Happy Halloweenie!

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween weekend!

My life seems a lot like Groundhog's Day lately - just the same stuff every day (work, gym, eat, sleep, repeat), so it's always nice to throw some socialization into the mix.

We had another YaYa planned for Halloween night - the great slider challenge! We each picked a different country to draw inspiration from and here's what we came up with:

For Mexico, Lindsey whipped up some awesome turkey burgers with guacamole. I had India, so I made some tandoori chicken topped with a curried slaw and naan. Lauren rep'ed Greece with killer bison burgers topped with a tzatziki dressing!

Lauren also made an awesome apple cider cocktail (being photobombed by some awesome Pumpkin Spice m&m's that we also dominated).

And for dessert... I made midnight black chocolate pudding thanks Joy The Baker for the recipe!

(I do want you to know that she liked and commented the above photo on my instagram. The excitement over that STILL keeps me up at night.)

You Will Need:

2 1/2 cups whole milk

1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsps granulated sugar (just 1/2 cup sugar if you're using regular cocoa powder

1/3 cup black onyx cocoa powder

4 tsp cornstarch

1/4 tsp salt

3 large egg yolks

2 tsp vanilla extract

Whipped Topping (she makes her own from heavy cream, but ain't nobody got time for that)

Directions:

Place 2 cups milk in a medium saucepan with sugar and cocoa powder. Heat over medium heat until steaming and warm - it doesn't have to be boiling, just heat up and whisk the ingredients together.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining 1/2 cup milk, cornstarch, salt, egg yolks, and vanilla extract. Drizzle about half of the steaming hot chocolate milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Return all of the chocolate, milk, egg mixture back to the saucepan and heat over medium heat, whisking constantly. Make sure to get the corners of the pan where the pudding might stick and overcook.

When the pudding starts to boil, continue to whisk and boil for about 2 to 3 minutes. Pudding will thicken. Remove from heat and spoon into 4 ramekins or jars. Cover with plastic wrap (directly on the surface of the pudding). Refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

To serve, just pull the plastic wrap off and top with the whipped topping!

You can always use regular cocoa powder, but because I have a ton of black cocoa powder leftover from the great oreo experiment, I used that and it makes it taste like an oreo flavored pudding, which, OKAY.

On Saturday, Lindsey came over and we got some work done in the "studio" aka the garage I've half converted into a studio.

To make it mimic our college experience, we had the music up, and the wine and candy flowing - because I don't even know what it's like to create outside of that environment. 

Stay tuned because more work is being done with the space - words like chalk paint, wine cellar, mini fridge, and diabetes drawer were thrown into the mix... (!)

I had to take a break from the waffle painting, so I got started laying down the groundwork for another piece (no bacon this time).

Thankful for this space to create and a friend to do it with! We're committing to meeting up twice a month, so I expect to be churning out art on the reg!