April 15, 2023

Season Five Kickoff

It took me a while to start on Season 5, but this weekend I got things going. For dinner I began with the Baked Macaroni and Cheese.

This is definitely a “grown up” mac n cheese – the onion and bay give it a real savory background of flavor that works really well. I didn’t have any mustard powder so I left it out of the recipe, but would really like to give it a try next time.

For dessert we went with brownie sundaes, so into the oven went a batch of Cocoa Brownies.

To go with the brownies I made up some Cocoa Syrup, and put it all together with some ice cream.

The brownies were alright, but not that much better than boxed mix ones. They were very fudgy, with a dark chocolate flavor, and not overly sweet. The syrup was good as well, also not overly sweet.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

• Crowd: 4/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used cheap-ish Cabot sharp cheddar.
• Left out the mustard because I didn't have any, and it was still great. Would love to try it with the mustard next time.

Cocoa Brownies

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used parchment in the pan like in the episode, rather than buttering the pan like in the online recipe -- might want to try the butter next time

Cocoa Syrup

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Halved the recipe on the site and still ended up with a ton of chocolate sauce
• Used this as chocolate sauce on an ice cream sundae