Archive | February, 2011

Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate Cake

20 Feb

This is my favorite cake ever. It has 3 different kinds of chocolate. And it may have more, depending on the variation you choose to make — I’ve had up to 5 before! And this cake is always a crowd pleaser, so if I’m heading somewhere new and not sure what people will appreciate, this is my go-to recipe. I’m a little worried about posting this one because it’s actually only semi-homemade, and I don’t want people to think I’m a slacker. But oh well — all my secrets shall be revealed here sooner or later. The pictures for this one are awesome, so I’m including quite a few more than usual. Compliments to the BF/amateur photographer. So feast your eyes, and I’ll go feast my belly.

I start off by moving the rack to the middle of the oven, pre-heating it to 350 F, and buttering a bundt pan. I like using a bundt for this particular cake for a few reasons: One, because it looks fancier without any extra effort. Two, it has a drizzle instead of a full icing, and I think that looks nicer on a bundt. And three, it’s pretty rich, and it’s easier to cut a bundt cake into smaller, neater slices than it is a round or sheet cake.

So after the prep, I dump almost all the ingredients rather unceremoniously into a large mixing bowl: 1 box devils food cake, 1 package chocolate instant pudding mix, 4 eggs, 1 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup warm water, and 1/2 cup vegetable oil.

Batter IngredientsI blend it with a hand-mixer on medium-low for 2-3 minutes. Then I fold in  1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips, and once it’s well-mixed, pour it evenly into the bundt pan.

Mixing the BatterChips!Batter in the pan

I bake it for 45-50 minutes. The cake slightly pulls away from the sides of the pan, and it should pass the toothpick test. I let it cool it on a wire rack for about 20 minutes, and then remove it from the pan. If you don’t cool it long enough, it’s more likely to crack when you try to remove it. And if you’re having a hard time getting it to pop out of the pan, take a long wooden skewer and run it around the edge of the cake before flipping it over. This will loosen it up without cutting your cake or scratching your pan.

Plain cake
Once it’s completely cool, I add the ganache-y chocolate topping — the same one I put on top of the Banana Butterscotch-Chocolate Cake. The rule for this topping is a 2:1 ratio of chocolate to butter. So I melt about 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips and 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) of butter in 30-second intervals, stirring well in between. While it’s still warm and runny, I drizzle in back and forth over top the cake. As it cools, it will firm up but not harden.

DrizzleChocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cake

How Sue Sees It:
- Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I just have to say it again: seriously, this is the best cake ever.
- The other reason I love this cake is because it’s sooo easy. There aren’t any silly rules about beating in eggs one at a time or anything like that. And aside from the sort-of long cooking time, it’s really quick and easy to throw together. Actually, I try to keep the ingredients for this on hand at all times in case I need a last-minute cake.
- I also like that this cake is so versatile and easy to make your own. I’ve substituted the semisweet chips for milk chocolate chips. Once I did half semisweet and half white chocolate chips. You could get even more wild and crazy and use butterscotch or peanut butter chips, or maybe a caramel topping. I haven’t tried those yet, so if you do, let me know how it goes.
- If you’re worried about it, it’s okay to swap light sour cream for regular sour cream. But if you’re honestly counting calories, that seems like a waste of time when it comes to this cake. I haven’t tried the whole swap your oil for applesauce thing, so I don’t know how that would work out with this particular recipe. If you try it, let me know.

Yum

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Banana Butterscotch-Chocolate Cake

16 Feb

I don’t know why, but I have been having some issues in the kitchen lately. Burnt butterscotch,  chocolate blooms, spilled food, cracked cakes, depleted food stores… you name it. I’m in some kind of food funk, so I guess I’ve been avoiding the kitchen for a couple weeks. I re-entered carefully a few nights ago, trying out a new semi-homemade recipe I got off the back of a bag of Nestle Tollhouse butterscotch chips. Even this proved challenging for some reason, though the end result turned out tasty. I edited the recipe a little bit to include chocolate, since a dessert isn’t really a dessert unless chocolate is involved (and I ran short on butterscotch). I’ll go through how I made it, but word of warning: be sure to have quite a few medium and large bowls on hand, and preferably someone to wash all these dishes for you.

I started by pre-heating the oven to 375 F and buttering a bundt pan. Then I filled a large mixing bowl with a box of yellow cake mix, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup vegetable oil,  1/4 cup water, and 1/4 cup white sugar. I also added in 2 mashed bananas — I didn’t worry too much about mashing them well. I just kind of shmushed them with a fork as I dropped chunks of banana into the bowl. I figured the hand mixer would take care of them.

Ingredients

Then I mixed everything together with a hand mixer in medium-low speed for about 3 minutes.

In a medium-sized, microwave-safe bowl, I melted 3/4 cup of butterscotch chips by cooking at 20-second intervals in the microwave, stirring in between each round. I did the same thing with 3/4 cup of dark chocolate chips in another medium-sized, microwave-safe bowl. I added about a cup of the banana cake batter into each of the melted chips bowls.

Banana-Butterscotch BatterBanana-Chocolate Batter

So then I had: a bowl of banana batter, a bowl of chocolate-banana batter, and a bowl of butterscotch-banana batter.

3 Batters

Then I set about filling the bundt pan in a way that would give me a great marbling effect. I just dropped random spoonfuls of each batter into the pan: spoonful of banana, spoonful of chocolate-banana, spoonful of butterscotch-banana… repeat. The bowl looked pretty cool, with yellow, brown, and tan spots everywhere.

Marbled Cake Batter

Once the pan was full, I put it in the oven for about 35-40 minutes, until I poked it with a toothpick and it came out clean.

Hot Cake

Once again, I was too impatient, and I tried to take the cake out of the pan too soon, resulting in a cracked cake! And this time I didn’t have an icing to hide the cracks! BAhhh what was I gonna do!? Easy — I just cut it into two halves, and served it as two separate cakes. Where the cracks were messy, I just sliced off a bit of crumbled cake and ate it, so that the edges would be smooth cuts. This worked out really well since I was taking some to the office, and they never eat it all anyway. So I sent one to my office and one to the BF’s office.

But first — the topping! The recipe called for drizzling melted butterscotch over the top of the cake. Unfortunately, I completely burned and ruined the last bit of butterscotch I had, so that was a fail. (Told you I’ve been having kitchen issues lately.) So instead I topped it with melted chocolate, which is a fantastic substitute. (Even that took two tries though. Issues.) This is the same ganache-y topping I use on my Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cake. The general rule is one part butter to two parts chocolate. So I melted about 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips with 1/4 cup (1/2 a stick) butter, heating in the microwave in 20-second intervals, stirring well in between each round. While the chocolate is still warm and smooth, drizzle it over the top of the cake, evenly all around. As it cools, it will firm up to be solid, but it won’t get hard, thanks to the butter. Tasty!

Banana Butterscotch Chocolate Cake

How Sue Sees It:
- If you prefer only butterscotch and not the added chocolate (not sure why you would, but whatever), just replace all the chocolate with more butterscotch.
- Reviews for this cake were mixed — some loved it, some liked it, some didn’t care for it. I think it totally depends how the taster feels about banana. If you like banana, you’ll love this cake. If you don’t, you won’t. Duh.

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6/7/8 Layer Magic Bars

1 Feb

Seven-layer bars are not anything new or exciting, but I had been craving these “magic bars” for days. I have no idea why — I haven’t had a seven-layer bar in years. But I pulled out my bar pan, and two trips to the grocery store later (I forgot stuff), I set to work on the bars. This is a classic recipe and can be found anywhere online or even on the back of a can of sweetened condensed milk. I probably know this one of the top off my head now, it’s so easy.

I preheated the oven to 350 F, and then I started off mixing 1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs and 1/2 cup melted unsalted butter in a small bowl.

Graham Cracker Crumbs & ButterGraham Cracker & Butter Mixture
Once it was completely mixed, I pressed a small amount into each  of the 12 cups of the bar pan, pressing flat to make a solid crumb layer along the bottom. I had a little extra, so I pulled out my mini muffin pan and pressed the leftovers into there — it used up about 6 of them.

Graham Cracker Crumb LayerGraham Cracker Layer
Then I set about filling up the layers. What I like about using the bar pan is that you can change up the ingredients. Someone doesn’t like nuts? Leave out the nuts on one row. No coconut? Leave out the coconut. What I don’t like about using the bar pan is that it takes more time, and it’s difficult to spread the layers evenly.

At any rate, I layered in 3/4 cup butterscotch chips, 3/4 cup dark chocolate chips, and 3/4 cup white chocolate chips. Then I added in 1 cup chopped walnuts and a little more than 1 cup shredded coconut. Last, I poured in 1 can of sweetened condensed milk, a little over top each bar.

Bar LayersMini Muffin LayersAdding Sweetened Condensed Milk
I baked them for about 18 minutes, until everything was all melted together. (But if you use the mini-muffin pan, take it out after 12 minutes or so!) Then I let them sit and cool for a couple hours before I attempted to remove them.

I managed to pry out a few bars and keep them whole, and they look delicious. (All the bars that I broke I dumped into a bowl and I just eat them with a fork. Talk about guilty pleasure.)

Magic Bars
I picked out the three best-looking bars and packaged them in a gift bag with a ribbon. Adorbs!

Magic Bars Gift Bag

How Sue Sees It:
- I consider these true seven-layer bars because they include seven layers: graham cracker crust, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, walnuts, coconut, and sweetened condensed milk. Other recipes do not include the white chocolate chips, but still call it seven layers by counting the butter that’s mixed into the graham cracker crust as a layer. And I call b.s. on that.
- That said, I highly recommend specializing these based on your taste preferences. If you don’t like certain ingredients, leave them out. Or get creative and add new things — white chocolate, macademia nuts, and coconut would be a delicious combo!
- Be careful not to add in too much sweetened condensed milk, which is really easy to do in the small bar cups. I definitely should have used a spoon to drop in a small amount rather than being impatient and trying to pour it in. Some of my bars ended up with WAY too much sweetened condensed milk — these looked funny, and they were the ones that wouldn’t come out of the pan in one piece. Check out this picture — the bars in the front of the shot are nearly overflowing with sweetened condensed milk. Too much!Too Much!- Next time I’ll probably add in the coconut at the end, after I spoon in the sweetened condensed milk. The coconut got kind of mushed under the weight of the milk, and it looks better when the coconut is fluffier.
- Don’t use paper baking cups! The bars stick to the paper, and if you try to unwrap it, it will just spread out into goo. Delicious goo, but goo nonetheless.

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