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.

Crepe Bar

If ever anything were worth savoring, it was this.

The barely sweet confection known is the crepe is the fresh-off-the-press tortilla of all things French and lightly decadent. Swirling its batter in a pan before it, poof, instantly cooks into a delicate final product, time and time again, is a therapeutic exercise, albeit one that requires all hands on deck. It's way worth it though, especially if you munch on crepe scraps while you go.

The whole spread of nuts, fruits and creamy spreads was beautiful to my taste buds, but what I found myself salivating over weeks later was the number one star: Nutella Mousse. Yes, Nutella Mousse, hazlenut-chocolate spread in creamy form. Spread it on a crepe, sprinkle on some strawberries and wrap it up with a chocolate drizzle on top, and you may never crave anything else again. It even transported one person back to Europe, she said.

Warning: If Nutella Mousse miraculously survives its debut and ends up in your fridge, it will quickly and frequently escape for you to violently tear off strips of leftover crepes to dip into it and unite with your tongue.

A spread such as this is perhaps best enjoyed with amongst female company. I often ooh and ahh (literally) over what I taste, but it's rare that other people have equally as expressive reactions like crepes elicit. So epic was this spread that I served it twice in one day, first for breakfast for the ladies in my new home group from church and second for our weekly Sunday evening Downton Abbey watching/face stuff gathering. A crepe bar would also be fun for a shower of some sort.

Side note: Extra Raspberry Syrup and Chocolate Syrup make excellent excuses to make cheesecakes and waffle bars, and might up your hot chocolate intake. Be forewarned in that realm too.

Crepe Bar Elements

Brown Butter Crepes (recipe below)

Nutella Mousse

Whipped Cream

Sliced Strawberries

Sliced Bananas

Chopped Pecans

Sliced Almonds

Powdered Sugar

Raspberry Syrup

Chocolate Syrup

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.

Red, (Off) White and Blue Berry Trifle

Some things just photograph real pretty. Like patriotic (but not overly so) berries on the Fourth of July.

And if you're going to have the real deal in fresh berries, why not go all out and bake a pound cake from scratch and make a pastry cream the same way? Hello, butter, butter, sugar, sugar, eggs, eggs. (I taught my roommate why pound cake in all its butteriness is called pound cake while I was at it.)

 You know the only thing that was missing in the ingredient list at that point in the brainstorming? Liqueur. So I drizzled me some Amaretto on the cake pieces.

This final masterpiece made its debut following dinner on the Fourth. Throw 19 eaters in the mix, and whoosh, it was gone baby gone.

Happy berry season to ya!

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!

Peanut Butter Pie: Take Two

Creamy peanut butter goodness in a peanutty Vanilla Wafer crust re-entered my life this week. And many mini chocolate chips were involved.

It photographed way better than a couple of years ago, ergo a new post.

The pie traveled to a Downton Abbey season kickoff gathering. It's not English-themed, but it is worthy of a the most special occasion: 1920 modernism meets a Mary/Matthew wedding and a Maggie Smith/Shirley McClain witty one-liner showdown.

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!

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.)

Flag Fruit Tart for the Fourth

The Fourth of July started with a flurry of butter, sugar, butter, cream and butter: a White Texas Sheet Cake; a vanilla custard base for ice cream; and most festively, a shortbread cookie topped with thick, vanilla pastry cream and carefully placed blueberries and strawberries.

And then I had to take advantage of the greenery around me on the lake and play with my brother's fish eye lens. It makes everything a little funky.

Super Simple Fruit Cobbler

Picking blackberries involves nasty gross summer heat and prickly bushes. It was not my favorite way to spend summer Saturdays at the lake as a kid. But my mom loves to dress head-to-toe and slave away amongst thorns for tart berries. That's where you'll find her these days while I am a lazy bum at the house or dock. She'd rather pick her blackberries, and I'd rather buy them, even frozen; but for the record, she'd rather buy her bakery cake and I'd rather bake one myself.

What mother and daughter do have in common is that we both make this shortbread-crumble-top cobbler and have been since I was first forced to pick blackberries.

It's super simple:
Sprinkle berries with cinnamon in a pie crust. Use a pastry cutter (or two knives) to cut together flour, butter and sugar.

Sprinkle shortbread topping over berries. I like to sneak some of this mixture to snack on, mmm, buttery, sugary yum.

 Bake it. And boom, you have a crumbly crust-topped gooey warm berries to delight.

And some vanilla ice cream, and it's golden (really cheesy pun intended).

Chocolate Waffle Bar

When I told my brother about having friends over for a "ladies lunch for (birthday) dinner," he commented on what a "crazy party" a salad party would be. And crazy it was with a special kind of bar, a chocoholic's dream.

A waffle filled with cocoa and chocolate chips tastes like warm dark chocolate cake and begs for a lighter sweetness to top its holey surface.

The bar: fresh whipping cream, chocolate chips, pecans, sprinkles (it was a birthday!), strawberries, the best chocolate sauce (a Lebovitz recipe), caramel banana topping. 

Not pictured above is the crown jewel: Cinnamon Ice Cream homemade in brilliance by Hannah. Really, you didn't even need the other toppings once you marry dark chocolate waffle cake with creamy spiced ice cream. Oooh.

Also, there was singing and other beauty of gathering the ladies who are a constant source of encouragement, inspiration and companionship to me. The only thing that tops that is presents of snickers salad (only really!), caprese salad, oriental slaw, chicken salad, fruit salad, potato salad, strawberry-pretzel salad, green salad with yogurt ranch dressing, vino, and, of course, cinnamon ice cream! (And lots of other sweet people thinking of me on my birthday, including (home) blog love from Amy.) Thanks, birthday crew. Y'all rock.

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

Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

(One of these days, I will take a break from my sweet obsession and blog about something savory. But that day is not today.)

If you ever want to make friends, put Oreos in chocolate chip cookie dough. Ooo, lala, baking brilliance inspired by the Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookie phenomenon of 2011. Only they are even easier to make and yield a bigger batch. Win and win.

It's the kind of recipe you make on Sunday, where they are poof! gone at a chili cook-off, and then find the need to bake another batch to share for Tuesday night dinner.

Adults find the Oreo stuffing thing delicious, but kids, they find it fascinating. One girl who lit up my life tonight had to take the cookie around to other people to show them how there was an Oreo inside, and then came back to inquire how exactly the Oreo got there and how it was sliced like that.

More Tollhouse Cookie Love:
Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars/Cookie Cake
Oreo-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

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.