For the purposes of holiday planning, there are really only two kinds of parties: the kind where you need to bring something, and the kind where you don't.
For the kind where you don't have to bring anything, "be prepared" mostly means having an outfit that can be dressed up by chandelier earrings and smoky eyes (or, if you're male, a snazzier tie), and remembering to put said earrings, tie, and/or eye makeup in your briefcase when you go to work.
For the kind where you have to bring something, you can sometimes get away with a bottle of wine or a bag of salad. When you can't, let chocolate come to the rescue.
You need two things: a bunch of tiny cakes in the freezer, and some ganache. Melt chocolate and cream together in fairly equal parts to make the ganache (experiment a little -- different kinds of chocolate will give you different textures of ganache.
Use this recipe to make the cakes:
Tiny Chocolate Cakes
2/3 c. chocolate chips or chopped chocolate
2 T butter
1/2 c sugar
1 egg
2/3 c flour
Melt the chocolate. Stir in the butter, sugar, and then the egg and the flour. Drop spoonsful into miniature muffin tins or tart shells. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.
Put these in the freezer.
When the party comes up, you can use the ganache in three ways, in ascending order of fanciness and time consumption:
- Liquid: while the ganache is still liquid, dip the tops of the little cakes into it, and let them dry to a shiny finish. You can easily take these to work with you, in a box clearly labeled "Receipts 2003-2005" so no one eats them.
- Soft: chill the ganache to the consistency of icing and pipe a puff onto each little cake.
- Firm: chill the ganache till it's solid (depending on the chocolate you use, this could be overnight -- you can reduce the amount of cream to half if you like) and use a melon baller or a pair of spoons to make truffles from the ganache. Set one on top of each cake -- moisten the bottom with a bit of water to encourage it to stay on.
