Peppermint Happiness

Posted: December 10, 2009 | Author: Alyssa | Filed under: Alyssa | 1 Comment »

I am officially a week away from holiday break.  Two days of classes and an exam separate me from two weeks of freedom.  More importantly, freedom in a warm environment.  Rather than ease into the brisk weather, yesterday winter decided to  bitch slap the midwest with hail, snow, sleet and arctic temperatures.  We started the day yesterday with 50 degrees and rain, and ended with a wind chill of 1 degree with hail and heavy snow.   Thank you mother nature, now please go die.  This impending glory of vacation has gotten me thinking about Christmas.  Just like with Thanksgiving, the menu itself is not particularly malleable, however the dessert is usually up for grabs.  So I decided to test out a new recipe for a holiday dessert: Peppermint meringue cake with chocolate butter cream frosting.  This is a Bon Apetit recipe from epicurious, and while it looks really complex, I promise its not as intense as it seems.  As long as you stay organized, its actually pretty straight forward.  I would recommend making all the components first, then cleaning up BEFORE you assemble…otherwise by the time you have put this together you really don’t feel like cleaning the kitchen.  Or maybe thats just me.  The combination of spongy cake, creamy frosting and crunchy meringue is so good, and it looks super impressive.  I don’t have a picture because I took this out to the common room (full of 14 year old girls) and then literally I turned to get my camera, and when I turned back it was all gone.  The girls all seemed to like it though, since the plate was COMPLETELY clean after the vultures cleared out

I did take the advice of the comments and make extra frosting, but I’m also a frosting fiend so I usually do that with cakes.  It was extremely rich, so just a little piece is perfect to satisfy that sweet craving, but its not so heavy that you feel like you are going to die after you eat it.  I think this will definitely make the perfect Christmas dessert, and when I make it again, I promise to take more pictures so you can get a feel for what it actually looks like without all the ridiculous decorations that I don’t have the patience for