Chocolate Zucchini Cake!

Most people's reaction to my saying I was planning on making a chocolate zucchini cake with chocolate ganache and strawberries was "Chocolate and zucchini? Ew!" Naturally, they weren't invited. And naturally, they missed out! Chocolate and zucchini turned out to be a very happy couple, making delectable and succulent, and the chocolate chips added little chocolately explosions in the mouth; warm out of the oven the chocolate chips had lost their shape somewhat, and thus weren't so much distinct vertices of chocolate as extra little kicks of flavor. It was perfect.

Teh interwebs surprisingly have many recipes for chocolate zucchini cake, but I chose one from the Chocolate & Zucchini blog. The first thing I did was to process our handsome zucchini so I had two cups of chopped zucchini. (Ok here's the secret: you can't taste it, obviously, but the zucchini makes the cake super moist and delectable.) Set the zucchini aside, or if you're processing it the day before, put them in the fridge. 

In a medium bowl, mix together 1.5 c flour, 1/2 c cocoa, 1 t baking soda, 1/2 t baking powder, and 1/2 t salt. Then, in the bowl of my new best friend, the Kitchen Aid mixer, cream together 1/2 c butter, 1 c brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp instant coffee, and 3 eggs (I used 1 whole egg and 2 whites). Take the time and mix it well after each addition (cream the butter well before adding the sugar; mix well between adding eggs). All it takes is an extra minute and the mixer does all the work. The batter should be fluffy before the eggs and speckled afterward.

Then you mix wet and dry, and while that's mixing, quickly stir 1/2 c flour and 1 c chocolate chips into the chopped/processed zucchini, and then fold this into the chocolate batter. Doing it this way really highlights just how much moisture the zucchini adds: before, the batter stuck to the paddle like stiff frosting, while afterward it was smooth and more runny. This recipe makes enough for a 10" spring form pan, but you can experiment with other shapes. Since we liked the slightly crusty edges so much, I'm considering doing it as cupcakes next to maximize the amount of edge that each serving has. I'm sure the size of your chopped zucchini pieces matters, but note that you can't really see the zucchini (click the picture to enlarge).

Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, and here you have to use the edges' pulling away, color, and texture as a measure of doneness; a toothpick never quite came out clean but burned chocolate zucchini cake would have been a tragedy, so we played it safe. The cake was a gorgeous dark brown.

When the cake is almost cool, heat half a cup of heavy cream on medium heat until it's just about to boil. Then pour over 4 oz. of really, really amazing darkish chocolate, chopped, and as it melts the chocolate, whisk everything together to form a smooth covering that requires all of your self control to not pour down your throat. I added a tbsp of butter and about 1/2 t instant coffee for added flavor, but there's lots of variation in ganache recipes, so you can't really be wrong. Let it cool until it's at a consistency you think is optimal for spreading, and pour - don't spread - over the cake. Using a spatula makes not-super-smooth lines; we had good luck carefully tilting the cake and the cooling ganache spread itself. I garnished it (very amateurishly; I blame the paring knife) with strawberries, and then we dug in.

A final word of advice: as you can see, it doesn't make a ton of cake. Your best bet is to make extra if you've got many unrelentless chocolaholics around, or you can make it for just me (I won't tell anyone ;)), and then you'll only have to make a single recipe's worth. Store it in the fridge if you've got a fruit fly problem - the last thing you want is rotten strawberries spoiling your beautiful ganache! And please send pictures if anyone makes cupcakes!!!

Chocolate Heaven

If my sleepy brain remembers correctly, I know some people who think they have a dessert with this name. However, tonight was born proof that they need a new name. This "tart" is 72845042859% Ghiradelli semisweet chocolate chips, so no doubt it was amazing.

Brownie "tart" from the crazy Barefoot Contessa. First you melt 2 c chocolate chips (the quality really, really, really matters so splurge and get something good!) and 6 tbsp butter in a double boiler until things are thick and creamy and you almost want to jump in and bathe in the stuff. With the kitchen aid workhorse, mix up three eggs (your choice as to how many whites and yolks you want to use; I used one whole egg and two whites) with 1 c sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1 tsp instant coffee. (Use the coffee! If you don't want the caffeine, use decaf like us; if you don't like coffee, don't worry, you won't taste it--it just enhances the chocolate flavor; if you don't like chocolate, get out!). Turn the mixer on low and leave it on while you stir together 1/2 c flour (we actually used almond flour because we were out of all-purpose, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, and another cup of your awesome chocolate chips. (Flouring the chocolate chips is supposed to help them not sink to the bottom. I forgot this step, but I'm not sure if they sunk or not, because it didn't really rise so there wasn't really a bottom or a top.) Put the dry ingredients in the wet, then add the chocolate and butter mixture. (If it's before dinner, don't do what I did and eat half the chocolate-butter mixture because it's the best thing you've ever tasted. Not that I'm allowed to talk.) Mix well and pour into a tart pan, or a 9" round, your mouth, etc. If it survives until the oven, bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Inside is gooey chocolate heaven, so don't expect a toothpick to come out completely clean.

My advice is to do this when you can be sure you'll be by yourself; it's not the kind of thing you'll want to share. :) And no, there are absolutely NOT pictures of the final thing! Would you have been wasting time taking pictures when you could have been eating it?! Of course not!

Smitten Cake

Yet another impulsive cake. One of the best impulsive decisions ever. The recipe comes from the Smitten Kitchen blog, which I was perusing (this time on a Sunday at 5 pm) and was so captivated by the photos I had to make it amoebiately. Lessons learned involved following directions, not just ingredient lists, and again, learning to take things out of the oven in time. The cake ended up too dry because I baked it too long, but it's better to learn from experience than threats, so I'm not too unhappy. Anyway, ten seconds in the microwave and some ice cream work wonders.

You start by creaming a stick of butter until it's super smooth. I let it first soften at room temperature until it was soft, and then let the Kitchen Aid mixer go to work. Normally I would have stopped after a minute, but there were still lumps, so I decided to see what would happen if I let it mix for longer. What happened was perfect, smooth butter. Guess who's never melting butter in the microwave again! Then you add 1 c packed brown sugar and 1/2 c white sugar. Hey, it's less sugar than the Hershey's Holiday chocolate cake!

The directions said to beat three minutes, or until fluffy. I had no idea what she meant by fluffy, but when I checked a few minutes, later, things were fluffy! I added an egg, then a 1/2 c plain nonfat yogurt, and 1/2 c skim milk (in lieu of 1 c buttermilk), and 1 tsp vanilla. I was reminded to keep reading the directions when I saw they said not to worry if things were uneven, because I had been worrying that things looked uneven. I added the dry ingredients (1.5 c flour, 3/4 c Dutched cocoa, [note: if your cocoa isn't dutched, leave out the baking powder and use 1/2 tsp baking soda] 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1/2 baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt), and the result was beautiful:

Waiting for it to bake (an hour!, at 325 F) was hard, but worth it. Next time I'm gonna try to not take fifty pictures.

So the Kitchen Aid mixer is my new best friend. Her and the treadmill!

Roof Cake

Every kitchen project recently seems to be on impulse. This one began on a Sunday at 4 pm when I had work the next day. Fortunately, my brother can be bribed with cake to drive me home. :)

I'm the only one who calls this roof cake, because that's what it looked like to me. I wanted to make a chimney, but it was Sunday afternoon, and I only know how to do gingerbread chimneys, so we settled for flags. On them were written various silly reasons for having the cake, like the fact that the car was clean, that a certain overachiever had already finished several college application essays, etc. Since the cake was a surprise, we made the inside a surprise too, by frosting between each layer with a different color of frosting (left over from this; see comment on that post about having lots of frosting colors laying around). The picture below should give you an idea of how it was constructed; this worked much better than using upside down cake hearts, which fell apart due to a pan-greasing (or lack there of...) error....

One perk of having cake in crazy shapes is that it's hard to tell how much you've eaten, which is easy with, say, a normal round cake. And then people get to eat extra at the end so I can get pictures like the one below. No wonder Giovanni's got so many friends. :)

Tie-Dye Cake

This family sure likes to make cake! And pudding:

Mumsy poured the warm (homemade!) pudding into the cake pans to harden, then flipped them onto the cake layers as everything was assembled. Since the cakes had shrunk slightly while baking, the pudding was trimmed, the process repeated, and then everything frosted. It's easiest to do all this when excessively-frequently cake making means you have several colors of frosting living in the back of the fridge, and when you somehow have four 9" round cake pans. Here's my favorite picture:

Peanut Butter Brownies

There are unfortunately no pictures, for a few reasons. First, this is the kind of thing that you begin shoving in your mouth with reckless abandon the second they come out of the oven, and don't stop until the pan is empty (or your heart stops beating, whichever comes first). Second, they weren't that photogenic because they had to travel from a hot apartment to movie night in the air conditioned library, and Giovanni wasn't around anyway. Finally, part of the point of pictures is education and motivation, and these brownies frankly are too good to be made. If you do make them, however, be sure to give them to me before you taste them, otherwise you could end up in the hospital. Good thing the library we ate them in was right next to the ER!

Brownies:

Whitney says to add things in three phases:

1) 1 c butter, melted; add 1 c cocoa
2) 2 c sugar; add 3 eggs (we used a whole egg and 2 egg whites); add 2 tsp vanilla
3) 1 c flour; add 1/2 tsp salt

Bake at 350 F in a 9x13 pan for 25-30 minutes (I think ours took longer?). The middle will be gooey and chocolately and soooo good...*faints*.

The original recipe is half this and makes an 8x8 pan with 2 eggs. For a jelly roll pan, use 1.5x the recipe.

Frosting:
1 stick butter, slightly soft
1 # powdered sugar
1/2 c peanut butter (could use more)
whole milk to consistency (can use another kind of milk, or probably half & half, etc.)

Grand Canyon Cake

It's Grand Canyon Cake Timeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This was the best cake I have ever had in my entire life. The trans fat (store-bought) frosting had a lot do to with it, but the colorfulness had even more to do with it, and getting to watch the canyon be split open definitely didn't hurt! (Email me for the video.)

Every white layer was dyed a different color, as was every layer of frosting. And at 8 layers of frosting, that's a lot of color:

The chocolate layers were of course the Hershey's holiday cake recipe. The outside was frosted my favorite combination, swirly yellow and green. We left some windows (not enough imo) just to be silly.

More, please, and hurry!!!

Like a Hole in my Head

Like a hole in my head I needed an ice cream maker. Like a hole in my head I need to keep the freezer bowl in the freezer so I can make ice cream whenever. (Like a hole in my head it needed to be this muggy out!) Like a hole in my head I needed to just invent 3-ingredient delectable chocolate ice cream that anyone can make at any time.

This is the kind of thing you eat as it's freezing, half milkshake, half ice cream. Only on February 31st is it possible for it to actually survive the night in the freezer without getting devoured before bedtime. Do not plan to serve this to dinner guests. It'll be like how the conversation would go if you asked for more pictures.

Dinner guests: Where's the ice cream you raved about?
(Giovanni: Where's the ice cream I'm supposed to photograph?)

You: What ice cream!?

Recipe: Into your already spinning freezer bowl (start it spinning before adding ingredients to reduce the amount of ingredients that freezes to the surface of the bowl and doesn't get mixed properly), put 1.5 c half and half, 1/4 c white sugar, and 1/4 c cocoa powder. Monitor it to make sure not to much freezes to the bowl too quickly. (This is also why you can't make half this much, like I originally intended to: you need enough liquid to cover the blade or the spinning won't actually mix anything.) Beat the balls of cocoa power with a spatula or the back of a spoon to break them up, if necessary.  Don't bother trying to restrain yourself from eating half of it while it's spinning; resistance is futile.

Butterscotch Brownies

My friend made a very wise decision to not hang out with me tonight because today was one of those days at work and I needed chocolate. Apparently I'm a bad influence on her. :P (Good thing she doesn't know I made the brownies in cereal bowls) She made the right decision. And more for me!

(the lumps are chocolate chips :) )

Tonight's experiment demonstrated 4 things:
1. Butterscotch chips SINK guys, they SINK! So don't expect that if you put them on top of the batter they'll melt and make you butterscotch frosting.

2. Butterscotch chips actually just plain SUCK at melting. Even in the microwave. Next time I'll spread the paste on the second the brownies come out of the oven so they're hotter and can melt the paste more effectively (tonight it didn't really melt at all, but it was still delicious).

 (it looks like cake but itsnot!)

3. More cakey brownies are easy (just add a tablespoon or two of extra flour) but know that this dilutes the cocoa, so also add more cocoa.
4. Last but not least, you can totally make brownies in cereal bowls (it helps if you're making a half-batch like I was). (Is my college student really showing that much? It was a small batch!)

To Whom It (yes we need to capitalize It when it refers to brownies!) May Concern:
When you come to eat stew, please take these away from me.
Kthxbai.

Guess who's not doing homework Thursday nights!

She said, "What do you do with dried garbanzos? Do they become normal garbanzos when you...soak them?" And then she made brownies, and we ate them with more extravagant homemade dark chocolate ice cream, and I forgave her. Stay tuned for hummus!!!

We Cubans wear our beans proudly on our shirts! Viva Fidel!