Roast Chicken & Flourless Cupcakes

Today I had the day off from work (ah, another perk of working for Boeing: Flex-Time).

I made two dishes today: a butterflied roast chicken from Alton Brown (the recipe is here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_141,00.html ), and a flourless chocolate/ ancho-chile cupcake recipe from a blog called Vanilla Garlic. This recipe is here: http://vanillagarlic.blogspot.com/2007/04/fojos-flourless-chocolate-cupcakes-with.html




First, pics from the chicken. This below was the au jus, cooking after I had finished roasting the bird. What's in here was the base from roasting the chicken (a chunky mix of celery, carrots, and onions), thyme, the liquid that the chicken had released, and some red wine. MMM:

Here is a pic of the butterflied chicken resting in a bowl (yes, it's on my floor. My place is 460 sqft - there's not a lot of counterspace!):

Here is a picture of the chicken after I quartered it and put it in a plate under foil, to go hang out in the fridge till I was hungry):

Now, let's move on to Dessert! I followed Vanilla Garlic's recipe, and here is the mix at the point after I had folded in the beaten egg whites to the chocolate and ancho chile powder (which I made by pulverizing some dried ancho chiles in my coffee grinder. That thing rocks!). Yes, the bowl is resting on a chair:

Here are the finished cupcakes. You might ask: Why are they all sunken? Well, it's because they are flourless. The egg whites provided whatever loft there was in the recipe.

The last step in this recipe is to whip cream and load 'er up! I have two cooking pots (little pots) full of whipped cream right now. One is in my fridge and a bigger one is in my freezer... Anyway, I can attest that the cupcakes are great!

One change I made? I added ground coffee beans to the ancho chile powder!! I think it heightens the chocolate flavor. Had I considered it, I would have added some chocolate nibs that I have in the cupboard as well.

I also made my own Trader Joe's Wintry Blend coffee today. All it is is coffee beans with whole peppercorns, cinnamon chunks, and cardamom pods in the whole bean mix. Sooo I did it myself, since I gave away my jar of it to one of Daniel's friends about a month ago... it was darn tasty! :-)