And the cooking begins...

So I started cooking as soon as my mom thought it was appropriate for me to learn how to make a proper Indian that I wouldn't deprive my husbands and kids of. I've always had a great affinity for food. When I was a child, I used to point at almost every thing in my sight and ask, "Is that for eating?" in Hindi. I usually get pretty sad if there isn't anything good to eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and I don't like it when people skimp on ingredients because they're watching their weight or whatever. That's why this blog is called Decadent Eatery, I guess!

So the first thing I want to share is chocolate ganache cupcakes I made. The recipe is from Ina Garten of Food Network. Now, Ina has a very unique way of cooking. In most shows, you see a neat counter from the beginning to end and nothing gets dirty. But in her show, the flour gets all over the counter, sauce might splatter a bit, and her hands get messy. Which is partly why I love her. But then you hear her voice, and it's all sophisticated and glossy sounding, and I think that is what rounds out her show.
So this is her recipe and it uses a whole lot of Hershey's chocolate syrup, but the cupcakes are divine. If you don't overmix (which is what I was so scared of, since Ina warned us in the recipe) the batter, the cupcakes turn out really really soft and almost fudgy, but not. As for the word "ganache," it sounded super fancy to my ears but its the most simple thing in the world. It's just melted chocolate in cream in a double boiler! What you get is a shiny melted chocolate that's perfect for dipping the cupcakes into. After a few hours, the chocolate ganache sets. These cupcakes are really chocolatey and you really have to like chocolate to eat them. They are perfect with a glass of milk to tone down the chocolate flavor, though. If you're going to make these, I would recommend that you have an electric mixer on hand because there is a lot of mixing. Also, having the butter at room temperature is a must. When I did this, the butter was almost at room temperature and I still had a little bit of trouble when I was beating the sugar in. Other than that, these are super easy and everyone will love them!

Cheers!
-Aparna