Max Brenner Is My Idol

Have you ever been to the Forum Shops in Las Vegas? If you go, you need to check out Max Brenner's Restaurant in the Caesar's Palace Forum Shops. OMG! He is a genius! A couple of weeks ago, we went to Vegas to celebrate my sister-in-law's 21st birthday. Since she was celebrating her 21st in Vegas, there was no need for a cake...just shots :)

Anyways, while were were there, Katia, Jay and I went to Max Brenner's for lunch. While Katia and Jay ate actual lunch, I snacked on a chocolatini made of peanut butter liqueur, chocolate, a coffee flavors (SO DELISH!) and chocolate eggrolls made of peanuts, chocolate ganache, and bananas rolled and fried in a spring roll wrapper. (I saw these egg rolls featured on the food network and on the show they were made with strawberries, which I think might have been better, since banana is quite overpowering, but really a chocolate eggroll? Who's going to fault Max Brenner for such creativity?)

This man is truly a genius. He creates the most abstract desserts and drinks, it is amazing! He has the restaurant that I strive to have one day! Hopefully, I can fulfill this dream sometime in my future!

Max Brenner created a dessert pizza. With this pizza he uses regular pizza dough, pre-cooked almost fully, and topped with a base mixture of dark chocolate and white chocolate chunks (which will melt down) topped with mini marshmallows. That goes into the oven for 5 minutes at 400 degrees, then is topped again with candied hazelnuts and drizzled with peanut butter! In his restaurant, he offers his guests a syringe of chocolate ganache for those chocoloate lovers out there.

There were no specific directions for creating this dessert but I took the information from the food network (Kid in a Candy Store) and created what I thought was this dessert pizza. I used a simple dough made of flour, salt, water and baking powder (next time I will use an actual recipe, as this was just blan if eaten alone) I used milk chocolate and peanut butter chips (instead of white chocolate, didn't have it), I used mini marshmallows and baked it until there was a nice browning of the marhsmallows. (Have you ever seen marshmallows cook in the oven? They get really big and fluffly as they get hot.) I candied the crushed hazelnuts in a brown sugar and water syrup and stuck them in the freezer for a quick shock. Once the pizza was out of the oven I sprinkled the hazelnuts on the top and took melted peanut butter and drizzled it all over.

Let me tell you this dessert makes for 6 generous slices. It is such a sweet dessert, even for me, that I gave 2 pieces to our neightbors who said they enjoyed this sweet treat. This dessert would be great for a dinner party!