In the Kitchen with... the Division of Student Development

Seasons greetings from Granville, and a special "Learning through Food" welcome to new readership especially from the Division of Student Development! Over the past couple of months, I've had the priviledge of working with a group of colleagues within our Division known as the Professional Development Committee or PDC, for short. After much planning and anticipation for our December Division meeting, which I must note was very well kept under wraps, all was revealed today that we were assigning fun as our theme for the day. (Or rather that folks were highly encouraged to be open to the activities and to have fun, whether they'd like it or not.) Following a wonderful stand-up sketch from Denison Wellness Coordinator Stephanie (her fourth comedy gig in her 11-year career), everyone was divided up into one of three activity stations under the auspices of our campus-wide theme of creativity and courage: cards, crafts and cooking.

Celebrating National Chocolate Cupcake Day 2011 with Dark Chocolate

If you didn't know, today is National Chocolate Cupcake Day and quite naturally I had to celebrate this unofficial food holiday that's nevertheless recognised this time of you. Combining my adapted dark chocolate cake recipe (based off of the recipe found on the back of Hershey's dark cocoa powder containers) and this one offered by online specialty foods magazine The Nibble, I woke up this morning prepared to bake some cupcakes in acknowledgment of this 19th century treat. The one issue I faced was the fact that I don't have any cupcake pans in my apartment and so I baked two cupcakes in ramekins and poured the rest of the batter into a baking dish; by definition, a cupcake is typically a cake made as a single serving and so at least the ramekin versions fit the celebration. On the menu: Dark Chocolate Chunk Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Orange and Almond Cream Filling and Dark Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

Don't Scramble the Eggs! ...That's Easier Said than Done (Pairs of Pictures)

As you may or may not have noticed by now, I typically select a single photo to kick-start each blog posts. However, with the way the rest of this post is set up, I have done away with this short tradition. Covered here is a post which describes a night which began at 9pm and somehow ended about 4.5 hours later. Time certainly flies when you are having fun!