Austin’s Chocolate Cake

Like most families, we offer the kids their choice of dinner and dessert for their birthdays. And for the past six years or so, Austin’s birthday cake has always been the one that I created in response to his indecision. His two favorite desserts are chocolate cake and french silk pie. And trying to choose between the two for his birthday dessert was causing him to totally stress out.

So I combined the two. Made a chocolate cake with french silk pie filling between the layers. It became an instant classic in our home, and ever since, the combination is known as Austin Chocolate Cake.

The only thing I have struggled with over the years is the icing. Because of the filling, it needs to be kept in the fridge. Which meant that the traditional buttercream frosting just didn’t work. Buttercream is best at room temp.

So last year I experimented with a ganache, and that was the answer. The cake I use is a chocolate wacky cake (otherwise known as a crazy cake or vinegar cake). It isn’t too sweet, has a good chocolate flavor, and is fairly substantial. You could use whatever your favorite chocolate cake recipe or mix is.

My recipe for french silk pie uses raw eggs. I know where my eggs come from, so I have no problem with it, but if you would rather not use raw eggs yourself, you can either use the liquid egg whites that are sold in the little milk-type cartons, or there are even eggs that are pasturized in the shell.

Happy Birthday, Austin!

Austin’s Chocolate Cake Cake:
Cake:
3 c flour
4 T cocoa
1 t salt
2 c sugar
2 t baking soda
3/4 c salad oil
2 c water
2 t vinegar
2 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Butter & flour 2 round cake pans. Mix all ingredients together with mixer.
Divide batter evenly between prepared pans.
Bake 35-45 minutes until done according to the toothpick test.

French Silk Filling
Mix until light and fluffy:
1/2 c Butter
3/4 c Sugar
Melt & cool slightly
2 oz semi-sweet chocolate
Add chocolate to butter & sugar mixture. Mix to combine.
Add:
1 t vanilla
1 egg
Beat until smooth & silky.
Add:
1 egg
Continue beating until smooth, light and silky.
Fold in:
4 oz Cool Whip or equivalent of whipped cream, beaten with 1 tsp gelatin powder to stabilize.

Chill to firm before using for filling.

Eggs + Air = Deliciousness

Even though I disdain Valentine’s Day as a “made-up” holiday, I am willing to use it as an excuse to make a delicious dinner.

The highlight of this year’s valentine’s meal was the souffle at the end.

Paul and I have a very special relationship with souffle. It was the dessert we had at our very fancy, way-out-of-our-price-range, first anniversary dinner. It is now funny to think of how overwhelmed we were by the sheer fanciness of everything.

It was a prix fixe menu. Not wanting to appear too unsophisticated, we ordered iced tea instead of sodas. I have no recollection of what appetizers or salads we had, though I know they were there. For the entrees, I went with the pepper-crusted steak while Paul thoroughly enjoyed the duck. And then we had dessert.

This was the first time ever that we had been required to commit to a dessert before the meal even began. But, as our very kind and patient waiter explained, souffles take time.

The dessert of the day was the Grand Marnier Souffle. We each had one placed in front of us, then the waiter plunged two spoons into the middle of them to make way for a dollop of whipped cream.

We were enchanted and impressed, and loved every moment of it. And ever since then, the souffle has held a special place in our hearts.

At that time, with my limited cooking skills, I never even considered trying to recreate the dish. Eight years ago I was braver and made my first souffle for our 10th anniversary.(Holy Cow! How OLD am I?) It was very egg-y tasting. Think puffy, sweet scrambled eggs. Not a good thing.

But over the years, my cooking skills have continued to improve, and I had a fridge-full of fresh, beautiful eggs that were calling to me. So I tried again, and it worked.

The recipe I used can be found here, so I won’t retype it. The only think I did differently was not using orange oil, since I didn’t have any.

Otherwise, it was really easy. Buttered and sugared the ramekins, and made the recipe up to the point of beating the egg whites. Then, after dinner, it was a simple matter of beating and folding in the egg whites, spooning everything into the ramekins, and baking.

And savoring.

Cinnamon can make anything better

It’s not that I haven’t been cooking, it’s more that I haven’t enjoyed cooking lately. Someone in the house has been sick, or work’s been crazy, or something’s been happening and I just have not been inspired.

So a couple of weekends, I was the sick one. Horrible cold – a chest cough, sore throat, sneezes, aches and pains. When Mom suggested chicken soup, it didn’t sound like it would be the magic cure it usually is. You know what sounded like the magical cure?

Cinnamon rolls!

I have issues with cinnamon rolls. They either seem to be too bread-y, so sweet, or don’t have enough cinnamon. There aren’t many cinnamon rolls I like that I haven’t made myself. So, in spite of feeling like I just wanted to roll myself up in a ball and moan, I got my butt in the kitchen and made some delisiousness that would make anyone feel better.

These were soft and full of cinnamon goodness. The bread was wonderful. My only disappointment was that flavor from the orange zest didn’t come through in the end. Next time, I’ll try adding in a couple tablespoons of orange juice and seeing if that kicks the flavor up some.

Now I’m going to be a bad blogger and just give you the ingredient list, but not the step-by-step instructions. If you’ve made a yeast dough before, this is just like that. If you haven’t, find almost any bread recipe and follow those steps. It’s really not that hard!

Cinnamon Rolls
Dough:
1 pkg yeast
1 1/4 c warmed buttermilk
1/2 c sugar
1 t salt
6 T butter, softened
2 eggs
1 T vanilla
4 1/2 – 5 c flour
1 T orange zest
Filling
1/2 c butter, softened
white sugar
brown sugar
cinnamon
nuts if you want ‘em. I used pecans cause Farmer Paul loves pecans in cinnamon rolls.

Again…bad food blogger that I am this morning, follow someone else’s directions for cinnamon rolls. They’re all assembled the same way. Be sure to butter your pans before you put the rolls in. Let them rise, bake until they’re done. I think mine took 35 – 40 minutes.

If you want icing, add it. Maybe make it with a little bit of orange juice for flavor. And eat them warm. It’ll cure what ails you.

The Color of Fall

Wow. Have you ever seen such a monochrome color photo before?

We harvested the pumpkins from the garden a couple of weeks ago. Farmer Paul and I spent a weekend roasting, cubing and canning some of them. I’d never canned pumpkin before, and information on the web had made me very nervous. There are warnings everywhere about not canning pumpkin puree. Apparently it’s a very high source of homemade botulism! But pumpkin cubes are alright to can. So we did.

It takes hours to can pumpkin. The pressure canner alone takes 90 minutes, not counting the heat-up or cool-down time. Really, after it was cooked, cubed and in the jars, it was still a full 3 hours before it was finished.

So last week I decided that I needed to know how if the whole process was worth it. But I wanted to make something out-of-the-ordinary to test it. I’d made a pumpkin custard a while ago, and it really was just a crustless pumpkin pie…good, but no Wow! to it. Pumpkin bread is always good, but nothing new & exciting there.

So I figured I’d try a pumpkin souffle. You know, there’s not a lot of pumpkin souffle recipes around. I finally found this one at Ben Bakes a Cake and decided to give it a shot.

It ended up being a very good choice. I’ve only made souffle once before, so I wasn’t entirely sure when to pull it out of the oven. If you’re nervous about making a souffle, this might be a good one to try, It’s apparently pretty forgiving…I pulled it out of the oven, put it back in, pulled it out and put it back in again before I decided that it looked close enough to what I figured “done” should look like. And it didn’t deflate at all.

I served it with whipped cream that had been sweetened with maple liqueur. Very yummy.

The souffle could be a little sweeter, but with enough maple whipped cream, you probably won’t care!

Ryan’s Birthday Wish

One thing that really has me puzzled is how my children can keep having birthdays and getting older while I really don’t think I’ve gotten older. The pages on the calendar keep turning and I guess I celebrate my birthday once a year like they do, but they seem to be growing older (and taller) much, much quicker than I do. I don’t feel like I could possibly be 11 years older than I was when my youngest child was born!

This week was Ryan’s 11th birthday so of course he got to choose his meal and his cake. His meal was homemade pizza which Nick and I have down to a science at this point. Nick makes the dough and sauce and gets all the toppings ready before I get home from work, and I spend the next 2 hours making pizza for everyone.

The cake, though, took a little bit more work. About 5 years ago, Austin “designed” his own cake (which you’ll have to wait until March to find out about), and that cake is known in our house as “Austin’s Chocolate Cake.” Ever since then, Ryan has wanted to have a “Ryan Cake” and has challenged me to make a cookie cake. Not a cookie that we put candles in, but a chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate cake merged deliciously together.

The first year I tried to incorporate cookies into the cake itself by dropping cookie dough into the cake batter and baking. That was just weird. The cookie dough pieces sunk to the bottom of the pan (of course) and it really didn’t look or taste very good. So last year I tried making a giant cookie and putting it between the layers. The problem with that was the cookie was too hard and I couldn’t cut through it. Not pretty.

So this year, I made a bigger cookie and cut out a circle the size of the cake, thereby avoiding the hard edges of the cookie. Then I cut it in wedges before putting it between the cake layers.

This time it worked! Beautifully! I don’t think I needed to pre-cut the cookie into wedges, I just need to make sure it’s not over cooked.

And I think the quest for Ryan’s cake is complete. It was interesting to have the cookie in the middle like that, but it really made for a very rich cake (so cut small pieces).

Happy Birthday, Ryan! Made for you with love, I present…
“Ryan’s Chocolate Cookie Cake”