Chopped Challenge

Jeff and I celebrated Valentines day by doing a "chopped challenge." If you've never seen the TV show "Chopped," it airs on the food network and its a lot of fun to watch, especially if you love food like I do! Basically, they have 4 chefs battle it out to win a $10,000 prize. They are each given a basket of 4 random ingredients in which they have to make an entree, appetizer, and dessert in 3 separate rounds. They are allowed to use a kitchen full of stocked ingredients as well, but they have to be creative in how they use their "mystery" ingredients. They have 30 minutes to complete the challenge, and are judged on taste, creativity and presentation. 

Jeff and I decided to simplify and just do dessert, and instead of having to incorporate 4 ingredients,  we each picked out 2 ingredients for each other. Jeff was having an anxiety attack of sorts, because i wanted to give him really random ingredients haha. So because I am the nice person I am, and since this was our first attempt, I gave him ingredients that you would actually make a normal dessert with. 

Jeff's ingredients: Caramel ice cream topping and graham crackers

Megan's ingredients: green apples and chocolate pudding

We gave ourselves extra time, 40 minutes on the clock. It was hilarious. This was probably one of the FUNNEST dates we've ever done. I was laughing pretty much the whole time. I decided to make a caramel apple trifle. So I made a chocolate cake, and layered that with a sad attempt at a caramel sauce to go with the apples, and chocolate pudding. I layered them all in a martini glass (because we drink Martinis regularly over here!) for prime presentation. Jeff make a homemade twix bar layering graham crackers, a much better caramel than mine, and a chocolate fudge topping using chocolate chips and half and half.  YUM! I don't know that we'd ever make either of our desserts again just based on the taste, but it was definitely fun. As you can see, I clearly won! ;) Just kidding, but he probably spent half his time deciding on what to do with his ingredients....I can't imagine the dilemma had I actually given him black beans and smarties like I planned on ;) We will definitely be doing this again!