March Blogging Madness: Three Musketeers Tea, Daredevil Parties, and a New Menu of the Month Hint!

Posted April 1, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Hints, Teas / 9 Comments

Normally I feel like March drags on FOREVER (perpetually gray skies are NOT my thing), but this year I had loads of exciting blog stuff to keep me busy!

Our Three Musketeers menu went off without a hitch. Five shiny new recipes are now tucked safely away in the archives. This month, I made my very first copycat recipes, and I did them back-to-back: 3 Musketeers candy bars and Cafe Angelina’s French hot chocolate! I made mini versions of the candy bars for my family’s Easter party, and they were a big hit. And my oh my, the French sure know their hot chocolate! For a chocoholic like me, it was like drinking liquid happiness. Milady de Winter’s Soup

Aramis Omelets

Drunken Ham

Milady de Winter’s Soup

3 Musketeers Candy Bars

French Hot Chocolate from the Three Musketeers

I also premiered a delicious new tea. While we’re on the topic of 3 Musketeers bars, I should probably mention All for One and One for All Tea: my new chocolate caramel tea from Adagio. I designed it to taste like a 3 Musketeers bar, and I daresay I succeeded. It’s super chocolaty and sweet enough to make a perfect dessert tea with a some milk and sugar. You can order it here.

three-musketeers-all-for-one-and-one-for-all-tea-3950

On a more embarrassing note, I had my very first blogging snafu this month. For some reason I cannot fathom, I thought it would be a good idea to schedule my Drunken Ham post before it was finished…and I accidentally scheduled it to publish a day early! The post was up for an ENTIRE HOUR before I realized the mistake, and although all the text was ok, the pictures were all placeholders from old posts (I hadn’t uploaded the edited pics yet). YIKES! Lesson learned.

The Mister and I went to C2E2, a Chicago comic con, where we had a blast. There were babies dressed up as BB-8, steampunk cosplayers selling tea, and SO MUCH FAN ART. It was perfectly awesome…though I may have dropped the ball and forgotten to get us tickets for some key YA fiction panels, which would have been perfect for the blog. * sigh * C’est la vie, I guess? Anyway, I promise to plan better next time! 🙂

We also threw a Daredevil party to marathon Season 1 before Season 2 came out on Netflix. I didn’t have time to make a post about it, but I shared the food in some tweets. We made Kingpin Omelets (which were basically the Aramis Omelets I made earlier this month), Anatoly Applesauce (this recipe from Taste of Home), Avocados at Law (aka Epic Meal Time Guac Grenades), and World on Fire Cupcakes (which are the same as my Girl on Fire cupcakes from The Hunger Games). All the food was well-received, but I think I had the most fun with the Avocados at Law! 🙂

But now it’s time to bid March adieu and turn our gaze towards April. Ready for your photo hint? Take a guess at what our next Book of the Month will be:

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/snicket/images/9/92/VFD.png/revision/latest?cb=20080308002459 — HINT: It’s a series.

The new menu premieres this Thursday!
Any guesses at what our next Book of the Month will be? 🙂

French Hot Chocolate: A Café Angelina Copycat Recipe

Posted March 31, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments

Since there’s an extra Thursday this month, I get to do a bonus recipe! At first, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make; I felt like the main menu had already covered what I considered to be the most important Three Musketeers dishes. Then I remembered the mysterious “breakfast of chocolate” d’Artagnan eats at a friend’s house midway through the book. I did a little research to figure out what it was, and the most likely candidate seems to be hot chocolate. As it turns out, people in France often have hot chocolate with their breakfast. D’Artagnan speaks about his chocolate breakfast as if it were a small, insubstantial meal, and having only a cup of hot chocolate would certainly fit that description. As such, I decided to make authentic French hot chocolate as my bonus recipe, and boy oh boy was that a good choice! The recipe I use here is a slight variation on one by Erin from Well Plated, which is a copycat version of Cafe Angelina’s famous hot chocolate. This thick, smooth hot chocolate has enough intense, rich flavor to satisfy even the most ardent chocoholic!

All for One and One for All: Three Musketeers Tea

Posted March 29, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Teas / 7 Comments

You may recall I had trouble deciding what flavors to use in my X-Files tea last month, but with this tea I had no such problem. A tea based off The Three Musketeers book HAS to taste like a 3 Musketeers candy bar, right? I’m sure there’s a law about it somewhere. So I combined Adagio’s Tiger’s Eye, Chocolate, and Caramel teas with cocoa nib and cinnamon inclusions to make the ultimate chocolate caramel tea. You’re welcome. 😉

All for One and One for All Tea

Seriously, guys, this is the tea equivalent of a 3 Musketeers bar, and it’s AWESOME. Tiger’s Eye tea is a chocolate-caramel blend from Adagio, and I used that as my base, adding extra chocolate and caramel flavored teas until I reached the desired balance of the two. Then I kicked it up a notch with cocoa nibs to intensify the chocolate flavor and cinnamon…because cinnamon makes everything better! The final result is rich and sweet, which I think is fitting. With some milk and sugar, it makes a perfect dessert tea!

You can order it here!

Wanna check out my other blends? Visit our Alison’s Wonderland Tea Gallery!

3 Musketeers Copycat Candy Bar (with only two ingredients!)

Posted March 24, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 8 Comments

3 Musketeers Candy Bars

three-musketeers-copycat-candy-bar-d-4639

three-musketeers-copycat-candy-bar-d-4618

You knew it was coming. How could a Three Musketeers menu end without a 3 Musketeers bar? Luckily, this recipe (which I originally found here) is super easy to make. There’s a little bit of wait time involved while the filling chills, but the active preparation time is only 5-10 minutes…and there are only two ingredients! When I first tested the recipe, I was a little nervous that it was all too good to be true, but the finished candy bars DEFINITELY taste like the 3 Musketeers bars you buy in the store. 🙂

All for one and one for all! Let’s all eat dessert! 😀

Lettin’ My Geek Flag Fly: The Mister and I Attend C2E2!

Posted March 22, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Uncategorized / 0 Comments

You may remember last August when I shared a post about my very first comic con. In short, it was AWESOME. I had no idea what I was missing out on all this time! This past weekend, I went to an even BIGGER comic book convention, the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (or C2E2 for short). I was originally planning on publishing a different post today, but I had such a blast at the con that I decided to scrap my plans and share the geeky wonderfulness of C2E2 with you! 😀

Milady de Winter’s Soup

Posted March 17, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 13 Comments

Milady de Winter is one of my all-time favorite literary villains. She’s the sort of cold, evil manipulator that you just love to hate. In fact, she’s such a good bad guy that my favorite chapters in The Three Musketeers are the five chapters she spends in prison doing nothing but scheming. Naturally, such a wonderful villain deserves a spot on our menu.

And given her name, I knew the recipe I made in her honor had to be winter soup!

Since I didn’t have a go-to winter soup recipe, I had to go hunting for one while planning this menu. This particular winter soup—my own slight variation on one I found by Chungah Rhee–is fragrant and wholesome. I chose it because it includes an extra step that many soup recipes don’t: it calls for roasting the vegetables before adding them to the soup. I think roasting vegetables ALWAYS makes them better, so I had my eye out for a recipe that took advantage of roasted veggie goodness. And this is definitely it! If I didn’t have a go-to winter soup recipe before, I’ve sure got one now! 😉

St. Patrick’s Day Recipes from Classic Lit

Posted March 15, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Holidays / 1 Comment

St. Patrick’s Day is coming up fast! Luckily, classic lit books (and some modern day classics) offer lots of potential St. Patty’s Day recipes. Here are some of my favorites:

hunger-games-lamb-stew-with-dried-plums-e-5325 — Nothing’s more Irish than lamb stew, and this recipe is Katniss’ favorite food in *The Hunger Games*!

Drunken Ham: Broiled Ham Steak with Port and Cranberry Glaze

Posted March 9, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 10 Comments

So…if you missed the excitement a couple hours ago, I accidentally published this post a day early while it was still an unfinished draft. AND IT WAS UP FOR A WHOLE HOUR BEFORE I REALIZED IT HAPPENED. * Cue death by embarrassment *

The full story is this: last night when I started drafting the post, I put the wrong date into the schedule bar. So it published at 11 am today…instead of 11 am tomorrow, when it was meant to be all finished and shiny. SOMEONE HIDE ME.

shame the lion king lion king pumba oh the shame — Funny thing is, I NEVER fill out the scheduler until the post is finished. I’m still not sure what possessed me to do it this time.

So after a giant round of panicking, I scrambled to finish editing and uploading my pictures, so subscribers wouldn’t click on the email containing this post and wonder what the heck was going on. EEP. I’m so sorry, guys!

Anyway, I should probably put my shame aside and try to focus on what this post is really about: namely, the Three Musketeers.

Our recipe today is a tribute to my favorite musketeer, Athos. I’ve got a soft spot for prickly characters, and he’s nothing if not stern and stoic. The only time Athos makes an exception to his rule of restraint is when it comes to wine. Athos LOVES him a good burgundy. This is proven when his friends get separated from him for two weeks while traveling, and they find him barricaded into an innkeeper’s cellar, drunk on four casks of wine and guilty of eating most of the innkeeper’s delicious hams.

This “drunken ham” recipe is our tribute to Athos’ wine-and-ham spree. It combines tender, juicy broiled ham steak with my own version of a spiced port glaze originally developed by Campbell’s. Enjoy!

All for One and One for All: A Three Musketeers Reading Kit

Posted March 8, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Reading Kits / 3 Comments

Reading kit time! These are steadily becoming one of my favorite things to post. I love picking out the most iconic items in a story and hunting down cool versions of them for a kit. And The Three Musketeers has loads! Below you’ll find a list of items you can buy to build an awesome musketeer reading kit for yourself…or your three best friends! So don your feathered cap and get ready for an adventure! 🙂

Aramis’ French Omelet with Sautéed Spinach

Posted March 3, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments

I just read The Three Musketeers for the first time last year, and I was hugely impressed. Considering the size of the book and the time when it was written, I was expecting it to be a little slow and wordy. Instead, I laughed my way through the first chapter and rooted for D’Artagnan and his musketeer pals all the way to the end. Before the book was over, I knew I had to make a menu for it here on the blog.