Chocolate-Filled Eggs

Happy Easter!  And happy birthday to Kª, no longer the Lady Downstairs, but now the Lady in Russia!

I never do things and post them in time for the holidays, so this post is coming from you from the distant past … Easter 2012 to be precise.

I wanted to have a bit of a take-away goodie for our Easter dinner guests, and a cute little place-marker in the bargain, so I thought, why not give everyone a chocolate egg — inside a REAL egg?  There are lots of great tutorials out there on how to do this right: both Martha and Not Martha have good ones worth checking out.  Me, on the other hand?  I didn’t look at any of them, except to find out what not to do.  So your options here are simple: you can do it the right way, or you can do it my way.  This is your choice.  Let the chips (of eggshell) fall where they may.

Dyeing the Eggs

Start with 12 large eggs.  You may break one or two, so work with more than you need.  Using a sharp paring knife, give the bottom of one of your eggs a hard poke.  Not hard enough to puncture the egg sac, but enough to chip through the shell.

Once you’ve got a wee hole, start enlarging it by prying up bits of shell until you have a hole about the size of a dime.  It doesn’t have to be perfectly circular, and don’t worry if you get a few hairline cracks.  It will all work out in the end.

Peel up that layer of membrane as well.

Once you’ve got a decent hole, take a syringe with a long tube attached (ear syringes and irrigation syringes work well here) and poke it through the egg sac.

Flip the egg upside down and push air through the syringe into the egg so that it expels all the goo into your waiting bowl.  Save those egg innards for something later on.

When your eggs are all empty, you’ll need to give them a quick rinse to get rid of anything left behind inside.  I poured a bit of hot water into each egg, enough to fill it about half way, and then gave it a good shake to dislodge anything grody inside.  Empty that out and you’re ready for the next phase.

Now, if you’re going to do this the right way, you’re going to sterilize your eggs first and THEN you’re going to dye them.  This is because agitating your eggs during the dyeing process will result in a mottled appearance in the dye.

I, however, actually wanted to have a mottled look, so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and dye my eggs while they were sterilizing.  Easy peasy.  So I filled a large pot with water and added a cup of white vinegar.  I submerged all the eggs, making sure to let each one fill completely with water so it wouldn’t float.

Then I added the dye — I used food colouring here, some green and some blue to create a turquoise colour.  Then I boiled it for about 10 minutes, making sure to give it a stir to agitate the eggs really well.

Make yourself a little drying rack by poking skewers into the bottom of your now-empty egg carton.  Tada.

Using a slotted spoon, remove each egg and drain it of dye before sliding it onto a skewer to dry.  Leave that overnight to make sure that everything is well-set.

See that nice spotting? I like it.

Everything was great until I dropped a spoon on the eggs and smashed two to smithereens.  And then there were ten.

Filling the Eggs

This is the fun part.  You can go crazy and fill your eggs with whatever you want.  I am looking for some kind of fruit and nut combination in my chocolate.

First, weigh a whole egg to figure out approximately how much stuff fits inside it.  Then take that number, multiply it by the number of eggs you have, and that’s how much stuff you need to go in the eggs.

So for me, my average egg weighed in at 60g.  So I needed 600g of chocolate, fruit, and nuts to make this work.  I actually needed more than that, so I suggest you up the chocolate amount significantly.  It’s amazing how much an egg will hold.

I used cashews and a dried fruit combination of cherries and pineapple.

I blended that sucker in the food processor to turn it all into tiny bits.

Using a serrated knife, chop up your chocolate.

Melt it in a large bowl over a pot of simmering water until it’s smooth and glossy.

Mix in your minced goodies.

Pull your eggs off your makeshift drying rack and line them up inside the carton again, hole-side up.

Now, set a piping bag or a regular plastic freezer bag in a tall glass or pitcher so that one of the ends points down.  Fill that sucker with your melted chocolate.

Snip the end, and, working quickly, fill each of the eggs to the top with your chocolate goo. You may need to use your fingers to encourage the solid bits to go through the bag if there’s a bottleneck.  Allow to cool and set completely.

Just make sure to clean the chocolate off the shells before it sets. If you’re at all like me, there will be chocolate everywhere.

I was also a little bit of chocolate short, so I melted more (just plain this time) to fill the last little space in the bottom of the egg.

Now feel free to decorate them any way you wish.  I used some acrylic craft paint to paint each guest’s name on the eggs.  It’s hard to have good penmanship when you are writing on eggs. Apparently I am incapable of following around in a straight line. It always came up slanted every time.

Then I set each one in a wee “nest” made out of a cupcake liner and some mini chocolate eggs.  Surprise!

Slutty Brownies for My Birthday

It’s my birthday.  Hooray!  Happy birthday to ME!

As such, it means I can do whatever the eff I want to do today.  And I choose to be totally lazy and completely unhealthy and make these brownies*.  I’ve been hearing amazing things about this thing called a “slutty brownie,” and after looking them up on the interwebz I decided to go to the source, which, apparently, is a lady known as The Londoner.  Seems legit.  I could definitely get behind this sort of recipe.

Normally I’m not one to make stuff out of pre-packaged food.  It’s just not my style.  For the most part, if you make something from scratch it tastes way better and is far more satisfying to make.  In this particular case, however, I think I can make an exception.

It IS my birthday, you know.  But I have to say that the word “chocolatey” versus “chocolate” is always worrisome, though these did include real chocolate after all.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and line a baking dish with parchment.  I figured that seeing as some of the contents of my dish would fit normally into a square pan, and because I had extra ingredients on top of that, I should use a bigger pan.

So you take a some chocolate chip cookie dough. In the British version, cookie dough comes in a box like cake and brownie mix, but here, unless you want it in bulk, it generally comes pre-made in refrigerated rolls.  The Londoner recommends using a teaspoon extra oil and water than recommended for the dry mix, because the cookie dough will be baking longer than usual and might dry out.  And you want this baby to be moister than moist.  So mix that up according to directions and add a bit more liquid. Smoosh the cookie dough into the bottom of the pan.  Use your fingers to make it all even and stuff. I decided I needed an extra roll of cookie dough.

Take a package of Oreo cookies (double-stuffed is better, apparently), and line them up in the tray.  She says not to use the broken ones, but how else would one fill the gaps?  It’s thrifty.  However, I didn’t have any broken ones.  Way to go, modern packaging.

And I didn’t have enough Oreos, actually.  So I moved everything to a smaller pan, which just involved some re-smooshing, and was very easy.

Still didn’t have enough Oreos, though, and I couldn’t justify going out for another package when I was only a few short.

So I just moved them over a bit.

THEN.  Then.  You take a box of brownie mix.  And you mix that up according to its directions. Mine had chocolate chunks in it!

No need to add anything extra.  Just do it.  Giv’er.

Pour that loveliness over top of the Oreos.  I’m serious.  Do it.  If you used a bigger pan like me you will need to spread it carefully so everything is covered.

Bake that sucker for 40-50 whole minutes, then remove from the oven and put on a wire rack to cool.  Mine was big, so it actually took an hour.  A smaller pan would probably take you about 30 minutes. Look at that lovely shiny/crackly top!

When it’s still a little warm, use the parchment as handles to remove the gloriousness from the confines of the pan, set it on a cutting board, and cut it up.  I recommend smallish cubes, as larger cubes of the stuff might result in DEATH.  And nobody likes death.

Serve it up with a dollop of ice cream on top, or whipped cream, or caramel sauce, or fudge sauce, or all four in combination.  With a cherry on top.  And sprinkles.  Okay maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

And I’m not going to give you storage instructions because if you have any sense, there won’t be any left to store.

* This is actually a lie.  I don’t do ANYTHING on my birthday.  It’s a rule.  I made these a week BEFORE my birthday (because despite what you may believe I don’t get up at the crack of dawn and bake in time for a 7AM NST post).  The Pie is creating a magical birthday cake for me as we speak.  There may be a post on it.  Who knows.

Have You Tried Banana “Ice Cream”?

No?  You probably should.  It’s like all the good things about ice cream, but it’s also gluten-free, vegan, and pretty darned good for you.  I feel like world peace could be achieved if everyone could have some of this ice cream (except for people who are allergic to bananas — they will just have to negotiate peace on their own terms).

So basically, you take some bananas.  Ripe ones, with a few brown spots.  You want them soft and squishy and very sweet.

Then you peel them and slice them into disks.  And then you freeze those.  In the freezer.  Or outside, if you live in Central or Eastern or Atlantic Canada.  Or Northern Europe.  Or Siberia.  Or Antarctica (actually, then they’d probably be too cold.  Your freezer is probably warmer than Antarctica).

Then you take them out of the freezer.  And you plop them in your food processor.

AND YOU GIVE IT A WHAZ.  Which is what Jamie Oliver would say.  And the Pie and I love him, so that’s one of our new favourite phrases.

And when it’s all gooey and soft and smooth, you can eat it!

If you prefer your soft serve a little more firm, you can chuck it back in the freezer for a bit.  I like the fact that when it thaws, because it’s banana, it doesn’t get all soupy.

And you can flavour it as well!  Add peanut butter, Nutella, chocolate chips, cocoa, vanilla … you name it (I added Nutella and vanilla).

The only limit is your imagination — and what you have to stuff in there.  GO BANANAS!

Long-Distance Greeting

The Pie and I don’t usually celebrate Valentine’s Day, but I thought I would make up a little card for Cait and send it home to Ottawa.

The base is cardboard with construction paper overlaid on top and I used construction paper to make the “hinges” of the card.

The “clothing” for the figure on top is a textured origami.  The limbs are pipe cleaner and the heart is made of felt.  Heartfelt.  Get it?

I originally just had glue holding everything down, but you see I had to resort to tape. Alas.

Under the “clothing” is a hole to accommodate this chocolate bar (which I bought from the Newfoundland Chocolate Company here in St. John’s, specifically because their bars are small enough to fit in an envelope), which is wrapped in origami.

I used a circle punch to make confetti out of my paper scraps and stuffed a bunch of it inside the card so it will all fall out when she opens it.

♥ Happy Valentine’s Day! ♥

Root Beer Bundt Cake

Potluck insanity. Too many tall friends.

Every year during the winter holidays we get together with our Ottawa friends and have a potluck.  We started doing this when we were all students because it was the one day we could guarantee that we were all in town at the same time and we could spend some time together.  We even get fancy with the planning, starting with a Doodle scheduler to pick the right date (if you’ve never used their free software to make an appointment, check it out).  Then we set up a Google spreadsheet to figure out who is bringing what, to ensure that not everyone arrives with chips and dip and that the people who are bringing appetizers don’t show up just as we’re starting dessert.  Inevitably the spreadsheet gets hacked by someone (or everyone) and chaos ensues.  Graphs and pie charts and graffiti abound.  It’s madness.  But fun.  This year the Pie and I decided to host, and as each person brings a dish, this was the Pie’s contribution to the festivities: Baked’s Root Beer Bundt Cake.

He’s made it before, for my birthday, and it’s always a favourite.  Anything Baked does is a favourite with us.  The problem is that because I was busy doing my own thing and making a superb leek and leftover turkey pie (which I will save as a post until the next turkey-related holiday), I didn’t actually get a chance to photograph the finished product.  So you’ll just have to guess as to what it looked like.  Sorry.

Now, the recipe calls for 2 cups root beer to go into the batter.  Don’t you dare use diet root beer — you’ll regret it enormously.  Use a stronger-tasting brew like Dad’s or Stewart’s or even Barq’s to get the best flavour, and feel free to replace some of the liquid with a root beer schnapps or even a tablespoon or two of root beer extract.  Not having any of these things, however, the Pie decided to make himself a root beer concentrate.

He started by pouring two cans of root beer into a pot. Then he simmered it for about half an hour to boil off the water and reduce the liquid.

The resulting fluid is dark and opaque, and we hoped it would enhance the flavour of the cake when added to the regular root beer.

While you’re doing that, preheat your oven to 325°F.  Generously butter a large bundt cake pan.  Dust the inside with flour and knock out the excess.  If you don’t have a bundt pan you can make this in an angel food pan.  If you have to make it in a pan that doesn’t have a hole in the middle you will need to cook it a bit longer and keep an eye on it so the bottom doesn’t burn.

In a small saucepan, melt together 2 cups root beer, 1 cup cocoa, and 1/2 cup butter and stir until the mixture is smooth.

Add in 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar and 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar and whisk that until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is smooth.

Remove that from the heat and allow to cool a little bit. You want it to cool a bit (enough that you can poke your finger in it and it will be nice and warm but not hot) because you’re about to add in 2 lightly beaten eggs. And if you add the eggs in while it’s still hot they will cook on their own and that will be super gross.

Add the eggs in and whisk thoroughly.

In a big bowl, whisk together 2 cups flour with 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda.

Gently pour the chocolate mixture into the flour mixture and fold with a spatula until just combined.

You don’t want pockets of flour or anything but you want the batter to still be a mite lumpy.

Pour that into your prepared bundt pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until you can stick a skewer into it and it comes out clean.

Set that puppy on a rack to cool completely.

In the meantime, you can make your root beer fudge frosting. In another bowl, whisk together 2oz melted dark chocolate and 1/2 cup room temperature butter. Add in as well 1/4 cup root beer, 2/3 cup cocoa, and 2 1/2 cups confectioner’s (icing) sugar and beat until smooth.

When you cake is cooled, plaster on that icing in a haphazardly charming manner and eat it all up. Cover what’s left over in plastic wrap and keep up to a week at room temperature.  Sorry again that I have no pictures.  It disappeared! Instead you can have a picture of Gren in the Christmas hat that he hates.

Treats Week: MacGyver Balls

I would like to officially take credit for turning “MacGyver” into a verb.  It was about ten years ago, I think.  Since then, I’ve used it pretty much all the time.  And now it seems to be entering the general lexicon.  So that’s a win for me I think.  Or for whoever actually coined the term.  MacGyver, if you’re not aware, was a fantastic show from the late eighties about a dude who could save the world by solving science and physics problems with what he had at hand.  The joke is that he can defuse a nuclear bomb using only a paperclip.  And he probably did.  Macgyver was one of my heroes when I was a child.  I tend to “macgyver” a lot of things around our house, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.  It’s another form of “half-assed halfassery,” which is also a coinage of mine.  Anyway, I’ve heard it being used as a verb on TV now so I would like to take the credit while I can.  Although if you also invented the word then good on you too!

Well, today I’m taking the term into the kitchen.  There’s a certain round chocolate confection of which I’m sure we’re all aware.  It comes wrapped in gold paper and commercials for it usually involve swanky parties of well-dressed demigods surrounding a pyramid made of the little shiny balls.  While what I’ve made below isn’t quite the version you can buy in the store, I think it’s a pretty decently-macgyvered version of the same.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.  Take 2 1/2 cups hazelnuts (filberts) and spread them on a baking sheet.

Toast in your oven, shaking a couple times, for about 10 minutes, or until the skins start to blacken and bubble. Remove the nuts from the oven and plop in the centre of a clean tea towel.  Wrap the towel around the nuts and allow them to steam for a few minutes.

Then rub the towel briskly over the nuts to remove the skins and allow the nuts to cool completely. If you don’t get all the skins off, don’t worry about it.

When they are completely cool, pour them into a food processor to crush them into small pieces.

Take about 3 cups Nutella (or store-brand alternative).  I am using the name brand because other versions are hard to get here in St. John’s and, well, it’s made by the company who makes the bon-bons I’m sort-of copying so I figure I’m on the right track, right?  Anyway, the jar contains approximately 3 cups of the stuff, so I’m going with that.  Scoop all that out into a bowl.

Pour in 4 cups crisped rice cereal (AKA Rice Crispies) and mix those into the Nutella, making sure to get it all evenly combined without breaking too many of the rice bits.  In the real thing, there’s a ball of soft chocolate in the middle with a crunchy shell around it, but this is my version.

If you wanted to be authentic you could make little spheres of frozen Nutella and roll them in the cereal. But that sounds hard.

Take a spoon and start scooping balls of chocolate rice onto a sheet of waxed paper.  When you’ve got them all scooped, pop them in the freezer for an hour or two.  Mine I froze overnight.

In the meantime, chop up 20 ounces dark chocolate and melt it in a double boiler or heat safe bowl suspended over a pot of simmering water.

Allow the melted chocolate to cool to almost room temperature.  You want it cool enough it won’t melt the frozen Nutella balls, but not too cool that you can’t work with it.

Spear a frozen Nutella ball with a skewer and dip it into the cooled chocolate.

Roll the ball in the crushed hazelnuts until completely covered and lay on a sheet of waxed paper to cool completely and harden.

The recipe above makes exactly 48 golf ball sized MacGuyver balls, so I’m sure you can use any fraction of this to make a smaller amount.

Treats Week: Salted Toffee

I know: after overindulging during the holidays, the last thing you want to think about is highly caloric treats.   January is time for moderation and abstinence.

HA.

We all of us know that this is complete hooey.

Even Gren knows it’s bull pucky.  And he’s a DOG.

January, and its evil-yet-slightly-shorter twin, February, are both miserable.  Have you looked outside recently?  Blech.  Don’t come to Canada in January or February.  If you do I don’t think you’ll stay long.

How do we survive this gray misery?  SUGAR.  And lots of it.  Personally, I need the calories to wade through waist-deep snow while my dolphin-corgi hybrid takes his evening constitutional.

So this week I will be featuring three easy treats that are each decadent in their own ways.  These will help you get through the worst of the winter.  And if you have the fortitude to resist them, then keep the recipes on hand for the next time the indulgences of the holidays roll around.

Today we’re going to make ourselves some glorious salted toffee.

Start by buttering a 10″ x 15″ rimmed baking sheet. Set that aside.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and plop 2 cups pecan halves (or pecan pieces) on a baking sheet. Not the buttered one. You’ll notice here I am using hazelnuts. I was out of pecans. But pretend they’re pecans. Stick those in the oven and toast them, stirring once or twice, for about 8-10 minutes.

Allow them to cool completely and then chop them roughly (saves you effort if you use pecan pieces instead).  Chop half of those up to fine little pieces, and set both the roughly chopped and finely chopped pecans aside.

In a large saucepan (because remember, sugar expands quite a bit when it boils), mix together 3 1/2 cups sugar, 1 1/2 cups butter, 1 teaspoon salt, and 3/4 cup water.

Heat on medium until the butter is all melted, then increase the heat to medium-high and, stirring occasionally, let that mixture come up to 310°F on a candy thermometer.

Should take about 20 minutes or so.

Remove from the heat and carefully stir in 1 tablespoon vanilla extract (be careful, this is where it gets fizzy) and the finely chopped half of your pecans.

Carefully pour your hot toffee into a rimmed baking sheet and let it cool until it’s fully set, about 30 minutes.

If you want your toffee pieces to come out even, you can score the toffee with a sharp knife after about 10 minutes of setting.  Make sure to wipe off your knife with warm water after each slice for easier cutting.

While that’s cooling, chop up 12 ounces of chocolate (the darker the better) and melt it over a double boiler or heat safe bowl suspended over a pot of simmering water.

Remove that from the heat and allow to cool a little bit (so it’s not molten) before pouring it over your set toffee. Smooth the chocolate down with a knife or offset spatula (honestly, it’s a handy item you won’t use often but when you use it, it will rock your cooking experience). Sprinkle the chocolate with your roughly chopped pecans and let it sit for about 20 minutes, until the chocolate has cooled but is still in a squishy state.

Then sprinkle THAT with about 2 teaspoons fleur de sel (or coarse sea salt, if that’s what you’ve got).

Chill the pan for about an hour, until it’s all set and lovely, then twist the pan to release the toffee and cut or break into pieces.  Store in an airtight container at room temperature for 2 weeks or in the fridge for about a month.

WOOO! It’s Ali Does It Herself’s 500th Post! And we’re making CAKE!

So on the 15th day of March, 2010, I caved to peer pressure (*ahem*, Kª), and I started this blog.  Ali Does It … Herself.  That sounded about right.  The Pie and I try to be as self-sufficient as possible, and having been raised by very DIY-oriented parents, I figured I might as well start telling the world about my own experiments in grown-up living.  Five hundred (!) posts later, we’re still going strong.  Ali Does It has been featured THREE times on WordPress’s Freshly Pressed page, twice on FoodPress.com, and last year won third place in both the Canadian Weblog Awards and the Canadian Blog Awards competitions.  I’m so grateful for the 1600+ subscribers who visit regularly and for everyone who has come to see and read in the past almost-three years.  If you’re reading this, then thank you so much for coming!

It’s amazing what this blogging experience has taught me to do.  Previously, I cooked, and fixed stuff, and did crafty things, and I was pretty good at it, but I never really tried to venture too far out of my comfort zone.  Now, if someone sends me a message saying, “do you know how to do this?”, my answer is usually “why yes!” (ha. rarely), or “no, but I’ll figure it out.”  And then I do.   It’s very empowering to know that doing stuff on your own is not as scary as you think it is.  The internet (and my parents) are very good teachers.

My very first post was about cake — wedding cupcakes, to be specific.  And if you’ll look below, you can see all the other posts I have made about cake and cupcakes since then (not to mention the posts about cookies, and brownies, and knitting, and sewing …).  In commemoration of that, I think I’ll make another cake!

I’ve been brainstorming with the Pie and our friends about what to create for this particular occasion, but they’ve been absolutely useless.  They keep suggesting that I make a cake THAT I’VE ALREADY MADE.  What would be the point of that?  Well, it’s not called Ali Does It on the Advice of All the People She Knows, after all, so I started thinking about what *I* wanted.  Something a little bit fun, not too big, not too complicated, but a wee bit different. And something that I have made up all by myself. So here goes.

What about a berry cake?  I want something pink.  And I have a temptingly large container of partridgeberries in my freezer, which I picked up from Bidgood’s in the Goulds over the summer. If you know anything about this place, you’ll know that Bidgood’s is where you go to get stuff like this. That same day we picked up moose burgers and a rabbit pie. Both excellent.

Now, I’m making this into a layer cake with icing, but you could easily skip the cutting and frosting and have it as a nice coffee cake. It’s a versatile little thing, and it will freeze beautifully, unfrosted. So. Take your favourite 9″ x 13″ baking pan/casserole dish and butter it generously. Plop a sheet of parchment in the middle and butter that, too. It will just make it easier to get the cake out in one piece. Preheat your oven to 375°F while you’re at it.

Grab yourself some partridgeberries.  You’ll probably only find them frozen, but if you’re in a part of the world where they come fresh, then more power to you.  If you don’t know what a partridgeberry is, it looks like a small cranberry, but isn’t as tart.  You may know it better as a lingonberry or a cowberry.  You could substitute other berries in this recipe, obviously.  If you go the cranberry route, though, I’d add a bit more sugar.  Anyway, you’ll want about 2 cups partridgeberries for this cake.

Plop them in a pan with about a tablespoon lemon juice and 1/2 cup granulated sugar, and stew on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the berries are thawed and juices are running everywhere.  Pop a few with the back of your spoon to increase the juiciness, and remove from the heat so they cool down a bit.

In a large bowl, cream together 1 cup butter with 2 cups granulated sugar.

Add in 6 eggs, one at a time.

Then jump in your stewed berries, along with 1 cup sour cream.

Almost ready — now, a little bit at a time, stir in 3 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Smooth your batter into your prepared pan.  I love that delicate pink colour.  Too bad it never lasts through the baking without artificial boosts — blech.

Bake your cake on the middle rack for about 45 minutes to an hour, depending on your oven.  Mine took 47 minutes.  Place it on a rack to cool, and when it’s cooled enough to tip out, let it cool completely on a rack before frosting.

A note on frosting:

Now, you don’t HAVE to frost your cake.  That is entirely up to you.  But I’m going all out here, and I feel that fruits like this need a bit of cream cheese in the frosting to make me super happy.  If you’re going to layer this cake, make the full amount of frosting I’ve set out here.  If you’re just going to frost the top, then make about 1/3 to 1/2 of the amount laid out below.  And if you want a non-chocolate version (also yummy), substitute vanilla for the Kahlua and leave out the cocoa.

In a large bowl, beat together 1 cup butter and 1 250g package plain cream cheese.  Make sure both of them are soft but not melty.

Tip in about 5 tablespoons powdered cocoa together with 1 tablespoon Kahlua (or other coffee/chocolate liqueur of your choice) and mix that in thoroughly.  Once you get that in, add about 3 1/2 cups confectioner’s (icing) sugar.  You may need more or less depending on your preference.  Beat that to a pulp.

Then pour in 1 cup cream, whipping cream if you’ve got it.  Or leave it out, if you want a frosting that is a bit stiffer.  Lovely.  Chuck that in the fridge to chill while you wait for your cake to cool.

Then I simply cut the cake in half down the middle, like so.

Then cut each half horizontally so I had four slabs of cake.  Slather on some icing between layers, plop the next one on, rinse, repeat.

It reminds me of a massive peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I didn’t bother with a crumb coat when doing the outside, and I didn’t really go to too much trouble getting the icing all perfect (because I really don’t roll that way, don’t you know that by now?).

I think I have laundry on the brain — I seem to do it often enough.  It’s not quite the celebratory bunting you were expecting, eh? Fitting, though.

Thanks for seeing me through 500 posts as I learn to be a grown-up.  Here’s to 500 more!

Thirty-Four other posts about CAKE (brownies, bars, and other eatables and noneatables not included, but feel free to use the search function on the sidebar to find whatever you want!):

• Baked’s Flourless Chocolate Cake
• Baked’s Sweet and Salty Cake
• Carrot Cake for Interviews
• Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes
• Chocolate Moose Cake
• Chocolate Rose Birthday Cupcakes
• Christmas Fruit Cakes
• Cool Blackberry Cheesecake
• Creamy Coconut Lime Cupcakes
• Dairy-Free Chocolate Cake
• Delicious Disaster – At least, it started out as a cake.
• Devil(‘s Food Cake) Made Me Do It
• Dulce de Leche Cheesecake
• Espresso Cupcakes with Mocha Buttercream
• German Chocolate Cake
• Gluten-Free Yellow Cake Batter
• Happy Hallowe’en Cupcakes
• Hazelnut Dacquoise – I know, not really a cake, but it’s close.
• Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake – Day 1
• Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake – Day 2
• Ivy Vanilla Wedding Cake – Day 3
• Pie’s I’m-Turning-Old Street Fighter Ice Cream Birthday Cake, with Fudge Sauce
• Pineapple Upside-Down Cake
• Pound for Pound Cake
• (Polar) Opposite Cupcakes
• Raspberry Trifle Cake
• Rectangular Chocolate Cake
• Red Velvet Comeback Cupcakes
• Strawberry-Glazed Angel Food Cake
• Toffee Bundt Cake
• Trifle Too Much – Again, not cake, but made WITH cake.
• Vanilla Cake
• White Cake with Blueberries
• Whopper of a Cake Topper

Them’s Fightin’ Cookies

This is a recipe for gluten-free almond chocolate chip cookies.  I found it in Thursday’s issue of The Ottawa Citizen, where it was referenced to the California Almond Board.  Can we get more complicated?  Surely.  These cookies are also touted as a great energy snack after a workout (a cookie?  Really?).  Whatever they are, they’re gluten-free, egg-free, refined sugar-free, and, if you use carob instead of chocolate, then they are also dairy-free and vegan.

So I figured I’d bake up a batch and try them out on my collection of captive guinea pigs — in this particular case, the Pie’s fighting game community, which meets every Sunday.  I’m sure that the last thing they need is more energy, but whatever.  They are good at ensuring the Pie and I are not left alone with too many cookies to eat by ourselves.

Preheat your oven to 350°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together 2 1/2 cups almond flour (I did half coconut flour and half almond meal, because that’s what I had and I figured that the recipe actually meant almond flour, which is a finer grind, and not almond meal) with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup grapeseed oil (regular canola or sunflower oil will do as well), 1/2 cup agave nectar (available at any health food store and many grocery stores — it’s basically sweet cactus sap, and they also make tequila out of it), and 1 tablespoon vanilla.

I’ve finally busted open the home-made vanilla that Ando and Teedz gave me a couple Christmases ago.  It’s excellent, and I can just keep refilling the bottle to get more and more vanilla.  Fantastic!

I’m not sure if I had to do this, but I whisked the ingredients thoroughly together until they formed a lovely smooth and thick emulsion.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and make sure they’re thoroughly combined before folding in 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips and 1/2 cup sliced almonds.

I didn’t have any sliced almonds so I just used some raw almonds, which I then toasted and crushed myself.

Using a tablespoon, drop the dough onto the parchment sheets and press down on the dough to flatten it a bit.

Well, that’s what the recipe said.  I had a hard time keeping mine together so I found if I used my hands and mashed them hard into little patties then I had better luck.

Bake those puppies for 7-10 minutes, until golden, before removing from the oven.  Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 20 minutes before you try to peel them off.

This recipe had potential, but it fell far short for me.  The cookies turned out a little burnt on the bottom despite me only cooking them for 7 minutes, and they were so very, very dry.  If I were to make these again (and I might), I would nix the oil and substitute in about 1/4 cup butter, salted (which means leaving out the salt in the recipe) and then 1 large egg instead.  If you still want to pursue the vegan route you could also substitute in some apple sauce.  In fact, I might add in some anyway, in addition to the butter and egg.  There simply was no glue holding this baby together.

Baked’s Flourless Chocolate Cake

The Pie made this amazing chocolate cake for me for my birthday so I figured I’d return the favour when Cait and Jul got here and the Pie thought they could celebrate a joint party with the two girls.  I’m not even sure you can really consider that this thing is a cake — there’s no powder in it at all — no flour, no cocoa — nothing like that.  It’s like a mousse in cake form.  It’s from Baked — my favourite, of course.

So first you preheat your oven to 350°F, and then you’re going to butter a springform pan.  And then put a circle of parchment paper into the bottom.  And then you’re going to butter it again.  With lots of butter.

Then you’ll want to bust out your double boiler or equivalent and chop up 10 ounces dark chocolate and chuck that in.

Melt that sucker until it’s smooth and set it aside to cool a bit.

Chuck 10 tablespoons softened unsalted butter into a stand mixer with 1 cup granulated sugar and beat the crap out of it.  For like, five minutes.

Until it’s all fluffy and whipped and creamy and amazing.

Separate yourself 7 eggs.  All seven of them.

Then add the yolks to the butter/sugar mixture, one at a time, and beat it on low until incorporated.

Pour in the chocolate and mix that as well.  Scrape down the bowl a bit and add in 1 teaspoon vanilla extract.  Beat it again for a few seconds until just incorporated.

In another bowl, and with an electric mixer, take your seven egg whites and add 1 teaspoon salt and beat them silly until soft peaks form.

Scoop about 1 cup of the whites into the chocolate mixture and use a spatula to fold it in gently.  Don’t feel you have to rush this — just be all cool and hip about it, fold it in like you don’t really care.  Take about 30 seconds to do this and then add in the rest of the whites and keep going.  Again, don’t rush it.

Scoop that foamy goodness into your prepared pan and smooth it out.

Then bake for about 35 minutes, until the centre is firm to the touch and everything is set.  Let it cool completely in the pan before you take it out.

Meanwhile, heat 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1/4 cup light corn syrup in a small saucepan.  Once you’ve got it just to a boil, remove it from the heat.

Pour it into a heatproof bowl over more chopped chocolate — 9 ounces chocolate, to be precise.  Let that sit for two minutes.

Then take a whisk and start stirring.

And stirring.  Until it’s all smooth.

Add a bit of liqueur if you like.

Smooth your ganache all over your cooled cake and eat it all up.  Wrap the cake up and store it at room temperature if you’re not going to eat it right away.

Even better next day!  (Sorry, when you eat cake at night the photos are never particularly good.)