weekend worship

My boyfriend's mom is in town this weekend, and obviously we have to try to impress her with our culinary prowess. She's already made us dinner and had a dinner made entirely by Jeff (both of which were very good), but we thought that our Guilty Pleasure Movie Night potluck contribution might offer the opportunity for us to really show off our skills...or so we'd hoped. Our dinner tonight is "country" themed, as in, Southern US country food. I just happen to also have a wonderful cookbook (Elizabeth Falkner's Demolition Desserts: Recipes from Citizen Cake) out from the library that has recipes for mint julep ice cream and pecan praline...what's more Southern than those things? (Okay, a lot of things are more Southern, but not necessarily more delicous.) Here are some photos of the cooking that we've been doing to prepare this great dessert. As you can see, we made two pralines as the first one got way overcooked (we invented Skor bars!) due to an unfortunate melting of the candy thermometer's case. Long story. Anyway, it has all turned out very well and we look forward to sharing it with our friends tonight. I'll upload a picture of the finished products with the Guilty Pleasure Movie Club post later in the week. Hope you have all had a wonderful weekend!

Here is a .pdf of the recipes that we used that I've uploaded for you.

steeping the fresh mint leaves

custard

brown sugar, butter and cream

finished pecan praline with skor bar innards in the background