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.

Oatmeal Cookie-Topped Brownies

On an Alabama "snow day," meaning it might possibly snow and so everyone goes home, I'm attempting to do my job from my couch in PJ pants late on a Friday afternoon, and all I can think about is baking warm and cozy chocolate something. I'm thinking brownies, I'm thinking cookies, I'm thinking... brownie cookies.

Soon I move a room over to delve into my ridiculous stash of chocolate chips and butter, whip these guys up and tote them down the street ready-to-bake for a super girly night with the March girls. (Side note: If you are female and haven't read or watched Little Women, it will make you feel almost as warm and cozy as this oatmeal cookie-brownie combo.)

Verdict: The oatmeal dough makes the rich brownie not as overwhelming and adds a bit of buttery nuttiness to the extremity of chocolate. They will be made again.

Chocolate Cake Parfaits (All from Scratch, Of Course)

It started with a tragically cracked cake layer. But it's okay. I fixed it by burying it in pieces under homemade chocolate pudding. And homemade pudding elevates the status of anything by 409 percent, make that 1,409 percent when it's also layered with Kahlua whipped cream.

And who needs a three layer cake when you can have a two layer one and then parfaits for your next party that week? Right? Right.

It turned out to be such a pretty little thing in a tea cup, thanks to the genius of my roommate. She not only shares her growing teacup collection but also had the idea for the cracked cake redemption. And she assembled these creamy party pleasers with me late at night, and that's just one part of her dinner party partner skill set.

Oh, and I must give credit to my other roommate for use of her glasses when we ran out of teacups. Yes, they have cats on them. No, I am not a fan of cats. Yes, I did it any way because they were like large Seasons 52 dessert glasses. Finally, my third (yes, third) roommate gets credit for affirming the supremacy of the taste and presentation of both forms of parfait.

Note: Layering creamy things in tall, skinny glasses is more challenging than short, squatty tea cups.



Homemade Chocolate Cake+Homemade Chocolate Pudding+Kahlua Whipped Cream even wowed my favorite sugar cookie-over-chocolate chip cookie-choosing friend (what kind of taste is that?).  She even took a second one home. It also puts to shame all those brownie trifles I made with instant pudding and Cool Whip before I became such a homemade snob.

Oh, and you could sub in brownies or cookie crumbs for the cake on this recipe. I first made them with Chocolate Chip Cookie pieces because that's what I had leftover.

Chocolate Cream Comfort

Friday afternoon I returned home to a mildly chaotic sea of flowers. It was wedding eve for my horticulturist of a roommate, and the clock was ticking for team wedding to finish arrangements, bouquets and boutineers before the rehearsal. Add to that news of a possibility of rain for an outdoor ceremony and that the photographer could be stuck in New York for the ceremony, and yeah, the state of the flowers was indicative of the mood in the space.

Enter pie.

Before I stepped into help with direct wedding matters, I went to the fridge to pull out the previous night's treasure,  Saveur's wonder of a chocolate cream pie recipe, encased in an Oreo crust and topped with real-deal whipping cream.

It was what the bride, remembering its previous iteration as squares, had requested for celebrations in her humble honor.

Slices of decadence were distributed, chocolate was consumed, florals were completed and a beauty of a wedding ensued.

I'd like to say that when the seas of my life turn to chaos that I want to turn to a greater, perfect savior, but the truth is I am drawn to seek comfort in the family of chocolate. Cookies, pies, cakes — they are what I crave to satiate my desire for still waters.

Clearly my priorities get mixed up, but thinking of the richness of creamy chocolate reminds me of words a flower party member I had only met the night before told me, "I like that you are the kind of people who pulled out pie in a time like that."

There's a place for words of greater truth, but there's also a place for wordless love in chocolate form.

Caramel-Chocolate Mousse Pie

I allow hostesses say-so in dessert requests, especially if they say something like "chocolate and caramel, preferably" when I offer.

Behold, cool chocolate mousse nestled atop sticky (but not too sticky) sweet caramel with a simple graham cracker crust to balance out all that decadence.

It was declared a winner by those who fully appreciate chocolate among my sphere of influence. In fact, it received the rarely granted "I might need that for my birthday" award from a certain musical member of that sphere for the first time since my Caramel Brownies. That's serious.

 

Two weeks later, the flowers from ever-thoughtful ladies in my house are still thriving. The pie met its death by consumption within 24 hours.

More Chocolate+Caramel Combos:
Caramel Brownies
Mini Chocolate-Caramel Cupcakes

Just Love-ly Heart Brownies

Chocolate+Butter=Love

 My favorite decadent, fudgy brownies had made a few appearances as footballs. Now it was time to take them a more girly direction, and time to break my inadvertent post-holiday baking fast.

Don't forget Feb. 15, a.k.a. post-Valentine's chocolate sale day.

The next most exciting day on my food calendar? Whenever I can have my natural light for photos back in the evenings!

Recipe: Outrageous Brownies

Previous Valentine's Week Posts:
Chocolate Cake Balls
Red Velvet Cupcakes
Molten Chocolate Cakes

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

Reese's Brownie Bites

For full disclosure...

Melted butter and chocolate chips erupted in my kitchen mid-afternoon one Sunday.

They were supposed to combine with peanut butter cup splendor and make it to Best Wurst Fest (think urban hipster church backyard version of a church supper with much sausage grilling).

This sequence of events did in fact happen. Like much of life, it did not happen as planned.

My Reese's babes did not want to come out of their little muffin tins until they were fully cooled.  

Cooling was taking about 10 years per brownie.
Three batches remained to be cooked.

I called in the assistance of a less cooperative nonstick tin.

 I was scooping batter. 

I was unwrapping gold foil.

 I was delicately hacking at the edges of cooked brownies only for them to melt into an ugly blob. 

I needed to shower before re-entering public. 

It was time to go.

In the end, I was clean and had half of my baked goodies to take and share. 

The kitchen was not clean. The other half of the brownies were in multiple tins, on a rack, in a container, smeared on the counter.

But my house had peanut butter chocolate decadence to keep us sane for the next few days, says the sweet-obsessed optimist in me.

This post is brought to you by Madoline's efforts to slash the idea that all things online are perfect and pretty. She knows baked goods make messes and result in imperfection. And she reminds herself that in real life marriages, children, vacations and all instagrammed and facebooked and blog prettiness are, in fact, messy, too. Oh, the lies to the contrary she subconsciously believes!

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.

Chocolate Cream Pie Squares with Oreo Crust

Let me tell you about the day my life forever changed.

It started with a seething cauldron of sin. Chocolate and cream and such churned into the most decadent creamy cocoa-y yum that has ever gone between Oreos and real whipped whipping cream.

And there was enough of it to feed all the dudes who ate bread and fish that day in that Bible story. Almost. 

But for real, 20 people ate it at the lake on a Saturday, I shipped off slices to my parents' house and my brother's house, and then I divvied up like eight servings when there ended up being a viewing of super-interesting documentary Searching for Sugarman (check it out, fellow documentary-nerdy friends/anyone who likes music) at my house the next night. 

And then I ate a final solitary piece all by my lonesome one night.

My not-so-pretty photos just don't do it justice.

And now dessert-obsessed me is struggling to brainstorm any other confection to make for people because all I can think of is this, the most perfect way to eat chocolate in summertime. Ever.

Every time I try to think of something new, all that comes to mind is the way the rich fudgy chocolate cream is cut by creamy whipped cream and held together by a buttery-chocolate crisp crust. Ohmygoodness.

Peanut Butter Bliss Brownies

When my coworker shows the first issue of our new Vestavia Hills paper to potential advertisers, here's what happens: Flip page, flip page, flip page, flip page.... (stare at page because these babes are on it)... Coworker says, "They are as good as they look. I tried them"

Brilliant baker of Vestavia Hills submitted this recipe photoless, so of course I had to play test kitchen and bake them, make 'em look pretty for the camera and then bring them into the office.

The Formula:
Dense, chewy brownie base
Super thick layer of peanut butter icing
Chocolate Ganache

Beware, they are rich, as in the normal person can only eat a small piece (but I am not normal in this regard). And they will give you a 13x9-inch pan worth of far-from-skinny bliss, so bring 'em to  eaters of sweets.

Break 'n Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies: The Homemade Kind

I pretty much feel like a failure as a hostess if I don't have chocolate chip cookies to serve after a lunch. They just end a meal that well. But I also hate not being fully present with people at a meal because I am so busy baking.

Problem: I am opposed to store-bought dough due to my baking snobbery.

Solution: Make the dough into balls ahead of time, and pop 'em in the oven during lunch.

This go-round I prepped dough one weekend, froze it, and pulled it out the next weekend when I was hosting a girls retreat at the lake. The dough balls were still a little frozen, so it made the cookies more fat than flat (I'm convinced they turn out differently every time depending on temperatures), which was beautimous.

Because seriously, warm cookies out of the oven make everyone happy.... and they make people love you extra, too.


How To Make Homemade Break 'n Bake
1. Make Tollhouse Cookie Dough.
2. Roll into balls. You can also refrigerate the dough before making balls.
3. Lay dough balls in a single layer in a gallon Ziploc bag.
4. Put the bag in the freezer.
4. Defrost when you are close to read for cookie time.
5. When it's cookie time, bake 'em up!

Mini Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

In some ways this story starts with brown bananas and mini chocolate chips in my pantry, with a limited time frame for baking and a personal delight in all things miniature.

But the more important story is bigger than that.

 

It's a story of the Knowles' hearts for their son and brother, the one they have yet to meet. That will change soon. They will bring him home from the Bahamas. But they know not when that will be.

It's a story of a house full of junk, literally, contributed by friends, and how the money it raised, several times the amount that was hoped for, helped pave a way for the last steps of this process of choosing someone and whatever he carries.

And it's a story of a small body of people journeying with the family and, on a Saturday morning, with the junk. Some lifted, some priced, some bartered, some cashiered, some bought, some baked.

And it's a story of a bigger body, the ones who came because they saw a sign or piles and piles of stuff in multiple yards, the ones who came to buy a couch or whatever treasures they could find, the ones who came to support friends or to take a Saturday morning stroll through the neighborhood (or both!), the ones who went home with clothes or books, or just a mini loaf of mini chocolate chip banana bread....or muffins or cookies or pecan squares or brownies or oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies.

Yard sale, adoption awareness, community gathering, bake sale — all from an overflowing fountain.

Mini Chocolate Chip-Toffee Cookies

Hello, holiday baking.
Hello, cute little cookies.
Hello, mini chocolate chips and toffee bits, all of you that fit into teensy teaspoon-sized balls of buttery dough.

And hello,  Evil Empire (what we call Walmart at my house). Maybe you do bring good things, like tree-shaped jars for gifting, along with your treacherous lines and "customer service."

Like all things cute and little, these took way longer to form into balls, flatten and bake in many, many batches.

But cuteness+sugar+butter in a jar to gift to coworkers, that was totally worth my Sunday afternoon.

Merry Christmas!

Advent's arrival: Chocolate Cookies with (Christmas!) Mint M&Ms

It's like 70 degrees for some reason, but Santa music and commercialized holiday, to put it frankly, vomit invaded a while ago. Despite all that confusion and disgust, I have slowed my life in an attempt to reclaim the anticipation and hope of a Savior that our culture slandered somewhere along the way.

And the season got much sweeter (pardon the cheesy pun) when I walked into Publix on Advent Eve to find the holiday baking display highlight: red, green and white M&Ms. So naturally, they were in the cart and, upon arrival back home, studded in cookie dough filled with melted chocolate chips.

And then off they went to roommates, in baggies to share with family members I saw, to a plate to serve with dinner with my Monday night girls (who need a name), to the office (where I ate 5 in one afternoon-there is a reason for individual apportioned servings), back to roommates, to spread the cheer of chocolate and mint.

All that cheer paired perfectly with studying the sin in Christ's lineage in Matthew, singing hymns of Christmas, and hearing the whole story in 44 minutes courtesy of the artistry of Andrew Peterson... that and writing a heart-warming "community supports kid with cancer" story and touches of holiday at home, with cranberries on our table and words of hope (this week's Advent "word") to start our "Advent cabinet" tradition.

 Come, Lord Jesus.

Killer Salty-Expresso-Chocolate Blondies

Other blondie dough tastes like butter and sugar with a touch of saltiness — good but in my book is better eaten with chocolate chips.

This blondie batter is a candy bar in itself. You cook together butter and brown sugar, ergo caramel, and then add instant expresso powder. It's salty like caramel with a hint of coffee, and then of course you must add chocolate chips to complete the soft, thick bar of decadence.

So if you are feeling lugubrious and torpid, bringing down your physiognomy to those around you, these will make you jocose, a reprieve from the phantasmagoria of life.* And you might not be able to resist eating a huge chunk straight out of the oven; evidence of why I should not be allowed to engage in late night baking alone is pictured. (That missing chunk? All eaten by yours truly.)

The recipe I based it off of also calls for adding more chocolate and caramel on top of the cooked blondies. I skipped that step the second time I made these; it wasn't worth the effort for that much more uber-richness but it does add flair to the top.

*Remember in school when you had to write sentences with vocab words? The nerd in me just took over, because that happened with the words I looked from reading Les Miserables, getting ready for the movie (!!).

Caramel Brownies

Let me start with a confession: I judge blog posts that start like this one does, with a picture of a collection of baking goods that includes a box cake mix and candy.

I  hesitated to make these brownies for the first time in years, since my baking philosophy has evolved to make me turn up my nose up when I know caramel and cake such as these add that slight chemical taste I now find in packaged foods. They are not pure. Not pure!

BUT then I remembered how a thick, buttery German chocolate dough encases melted caramel and chocolate chips, and remembered how its gooey chocolateness is richer than a chocolate bar.

Most of all, I remembered my time was somewhat limited, and with this recipe I wouldn't have to experiment with a caramel sauce and chance a brownie recipe that was too dry or too over-the-top rich. Convenience products are just so convenient (imagine that).

These convenience-baking-with-a-twist morsels of sweentess garnered many compliments at a large group function, and also prompted this conversation:

Roommate in our House of Sweets: I want you to make these for my birthday.

Me: I think we can find an excuse to make these again before your birthday.

Roommate: No, you don't understand. I want the entire pan to myself.

(Roommate got them for her birthday, and she even shared them.)