piece de resistance

This past spring, Doug was part of the search committee for our new youth director at church. When the search committee had a choice they were fairly confident about, they decided to invite this individual and his wife to Michigan to undergo an intense "interview weekend". This consisted of this couple staying with a family at our church, sitting through an "informal" group Q&A session, working on construction the next morning at the CDC warehouse, attending a youth group party (giving a brief talk there and doing praise & worship), attending church, undergoing a "formal" panel interview with the search committee, and meeting with the current youth director. Phew. Thankfully for this candidate, he was hired.

All that to say - I was invited to the "informal" group Q&A session and asked to bring a dessert. Obviously my favorite kind of invitation.

It's safe to say that I am obsessed with Annie's Eats. So I headed to her blog right away to look for dessert options, where I stumbled across this bad boy: triple chocolate mousse cake.

The cake has, not surprisingly, three layers, 2 of which require some refrigeration - the middle layer needs at least 15 minutes while you're preparing the top layer, and the top layer needs about 2 hours. So I baked away, giving myself plenty of time for the top layer to set.

I got to the gathering, started to open my spring-form pan... and the top of the cake began to spread. Not good. After putting the cake in the freezer for about half an hour, the top layer still hadn't set, but was at least somewhat firm enough that I could get the pan off. Within 10 minutes, the top layer was sort of a gooey mess on top of the other 2 layers, but let. me. tell. you. That was a delicious gooey mess. Enough so that it was the only dessert gone at the end of the evening, despite its lack of visual appeal.

Well, last night we hosted a "Parton Place Party" - celebrating our new home with our friends. And I decided to tackle this decadent dessert again.

Ta-da! (To be on the safe side, I would modify Annie's recipe to a whole teaspoon of unflavored gelatin.)

Oh, I also made margarita cupcakes (modified from Annie's recipe) and cheesecake cupcakes (you guessed it, Annie's!).

Plus a bunch of other snacks.

What a fun evening! Plus, there's some of the triple chocolate cake left, so I know what I'm having for breakfast today.