Strawberry Swiss Roll Cake

I've always been fascinated by cake rolls.  They just look so pretty and yummy!  A while back, I finally decided to make one and settled on this recipe over at Home Cooking Adventure.  For once in my life, I followed the recipe to the letter.  I know when it is and is not safe to tinker and this type of cake definitely seemed like one to follow precisely!
  
Mine turned out beautiful and delicious.  The lovely, moist sponge cake is perfect with all the creamy, fluffy filling and strawberries.  It was also very heavy on the filling, which was not a problem at all!  To my surprise, it lasted quite a few days in the fridge without the cream filling deflating.
 
I will for sure make this again and would like to experiment with different fillings.  I'm not too eager to mess with the cake itself because it was so good and rolled so perfectly, but adding citrus zest or spices certainly wouldn't change it any.  I wonder how many chocolate chips would fare?  Next time, I want to make the cake and creamy filling as written, but substitute Nutella for the strawberry part, just because I can.  Lemon curd or, ooh, rhubarb curd would be great as well.  Lots of options!
  

   
Strawberry Swiss Roll Cake
 
strawberry filling:
10 oz strawberries, chopped finely (this is by weight)
4 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp water
  
cake:
3/4 C flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
3/4 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp canola oil
  
creamy filling:
1 C whipping cream

9 oz cream cheese, softened (I know this is a weird amount, but go with it)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 C powdered sugar
  
Make the strawberry filling first so it has time to cool.
  
Combine strawberries, sugar, and water in a medium saucepan.  Heat over medium-low and simmer for 15 minutes, or until slightly thickened and jammy.
  
Move it to a separate bowl and refrigerate until ready to use.
  
Make the cake next!
  
Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 12 by 16 inch jelly roll pan.  Cut a sheet of parchment paper to fit exactly in the bottom of the pan.  Set aside.
  
Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then set aside.
  
Beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla extract until foamy and light yellow.  Mix in oil.  Add the flour mixture a little at a time and mix just until it's completely combined.
 
Pour the cake batter into the prepared pan and use a spatula to spread it evenly all the way to the edges of the pan and corners.  Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 10-15 minutes.
 
Spread a large, thin, very clean dish towel (not terry cloth, regular cotton) on the clean table and sprinkle generously and evenly with powdered sugar.  Carefully flip the cake onto the cloth (it may help to have two people).  Remove the pan and peel off the parchment paper.  Sprinkle with more powdered sugar.  Use the towel to roll up the cake nice and tight, starting from one of the short ends- don't roll the towel into the cake, though!  When the cake is all rolled up, put it aside, seam side down, and still in the towel until completely cool.  Don't refrigerate it, room temperature is good.
 
When you're ready to fill the cake, make the filling.  First, whip the whipping cream until (shocking!) you have whipped cream.  Set aside.  In a separate bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth, then beat in the vanilla extract and powdered sugar.  Gently fold in the whipped cream.
 
Gently unroll the cake and spread the strawberry filling evenly over the top, then spread on the creamy filling.  Gently roll it up again, place it seam side down on a platter, cover with plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out, then refrigerate it for a few hours so it has time to firm up.
 
Cut into slices with a serrated knife and serve!
 
Yield: about 8 servings

Chewy Chocolate Fudge Caramel Frosting

I know it may not sound like a good thing for frosting to be chewy, but trust me on this.  It's not chewy like gummi bears, but chewy like a homemade caramel candy, with a solid helping of chocolate.  It starts out the perfect glossy spreading consistency, then firms up into a thick, fudgy texture.  How could that not be good?  Let me note that I have no idea how well this would work with a layer cake where the frosting has to stick to the sides, but it works well on cupcakes or spread over a 9 by 13 inch cake left in the pan.

This frosting is also astonishingly easy to make and only has two ingredients: chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk.  It's the fudge frosting from Joanne Fluke's titular fudge cupcake recipe.  I was excited about trying the cupcake recipe for months because I've had a lot of luck with her recipes and love all things raspberry (the "secret" ingredient in the cupcake batter is raspberry syrup), but didn't care for the cupcakes themselves.  They weren't very chocolatey, but were both dense and dry.  Sorry, Joanne.  The frosting, on the other hand: divine!  Make it!

Chewy Chocolate Fudge Caramel Frosting

14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk)
12 oz bag semisweet chocolate chips (2 cups)

Pour sweetened condensed milk into a medium sauce pan and heat over medium, stirring frequently, just until it's hot and bubbly.  Remove from heat and wait for the bubbles to subside a little (about 30 seconds), then dump in the chocolate chips.  Stir mixture until chocolate chips are melted and the frosting is thick, glossy, and very smooth.  Spread immediately over cake or brownies.  

Secret Recipe Club: Coconut Oatmeal Cake

For this month's Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned the blog A Taste of Madness.  It's written by a Canadian woman named Cathleen.  Cathleen is a math teacher (how cool!) and enjoys doing yoga and traveling, in addition to making- and eating- desserts.  Sounds like we have a lot in common!

I'm not sure I'd seen A Taste of Madness before, but believe me, I'll be back frequently to try new recipes.  There were about 25 looking awesome ones that I bookmarked, and I didn't even go through her whole blog.  I actually made two recipes of hers this month, the Cottage Cheese Pancakes (which I added a smidge of vanilla to, they were amazing), and Coconut Oatmeal Cake.  My husband and I both really wanted to make her crumpet recipe but ran out of time, it's one we plan to make soon, though!  Cathleen is originally from the UK, so we figure she would know a good crumpet recipe!

This Coconut Oatmeal Cake was great.  I've seen recipes that called for a broiled coconut-pecan topping and always wanted to try it. I brought it to a friend's get together where we got to paint, and it got rave reviews from everyone.  It's so moist and the topping is delightfully sweet, crunchy, and a little chewy from the caramelization.  This is a perfect cake for winter because of the spices, oats, and rich topping!  I can picture it perfectly on a Thanksgiving or Christmas table.

My only change was to decrease the salt in the cake (I worried it would be too salty with 1 1/2 tsp), and for the topping, there was a difference between the types of sugar mentioned in the ingredients list and the recipe itself.  I decided to go with what the ingredient list said, and it turned out wonderfully!

Coconut Oatmeal Cake

for cake:
1 1/4 C boiling water
1 C quick cooking oats
1 1/3 C flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 stick salted butter, softened
1 C sugar
1 C packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs

for topping:
1/4 C milk
1/2 C salted butter
1/4 C packed dark brown sugar
1 C sweetened coconut flakes
1 C shopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 pan.

In a heat safe bowl, pour boiling water over oats and stir to combine.  Set aside to cool while you prepare the rest of the batter.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, and cinnamon.

Cream together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar, then stir in eggs until smooth.  Mix in the dry ingredients a little at a time, until smooth.  The mixture will be thick.  Mix in cooked oats.

Spread batter evenly in prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.

When cake is almost done baking, prepare the topping.  Place the milk, butter, and brown sugar into a medium sauce pan and cook over medium until everything is melted and well combined.  Remove from heat and stir in coconut and pecans.

When the cake comes out of the oven, immediately top with the topping mixture.  Spread the topping as smoothly as possible so no bits of coconut or pecan sticks up, this will help prevent burning.

Place an oven rack at the highest setting, turn the oven to broil, and place the cake on the top rack.  Watch it very carefully (don't walk away!) and remove the cake immediately when the topping turns golden.  This will only take about 2 minutes.

Let cake cool, and serve.  It's great both warm and at room temperature.

Yield:  about 10 servings

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Crazy Cake

This cake is so good that I made it twice in less than a month!  First to bring it to a dinner with friends, then for a potluck that actually featured most of the same people, but I didn't hear any complaints.  The recipe is from the Ben and Birdy blog, and it's one I've been intrigued with for years and am so glad I finally made it.  You know it's good if I make it twice in such a short time period!  The first time I topped it with sweetened whipped cream and sprinkles like in the pictures over on that blog.  It was really, really good that way, but I decided to try a double batch of this frosting this time.  Either way is delightful.

This recipe apparently has its roots in the Great Depression because it was a reliable way to get a fantastic cake without eggs or butter.  It's often called Crazy Cake or Wacky Cake.  Whatever you call it, it's awesome!  The first time I used all whole wheat flour (just wanted to try it out) and Hershey's Special Dark cocoa.  The cake was basically black from the cocoa and everyone loved it.  The second time, I tried white flour and normal cocoa.  Also fantastic!

Note that this cake is vegan if you serve it with a vegan icing, vegan iced cream, sprinkle it with powdered sugar, or just serve it plain.

Crazy Cake

2 1/4 C flour (white, whole wheat, or a mixture)
2 C white sugar
1 C cocoa powder (regular or dark)
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 tsp vinegar
2/3 C canola oil
2 C cold water

Preheat an oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 baking dish.  Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together dry ingredients.  Make 3 wells in the dry ingredients and pour the vanilla extract into one well, vinegar into another, and oil into the third.  Pour the cold water over top and whisk thoroughly until the batter is smooth.  Pour batter into prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes.  Let cake cool completely before frosting, or you can just let it cool for half an hour or so and serve warm cake topped with ice cream or sweetened whipped cream and sprinkles.

To make sweetened whipped cream, just beat 2 C cream until soft peaks form, then beat in vanilla extract and powdered sugar to taste.  Continue beating it until stiff peaks form, then stop immediately because you don't want to accidentally start turning your whipped cream into butter!

Triple Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Fudge Icing

I don't use cake mixes much.  Not because I dislike them per se, it's just that I don't bake cakes that often and when I do, I usually want to make it from scratch!  This particular recipes uses a cake mix as a base, and you add a bunch of other ingredients to it, then top it with peanut butter icing.  I've made it I think 3 times over the past 5 years.  It's really very good, the chocolate cake is dense (in a nice way!), very moist, and very chocolaty because of the added chocolate chips.  I love the mini chips.  They kind of melt into the cake, adding lots of extra flavor and gooey chocolate, and stay soft.  The cake recipe is from AllRecipes, my only change is to replace half the oil with applesauce.
  

The peanut butter icing is from the Southern Plate blog, I changed it to use all butter instead of a mix of butter and shortening.  The icing is perfect for this cake!  It's thick, fudgy, sweet, and firms up rather than staying spreadable like regular frosting.  The chocolate and peanut butter flavors work fantastically together and neither overpowers the other.  This cake is a great choice for a peanut butter-chocolate lover!

Triple Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Fudge Icing
  

Chocolate Cake:

 

1 box devil's food cake mix (use the biggest you can find, mine was 16 oz)

6 oz box instant chocolate pudding mix

1/2 C water

1/2 C vegetable oil

1/2 C applesauce

1 C sour cream

4 eggs

12 oz bag mini chocolate chips
  

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 baking dish.
  

Mix together everything except chocolate chips until smooth, then stir in chocolate chips.  The batter will be thick.  Spread it in the prepared baking dish and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean (the chocolate chips will prevent it from being completely clean), about 45 minutes.
  

Allow cake to cool completely before making icing.

Peanut Butter Icing:
 

1 1/2 C sugar

4 Tbsp butter

7 Tbsp milk

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 C peanut butter
  

Stir together sugar, butter, milk, and salt in a medium saucepan and cook over medium-high, stirring frequently, until it comes to a boil.  Set a timer for 2 minutes and let the mixture boil that entire time, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon.  When the time is up, remove immediately from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract and peanut butter until smooth.  Quickly spread the icing over the cooled cake, it will set up rapidly.

Secret Recipe Club: Buttermilk Spice Cake

For this month's Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned Lisa's blog, Sweet As Sugar Cookies!  I had such a hard time choosing a recipe because Lisa's blog is just full of amazing looking desserts.  She makes other things, too, and I almost chose either Oyster Sauce Meatballs or Spicy Peanut Butter Meatballs (will have to try those later), but ended up choosing her Buttermilk Spice Cake because it looked like the perfect recipe for autumn.  We just purchased and moved into our first house, and this cake had the honor of being the first dessert I made!  It was definitely a good choice, because we loved how the cake turned out.  The spices were fantastic and the amount of ginger gave it a little bit of a burn, in the best way possible.

My one change from the original recipe was to use a maple glaze on top instead of cream cheese frosting.  I used the glaze recipe from Pound Cake with Maple Glaze, and it was the perfect accompaniment to the spicy, flavorful cake.

I will definitely make this cake (and the glaze!) again, but will try using cake flour instead of all purpose flour, and a 7 by 11 pan instead of 8 by 8.  There was a lot of batter for an 8 by 8 pan and by the time the center was cooked, the edges were a bit dry and it was a bit over browned, to the point that I covered the cake with foil for the last 10 or 15 minutes of baking.  I think a slightly larger pan will help with this!

Update:  I made this again for Thanksgiving dessert with cake flour and baked it in two 8 inch round cake pans.  The cakes only took 20 minutes to bake and were SO light, fluffy, and soft!  I had serious issues getting the cakes out of the pans (next time will put parchment paper rounds in the bottoms) and ended up making a trifle with the broken cake pieces instead of a layered cake frosted with caramel cream cheese frosting, but it was definitely a hit this way.

Buttermilk Spice Cake

1 stick butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
3/4 C brown sugar
2 eggs
2 C flour
2 Tbsp ground dried ginger
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 C buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease either an 8 by 8 pan or a 7 by 11 pan (see my note above).

Cream together butter and sugars, then beat in eggs.  Stir together dry ingredients in another bowl.  Alternate beating dry ingredients and buttermilk into butter-sugar mixture in 3 additions each, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

Spread batter in the prepared pan, and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 55 minutes.  You may need to cover the cake with a sheet of aluminum foil, shiny side up, if it browns too much.

Remove cake from oven and allow to cool about 20 minutes.  It does not need to be completely cooled before you add the glaze.

Maple Glaze

2 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp maple syrup
1 C powdered sugar

Place butter and maple syrup in a small pan and heat over medium until butter is melted.  Remove from heat and whisk in the powdered sugar until smooth.  Spread over partly cooled spice cake.  Let cool until the glaze has set.  You can either serve it while still warm, or let it cool completely- it's great either way!

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Cookies and Cream Cake

My husband's parents were in town for Christmas, and they love Oreos, so I decided to make this cake!  The cake itself is just the recipe from the back of the Hershey's cocoa can.  If I recall correctly, it was the first from scratch cake layer cake I ever made about 10 years ago.  It always turns out perfectly: moist, yummy, chocolaty, and stays good for several days.  Easy to make, too!  The frosting is slightly adapted from a recipe called "Cookies and Cream Brownies" on The Girl Who Ate Everything blog.  It's really, really good!  Fluffy, great flavor, and just all around amazing, especially on top of chocolate cake!  Definitely will be making this one again, and I'll add crushed Oreos to the cake batter as well.

Quick Note: I made this as a 9 by 13 cake, but think it would work fine as a layer cake.  Just pour the batter into two 9 inch pans and bake a few minutes less, just until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Make the frosting after the layers have cooled, and stick the cake in the refrigerator right away so the frosting can firm up some more.

I decorated my cake with red and green sprinkles and the penguins for Christmas!

Cookies and Cream Cake

Chocolate Cake:

2 C sugar
1 3/4 C flour
3/4 C cocoa powder
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
2 eggs
1 C milk
1/2 C vegetable oil
2 t vanilla extract
1 C boiling water
Optional: 10 lightly crushed Oreo cookies (not completely pulverized)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 pan.  In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients.  Beat in eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla extract until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl periodically.  Bring the water to a boil and immediately beat it into the batter.  Batter will be thin.  If you're using the Oreos, stir them into the batter.  Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30 to 40 minutes.  Let cool completely before frosting.


Oreo Frosting:

2 sticks salted butter, softened

4 oz cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon milk, plus a little more if necessary
12 oz powdered sugar by weight, plus a little more if necessary
10 Oreo cookies, crushed

Place butter, cream cheese, and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until well combined, about 1 minute.  Add powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon milk, and beat on low until powdered sugar is incorporated.  Increase speed of mixer to medium-high and beat until frosting is very fluffy, about 5 minutes.  Add more milk or powdered sugar, just a little at a time, if the frosting is too thick or thin.  Scrape down sides of mixing bowl and mix in crushed cookies.  Serve immediately or cover the cake and refrigerate a few hours- it's great either way.  Just be sure to store the cake in the refrigerator because the frosting has cream cheese in it.

Yield: Enough to very generously frost a 9 by 13 cake.

Hershey's Red Velvet Cake

Well, it looks like 2012 is almost over!  My first complete calendar year of having this blog.  I haven't shared a lot of recipes this month, but I HAVE cooked lots of good ones.  This is the red velvet cake that I made for our Christmas dessert.  It's not the first red velvet recipe I've tried, but is definitely the best!  It turns out that red velvet is kind of hard to make really good, it always seems to have an odd texture or flavor.  This recipe though is not just good, it's great.  Moist, tender, fluffy, and sweet with a hint of chocolate flavor.  It also stayed fresh for a good 5 days!  If you want to try a red velvet cake recipe, I suggest you try this one!  Normally red velvet cake is topped with cream cheese frosting, my favorite recipe is here.  Sorry there aren't any photos, we loved it so much and devoured the whole thing rather quickly.  I do believe it will become a Christmas tradition here!

This recipe is from the Hershey company and can be found here.  My only changes were to halve the amount of salt because I thought 1 teaspoon sounded like too much and to bake in a pair of round cake pans. 

Hershey's Red Velvet Cake

1 stick butter, softened
1 1/2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
2 C flour
1/2 t salt
1/3 C cocoa powder
 1 C buttermilk (or 1 C milk with 1 T vinegar added and allowed to sit 10 minutes)
1 oz bottle red food coloring
1 1/2 t baking soda
1 T white vinegar


Heat oven to 350 and grease 2 round 8 or 9 inch cake pans.  I used nonstick pans and Baker's Joy spray, my cakes came out of the pans perfectly after cooling!

Beat together butter and sugar, then beat in eggs and vanilla extract.  In another bowl, stir together flour, salt, and cocoa powder. In a measuring cup, stir together buttermilk and food coloring.  Beat in a third of the dry ingredients, then a third of the buttermilk mixture, and repeat until both have been completely incorporated into the batter and batter is smooth.  Add baking soda and vinegar, then mix thoroughly.

Evenly divide batter between pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean, about 20 to 30 minutes.  Allow cakes to cool completely before frosting with cream cheese frosting.

Graveyard Cake

Well, darn!  So much for sharing several Halloween recipes.  I attempted to make Candy Corn Pizza (less horrifying than it sounds, look here at Our Best Bites) but somehow or other after it baked, the mozzarella was the same color as the cheddar.  Delicious, but unimpressive and not worth blogging about.  Then I was going to make Spider Melt Sandwiches, but we ended up having pizza instead.  Then on actual Halloween night, I wasn't feeling well so didn't make my standard Mummy Fingers.  I have the ingredients for the spider sandwiches so will probably just make them anyway, and if they turn out well I will either post the recipe in a couple of days or wait until next year.  The Mummy Fingers- which somehow escaped getting posted last year, too- will wait as well.

Hopefully this awesome cake will make up somewhat for the boring and unfestive spirit on the blog!  Every Halloween, I want to make some kind of spooky dessert, and for some reason that dessert almost without fail ends up being Graveyard Cake or Graveyard Cupcakes.  I figure it's pretty much tradition now, so decided to do it again this year!  Usually I use a cake mix since it's the decorations that are the star, but this year I wanted to try something different and used the base for the Mississippi Mud Cake from the Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice blog.

Poor Reeni will probably be horrified at what I did to her cake- left off the marshmallow/ganache/coconut/pecan/cherry topping and used just melted chocolate chips and food coloring tinted canned frosting (sorry, Reeni!), but I couldn't help myself!  The cake looked so, so good and I wanted to make it immediately when I ran across the recipe a couple of weeks ago, but the only chocolate cake I was planning on making anytime soon was my traditional Halloween graveyard cake.  Sadly, chocolate ganache and those other yummy toppings do not look like a graveyard, so I had to change things up a bit.  Used just chocolate chips instead of the ganache because I wanted to safely store the cake at room temperature for a few days and ganache has cream in it, and purchased frosting simply because so far I have never, ever found a recipe for homemade vanilla frosting that I thought tasted okay (not a fan of the powdered sugar flavor).  If you decide to make this cake, though, you are more than welcome to make both the ganache from the original recipe and homemade vanilla frosting, or you can jump over to the original recipe and make a Mississippi Mud Cake the way it was intended to be made!

Justifications aside, this is a really good cake.  Reeni said her cake was dense and brownie-like, which is of course what I expected, but mine ended up being fluffy and soft and moist and perfect.  The thin layer of chocolate on top really enhanced the chocolate flavor, and the frosting just made it even better.  Next time I will definitely make the cake with the ganache and marshmallow fluff because I can only imagine it is amazing, too!  And although I was quite happy with the amount of chocolate in the cake, real chocolate lovers could even use 3/4 C cocoa.  My other favorite chocolate cake recipe (uh, the one on the box of Hershey's cocoa) uses 3/4 C cocoa for the same size cake so I don't see how it could be bad!

Update:  Amazingly, this cake stayed yummy and moist for a solid week.  Homemade cakes usually get stale really fast, but not this one!  It will be my go to chocolate cake recipe now, no more boxed mix.  The only reason I used the boxed mix anyway was because they stay good a lot longer.

Graveyard Cake

Cake:
1 C butter
1 C hot water
1/2 C cocoa
2 C sugar
2 C flour
1 t baking soda
1 t espresso powder (optional, I didn't have this and didn't want to buy it)
1/2 t salt
2 eggs
1/2 C sour cream
1 t vanilla extract

Topping:
about 1 C chocolate chips
1 jar vanilla frosting (or about 1 1/2- 2 C of your favorite vanilla frosting recipe)
green and black food coloring
Milano cookies
pumpkin shaped candy corn
about 5 Oreo cookies, pulverized in a blender

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 baking dish.  Place butter in a medium bowl and microwave until melted.  Stir in hot water and cocoa powder.  Set aside.  In a mixing bowl, mix together sugar, flour, baking soda, optional espresso powder, and salt.  Pour in cocoa mixture and mix just until combined.  Add eggs, sour cream, and vanilla extract, and beat just until smooth.  Don't over mix.  Pour batter into prepared baking dish and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

As soon as the cake is done, pour the chocolate chips on top.  About a cup is good, you can just eyeball it and use more if you want, but keep in mind a thick layer will be harder to stick the tombstones through!  Place cake back into oven and let the chocolate chips melt for a minute or two.  Make sure not to walk away or you risk doing horrible things to the chocolate chips!  When the chips have melted enough, they will look very shiny.  Remove the cake from the oven and do one of my all time favorite kitchen activities: Evenly spread the melted chocolate over the surface, while imagining the opening credits of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and humming "The Candy Man Can" and wonder why you don't melt chocolate chips onto things more often just so you can spread it around.  After you finish having fun, set the cake aside and let it cool completely before decorating.

To decorate, place a couple tablespoons of frosting into a small plastic bag and add a bit of black food coloring.  Squish it around to mix, snip off the very tip of a corner of the bag, and pipe "RIP" (or whatever you want) onto the cookies.  Alternatively, you could probably use more melted chocolate chips for this.  Set the cookies aside and mix the frosting with green food coloring.  Spread over cake, then use a spoon to make the frosting look like grass by touching a spoon against the surface of the frosting and pulling upwards.  Do this all over the cake.  Carefully press the tombstone cookies down through the layer of chocolate, then sprinkle Oreo crumbs in front to look like freshly turned soil.  Place candy corn pumpkins around tombstones.  Enjoy!

Yield: About 16 servings

Peach Pudding Cake

Whenever I visit my mom in Washington, we always have a Girls' Night and invite my aunt and cousins over to eat, have girly drinks, chat, and watch a movie.  Usually my mom and I cook something.  This time, she chose the recipes.  Together we made a delicious roasted green chile and corn lasagna (still need to get the recipe from her!) and I made this hideous yet delicious cake.  The recipe is from a restaurant called Hyde Park Bar & Grill and was featured in Bon Appetit a number of years ago.  It's probably the ugliest dessert you will ever make- sorry there aren't any pictures, just trust me- but it's also one of the most amazing ones!  Wonderful fresh peaches, a hint of cinnamon (which was entirely my doing, the recipe doesn't call for cinnamon sugar), and perfect, moist cake.  It's heart breakingly old fashioned and absolutely a must try recipe.  And if you really must, you can cover the ugliness with whipped cream or ice cream :oD

Quick note:  A great way to peel peaches is to bring a big pot of water to a boil and submerge the peaches, one or two at a time, for about 30 seconds to a minute for ripe peaches or up to 3 minutes for less ripe peaches.  Scoop the peaches out of the water with a slotted spoon, let them cool (you can speed this along by dunking them in cold water), and the skins will slip right off.

Peach Pudding Cake

1 3/4 C flour
2 1/4 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
3/4 C softened butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 3/4 C sugar
2 T vanilla extract (yes, 2 tablespoons!)
2 eggs
3/4 C buttermilk
4 C peeled, sliced peaches (about 3 lbs- I just covered the entire surface of the cake with peaches)
3 T sugar
1/2 t cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 9 by 13 inch baking dish as well as a piece of aluminum foil large enough to cover the top.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda, and set aside.  In a medium bowl, beat butter until creamy.  Beat in sugar in 3 additions.  Beat in vanilla extract, then eggs one at a time.  Alternately mix in dry ingredients and buttermilk in 3 additions each.  Batter should be smooth.  Spread batter in prepared baking dish and cover with a layer of peaches.  Don't worry too much about whether they're arranged prettily because they will sink to the bottom of the cake!  Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle on top. 

Cover the baking dish with the foil and bake for 45 minutes, then remove foil (don't worry if some of the cake sticks, like I said earlier it is an ugly cake!) and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 to 40 minutes longer.  If your cake turns out anything like mine, the surface in the middle will look shiny and raw even when it's baked through, so start testing the cake after 20 minutes!  Let cake set for about 15 minutes and then serve warm.

Yield: about 12 servings

Luscious Lemon Buttercream Frosting

This one is for all the lemon lovers out there!  A creamy, sweet, tart, and lemony buttercream that I found on AllRecipes.  I'm not very fond of most non-chocolate frostings because I despise the flavor of powdered sugar.  Weird, I know, but it just has a strange flavor that is really intense in the majority of homemade frostings.  To compound the issue and possibly even stranger, I also dislike the flavor of vanilla extract in frosting, so most buttercreams offer up a double whammy of unpleasantness for me.  This buttercream is different though!  The bright lemon flavor masks the powdered sugar flavor, and there's just a few drops of vanilla in it to round things out.  It's also stiffer than some buttercreams, which means you could pipe it easily.  I suggest only using the full amount of lemon juice if you want a tart and lemony frosting.  We loved it, but it did cover up the subtle strawberry flavor of the cupcakes I made to go with it (note: the strawberry cake turned out wonderfully, but I want to make it again with more strawberries before posting the recipe).  If you want your frosting to taste less lemony, just substitute a tablespoon of water for one of the tablespoons of lemon juice.  You could also add some lemon zest.  Yum!

  

These cupcakes were made in honor of my bunnies' birthdays.  Yes, their birthdays are celebrated every year; yes, it's partly an excuse to make cake; and yes, I am a crazy bunny lady, but I'm okay with that!  Below is our one eared boy getting a little taste of his birthday cupcake.  He definitely approved, though I'm sure he wishes I'd given him more than just a tiny piece!

 

Luscious Lemon Buttercream Frosting

1/2 C salted butter, softened
2 T lemon juice (or 1 T lemon juice and 1 T water if you want it more mild)
about 5 drops of vanilla extract
3 C powdered sugar
optional: a drop or two of yellow food coloring

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter with the whisk attachment until smooth.  Add lemon juice and vanilla, then add the powdered sugar.  Whisk on low until the sugar is incorporated, then bring it up to medium high and beat it for a couple of minutes until fluffy.  The longer you go, the fluffier it will get.  If it's too thick, add water a teaspoon at a time and if it's too thin, add powdered sugar 1/4 C at a time.  If you're using food coloring, beat it in at the end.  You can of course also use a hand held mixer.  Use the frosting right away or else cover it because the surface will dry.

Yield: Enough frosting for about 18 cupcakes if you use lots like in the picture, or 24 if you spread on a thinner layer.  I have not tried it yet, but I think it would be enough to frost a 9 by 13 cake.  If you want to fill and frost a layer cake, you should make one and a half batches so you have enough.

Pineapple Zucchini Bread

I'd never had, much less made, zucchini bread until last night when I made this. It turned out wonderfully though! We liked it hot from the oven and I had some for breakfast and as a snack later on. When I make other quick breads it tends to languish for a long time until we finally finish it but the first loaf is already half gone after one day in a house with two people. Usually we're not big fans of "things" in our bread but the pineapple and raisins are good. I like golden raisins a lot more than regular ones because they taste better to me but you can use regular ones and add in a cup of nuts if you feel so inclined. Before I made it (altered from this recipe) I was concerned there'd be too much going on what with the zucchini, pineapple, raisins and cinnamon- why not add in coconut and chocolate chips while we're at it?- but it's very yummy with great flavor and texture. The original plan was to give one of the loaves away but I cut the second one in half and froze it so we can enjoy it ourselves later ~muahaha~

A note on preparation: The original recipe says to mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately, then to mix them together and stir in the raisins. I pondered that for a couple seconds and then just stirred it all up. Maybe the bread would have risen more if I'd done everything separately, but I can't imagine it turning out any better than it did! The original also had some cockamamie method for preparing the loaf pans and removing the bread. I skipped that completely and just greased nonstick pans and the bread came out fine after cooling in the pans.

I do have to admit that I accidentally left out one of the eggs. The recipe called for 3 and I only used 2. You can go either way. My bread ended up more cakelike in texture. You'd have a hard time holding a slice of it in your hand and eating it. The third egg may give it a more bread like texture. We like it a lot the way it turned out (who doesn't like cake?) but next time I'll toss in the extra egg to see what happens!

Behold the ugliest delicious bread ever:


Pineapple Zucchini Bread

2 C grated zucchini, squeezed dry (measure after squeezing!)
8 oz can crushed pineapple, drained
2 C sugar
1 C vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
3 C flour
1 C golden raisins
1 T cinnamon
2 t baking soda
1 t salt
1/4 t baking powder

Preheat oven to 325 and grease two nonstick 9 by 5 loaf pans. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the first 6 ingredients until well combined. Add remaining ingredients and stir just until it comes together. Do not over mix! Divide batter between the two prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the loaves comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cover with foil partway through baking time if the loaves are getting too brown. Remove from oven and allow bread to cool in the pans.