Several months ago, the Everyman and I took a shine to a British cooking show called Come Dine With Me.
Come Dine With Me’s premise is to get 4-5 strangers together and let each of them host a dinner party over the course of a week to compete for a $1000 prize. The guests at each dinner party secretly vote on how each other has done once the parties are over, and whomever’s party has the highest score at the end of the week is the winner. As you can imagine, hilarity often ensues.
One of the segments of the show that occurs with some regularity is the wandering around the house bit. While the host is busy assembling appetizers, the guests are typically left to roam free around their house, being nosy and poking into private things. It was during one such segment that the Everyman and I saw a guest pull an Elvis cookbook off one of the host’s shelves. I’m not sure what it was about the book that captivated him so much, but the Everyman was absolutely enthralled by it. At that moment I secretly took it upon myself to try and find him a copy.
After a few weeks, I managed to surreptitiously find Fit For A King in England (it’s long since been out of print) and presented it to him on a recent weekend. Little did I know at the time of purchase that he had no intention of actually cooking from the book, but rather thought it was an interesting coffee table curiosity. Generally speaking, I didn’t intend to cook anything from it either, being that Elvis wasn’t exactly known for his healthful lifestyle. Then, one day when the Everyman was paging through the book reading me tidbits of various recipes, he came across one for peanut butter buttermilk bread. I was immediately intrigued by the idea, and filed it away in the back of my mind for later.
This past weekend I decided to revisit the idea, but instead of baking it as a bread I opted to make a dozen mini cakes.
