Triple Chocolate Oat Cake

Since this has pretty much become a chocolate cake blog, here's a new one: moist subtly sweet cake with a hint of cinnamon studded with chocolate chips and cocoa-encased oatmeal—all covered in a just-thick-enough layer of rich buttery chocolate frosting with a hidden touch of molasses. Bake it in a 13x9-inch pan, and add some writing icing to step up the celebration factor.

When I look at this image, I see the imperfection of small border of congealed butter on the frosting (whoops on cooking that too long) and how I didn't get a photo of the cake whole before it got cut and devoured.


But then I think of how an old roommate with superb icing writing skills just so happened be at my house for a walk right before this cake was to be delivered (and so naturally I enlisted her skills), and minutes later how the birthday girl, well into adulthood and motherhood, remarked with delight that she hadn't had her name on a cake in years. 

I think of cutting kid pieces and then adult pieces, eating with plastic on paper, with people I share in life with week by week. And then I think of plating up a final piece with icing prettiness the next morning and deciding to place it on this piece of artwork that was just hanging out on my porch because I live with talented artists who capture everything I love about forests and mountains and put them on our walls.

That's when I'm reminded the messy-beautiful of real life is far superior than a perfect cake or a perfect blog photo, and that I can always capture the all of it the old fashioned way in words at any time.

Nutella Mousse Cake

The good news is that if, by chance, you cut this cake and serve about half of it, and the remainder topples over into not-so-pretty layers, the creamy Nutella mousse+moist chocolate layer cake combo is still just as dreamy as in its original form.

I am now wondering why I ever even liked super sweet, thick buttercream when you can sub it will a light and fluffy cream filling that makes a layer cake more creamy than intensely sweet. By the time you incorporate the chocolate-hazlenut spread into whipping cream, its flavor is less intense, making it a simple cool, slightly chocolatey complement to that chocolate layer cake that I make over and over and over again.

This recipe wins the elusive Madoline-Says-OMG-So-Tasty-With-Literally-Every-Bite award. It will be making more appearances in the future.

Bavarian Cream Cake

One magical day, homemade layers of chocolate cake and creamy something or other appeared in my fridge, courtesy of my roommate's church dinner. Maybe it was because I had suffered through consuming overly sweet icing from a local bakery that most of the world just loves (and I really don't understand—it's not made with butter, people), but lightly sweet cream opened a new world of cake combos reminiscent of trifle for me.

Within a week, I had tracked down the recipe, which turned out to be a combination of whipping cream, cream cheese and surprise ingredient brown sugar, and made it for myself with my favorite chocolate cake recipe. The recipe calls for refrigerating it 8 hours, but the longer you leave it in the fridge, the more wonderfully the cake melds with the cream, bettering with age. 

I also have this recipe to thank for inspiration to ice cake with Nutella cream. Maybe that will make it to the blog next, since all I seem to blog about is variations on cake these days.

Strawberry Baked Doughnuts

Theory: all things small and cute have a positive correlation to requiring hard work. This applies to puppies. This applies to small children. This applies to miniature sugary delicacies.

 Behold, the product of umpteen batches of light and fruity lil' cakes in my miniature doughnut pan (yep, I ordered one of those once upon a time and finally got around to putting it to use).

It's fun to fascinate friends who brunch and who don't have doughnut baking pans on their radar with little cakes in a circular shape. For now, I'll make these and let Krispy Kreme do the frying. Amendment: Maybe I'll invest in a regular-sized doughnut pan so I can cut time of tedium and try again.

Chocolate-Peppermint Layer Cake

Always searching for the latest greatest variation on homemade chocolate cake, I took the recipes I know work and added some peppermint flavoring. Voila... chocolate layers with peppermint buttcream innards and pepperming chocolate frosting on the outside.

In-person time with people trumped photo opps for this babe, so all I got was the whole cake in nighttime lake house lighting and then a giant slice that was left two days later. The slice only lasted like 20 minutes after this photo.

How to make this cake:

Chocolate Cake Layers
Buttercream Frosting, subbing peppermint for vanilla
Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Icing, subbing peppermint for vanilla
Crushed peppermints for garnish

Buttercream Play Dates

I choose making cake from scratch over making it pretty any day, and all previous decorating attempts have been pretty major failures. But in the spirit of trying new things, I found myself spending Sunday afternoons this fall with a professional cake decorator and two fellow students of confection in a very nice teaching kitchen at Samford.

Our book taught us how to ice and also how to spend a fortune on Wilton cake decorating equipment. But here's what I concluded:

1. Decorating is tedious and laborious. See that cookie? It wasn't so bad. But once we got to cakes, that meant baking cakes, whipping up icing, coloring it drop by drop, coloring another color and another, cutting icing bags, filling bags, putting tips on... and that's all before the decorating starts. And you gotta reverse it all to clean-up at the end.

Basic Sugar Cookies from Martha

2. I hate Crisco, hate it very much. One night after I thought I had cleaned all my icing instruments, my roommate ventured to our kitchen sink to find a greasy soap bottle, greasy dish brush, grease, grease everywhere. I blamed the Crisco. Seriously, it's way worse to clean than butter. And it doesn't taste like butter, just GREASE. I'm sure it helps the shape of my icing and all, but I had a hard time cheating on my true love (butter, right after chocolate) to follow class icing  recipe directions.

Yellow Cake (Smitten Kitchen) with Wilton Class Buttercream of the Almond Variety

3. Flowers aren't that scary to make. They just take about 10 years to bring to life, and then you eat them and they are gone.

4. I could write with icing for hours on end. When penmanship met confection, I had this ah-ha moment: "This is what I was made for — writing words with sugar!" My wax paper-on-kitchen-counter canvas brought me back to my sixth grade and all of a sudden I doodling my name and my friends' (now, roommates') names and random greetings. I did stop before getting to adding last names of whatever boy we would like to marry at the given moment.

5.  With writing, I can add all a new dimension to make cakes, one of thoughts and ideas I usually reserve for paper. I was hosting Monday Night Bible study dinner, so I whipped out our "theme line" courtesy of All Sons and Daughters.

(More) Yellow Cake with Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Icing

 6. The best way to bake a cake is to bake it, brainstorm a design with a friend with more artistic talent, do all the prep work yourself and then let her do the hard part where the icing actually comes out of the tip. And then you end up with something like this beauty below, pretty much a masterpiece minus my handwriting. She even created the "Appalachian Trail," albeit unintentionally.

Pumpkin Pie Cake

Chapter 1: The Reaction
To: Madoline
From: Coworker
Subject: Yum!!!
Message: That's the best pumpkin cake I've ever had.
(This was copied and pasted from an actual email, for full disclosure.)

Chapter 2: The End Product
Dense, buttery cake.
      Then, pumpkin pie.
            Finally, buttery cinnamon streusal sprinkled on top.
                  All melded together in the oven.

Chapter 3: From Whence It Came
My friend Brianne's aunt's pumpkin cake recipe.
The one she brought to Southern Progress fellow potlucks.
The one made with cake mix.
Tweaked to be from scratch by subbing in parts of some random "homemade cake mix" recipe Google found me.

 

Chapter 4: The Critique

I took this baking project on too late on a school (err, work) night (over-ambition in the kitchen=my downfall in life). And then I had to do math to combine recipes because I wanted to be original (originality for the sake of originality=not always the best idea). And then it was 11:30 p.m. and the top of the cake was STILL not set. And I just wanted to go to bed. So, yeah, I had bias against this cake before the innocent thing made it out of the oven. It ended up tasting sweet and richly dense, yes, but also too much like pumpkin pie for this Thanksgiving-pie hater. I ate a bit, gave away most of it, and then moved on to... chocolate, my one true love. But now I baked something seasonal and something original, so I can check that off my list and move back to the 17,987th variation on chocolate cookies and cakes I can develop.

Also, it was really ugly to photograph. That's why you basically see pictures of plant green and tree/house bright yellow with only a splash of all shades of distasteful browns and oranges, brightened in Photoshop.

 

Chocolate-Buttercream Cupcakes

Why even bake other kinds of cupcakes?

This is what I ask myself after tasting this Best Cupcake Combo Ever this go-round.

And self, I really have no good response.

 Let me explain:

1. The Cake. Cake more moist and pure chocolatey than what comes from a box, 100x more moist than my other attempts to bake cake from scratch and 100 percent without the fakey-chemically taste that comes courtesy of a box.

2. The Icing. It's butter and cream (milk actually). And sugar and vanilla. The best thing that will ever go in your mouth, and the perfect butter-vanilla complement to chocolate cake.

3. The Garnish. Shaving chocolate is easy, looks fancy, and, of course, is chocolate.

So if someone has a birthday coming up or an unbirthday, wow them with these... unless of course they don't like chocolate. Then they don't deserve birthday sweets.

But beware, if you blink, they will disappear. All 33 of them.

Mocha-Chocolate Chip Cookie Icebox Cake

Ina Garten is a brilliant woman. She dreamed up layering chocolate chip cookies with a tiramisu-like mocha cream in a spring form pan.

But in the name of "Barefoot Conetessa How Easy Is That?", her recipe calls for packaged cookies. Dessert blasphemy! I baked Tollhouse ones from scratch.

Actually I baked cookie bars in a jellyroll pan because it was like 9:30 p.m., and I did not want to be scooping dough and cooling cookies for forever. So I ended up with three thick layers of cookie and Kahlua/marscapone wonder instead of the five the recipe calls for. If I did if over again, I'd make thinner cookies so that cookie+cream melds together more seamlessly.

 Icebox desserts: Madoline's solution to serving seasonally appropriate chocolate desserts in the summer since the Strawberry Icebox Dessert wonder of 2010, or actually since Cooking Light's Chocolate- Eclair Icebox Dessert of my teenage years.

Blueberry-Lemon Layer Cake

A is for Amy, who likes fruity, fluffy desserts and hence inspired me to bake a cake that wasn't chocolate.

 

A is for apartment, which we christened with a celebration of Amy's birth.

Blueberry cake layer, lemon cake layer, blueberry cake layer, all covered in a creamy lemon frosting.

 And A is for appetizers, of which we ate plates full before moving onto dessert.

Evidence of a tart with caramelized onions/tomato/goat cheese and pull-apart sausage bread sit behind the almost-blown-out-candle-topped cake.

 Cake verdict: Butter-y, subtly lemon-y. berry-y, pretty darn scrumptious for not being chocolate.

Tiramisu Birthday Cake

Leave it to the Smitten Kitchen to find the birthday-perfect version of tiramisu via Dorie Greenspan. All I can claim in this art is simply following the directions they left behind in their path of confectionery genius.

The crown jewel was the whipping cream-mascarpone (fancy Italian cream cheese)-Kahlua-espresso cream that encased buttery cake layers. But some chopped semi-sweet chocolate in the middle made it all the better.

Oh, and the best part of this cake experience was not actually the way it tasted (although it was divine) but giving away most of our leftover pieces to the staff at the restaurant whose patio we celebrated on, well that and the birthday girls and their guests of choice.

Now that I have invested in Kahlua and instant espresso, my dessert-obsessed mind is running wild with ideas for more tiramisu creations. If you give me some inspiration, I might just bring you some of whatever comes of it.

Recipe: Smitten Kitchen Tiramisu Cake

Sour Cream Marble Layer Cake

When my friend Susan emailed "birthday," I replied, "cake."

You see, the last time I had the pleasure of hanging out with Susan, she made ginormous homemade cinnamon rolls with vanilla pudding, like whoa. So when I thought of her birthday, sinful pastry delight and hence of the best confection in all of Birmingham, the Pastry Art Bake Shoppe baby bite, came to mind, specifically the marble one with chocolate frosting I tend to rave about editorially and in person whenever possible.

And then I thought layer cake. And birthday candles too.

Thanks, Laura, for styling the birthday girl slice so purdy.

Question from menfolk of the evening: So how do you make cake "like that"?

Answer: You put one spoonful of vanilla batter in the pan. Then shake it so it sets. Then do the same with chocolate batter. And then repeat lots 'o times. And then it gets all swirly.

I even saved some swirly cake batter for four lil' cupcakes for my weekly Downton viewing party gals to eat while we watched Mary and Matthew twirl, ohhh the delight.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (Bonus: Love Stories)

This Valentine's season I am in love with people who are in love:
Mary and Matthew from Downton Abbey (the only show worth watching on TV, FYI), even though they won't tell each other.

The 17 million couples  I know (yes, I counted) who got engaged in the past few months and for whom I am want-to-squeal-and-quit-my-job-to-help-wedding-plan-full-time excited.

(Modern) Southern food blogger goddess Nealey Dozier of Dixie Caviar who was proposed to with a most perfect-for-her-relationship Lego video involving lots of food (I am kind of obsessed with it; you should watch it and read Nealey's story behind it).

Yes, I will talk about cupcakes later in this post after I finish my love story rant. Sorry.

The God-so-ordained-the-timing story of the Simmons marrying together their family of nine I got to write for 280 Living (thanks, Mom, for saying, "I think the neighbor married some woman with five kids," when I asked her for story ideas). I loved how they told me about having hip hop dance parties in the kitchen and then all eating dinner together most nights, and how the husband completely lit up when he talked about his wife's Gouda Cheese Grits and the outer, crusty part of her Crockpot Chicken and Rice.

Anyway. As usual, I am also in love with baked goods. So I felt the need to make the cupcake recipe we were running in The Homewood Star this month. The photo that had been submitted was so-so, so I thought I'd try to take a better one with my fancy new camera Christmas present. Which meant I had to bake the cupcakes myself. Darn. Yet another round of Madoline-finds-any-excuse-to-bake-whatsoever.

The only problem was the recipe was vegan, and power to vegans but I wasn't about to buy soy milk and soy cream cheese or leave eggs out of cupcakes. So I tweaked it. I also left out the "chocolate extract" because who buys chocolate extract when you already put cocoa in something? Not me. What is chocolate extract anyway?

Homemade cake batter wins again. I am starting to hate box mixes more and more. Beware my cake snobbery.

Cakes and Carols

According to magazine covers, it's the season to bake a festive layer cake, even if you are not typically the kind to devote so many hours to the art. So, because I am a strange person who enjoys laboring over such a cake more than once a year, I bring you my favorites this holiday season.

Christmas music — not the cheesy stuff on the radio but the kind with rich theology of how much awe we should be in awe of Christ's birth —is speaking particular wonderful words and emotions to me this year. I blame the number of times I have listened to Sojourn's Advent Songs and my church's new album (check it out!). So I've interlaced parts of my favorite carols with my cakes. Believe it or not, I do believe in more than just sugar to celebrate the season.

Let's get our priorities straight: chocolate first.

 Chocolate-Oreo Cake

Statement maker: that purdy oreo cream

So bring Him incense, gold and myrrh,
Come peasant, king to own Him;
The King of kings salvation brings,
Let loving hearts enthrone Him.

And chocolate second:

 Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cake

Statement maker: The drizzle of peanut butter-chocolate ganache on top 

Long lay the world in sin and error pining.

Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!

O night divine, the night when Christ was born…

Truly He taught us to love one another,

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,

With all our hearts we praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

His power and glory ever more proclaim!

 

Choco-latte third:

Chocolate-Buttercream Cake

Statement maker: Oh, that buttercream

(Yes, I realize I just blogged about this cake, but it is just that worthy of emphasizing.)

Come, Thou long expected Jesus

Born to set Thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us,

Let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s Strength and Consolation,

Hope of all the earth Thou art;

Dear Desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.

On to the second best thing after chocolate: Caramel!

Caramel Cake

Statement maker: Caramel icing from scratch+caramel filling

Adeste Fideles
Laeti triumphantes
Venite, venite in Bethlehem
Natum videte
Regem angelorum
Venite adoremus, Venite adoremus,
Venite adoremus, Dominum*


All Hail! Lord, we greet Thee,

Born this happy morning,

O Jesus! for evermore be Thy name adored.

Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;

O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him,

O come, let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord. 

*I love the beauty of the Latin. This is the first verse of "O Come All Ye Faithful"; it's fairly easy to see the connection to English here even if you don't know the dead language of Caesar and old church music.

 

Caramel again, with a twist:

 

Caramel Italian Cream Cake

Statement maker: Can't-stop-talking-about-it icing with a nutty filling

"Fear not then," said the Angel,

"Let nothing you affright,

This day is born a Saviour

Of a pure Virgin bright,

To free all those who trust in Him

From Satan's power and might."

O tidings of comfort and joy,

Comfort and joy

O tidings of comfort and joy

And an obligatory seasonal-type spice kind of cake, but only because it's a family recipe and the maple-flavored icing really is quite phenomenal:

 Carrot Cake

Statement maker: maple flavoring in the cream cheese icing

Carol Sidenote:
As I am typing this, my roommate is introducing me to Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God, a concept album that tells the whole story of Christ's coming. It might become a new favorite.

Last year's round up of sweet treats for the holidays:

6 Cookies for Christmas

What carols and sweet treats are you celebrating with this season?

Chocolate-Buttercream Cake

This was almost a true Nancy cake.

If it were* a true Nancy cake, its maker would have followed the directions to a tee instead of trying to bake the cakes without lining the pans with parchment paper (result: not-so-pretty cake innards; fortunately icing covers most any mess-ups, and speckled icing is more than okay).

If it were* a true Nancy cake, it would have about 15 more accessories and 7 more colors.

But because it is still a Nancy cake, it is homemade chocolate.

And it is covered in buttercream. Mother Dearest is to credit for why I know how to make the beauty of chocolate cake with buttercream frosting.

And it was delivered to the honoree during Thankslakecabinfest 2011 because, among many other things, I am quite thankful for the one who taught me to love to bake and eat well (and pretty much everything else I value in life).

And like her, this selfish baker also likes to eat chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate with buttercream. Apparently so does the rest of my extended family. The cake was down to this lone piece 24 hours after it first appeared for our Thanksgiving Eve spaghetti dinner.

I can't say the same about the pecan or pumpkin chiffon pie we had for actual Thanksgiving.

This cake's cousins (same moist chocolate cake layers):
Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cake
Chocolate Oreo Cake

Did you bake anything tasty for Thanksgiving?

*I am 99 percent sure my use of "were" is correct grammar because it is in the subjunctive mood, but if any grammar nerds out there would argue otherwise, please do assert yourselves.

Caramel Apple Cupcakes

If you send Madoline an email with a recipe for Caramel Apple Cupcakes, she will use roommate dinner and her mom's Madoline-sweet-deprived coworkers as excuse to make them. And if she makes them, she will taste test the apple-cinnamon cake and find it quite sweet. And if she finds it quite sweet, she will only put so much uber-decadent caramel icing on top of each cake (as opposed to the Dreamcakes Bakery volume, which is about seven times more than necessary).

And if she only puts so much icing on each cake, she will have pounds and pounds of  luscious caramel icing leftover. And if she has icing leftover, she will make another half batch of mini cupcakes for a block party. And if she only bakes half a batch, she will still have icing leftover.

And if there is still icing leftover, she will set it next to the brownie bites her roommate made. And if she sets it next to the brownies, the brownies will get dunked and disappear.

And if the brownies disappear, someone clever will think to dip Tostito's in the caramel for a sweet-salty snack. And if they dip Tostitos, then they'll try pretzels. And if they try pretzels, the caramel icing will vanish.

Reference (in case you missed it): If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

White Texas Sheet Cake

It's rare that someone expresses anything but happiness over cake, but this is the kind of cake that takes that happiness to the next level for an oh-my-goodness, sinfully sweet and buttery jubilation in the mouth that you can't stop talking about.

White cake with icing makes me think birthdays+family, a hint of almond extract makes me think weddings+friends and that combo in this cake especially makes me think of excuses to gather special people for a cake-worthy occasion, which is pretty easy to find in my book.

The cake is not tall in its jellyroll pan, meaning there is more icing-to-cake than usual for a sheet cake. And then you cut it into bars for eating with your fingers, or a fork if you like things extra tidy.

This cake's cousin also so worthy of trying in the easy-cakes-from-scratch realm: Chocolate Sheet Cake, known to some people as Texas Sheet Cake. For both you cook butter in a saucepan with other goodness for the cake and the icing; this might be the secret to why both cakes are the most moist and delicious I've made.

Wedding Cake Cupcakes

I usually come home from weddings talking about meaningful ceremonies, happening dance floors, and, of course, the cake—assuming it’s not too dry or froo-froo with fondant. Creativity with different flavors is great, but plain and simple white cake with buttercream is just, wow, wedding cake wonderfulness.

After being treated to a moist cake with a hint of coconut and a luscious buttercream at my one wedding of the summer, I knew one such cake would not suffice for an entire year. So I decided to copycat cool cupcake shops and make a wedding cake cupcake.

In my interpretation, that means you make white cake and buttercream frosting both with almond extract—oh, almond flavoring in cake! So all weekend we got to have party in our mouths, wedding style, without all the dressing up, expenditures, and potential for awkward small talk.

The cake dried out after a few days but still had its wonderful flavor. I need to perfect a scratch-made white cake recipe to stay moist, maybe by using oil instead of butter? For an easier version, you could add almond extract to a boxed mix, but do not, I repeat, do not skip out on the taste superiority of homemade vs. canned buttercream, deal?

Chocolate Chip Bundt Cake

This one time my mom convinced me it wasn't lame for her adult daughter to tag along to her office party full of old friends, beef tenderloin, and those wonderful butter-and-cracker-topped casseroles I only eat on rare occasions. But then she mentioned that the dessert count on the potluck list was low. She assured me that someone would "pick something up." Pick something up? Do you know what that says to me? Someone would run by the grocery store bakery (God bless the grocery store bakery) and get one of those so-so pies or, worse yet, a fruity thing covered in that fake whipped cream. 

For the sake of the party, I had to intervene. I recalled a chocolate chip-laden bundt I had been eying, printed the recipe, ran to the store, and lo and behold, by bedtime there was a homemade cake ready to be toted across town the next night.

Bundt cakes always make me think of the poor plain, conservative mother in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who brings one to the ever-lively Greek family party. Her bundt was lame next to all that wonderful Greek meat. But this bundt would not have more acceptable, for it is topped with a buttery, sugary pecan coating. And nuts are in baklava. And baklava is Greek. The word for nut probably even comes from Greek. Thus, this nutty bundt might have caused less awkward interaction between the soon-to-be in-laws. It might or might have still been served with a flower in the middle or have required a spray of Windex.

Triple Caramel Cupcakes

Scrumptious as they are, I feel kind of ridiculous talking about cupcakes at the moment. It's been a week since tornadoes ravaged all over Alabama and the Southeast. I've seen trees down and heard countless stories of people who have lost friends and family and homes and communities. My life returned to normal while everywhere I look people are people are donating supplies and money and going to help out. So in the scheme of life and loss, what are cupcakes? Silly as they are, sweets do always bring smiles. So why haven't I done my part? I lose.

Anyway, the original cupcake story: My little brother all of a sudden grew up and is graduating from college. And he finally decided to host his friends for a lake weekend. Responsible as he is, the extent of Patrick's cooking skills are turkey sandwiches and microwaved nachos. Read: college boys stuck in the woods far from any restaurant armed with only a kitchen and a grill. My mother and I couldn't let these poor boys not experience the full culinary wonder of the lake house.  We made a menu.We shopped for them. We wrote down how to grill steaks and bake potatoes. And I made cookies and cupcakes—caramel because caramel cake is his favorite.

Did I mention they are triple caramel cupcakes? Dense brown sugar-filled cake. Syrupy caramel surprise filling the middle. Sweeter-than-sweet caramel icing on top.

Luckily, I found a way not to waste the leftover caramel icing. The freshly baked Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies sitting on the other side of the kitchen begged to be filled with it. The double doozy combination might have tasted even better than the cupcakes, and the cupcakes were fabulous. Chocolate always wins.