Leprechauns in January

I'm horrible, I know.  I have not posted in seemingly forever.  Mostly because baking can be expensive.  Also it is not good to have sweets lying around the house.  Also, sometimes I bake and I'm too intent on getting the food into the oven to stop for 30 seconds to take a picture.  And posts just aren't worth it without a picture.  But this cake, I promise, has a wonderful picture.  Several actually.

Now I can't take credit for the idea.  I stole it directly from notmartha.org and made only several slight modifications but I can promise you it is FAR easier than it looks.  Too easy in fact to the point where I tried to make it harder on myself.


The ingredients are as follows:
1. Cake mix (white or yellow)
2. Food coloring
3. Cocoa powder
4. Eggs
5. Butter
6. Vanilla extract

Frosting:
1. 1 cup butter
2. Powdered sugar
3. 1/2 cup milk

Directions:

1. Note that the ingredients mostly don't have amounts.  You really don't need measuring cups for this recipe.  You do need a lot of bowls though.  A LOT.  So start by making the cake following the directions on the box, except use melted butter instead of oil.  It gives a better taste.  Add in vanilla if you like that kind of thing.

2. Now split the batter into four more bowls with each bowl containing slightly less batter.  The biggest bowl is done.  The next bowl I made green by adding lots of food coloring.  Add food coloring to each of the other bowls making sure to wash the spoon between mixing otherwise it will bleed colors.

3. I added a few tablespoons of cocoa powder to the two darker shaded batches of batter.  To the lightest bowl I added a bit of cocoa powder and a bit of cayenne pepper and cinnamon to give it a kick.  The smallest bowl only had about 2/3 cup of batter so it's not going to make the cake spicy, but it will add a little extra flavoring.

4. Now this is where I had to make major adjustments.  The point of this cake is to lure a leprechaun to your cake so that when he goes for the gold in the center he falls into the hole at the center of the bundt pan.  Sadly, I don't have a bundt pan so I had to make one out of a circle pan.  I folded aluminum foil into a circular shape at the center of the pan and poured around it.  But this worked out quite nicely so I recommend it for anyone else who doesn't have a bundt pan.

5. Pour the white/yellow batter that you have the most of into the pan on the bottom.  Then pour each layer of color on top of it in concentric circles getting thinner and thinner with each layer.  It should look like this:

6. Now when mine came out it didn't look like it had kept the colors properly but when I cut inside it worked just fine. 

So don't panic.  Bake it at 325 or 350 F (really either one is fine) for about 45 minutes or whatever it says on the box.  When it looks done, take it out and let it cool.

7. In the meantime, beat the softened butter in a bowl with mixers and add in 2 cups of powdered sugar.  Slowly add in the milk and lots of green food dye, and then continue to add powdered sugar until you get the right consistency for your frosting.  This can be anywhere from 3-5 cups of sugar.  I swear powdered sugar disappears when it gets wet.  It's weird like that. 

8. Once the cake has cooled, I did a crumb layer of frosting.  Basically that means you frost it a little and then freeze the cake for about 10 or 15 minutes.  Then when you go back to finish frosting it, the crumbs don't get flaked into the frosting to ruin the look.  Very fancy.  I'm cool like that.  Once you've finished frosting the cake, you can take a fork and give the frosting a 'grassy' look.  Keeping in line with the impressive fancy methods and all.

9.  Now if you have leftover gelt from Hannukah, place that in the center and you're golden.  If not, I used Reese's candy and it looked just as good.  Then I made a ladder out of cut-up Kit-Kat bars.  They stick to the frosting so it works out well.

10. The Final touch is adding your sign to let the leprechauns know where the gold is.  My leprechaun looked oddly Amish, but I'm not the best of drawers.  Next time I'll get a redhead.

11. Serve and enjoy!  And remember, you're eating a lot of food coloring, so you may start to sneeze in bright colors.  Only one of the many wonderful side effects of this sugary concoction.

Is there a Dr. in the House?

Like I said, this post will be worth your time.  If this is the only post on my blog you ever read, I will be ok with that.  I almost don't want to try to post after this because I just don't know if I can top it in terms of flavor.  That didn't stop me from baking brownies tonight out of sheer boredom, but I didn't even bother taking pictures because it was boring in comparison.  I mean, just look at the ingredients I used for this recipe:

For those of you attempting to repeat this glorious mess at home, the ingredients are:
Cake:
2 cups of sifted flour
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk (surprisingly, despite the name, buttermilk isn't too bad for you)
1 Tb vanilla
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 1/2 cups marshmallows
1 cup Dr. Pepper (I was worried about using diet, but it worked, so feel free to cut the calories in that area)
3 Tb. unsweetened cocoa powder

Frosting:
1 lb bag of confectioners sugar
6 Tb. Dr. Pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3 Tb. unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:
Now mind you, I was making this for a potluck, and we all know the deal about potlucks.  Everyone brings the one thing they're really good at making.  So everything is awesome.  And if you bring something crappy it stands out.  Plus you end up taking it home at the end of the night and what's more embarrassing than having to eat leftover crappy cake alone at home?  Perhaps wetting yourself in public, but I'd say that's about it.

So anyway, I found this recipe book online.  And I know that it's a book of traditionally southern African American desserts.  But I found it somehow calling out to me.  Maybe it's the deep fried chicken and kale I was deprived of as a kid, but something in this recipe book called out to me.  So I asked for it as a Hannukah gift and decided to make this recipe the second I saw it.  Dr. Pepper, marshmallows AND chocolate?  There really was no higher priority in my life than immediately getting all necessary ingredients.

After the trek to Whole Foods for kosher marshmallows (which have fish gelatin in them, and I don't usually eat fish, but this was an exception I felt somehow I had to make) I started the complicated journey on the path to perfection.  Otherwise known as making a cake.  Obviously the first thing I did was preheat the oven to 350, though the cake takes a while to put together so if you wait 15 minutes before preheating the oven you'll probably still be fine.

Next you have to melt the butter, marshmallows, cocoa powder, and Dr. Pepper in a saucepan on the oven until it's nice and smooth.  It might get a little frothy for a while but eventually it should have a nice consistent texture:

While it's melting, and assuming you can still pay close enough attention to it that nothing will burn, go ahead and mix together the flour, sugar, and baking soda:

Now slowly pour the melted and smooth marshmallow mixture into the flour mixture and mix it well:

You can beat it a little, but don't get carried away.  It will fall easily off the spoon:

Meanwhile you can beat the eggs in a third bowl until they're nice and fluffy.  I know, lots of bowls in this recipe and lots of clean up.  But I swear it's worth every dish.  Now add in the buttermilk and vanilla and beat for another 30 seconds or so:

Add the egg mixture to the batter and mix until well blended and the batter is smooth.  Pour into a 9x13 inch pan (spray first with butter spray or some equivalent) and bake for 50-55 minutes or until it looks done.  Let cool for at least 10 minutes before frosting, though with this recipe the cake doesn't need to be completely cooled before frosted.  Another reason I love it.  Also just to warn you, when I took the cake out of the oven I was not impressed.  It looked like there were lots of little air bubbles and the cake didn't seem very thick or moist.  Then I frosted it and ate it and realized I could not have been more wrong.  It was perfect.  So please take a moment before judging your naked baked cake.  Give it a chance to impress your tastebuds.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

For the frosting, you're basically going to repeat the first step but with confectioners (aka powdered) sugar.  Melt the butter, cocoa powder, and Dr. Pepper in a saucepan.  I used the same one as before and didn't even bother washing it out because it was mostly the same ingredients.  Once you have a nice smooth consistency, take it off the heat and slowly stir in the whole bag of powdered sugar.  It's a lot of sugar, it's very sweet, and like I said before, it's totally worth it.  Once it's all mixed in you'll still have a pretty drippy looking frosting.  Let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes, and then pour it over the slightly warm cake.  Then let it sit for at least an hour, preferably two, before serving.  I dusted it with more powdered sugar to make it pretty:

And then bask in the glow of compliments you will undoubtedly receive for this piece of perfection.  You'll never look at Dr. Pepper the same way again.  I certainly won't.

Maybe you'll even get enough compliments that you can convince someone to wash your dishes for you...

Dr. Pepper in a Cake? Heck Yes!

Just a heads up that the next post will blow your mind, and if you end up making it, your taste buds too.  Seriously.  Dr. Pepper in a cake may have been the best decision I ever made.  Come back soon, it will be worth your time.  I promise.

A Veritable Cornocopia

Holiday season is upon us, and after a weekend of gorging myself on Thanksgiving treats, it was somewhat depressing to return to DC and discover that the leftovers had not magically returned along with me.  Of course the obvious solution to this problem was to create my own leftovers.  And an early Hannukah offered the perfect excuse.  Additionally, while I would be quite content to nourish myself entirely on cakes and pies, I could hear the Jewish mother in my head reminding me that vegetables are an important food group.  So I dragged myself to the grocery store and spent an embarrassing amount of money on butter, eggs, chocolate, vegetables, cheese and the like.  Then I set to work in the kitchen.

There's really nothing I like more than to spend my day off in my running clothes, covered in flour and cocoa and baking something sweet for people I love.  Occasionally the thought crosses my head that this might be a fun way to spend my life, but then I wouldn't have anything to do with my free time.  Also I like to take my time when I bake, and I'm pretty sure professional bakers are constantly rushing.  And they get up at 4 AM to make bread which does not sound even slightly appealing.

Anyway, I am going to break this post up into several installments only so it's easier to follow the recipes.  I got occasionally distracted while baking so a few recipes have less pictures of the process, but I am confident that should you try to recreate any of these you will do just fine.  Worst case scenario you have a bowl of sugary butter, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Nothing wrong at all.

On my menu for the week was a quinoa-cauliflower-feta invention and a spinach and mushroom lasagna.  I forgot that cheese is surprisingly expensive and that managed to bring me back quite a pretty penny.  But the results were oh-so worth it.  Assuming you're not lactose intolerant.  But if you are you probably have no reason to continue reading my blog other than my occasionally witty remark.  Because I love butter.  And cheese.  A lot.  Perhaps one of the reasons veganism didn't quite work out for me.

But back to the recipes (how did I manage to write so many paragraphs without even hinting at my dessert?!).  Also on the menu were two desserts from my favorite cookbook in the entire world.  It is the Toll House dessert cookbook and I may or may not be obsessed with it. I picked out the Toll House Cake (a white cake with chocolate chips and milk chocolate frosting) and an Apple Pie.  If your mouth isn't watering yet you should check your taste buds to make sure they're still working.  Seriously.

I'll start with the cake recipe and put the rest of them up over the next two days.  Get psyched!

Tollhouse Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
Cake:

2 cups flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup butter/margarine softened
2  tsp baking powder
1 cup chocolate chips (or one chocolate bar chopped into small to medium chunks)


Frosting:
1 cup butter softened
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350.  But when you're baking, that's almost always a given.

You start by doing the traditional cake thing.  Beat the margarine for about 30 seconds, then gradually add in the two sugars until you get a nice creamy consistency.  It takes about 3 or 4 minutes which always seems like an eternity to me, but it's worth it if you want a good batter.  Then slowly add in the eggs one at a time making sure the beat well after each one.  Your batter should look something like this:

I saw the Cadbury chocolate bar and decided to use it instead of chocolate chips just to mix it up a bit.  I chopped it up and then had a hard time resisting the urge to eat it all before adding it to the batter.

Now, after making sure your flour isn't clumpy, and ideally after mixing it in a separate bowl with the baking powder and salt (though we all know by now I pretty much never do this) you can slowly beat it into the sugar/butter mixture.  I also added a few dashes of cinnamon, because I can really never get enough of that spice.  After that, you can slowly mix in the chocolate chips with a spoon.  Resist the urge to eat all the batter immediately.  And if you're really smart you'll dust the chocolate chips in flour first so they don't all sink to the bottom of the batter as soon as it goes in the oven.  As you can see, I did not do this:

But it turned out okay in the end anyway, so no worries.  I slid it in a small loaf pan:

And baked it for about an hour and a half.  This is because I accidentally preheated my oven to 250 degrees instead of 350 and realized this 30 minutes after I put the cake in the oven.  So I just upped the temperature and periodically checked on the cake until it was thoroughly baked.  Theoretically if you bake it at the correct temperature it should only take 45 minutes to bake.  But you're welcome to try it my way.  I took it out and sliced off the lump on top to make frosting easier.  Cakes ALWAYS have a little lump towards the center, if they don't they have definitely been trimmed before frosting.  It looked so good inside!

While your cake is cooling you can melt a little over a cup of chocolate chips on the stove for the frosting.  You could theoretically do it in the microwave, but chocolate melts better over a low flame, and when you're using it in a frosting consistency is very important.

Now beat the cup of softened butter and slowly add in the confectioner's sugar and vanilla.  Feel free to add more confectioner's sugar if the consistency isn't right, but make sure to beat it for at least 3 minutes after all the sugar is in before adding more.  Once you have a nice frosting-like consistency add in the melted chocolate and beat until you have a nice chocolate colored frosting.

Now, once the cake is cooled remove it from the pan and slice it into four equal layers cutting the long way across.  I like to cut it in half using a bread knife, and then cut each half in half.  This makes for the most even layers, but you're welcome to eyeball it starting from the bottom.

Place the bottom layer on a plate and put a large dollop of frosting down and spread it evenly:

Add a layer and frost continuing until you've done all four.  Then use the remaining frosting on the top and sides.  This recipe doesn't make a ton of frosting so either be conservative in your frosting of the layers, or double the recipe for the frosting.

I added some festive chocolate chips on top.  Unnecessary, and I didn't have enough space to make a proper chanukiya, but still pretty.

And when your guests finally finally FINALLY arrive, you can cut it open and it looks like this:

 

Tada!  Delicious cake magic.  And it only took me 50 million paragraphs to report.

Now go eat and be merry.

A Martha Pumpkin Swirl

So I've never really been a follower of Martha Stuart, but after my little adventure I might have to reconsider my feelings towards her.  I love pumpkin, I love chocolate, and I love recipes that require more than two bowls.  Not that I love washing them, but I derive a certain pleasure from the process of baking and if there's something that will prolong that process and improve the taste, I'm in favor of trying it.  So when I found a Martha Stuart Pumpkin Chocolate Brownie Swirl recipe, I figured I'd give it a go.

The list of ingredients is not quite daunting, though it is a bit longer than most brownie recipes.  After having made it, I'd probably make a few changes to the recipe.  I found it on the Smitten Kitchen blog (here's the direct link) but the following is my own slightly altered version.  I'm including alterations I'd make if I were to do it again.  If you try it and it doesn't work, feel free to blame it on me.  There are plenty of other things to blame failure on though, so I encourage you to try the blame on them first, but I guess I'm a good third or fourth scapegoat.  

Anyway, here's the ingredient list if you're making it in a 9x13 inch baking pan.  Also, I would say this is more of a cake than a brownie, despite what Martha and Smitten seem to think.  We clearly have differing opinions of what constitutes a brownie.  

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or margarine (for those of you afraid of cholesterol or dairy)

12 oz (1 regular size bag) semisweet chocolate chips

3 1/4 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/4 cup sugar

6 eggs plus 2 egg whites (or 8 eggs if you can stomach cracking that many eggs into one dessert)

2 Tb vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (about 1 1/2 cans)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 cup chocolate chips (extra for mixing in, not to be confused with what you're melting)

1/2 cup chopped pecans

First preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  I forgot to do this until halfway through which was fine, because this recipe takes a while to make and our oven heats up fast.  But all recipes start with preheating the oven, so there's no real reason to do this one any differently.

Next mix together in a bowl the eggs, vanilla extract and sugar beating until you get a pretty foamy layer on top.  Five minutes with electric beaters, or three if you're impatient like myself.  It should look something like this:

Now go get a pan (don't try it in the microwave, you are likely to burn the chocolate, trust me I've done it enough times) and melt the butter and chocolate over the stove until smooth.  It should look something like Willy Wonka's chocolate river.  Or the picture below:

Now mix the flour, baking powder, cayenne pepper, and salt together in a bowl.  I hate doing this and usually just add all the dry ingredients into the wet at once.  But you're going to need the second bowl later anyway, so with this recipe you might as well.

Good, now you're going to beat the flour mixture into the egg mixture in batches until it's all nicely combined like this:

Doesn't that just make you want to start baking this recipe immediately?  It just looks so darn tasty.  God, I'm starting to want to make it all over again just posting these pictures.  But I guess I should finish my post first.

So now you're going to split this batter between your two bowls (see, I wasn't lying when I said you'd need it anyway).  I didn't read the whole recipe before I started to make it and at this point realized I should have just mixed the dry ingredients together in the second bowl to begin with.  Ah well, live and learn.

Now that you've split the batter, you're going to pour the chocolate mixture into one of the bowls and beat it in with the batter.  You will likely begin to drool at this point, so I suggest wearing a face mask.  Learning to shut your mouth when cooking might also work, but I have yet to master that technique.  Now try not to drool on your laptop, but this is what it should look like:

Great, so now you're going to add the pumpkin, oil, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the other bowl of batter and beat it all together.  Side by side it looks like these lovely ladies:

Now I think things could always use chocolate chips, so I would recommend adding a cup of chocolate chips to the chocolate bowl.  You could really put them in either, but the chocolate chips might dim the orange/brown contrast of batters if there's already brown in the orange batter.  I think I might have made that sentence unnecessarily complicated.  I'm going to assume you're smart enough to piece out my meaning.

Now you're going to grease a 9x13 pan and pour half the chocolate batter into the bottom of the pan.  Top it with half the pumpkin batter.  It looks like this:

Spread it evenly across the chocolate bottom, and then put down another chocolate layer and a final pumpkin layer.  Using a knife, swirl it around until you get the marbling effect you wanted:

Sprinkle the pecans on top and bake for about an hour, but check on it at 45 minutes in case your oven is much faster than mine.  When it's done it will look like this:

And it will taste like this:

YUM!!!

Actually, I thought it was just ok but everyone else seemed to love it and it was gone by the end of Saturday afternoon so I guess something went right.  Perhaps it's because I have a different expectation of brownies.  I want them to be moist and not at all spongy, so this was a bit too cake-like for me.  But With my suggested alterations (more sugar, less flour, added chocolate chips) I think it will be a bit more brownie-esque.  But really, I like pleasing others with my food just as much as I like pleasing myself, so in that regard it really was a success.  

In other exciting news, my sister just bought me a new copy of my favorite dessert cookbook (I long ago wore my last copy to pieces) so when I return to DC I will attempt to bake everything from the book I haven't tried before.  There isn't much, but I'm giving it all a shot.  That means you have some donuts and several candies coming at you in the next few weeks.  Get excited!  I certainly am.