a pound and a half of chocolate pastry filling

Those cherry blossoms were out in Seattle about two weeks ago. In January. In one of the rainiest Januaries in a really, really long time. I barely got the picture between squalls. It has little reason for being here, no attachment to the rest of the post, it's simply a lovely cntrast to the rest of what I've been looking at lately. Like the kitchen.

The kitchen is littered with brown golf balls. Puffy, irregular, cracked, chocolate golf balls. Looks like a chocolate Easter bunny played 9 holes before getting distracted and wandering off. A dozen or more — actually a lot more — discarded chocolate-espresso puffs, mostly torn to reveal gummy insides (gasp) cover much of the counter. What's left is either smeared with chocolate filling or dusted with chopped praline. Except for the pile of drying orange zest. I'd take a picture, but I'd just get the camera dirty.

When I made the big batch of the Mud Puffs yesterday, I guessed at the actual quantity of filling that would be needed. Apparently I guessed high. Quite a bit high. Leaving me with a pound or two of disgustingly rich chocolate orange pastry filling pressing need to make it go away to a place that doesn't make my jeans tighter.

What to do. What to do.

Luckily, I have a meeting tomorrow night with people who will be more than happy to help me with the consumption side of this equation. So if I can come up with some sort of filling containment device that is created in a single pan and lends itself to slicing, I am set.

I am entertaining a jellyrollish cake, purely for high presentation value relative to the amount of work.Except I am not so fond of the texture of your typical jellyroll cake.

OTOH, the filling would be happy with that sort of cake. And really, having tasted a lot of the filling, it would be hard to screw it up with a reasonable, but not great, cake.

Maybe an orange cake. After all, I've got eight — yes EIGHT  — zested oranges lying on the counter too. It would be a nice balance for the decadently rich filling.

Let's pretend that's a decision. Orange cake with orange chocolate filling and just a dusting of cocoa'd powdered sugar on top. Now I just have to find a recipe and clean enough of the kitchen to bake without things falling off the counter. It's all so clear to me now.

I wonder exactly how derailed I will get between here and there. The Mud Puffs were going to be mini mint-infused flourless chocolate cakes and look where they ended up.