Dinner with my Brother: Chocolate Stout Cake and Garlic Butter Cheddar Chicken

My brother just landed a job, moved into his new apartment, is (hopefully) meeting some of my old friends, and starts real work this week. In honor of his success, I thought today should be about him - a little bit of storytelling, and of course a couple of recipes. We did the whole celebratory dinner thing twice last week - my sister also got accepted to the first of many colleges - and I wanted some real homemade food come Thursday. That's where my brother comes in. He's a pretty good sport, and he accepted my plea that we make dinner and dessert.  He even drove to the liquor store and gas station with me to get some guinness and heavy whipping cream for the dessert I had my heart set on (What an awesome guy!).

This dinner was a fun and successful night of camaraderie reminiscent of our snow days as kids. Snow days, by the way, were awesome as a kid. There were no obligations or expectations, the world was pristine and white, we live at the bottom of a steep hill, and our neighbors had three boys and runners. The most epic snow day was one when the roads turned to ice and all five of us trekked over and over again up the hill, slipping and sliding, to race down in pairs. Parked cars made interesting obstacles, and once I laid on my brother's back while he steered the runner down the hill and under a parked car. My head was centimeters from grazing the undercarriage and I was sure we were going to crash, but we miraculously shot out on the ice and finished first, laughing with relief and adrenaline. We may not talk much, but we have some pretty good memories, my brother and I.

Anyway, back to dinner. I'm not overly keen on meat, particularly dealing with raw meat, but family dinner is much easier with a meat plate as the main course. Cheese is usually a hit too. My brother and sister scoff at the thought of a vegetarian meal - you can make that for yourself, they say, but give me something tasty. I did try to get them to eat the absolutely delicious stuffed bell peppers, but my sister ate the stuffing sans tomato (basically just couscous) and left the bell pepper untouched.  That being the case, my brother and I decided on garlic butter cheddar chicken. It's flavorful, it was fun to make, and there wasn't a single piece of chicken for my sister to pack for lunch the next day.

Almost done "breading" the chicken

Dinner is served

Despite my skepticism about cakes, if Deb says it's good, it must be good. She has never steered me wrong before, so we had chocolate stout cake for dessert. I have to say, it fully lived up to all expectations - it was fantastically moist, not sickly sweet, and had not even a hint a powdered sugar taste thanks to Deb's preference for ganache rather than frosting. We ended up using an entire bottle minus a gulp of guinness to solve the altitude problem. That whole carton of whipping cream couldn't go to waste either, so we whipped up some delicious whipped cream which conveniently added a beautiful white contrast to the black cake and (obviously) tasted good too. If you want the recipe, click on the link - it's great the way it is, and there is no need for me to write it all out again, especially when you have the chance to read Deb's fabulous commentary on her blog.

Garlic Butter Cheddar Chicken

Adapted from Moms Who Think
1/2 cup butter
4 cloves minced garlic
3/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar
1/4 teaspoon parsley
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
5-8 boneless skinless chicken breast halves pounded thin

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Melt butter in a saucepan over low heat, then cook garlic until tender, about 5 minutes.  In a bowl big enough for a chicken breast, mix bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese, parley, oregano, pepper and salt. Dip each chicken breast in the garlic butter then liberally coat in the bread crumb mixture. Arrange the chicken in a 9x13 pan (we fit 6 chicken breasts, but whatever you can do is fine) and drizzle with any remaining butter and bread crumbs. Bake 20-30 minutes until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear.

If you thought there would be any dessert left over, think again. Even a full dinner can't stop us when there is chocolate involved.