Double Dessert Date Night

Happy Easter everyone!!

Haha. This picture just cracks me up.

This is my first easter away from my family so it is a weird one but I feel lucky to be where I am. I hope everyone has a wonderful relaxing Sunday (filled with peanut butter eggs)!

So, last night Cort and I had an absolutely incredible meal.  We are both big foodie's so I have been searching for new restaurants for us to try once or twice a month. Last night we went to Picca Peru, where I have been trying to get a reservation since we got to LA. In 2011 the head Chef, Chef Zarate, was awarded the title of Best New Chef in America by Food & Wine Magazine. And, GQ ranked it one of the 10 Best New Restaurants in America. So yeah, I knew it was going to be awesome.

We had a 6:15 reservation, and as soon as we walked in I was pleasantly surprised at how laid back it was. I was thinking it would be a fancy stuck up type place since it was so hard to get a reservation but I was totally wrong. It was such a fun little restaurant and our waiter was really nice and explained how everything worked since it is a Peruvian restaurant and the menu is a bit confusing. My favorite part about it was the "tapas" style serving sizes so they were only a few bites each. This allowed us to order a variety of things off the menu.

Cort started with the Avocado Project. Our waiter said it was one of their most popular drinks and Cort really liked it.

I ordered the Anticucho Black Cod which was cod with a miso anticucho sauce and crispy sweet potato. It was so good. The cod was cooked perfectly and the sweet potato's were crunchy and salty, I wish I had more!

I also got the Zapallo, which was kabocha squash with sweet miso sauce and micro greens. The sauce tasted like honey, I loved it!

Cort went with the Seco De Pato. It was a crispy braised duck leg with peruvian beer sauce and cilantro rice. It looks much bigger in the picture, but it was only a couple bites! He was raving about it.

His second dish was the Choritos. It came with steamed black mussels, applewood smoked bacon, and aji amarillo butter.

Even though we had four Georgetown Cupcakes waiting for us back at home, we couldn't resist ordering some dessert. We went with the Vanilla Bean Pisco Flan and the Alfajores which were little pastries with chocolate and strawberry filling. The dessert was my favorite part (surprise surprise haha), the flan was amazing and the pastries reminded me of powdered donuts!

I wish I could eat here every weekend! It was such an awesome experience and I plan on bringing my friends and family here this summer when they come to visit, it would definitely be a good time with a big group.

BUT, our feast didn't end there... as the title of this post indicates we went big with desserts last night. When we got home we dug into these four beauties while we watched Downton Abby. By the way, I have become obsessed with Downton... such an awesome show and I love the accents.

Two peanut butter fudge, one salted caramel, and one chocolate vanilla. 

The salted caramel stole the show in my opinion. Mmmmm.



And that is all! I have a smoothie recipe coming your way soon, but for now have a good week everyone!

OMG Healthy Chocolate Cake

Hello!

So I was craving something sweet the other night and came up with an awesome healthy chocolate cake masterpiece. The key ingredient in canned pumpkin. So if you don't have any, go out and get some! It's cheap and you can use it in cookies, cakes, oatmeal, etc, and it makes the texture sooo fudgy and delicious...and it's good for you!! Just make sure you are buying the plain canned pumpkin and not the pumpkin pie mix.

So, for the recipe...

OMG Healthy Chocolate Cake 
Serves 4
-1/2 cup canned pumpkin
-1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
-3 egg whites
-2 tablespoons of coconut flour
-2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder
-1 tsp of baking soda
-1 packet of stevia







Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Pour the mixture into the smallest cake pan you can find, or separate it into cupcake pans... now that I think about it that is a perfect idea! Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes. You may have to bake it a little longer, just keep checking, the edges should be a little browned.

I enjoyed mine over some frozen greek yogurt.

And then again with a LARA bar on top. =)

Enjoy!

Spring Break

So I am pretty frustrated with my blog. I totally messed it up trying to change the header and ended up just leaving it alone before I really screwed it up. I am working on getting a blog designer to take over so that it'll look a bit more professional but that probably won't be happening until the summer. So for now, excuse the subpar layout!

What's really important is all the delish food and pretty pictures I want to share with you...

I had an awesome spring break with my mom. We stayed at two beautiful hotels, one in Newport and one in Santa Barbara.

We hiked to Inspiration Point in Santa Barbara, biked on the beach, and ate at some really cool restaurants all around Southern California.

She left on Tuesday, the same day Cort got back from his skiing trip in Jacksonhole, Wyoming. Cort and I spent the rest of the week exploring some areas we haven't been to yet.

We also went out for some pretty delicious food. Cort got a hamburger that he loved at The Curious Palate restaurant in the Santa Monica Market Place. The boy has gotta eat some beef when he gets the chance ;)

And we couldn't resist stopping at Dylan's Candy Bar or Spinkle's Cupcakes for a treat!

I cooked up some pretty yummy dinners as well. Fish and veggies all the way!

 






And my latest creation, which I like to call the "OMG Healthy Chocolate Cake". This is SO good and I will be posting the recipe ASAP. I had it at least three times over break.

It is always a bummer to go back to school, but we only have 6 weeks left! I will be posting a couple new recipes as soon as I can so look out for those! =)

Six course meal from heaven!

Last night Cort and I drove to Santa Monica to eat at a raw vegan restaurant by chef Matthew Kenney. I read awesome reviews about this place so I couldn't wait to try it out.

The restaurant itself is part of Matthew Kenney's culinary school, so we got to watch the chefs make some of the dishes.

The tricky part about raw vegan restaurants is that the menu can be pretty intimidating if you aren't used to the food. We really had no idea what to order so we ended up doing the Chef's Market Tasting Menu, which was a six course meal prepared by the chef. Each dish was pretty small so it was a great way to taste a variety of things on the menu.

Everything that came out was beautiful and so delicious. I felt bad eating the food because it looked like a piece of art!

The first dish that came out was a tasting of their tree nut cheeses with sweet & spicy mustard seeds on top of a fennel crisp. The cheese was made out of cashews and macadamia nuts, and it was extremely rich. 

Next was one of my favorites, beet tartar. The beets were perfectly sweet and crunchy and there was an awesome creamy nut sauce underneath. 

Our third dish was insane. Kimchi dumplings with ginger foam. Yeah, just take a look...

The fourth dish was the simplest, but it was so refreshing. A wild arugula salad with herb-caper cream, and dehydrated sweet potato chips. 

Moving right along to the fifth dish, and the best of the night, black pepper kelp noodles with a delicious creamy nut sauce, snap peas, olive crumb, and pea vines. Oh my god. This dish was ridiculous. Keep in mind it is completely raw, so they can't cook anything...

Whew! Okay so desert was art on a plate. We got a sampling of all of their deserts from apple pie to lemon sherbet to white chocolate to chocolate walnut cake, my mind was blown. 

 

And thats all! We left feeling happy, full, and really glad we came, it was an amazing experience! Cort is a meat and cheese lover but even he was impressed. In case you want to drool over some more food, check out his website here.