Doug’s Sounding Board

That was a great finale and I made something that won me a steeping teacup!
(spoilers at the end)

I made a  dessert appetizer composed of graham cracker, semi-sweet chocolate, and boysenberry butter. It ended up being a lot less sweet than I thought it would be which was a good thing since I was worried about it being too sweet. To make it I started melting chocolate chips while I got to work on the graham cracker pieces. I cut the graham crackers into quarters since ther perforations weren’t deep enough to break evenly by hand. I put the chocolate on one end of the graham cracker sticks in an attempt at a very shallow bowl and to leave an easy way to hold it without getting chocolate fingers. The best application I came up with was to use an espresso spoon to blob the right amount on and then do a swirl with the bowl in the center to spread most of the chocolate to the outside. The boysenberry butter was about 6 or 7 tablespoons of salted butter softened with boysenberry syrup added until it tasted “right”. I think that was about two tablespoons. The butter was then applied with another espresso spoon.

The final if the show I thought was great! I liked the live reveal in Chicago (where season 4 is filming right now). I liked the sous chefs they were provided and how they were delivered. It seemed to give a better look at the preparation and cooking than previous finals in Top Chef. I liked the head-to-head matchup of the food. I liked having many guest judges for the meal, and I liked the outcome! Going into it I thought Casey had an edge with her flavors as long as she didn’t panic, and Dale would be a contender if he stayed away from dough (altitude) and spicy (smoking has killed his hot receptors). I figured Hung would be excellent and finally able to bring his flavors which is exactly what happened.