from the fair) but had never made them before. I didn't have time to make it more than once last night.

Asiago Roll

They were originally going to be called Rosemary Asiago Rolls. I have 2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary in the recipe but I couldn't really taste the rosemary that well when it was all said and done so I took the "rosemary" out of the title so I wouldn't get dinged by the judge for not having rosemary flavor in my rolls. Personally, I think they were a little salty.

Next, I started making my chocolate dessert. It had to have Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips in it and be a "bite-size delicacy." My vision was a small tart-like dessert with a lime cookie crust, bittersweet chocolate ganache filling, and a swirl of coconut buttercream on top, garnished with toasted coconut. Well, I couldn't get the lime cookie crust to work. In fact, I ended up messing with that til 11 pm.

In the meanwhile... I started making the crust for the second Fleischmann's contest - dessert pizza. This is the crust I had already made. I ran 4 miles while the dough was rising. I decided 8 wasn't happening last night. I got the crust baked and thought about my toppings some more. In the spring when I made this I had fresh peaches and honey roasted almonds on top. I had tried almond butter, ricotta cheese, and mascarpone cheese as the bases but none of them worked like I wanted. I had settled on using goat cheese but then needed something else to make all the stuff stick to the crust. I came up with peach preserves. Of course, I didn't have any peach preserves at home.

At 11 pm, when I decided the lime cookie was not going to work, I thought about scratching out of Ghirardelli... except I already had already made the chocolate ganache. My next brainstorm was to just make a meringue shell and pipe the ganache in it. Meringue takes an hour to bake and then you turn the oven off and keep the door shut until it's cool. I put the meringue in the oven and ran to the grocery store; picked up peach preserves and looked for one more thing to put on top of the chocolate ganache as a garnish. Found raspberries.

Came home, turned the oven off, and went to bed.

This morning, the meringues were "OK", not the best but they were done. I also decided to shave some white chocolate over the whole mess because the bittersweet is, well, really bittersweet. I loaded all the food in the car and went to the Fair. I put both the "Ghirardelli Bittersweet Clouds" as I called them, and the "Fresh Peach Pizza" together in the prep room at the fairgrounds.

Ghirardelli Bittersweet Clouds

What's left of my Fresh Peach Pizza after judging and sharing

Well, I didn't place in any competition today. I'd say I was totally unprepared. Every year I always have some great ideas but tend to run out of time to practice them.

The kids beat me home from school. My younger daughter was experimenting with the "carnage" when I got home. This is what she created with my Ghirardelli leftovers...







Simple and Elegant!

It's a raspberry stuffed with bittersweet chocolate ganache, topped with a white chocolate chip. Now why didn't I think of that!