#desserts!

Okay, I don't know how fancy anything I've had/made really is in the grand scheme of things, but here are some of the desserts I have made that require a fair bit of work/lots of steps (which I consider fancy) 1. Chocolate almond truffle torte. This is a recipe that I found in a magazine and used to make during the holidays to bring to family dinners as my contribution. It's a two layer chocolate cake, thin and fairly dense, with sliced almonds baked in, and frosted with an almond-flavored chocolate ganache (I've used both amaretto and almond extract for this, both work well). The original recipe also called for chocolate-covered strawberries on top, but I've never bothered with that step, instead topping it with more sliced almonds. Mr. Ninja enjoyed it enough that he once requested it as his birthday cake, AND suggested that I make another one for Christmas a month later! That was too much work for me, though, lol. 2. One year for my birthday, I decided to make this recipe for a chocolate salted caramel tart. I almost screwed up the crust by forgetting one of the ingredients and adding it in later (it turned out fine) and it was the first time I ever made caramel from scratch! It ended up being delicious, but more work than I'm willing to put into a dessert most of the time. 3. I don't know if this counts as fancy, but it's definitely a favorite of mine so I'm going with it - every year for Christmas I make a batch of pumpkin cheesecake truffles! It's like a pumpkin cheesecake filling, but with graham crumbs added into it to make the texture thicker. That gets rolled into balls and dipped in chocolate. The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate, which is what I normally use, but last time Mr. Ninja requested milk chocolate (which is also my preferred type of chocolate) and that was even more decadent, so I will probably stick with milk chocolate in the future. These babies are absolutely delectable and addictive, and so satisfying to eat with the hard chocolate on the outside and the cool and creamy pumpkin cheesecake on the inside *drools*

Lilo

In any case, a glass of wine with some cheese cake, sounds delightful.  Although I find cheesecake to be very fattening. I might try my hand at a variation on it.