Pink Candles in My Burning Kitchen

Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of meeting two local ladies who are food bloggers.  Darlene of My Burning Kitchen discovered my blog due to a link on M-Theory’s Facebook page to my post about Peter Hook.  She contacted me through Twitter and we started to chat.  Through Darlene, I met the lovely rocker girl of Pink Candles at Ridgemont High (I will respect her choice to remain annonymous, so I’ll just call her Pink Candles).  Both have posted very sweet comments on my blog, and through email exchanges, we discovered that we each have quite a few things in common, mainly to do with loving the 80’s.  Darlene shares my love of Duran Duran and groups like Depeche Mode and New Order.  Pink Candles is more a hard rocker, which actually equates to our mutual love of metallic spikes and edge in our style (she had killer boots on when we met up).  After a few Tweets and many emails later, we decided it would be fun to meet up.

Pink Candles arranged when and where, which I fully supported because I definitely would trust food bloggers to pick a more than suitable place to eat!  She choose the Eclipse Chocolat Bar & Bistro in eclectic South Park.  It was the perfect time of day to have their Sweet & Savory Bunch special, which is $16 for three plates.  After having a salted mocha with homemade marshmellows, I started brunch with the rosemary potato wedges in a burnt caramel hollandaise sauce.  Very savory indeed!  Sadly, I don’t recall what Darlene and Pink Candles each had for their starters.

Next we had our main dishes, all pictured below.  Darlene had the grilled panini (left), I had the build-a-benedict topped with brown sugar-pulled pork with a chile burnt caramel hollandaise sauce (middle), and Pink Candles had the mushroom thyme quiche (right).  We all shared bits of our main dishes with each other and although my dish was very good, I liked Pink Candles choice of quiche.  That flaky pastry was quite heavenly.

We closed with the sweet portion of brunch.  I think it was an accident that both Darlene and Pink Candles ordered the same dessert, which was the burnt caramel apple cobbler.  Now, that was a very interesting and very savory dessert because it was spicy, sweet, creamy and rich.  The chile burnt caramel hollandaise sauce blended well with my build-a-benedict so the heat of the spice was more mild.  But the spice was very prominent when used over the cobbler.  I’m going to have to bring my girls Janice and Regi here, because I have found a new favorite dessert, which was the frozen peanut butter mousse.  All elements of this dessert worked so well together and I just couldn’t get enough, even though I was a bit full from my starter and main dish.  Next time, I will go there just for that dessert with a cup of coffee.  So. Good.

After brunch, we strolled around South Park for a little bit, taking in some shopping.  Pink Candles bought a few goodies and I vowed to go back there after Lent and explore more in depth the stores that we visited that day:  Bad Madge, The Make Good, Junc Life & Style and Graffiti Beach.

And finally, pictured below are the desserts that both Darlene and Pink Candles each made and brought to share (as the sole fashion blogger not knowing this food blogger ritual, I came empty handed).  Pink Candles made the yummy blueberry mochi cake and Darlene made the equally delicious yellow cake with sour cream chocolate frosting (the cake & frosting recipes are on her blog here).  Pink Candles even made beautiful earrings for each of us (I have wore my pair to the Alicia Keys concert).  I like this ritual, and I will definitely bring something the next time we all meet up!  I have found new friends in Darlene and Pink Candles, and you can be sure that this will not be the only time I go on an outting with these beautiful and fun food bloggers.