Alexander Turns Three!

My little friend Alexander turns three today, and his parents organized his birthday party for last weekend (thoughtfully scheduling it around my wedding this upcoming weekend -- Alexander's mother is, after all, my matron of honor). This year's party theme was Curious George, and I thought that a red velvet cake might be a nice change of pace from the Restaurant Eve birthday cake I've made Alexander the past two years. I briefly contemplated dyeing the frosting yellow to go with the Curious George theme, but then thought that might be a little much. So the cake exterior remained white. This is a pretty bad picture, but my camera battery died during the party, and my opportunities for picture taking were severely limited!

I also made some salted fudge brownies to serve at the party and some buttercrunch melt-a-ways to give away as favors (sorry, no picture of those!).

As an experiment, I also tried making some matcha truffles. I saw the recipe in the Los Angeles Times back in May when the food section ran an article on matcha (green tea powder) and chocolate desserts, and I had been meaning to try the recipe for some time.

These truffles have to set up in the refrigerator overnight, and even so, they remain quite soft. They begin to melt at the slightest touch, including if you try to pick them up to serve them or eat one! Because they were so difficult to handle, I put each 1-inch square truffle in a foil mini-cupcake liner (pictured at the top of this post). The truffles are creamy and luscious, with an ultra-velvety mouth feel. That said, no one could detect any green tea flavor in the final product. But they were still decadently delicious, with the combination of white and bittersweet chocolate creating a complex and richly satisfying bite.

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