This Land is Your Land View ppt (F5) - ppt video online download

This Land is Your Land View ppt (F5) - ppt video online download: This land is your land. This land is my land.

Why Barack Obama is Like a Chocolate Soufflé

Chocolate Soufflé: A chocolate soufflé is quickly whipped up and baked into a delicious, light, and airy dessert. Sweet, popular… yet its rise is precarious – even the best chefs must hope their soufflé does not fall.



Barack Obama: Senator Obama’s popularity was quickly whipped up following his stunning 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech and has risen to new heights in the 2008 Presidential campaign. He promises sweet, sweet change… a message that is both popular for some and lacking in substance for others. Can his sweetness hold up? Here’s hoping.

Why Hillary Clinton is Like a Fruitcake

Fruitcake: This staunch dessert is associated most strongly with the holiday season. Often given as a gift, although no one we know has ever been interested in receiving one. Sometimes re-gifted to others who are not interested. Solid, rock hard, dependable year after year. Nearly impossible to destroy.



Hillary Clinton: This staunch Presidential candidate, New York Senator, and Former first lady is associated most strongly with her husband’s tenure as President. She is a mainstay of the Democratic party, although sometimes a controversial figure on the other side of the aisle. Seems to be re-gifting the Clinton era to the American public. Solid, rock hard, dependable year after year. Nearly impossible to destroy.

Layer Cake

White layer cake with vanilla pastry cream and chocolate ganache, Majestic Cafe, Old Town, Alexandria.

Bouchons from Oregon

My friend Parag is having a birthday today (Happy Birthday, Parag!) and is also packing his bags for Portland, Oregon, where he will join Team Obama.

Well Parag, bon voyage! And for your sake, I hope you are gone a long time and ride this train straight into the White House. While you're in Portland, be sure you stop at the Pearl Bakery and load up on these bouchons au chocolat. If I lived there, I might eat one every day.

These perfect little cakes are a bit like a brownie meeting a cake -- dense, chocolatey, but a bit crumbly and dry, not gooey or fudgey. They don't have any baking soda though, so they stay pretty dense and rich, and they're studded with mini-chocolate chips, which melt to create little pockets of rich chocolatey goodness. Thank you to David Lebovitz, who needled this recipe out of the Pearl Bakery and allowed anyone to eat these delightful little cakes, without joining the BHO team.

Bouchons au Chocolat

From the Pearl Bakery, via David Lebovitz's Great Book of Chocolate

Makes 12 mini-cakes

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate
• 3 1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 1 3/4 c. cake flour
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
• pinch of salt
• 2 sticks (1/2 lb) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 1/4 c. granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs at room temperature
• 1 c. mini chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 12-well muffin tin.

Melt the bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate in the microwave, in 30 second installments. Do not scorch or over cook. Beat the butter and the sugar with an electric mixer until they are very light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after adding each one. Stir in the melted chocolate until well incorporated.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder and salt into the bowl, and then fold it into the batter until incorporated, being careful not to overmix. Add the chocolate chips and stir just enough to combine.

Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin wells. Bake the cakes for 18 minutes, or until they still feel quite soft in their centers when pressed lightly with your index finger. Do not overbake them.

Allow the cakes to cool in the muffin tin for ten minutes, then pop them out and let them cool completely on a rack. Wait until they are room temperature before eating.

Serve them mint ice cream, or just eat them at tea time. Or all the time. God they're good.