Meat Loaf Club Sandwich

Ordinarily, sandwiches don't make it to the blog, because my sandwiches tend to be kind of boring. "Take something, put it in bread". This one, however, seemed interesting. It's a meatloaf sandwich that doesn't require one to make a meatloaf first. Ok, I had to have a go at that.

This comes from Food & Wine (found here on their website). You make a seasoned meat mixture, spread it out on a sandwich, and press it on either a grill or skillet. Instant meatloaf in a sandwich.

Mine had no tomatoes and no rosemary, and I put mustard directly on the top layer instead of having it on the side. Two thumbs up. They're garlicky, bacon-y, with moist meat, crunchy toasted bread, and a little kick from the chipotle. It's a little more work than a typical deli meat sandwich, but well worth it.



Note to self: next time, make fries. This needed fries. :D

Sour Cream Fudge Cake

As we know by now, I like to bake. Mostly, I lean towards savory things like breads and rolls, and especially yeasted recipes that let me knead dough for 15 minutes. However, for my birthday buddy cake today at work, I really couldn't show up with a birthday loaf of rye bread.

My buddy had requested chocolate, and as I paged through Tish Boyle's The Cake Book, I saw many MANY chocolate cakes. The one that I settled on won out for the simple reason that it can feed a crowd: Sour Cream Fudge Cake (p. 140) with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting (p. 311).



It took a little bit of time, but not an unreasonable amount. Both the cake and the frosting required double boilers, and the cake had lots of "add ingredient x in three batches, mixing thoroughly after each addition". I made the cake Sunday night, and got up early Monday morning to make the frosting. I figured, with a cream cheese frosting, fresher is better. I have no cake decorating tools or skills, but I think the pattern came out nicely. Looks like waves, or dragon scales, depending on how you look at it.

It went over very well, despite being just a hair on the dry side. Something in the fridge at work smelled funky and I didn't want the frosting to absorb any weird flavors, so I only had the cake in there for about 3 hours and then pulled it out. The three hours at room temp before we cut into it... it lost a bit of moisture, but not too much. The cake was dense and chocolaty, but not overly rich or sweet. I could eat the frosting by the spoonful. I know white chocolate can sometimes be almost cloying, but the tang from the lemon juice and the cream cheese cuts right through that. The white chocolate ends up being more of a background note.

I've already been told that they're signing me up for dessert duty for our holiday party, and that I'm not getting a vote. :D