How do I not weigh 2,000 lbs?

Seriously, my love affair with food is something that just continues to grow the older I get. I'm afraid to see how out of control I am by the time I'm 40. Heaven help my family or my puberty struck teenage daughter trying to keep a skinny waist and attract the boys. She'll have cakes and cookies coming out of her ears! I just cant help myself though. I LOVE trying out new recipe's and this whole Pinterest thing just aint helping. It's an addiction the internet is feeding and feeding and feeding...

I.need. counselling!  

Thankfully... miraculously... I have managed to balance trying lots of yummy new recipes/food while still sticking to my diet. In the last 4 weeks I've lost 10lbs total and I've dropped a dress size! (I went shopping for new jeans yesterday and I totally did a happy dance in the dressing room when those bad boys zipped all the way up. Hell yes! Can I get a high five, ladies!? Ha! Sorry, I'll control my corniness from now on). I'm not far from my goal weight now and I'm as happy as a clam. I'm am, however, campaigning for positive dieting thoughts in regards to tomorrow when I step on the scales, because this weekend I created a chocolatey masterpiece monster. I fear this delicious concoction may have derailed me ever so slightly. I was so greedy with this that I not only ate it when it was cooked but also in the raw batter form. I'm not proud. But what the hell. We only live once, and if my bit of indulgence means that if I don't lose 2lbs this week I'm not bothered. It was WELL worth it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Over the weekend Carl and I invited his parents over for a roast dinner. I made a roast lemon and thyme chicken with herb roasted potatoes (please see picture below as I pose in my best 'doting house wife' stance). I also made lemon chicken gravy (YUM!) grilled corn on the cob, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower and yorkshire puddings. It was very healthy (it had to be in order to compensate for what was coming) but also pretty tasty if I do say so myself. Everyone cleaned their plates and aside from my father-in-law cracking really corny jokes (this is like a disease to him, you see. He can't help himself and those of us constantly around him have grown so numb to their bad-ness that we can't help but smile and shake our heads) there wasn't much said as everyone was preoccupied shovelling the yummy goodness into their mouths. It was a success :)

But the real star of the dinner was my own chocolaty concoction. That masterpiece monster that I mentioned above. It was truly epic and I'm so proud of how it turned out. I combined a tried, tested and adored Nigella recipe for Salted Caramel Sauce (you can read about my obsession with this recipe in this post) with a scrumptious Best Chocolate Cake recipe that I found on Pinterest. In addition, I topped the little brown bundles of heaven with a gut busting Martha Stewart Dark Chocolate Frosting. The result was an abundance of scrum-diddly-umptious Chocolate Cupcakes with gooey salted caramel centers that were topped with heavenly dark chocolate buttercream. They were AMAZING and by far the best cupcakes I've ever made. Even the hubby and in-laws agreed! In fact, they were so good Carl has eaten 5 of them within the past 24 hours. And my mother-in-law and I couldn't control ourselves and ended up splitting a second cupcake to satisfy our craving. Haha.

In order to get the moist caramel gooey middles, I allowed the cupcakes to cool completely before I cut quarter size holes out of their middles and poured 2 tsp of the salted caramel inside. I replaced the wedge of cake I'd hallowed out and allowed the cakes to soak up the caramel over night. I finished them off by frosting them with Martha's unbelievable chocolate buttercream, drizzled them with the left over caramel sauce and grated dark chocolate on top of that. I found that the recipe's were all very simple on their own, but it was just a little time consuming to do. Having said that, I definitely think the final product is WELL worth it if you're looking for an outstanding dessert that will bag you lots of compliments. Also, if you'd rather not make cupcakes you could just simply divide the batter into 3 round pans and make a layer cake. If you're doing that, I suggest poking holes in the cake layers soon after they come out of the oven and pouring the caramel over the top so that it has time to soak in. To finish it off, put the buttercream JUST on the top of the cake (it's too rich to go in between all of the layers). 

Now for those of you who are also on Weight Watchers and wondering just how naughty these cupcakes are...I entered the recipe (with the caramel and buttercream) in the Online Recipe Builder and discovered that they're around 8 Weight Watcher ProPoints PER cupcake - that's if you get 22 cupcakes out of the cake batter, divide the frosting among all of them evenly and only put 2 tsp of the caramel sauce per cupcake. Yes, I know this is a lot of points. Yes, I know you'll have to eat tomato soup and grapes the rest of the day. BUT, I promise you won't be disappointed. Everybody needs a bit of a chocolate overhaul from time to time! Go on, live on the edge! Find that naughty bone in your body and enjoy!

Aside from going into a chocolate induced coma this evening, I've also been lucky enough to enjoy a Skype date with my best girlfriends from back home. I was laughing so hard at one point that I was snorting, coughing and crying all at once. Yes, it's possible. I shall write about this at a later date when I have more time to digest it. Let's just say it involved my best friends razor sharp heels that 'tear up' everything within a 50 mile radius, ragged carpet, a sander and hole infested socks. Now you know why I need time to digest it...

I love my friends.

Thanks for reading, guys!
Take good care,