Chocolate Fudge Cake

January 13, 2012 jennifer Desserts

After my little comparison between cakes and life yesterday I figure the least I could do is share with you the recipe. It’s one of those cake-mix-gone-gourmet recipes and we won’t even talk about how fattening it is. We’ll just talk about how incredibly moist and flavorful it is and you can just file it away in your mind as an easy, sure-win Valentines Day dessert in the next few weeks. It’s really good. {And I’m lucky we have ten people to share with in my house; it means I can’t eat too much.}

I got the recipe from Bonnie at Cotton Way , but I did make a small change, which I’ll tell you about.

Here’s what you need to make this luscious cake.

Chocolate Fudge Cake 1 fudge cake mix 4 eggs 1/2 cup oil 1/2 cup water 1 large box instant vanilla pudding 1 cup sour cream 1 3/4 cup milk chocolate chips, divided 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup whipping cream If you’re like me you got to the pudding and sour cream and in your mind you said, “Yep, moist!” Oh yes, very moist.

In a mixing bowl, combine cake mix, eggs, oil, water, pudding and sour cream. Mix together for 5 minutes. Add one cup chocolate chips and stir in. Grease a bundt pan and spoon batter into pan. Bake at 350 for 55 minutes. Cool in pan for 15 minutes, then invert. Cool completely (at least another 30 minutes).

Here is where I diverted from the recipe. It calls for a can of store bought chocolate frosting, and without offending any store bought frosting fans, I’ll just say that I don’t buy it. Period. So we needed another alternative. I had some whipping cream in the refrigerator that needed to be used, so I whipped up some chocolate ganache. It was fabulous, a great pairing with this cake.

For the ganache:

3/4 cup whipping cream 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I usually use semi-sweet, but since I had just opened a bag of milk chocolate chips for the cake I used them instead, and surprisingly, it didn’t taste too sweet.)

In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before it boils. Remove from heat. Place chocolate chips in a bowl and pour hot cream mixture over the chocolate chips. Whisk until chocolate is completely melted and the ganache is smooth. Let sit, stirring occasionally, while it cools. You want it to cool to a good drizzling consistency, still warm enough to meander down the sides of the cake, but cool enough that it goes very slowly and doesn’t puddle. It takes a little while, but it’s worth waiting.

Let the ganache set and serve that cake! I hope you love it. And here’s just one more picture of an incredibly moist cake with ganache on top. I love the way it shines slightly in the light. YUM!

Oh, we’ve been embellishing some mini notebooks this week over at Sisterview . It’s a fun way to get the creative juices flowing, and would be a fun activity with the kids too. You could turn it into a Valentine as well. Check them out!

Have a great weekend!

Hopeful Homemaker

“E-Doodles”

December 9, 2011 jennifer Desserts

True story:

She came home from school wanting to bake cookies for a friend. After perusing the cookbook, she settled on peanut butter cookies and got started. Part way through the recipe she inadvertently began following the cookie recipe on the adjacent page for chocolate cherry cookies. She figured it out when her Mom asked why she was opening a can of sweetened condensed milk. “Oh!” was her first thought, and “Oh well!” was her second.

She finished mixing the ingredients she had in the bowl and baked them. She worried that the dough was too dry. The first pan came out of the oven and some taste testing began. They were delicious! Thus E-Doodles were born. (The name is of her choosing.) Slightly hard on the outside but amazingly soft and chewy in the middle. The flavor was great and every one of us was disappointed that there weren’t more.

Want to try them?

Here’s the recipe:

E-Doodles Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter 1 cup granulated sugar 1/4 tsp. baking soda 1/4 tsp. baking powder 1 egg 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla 1/2 cup cocoa powder 1 1/2 cups flour 1/4 cup chocolate chips 1/4 cup granulated sugar, reserved Beat together butter and peanut butter until smooth and well-incorporated. Add 1 cup sugar, vanilla and 1 egg. Mix well. Add cocoa powder and mix to combine. Beat in flour, baking soda and baking powder. Mix in chocolate chips.

Roll cookies into 1 1/2 inch balls and roll in reserved sugar. Place on baking sheet and press the center of each ball down with the prongs of a fork. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes. Cool slightly and enjoy! *Note: these were SO yummy warm, and the middles were still really soft and chewy the next day.

This recipe is proof positive that sometimes our mistakes turn out great. Of course, sometimes they don’t, but generally if we press on there is a way to make things work. This was a reminder I needed this week.

Oh, and if you try them, please let us know. It would really be good for my daughter to hear what you think.

Jennifer

Pumpkin Lavender Cake

November 17, 2011 jennifer All Things Pumpkin, Desserts

One thing that resulted from the lavender books I purchased and read this year is a curiosity about experimenting with pumpkin and lavender together. I happen to love both of them independently and I was pretty sure they’d make a nice combination.

At last I did it. I fiddled with another recipe and came up with this one for a pumpkin lavender cake. It did not disappoint.

This cake is doubly special to me because I also did some research on pumpkins and learned more about the Rouge Vif d’Etampes pumpkin. It’s a French heirloom pumpkin which was first brought to the U.S. in the late 1800s and is now often referred to as a Cinderella pumpkin. I learned that the flesh of this pumpkin is very thick, yielding much more pumpkin than most and that it also makes the most delicious pumpkin pies. So, naturally, I bought one. On Sunday I cut it in half, scraped out the seeds (which I’ve saved to plant next year) and baked it. Can you believe how beautiful this pumpkin is? The color is breathtaking, and the walls are very thick.

I could only fit one half on a baking sheet at a time and it yielded a huge bowl of pumpkin, probably enough for all my pumpkin baking this year. (Yay for me! I learned something new!)

And thus my pumpkin lavender cake was born, baked with homemade pumpkin puree. I baked it in my pumpkin cake pan, but it would be especially pretty in a bundt cake pan as well. {And if I’m honest, I’d say this cake pan makes it look more like a candied apple than a pumpkin, so maybe next year I should try a caramel apple cake in this pan!} What really matters with this cake is its flavor.

Here’s the recipe:

Pumpkin Lavender Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar 1 Tablespoon dried lavender buds 1 cup butter 4 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 cup pumpkin puree 1/4 cup heavy cream (or half and half will work, too) 2 1/2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon salt Preparation:

Place the sugar and lavender in a blender or food processor and process until lavender is chopped and incorporated into sugar (*if you’d like to smell something divine, just savor this for a few minutes!). Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl cream butter until light and fluffy. Add 1/3 sugar mixture and beat. Continue this until all sugar is added and mixture is creamy. Add eggs, one at a time and beat well after each egg. Add vanilla and beat well.

In a small bowl, combine pumpkin and cream and mix together. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add 1/3 pumpkin mixture to batter and mix well. Add 1/3 flour mixture and beat again. Continue adding both the pumpkin and flour mixtures (alternating between the two) until all ingredients are combined.

Grease a bundt pan and spoon batter into pan. Bake at 350 for 50-60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool in pan for 10 minutes. Invert onto cooling rack to remove cake from pan and allow to cool completely.

My first impression of the cake was that the lavender flavor was the tiniest bit stronger than the pumpkin. Because of this I opted to frost it with my Brown Sugar Frosting to balance the lavender and increase the traditional pumpkin taste. I sprinkled the top with lavender buds for a finishing touch.

My family loved it. They all liked different things more. Some liked the frosting best, some liked the cake, some liked the pumpkin, some loved the lavender. It was gone in an afternoon. I loved savoring each bite, tasting the lavender and the pumpkin both. I’ll definitely make this cake again, and it was a fun first effort at pairing pumpkin and lavender.

If you ever try it, let me know. I’d love to get more opinions on the two flavors together!

Jennifer

2 comments baking, lavender, pumpkin

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