Delight of the Week - Devil's Food Cake

Back in May, my Best Friend came up for a visit. Since it was very close to her birthday, I asked her what kind of cake she might enjoy as a birthday treat. True to her chocolate loving heart, she asked for a Chocolate Cake.



I dove into my cookbook collection and began hunting for the perfect chocolate cake recipe. As soon as I opened one of my Nigella Lawson cookbooks, I knew I had found a winner.



This cake is fun to make and delicious to eat. We gobbled up half the cake while my friend was visiting and then threw the rest out into the compost bin to keep ourselves from a sugar high. The raccoons loved the treat as I found chocolate cake crumbs all over the back porch in the morning.



Nigella's Devil's Food Cake

Ingredients

Cake:
1/2 cup best-quality cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
1 cup boiling water
1 stick plus 1 tablespoon (9 tablespoons) soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
3/4 cup superfine sugar
11/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs

Frosting:
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, cubed
11 ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (or 2 cups chips)
Special equipment: 2 (8-inch) round cake pans

Directions

1. Begin by making the cake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line the bottoms of both cake pans with parchment paper and butter the sides.

2. Place the cocoa and 1/2 cup dark brown sugar into a medium bowl and pour in the boiling water. Whisk to mix, then set aside.

3. Cream the butter and superfine sugar together, beating well until pale and fluffy.

4. Stir the flour, baking powder and baking soda together in another bowl and set aside for a moment.

5. Add the vanilla extract into the creamed butter and sugar - mixing all the while - and then drop in an egg, quickly followed by a scoopful of the flour mixture, then add the second egg.

6. Keep mixing and incorporate the rest of the dried ingredients for the cake then finally mix and fold in the cocoa mixture, scraping its bowl out well with a spatula. Divide the batter between the two prepared pans and put in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Take the pans out and put them on a wire rack for 5 to 10 minutes, before turning the cakes out to cool.

7. As soon as the cakes are in the oven, get started on your frosting: put the water, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar and 1 1/2 sticks butter in a pan over low heat to melt.

8. When this mixture begins to bubble, take the pan off the heat and add the chopped chocolate, swirling the pan so that all the chocolate is hit with heat, then leave for a minute to melt before whisking till smooth and glossy.

9. Let it stand for about 1 hour, whisking now and again by which time the cakes will be cooled, and ready for the frosting.

10. Set one of the cooled cakes, with its top side down, on a cake stand or plate, and spread about a third of the frosting, then top with the second cake, regular way up, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides, swirling away with your spatula.

Delight of the Week - WHO Bread

Scott and I love homemade bread and before I got a bread maker, it was sometimes a pain to make. We however loved SouleMama's WHO Bread goes acoustic recipe. When I got the bread maker, I remembered that SouleMama's WHO Bread was originally a bread maker recipe.



Last week, I decided to make the WHO Bread. It was so simple and delicious. It barely lasted the day.

WHO Bread Recipe

(makes 1.5 lb loaf, set to 'basic' with medium crust)

1 1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons butter @ room temperature
1 tsp salt
3 cups of flour (we do 2 cups unbleached white, 1 cup whole wheat pastry)
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (or, one package)

Delight of the Week - Lemon Pound Cake

I've been dreaming about quick breads. I love how quick they are and how tasty they turn out. Take a few simple ingredients and in a few short minutes, voila! you have a delightful treat.



I like to line my bread baking pans with parchment paper as it helps with the clean-up. This recipe can be easily adjusted. Instead of lemon, you can add lavender or berries or whatever you can dream up.



Lemon Pound Cake
Makes 1 Loaf

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon lemon zest
3 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
5 large eggs, beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt

Glaze:
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a 4 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch loaf pan by lining with parchment paper.
2. Beat butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
3. Add vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice to the mixture. Mix again. Gradually add eggs, beating well and scraping down the bowl.
4. With the mixer on low, add salt and flour. Beat until just combined.
5. Pour mixture into prepared loaf pan. Bake in the center of your preheated oven for approx. 65 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for an hour before icing the top with the glaze.

Delight of the Week - Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I had my parents over for dinner on Sunday and as I planned the menu, I knew it was time for Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. I love making pie. I love eating pie. Having my parents over for dinner meant it was time for pie.



Whenever I make pie, I turn to my favorite pie book, Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie. If you love pie (heck if you only like it), this is a must-have book. It tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about pie. How to make the best crust, what works for fillings and then it gives you 300 recipes to try!



I'll be announcing the winner from last week's contest on Thursday so there is still time to tell me what your favorite wedding cake flavor is!

Delight of the Week - Anniversary Red Velvet Cake

Scott and I celebrated our 1-Year Anniversary on Sunday so I decided to recreate our wedding cake. We had two flavors for our official wedding cake, red velvet and cheesecake. Since I made a cheesecake a few weeks ago, I decided to focus on the red velvet cake.



Luckily for me, Lorna Yee created a fantastically wonderful red velvet cake in her cookbook, The Newlywed Kitchen: Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together. I did decide to make a smaller version of the cake though to reduce the amount of cake leftovers in our house. I found some great small pans at Williams-Sonoma. They were meant for deep dish pizza but the sales guy and I decided they would work for cake. Luckily they worked great!



The cake came out delicious and moist. My only problem was that my icing was a bit lumpy. But that was my fault. I tried to mix the cream cheese and butter together before they softened. Let that be a lesson to you. Soften thy butter!

In celebration of my one-year anniversary and such a delightful cake! I'm giving away one copy of The Newlywed Kitchen: Delicious Meals for Couples Cooking Together. I'll use a Random Number generator to pick a winner. All you need to do is leave a comment saying what your favorite wedding cake flavor is (married or not, we've all eaten wedding cake and we all have our favorites!).

Delight of the Week - Heavenly Angel Food Cake

Scott and I have been enjoying some pretty heavy desserts lately so I decided to make one of my favorite light desserts for this week's Delight of the Week. It turns out that this might be one of Scott's favorite desserts. That or he was quite hungry when he gobbled up three slices in one night!



When making Angel Food Cake, it is important to have fresh egg whites. The older your eggs, the less the cake will rise which still results in a tasty cake, just a shorter one at that. Angel Food Cake is actually pretty simple to make and a snap if you have a stand mixer. I served ours with a Raspberry Sauce but be creative and top your cake with dulce du leche, whipped cream, chocolate sauce or really anything you want.



Heavenly Angel Food Cake
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Ingredients
1 cup cake flour, sifted
1 1/2 cups fine sugar
9 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 325F. Take out your un-greased 10-inch tube pan and set aside.

2. Sift together the flour and 1/2 cup of sugar. Repeat once more.

3. Beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the salt and cream of tartar. Continue to beat until you have soft peaks. Beat in the remaining sugar and extracts. Continue to beat until the peaks are almost stiff.

4. Gradually fold in the flour mixture. Be gentle here. Turn the batter into your 10-inch tube pan and bake for 45 minutes or until the cake is firm and nicely browned.

5. Invert the cake onto a rack and let cool for about an hour. Using a knife, carefully cut around the sides of the cake and remove. Serve with Raspberry Sauce (recipe follows)



Raspberry Sauce

Ingredients
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons butter
2 cups frozen raspberries (really any berry would work here)

Directions
1. Combine water, sugar, butter and berries in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until the mixture is thick and syrupy.

2. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 2 minutes until berries are completely broken down. Serve warm or at room temperature over Heavenly Angel Food Cake.

Delight of the Week - Peanut Caramel Jar Budino

The Peanut Carmel Jar Budino perfectly layers the delightful flavors of a Snicker's bar with everyone's favorite, pudding! This is the ideal treat to curl up on the couch with or sneak a few bites of at midnight. Remember Budino just means pudding in Italian!



I served this as dessert to my parents who practically licked the jars clean. My husband asked about this dessert for days after eating it.



Peanut Caramel Jar Budino
Serves 4
Adapted from Food 52

Ingredients

2 Tablespoons Honey
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons Kosher Salt
1/4 cup water
2 1/2 cups Half & Half
1 large egg
2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons Cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
1/4 cup finely chopped hazelnuts
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup dulce du leche (pre-made or use this recipe)
1/2 cup dark chocolate ganache (recipe follows)

Directions

1. In a saucepan, whisk together honey, sugar, water and salt.

2. Bring to a boil, stir occasionally before lowering to a simmer. Simmer for approximately 5 minutes until it thickens.

3. Remove from heat and add half and half while whisking the mixture.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, egg yolks and cornstarch.

5. Add the half & half mixture to the egg mixture in a slow continuous stream. Keep whisking!

6. Strain the custard through a fine mesh sieve back into the sauce pan. Put the sauce pan on medium heat and start whisking.

7. Keep whisking, until the custard starts to thicken and bubble. This will take some time so keep whisking.

8. Remove from heat and strain through a fine mesh sieve into a small bowl. Set the bowl into a bowl of ice to cool.

9. Melt butter in a saute pan and add nuts and crumbs. Saute the nuts and crumbs until they are toasted.

10. Time to assemble the budino. I used Weck jars but you can assemble these in any type of jar, glass or bowl. Add a tablespoon of the nut and crumb mixture to the bottom. Fill the jar halfway with the cooled custard. Add two tablespoons of Dulce de Leche to the jars before adding more cooled custard. Top with a tablespoon of dark chocolate ganache and sprinkle with fleur de sel.

11. Let the assembled budino cool in the fridge for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients

1/2 cup chopped dark chocolate
1/4 cup half & half
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 pinch kosher salt

Directions

1. Bring half & half, butter and salt to a simmer in a saucepan.

2. Add dark chocolate and whisk until smooth. The ganache will thicken as it cools.

Delight of the Week - Crafterday Orange Lavender Tart

Once a month, I have a few friends over for Crafterday. We sew in my craft cave, chat about all of our crafting plans and rave about our successes. I like to provide treats to keep our Crafterday energies up. This tart was a delightful way to celebrate Crafterday with it's citrus-y flavor and lavender scented crust.



This past weekend, I decided to make an Orange Lavender Tart. Coincidentally, Food52 was holding a contest for the best "Late Winter Tart" and so after crafting up this treat, I also decided to enter it into the contest. You can find my entry here: http://www.food52.com/recipes/10337_orange_lavender_tart

Delight of the Week - The Cheesecake Abides

One of Scott's favorite movies is "The Big Lebowski" and last week he decided that it had been much too long since he had last seen it. I promised him that we'd watch it over the weekend and that I'd craft up a treat suitable for The Dude.



I dug into a few cookbooks, found an old Kahlua brochure and crafted up a White Russian Cheesecake. I like to think that if The Dude actually did more than drink White Russians, he'd really dig this cheesecake.



I decided that a caramel nut crust would be perfect to offset the cheesecake flavor. Adding a bit of Kahula to the crust helps keep the flavor through the entire dessert. In addition to the crushed graham crackers and pecans, a dusting of cinnamon and nutmeg is a delight.



I recommend crushing the graham crackers in a food processor with the nuts. It creates a more uniform crust. Add the spices to the cracker and nut mixture to really combine the flavors.



Once the butter and sugar are caramelized, add the crushed crackers and nuts. Heat until all ingredients are warmed.



Wrap parchment paper around a small ramekin and use it to press the warmed crust into a 9-inch Springform pan. Since the crust is made in a skillet, there is no need to bake this crust.



Once the crust is made, the cheesecake can be created. It takes a lot of cream cheese to make a dense cheesecake. Density is important in a cheesecake. Make sure to really whip the cream cheese before adding the rest of the ingredients.



Once the cheesecake is mixed, fill the springform pan being careful to leave at least 1 inch from the top of the pan.



I did not follow my own advice and filled the pan almost to the top. The cheesecake puffed up a bit and almost over flowed the pan. Oops!

Once the cheesecake is baked, allow it to cool for 5-10 minutes before placing it in the fridge for at least 6 hours. We tried to dig into the cheesecake before it had fully chilled and really it wasn't as good as when we waited for it to fully chill.



A brown sugar and bourbon cream topping really brought the cheesecake to life. Of course this meant an extra trip to the liquor store but it was worth it for this whipped cream topping. Also no need to buy the expensive bourbon for this, the cheap ones will work just fine once they are mixed with the remaining ingredients.



The recipe follows after the jump.

Delight of the Week - Spiced Pumpkin Bundt Cake

In my eternal quest for the perfect dessert, I've decided to feature a new dessert every week. This week is the Spiced Pumpkin Bundt Cake, inspired by Martha Stewart herself.



I've had an obsession with Bundt cakes ever since I flipped through Sarabeth's Bakery: From My Hands to Yours. She features many a beautiful Bundt cake which I hope to make one day soon. I've also had a can of Pumpkin Puree in the cupboard since November so I decided to combine both my desire for a Bundt cake with my love for pumpkin flavored desserts.

This cake is delicious! It came out moist, flavorful and beautiful. I think a scoop of rum flavored ice cream would be a wonderful accompaniment to this cake.



Spiced Pumpkin Bundt Cake

Ingredients
Nonstick cooking spray
4 cups cake flour, plus more for dusting
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons pumpkin spice
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup canned pumpkin puree
Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray a Bundt pan (14-cup) with cooking spray. Dust with cake flour. Tap out the excess flour.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin spice. Set aside.

3. Beat butter and brown sugar together in an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Reduce speed to low and beat in flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk. Beat until just combined. Add pumpkin puree and beat until mixed. Pour batter into prepared Bundt cake pan.

4. Bake cake until golden, about 55 minutes. Use a wooden skewer, inserted into the center of the cake to check for done-ness. The skewer should come out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Once cooled, carefully turn the cake onto the rack to completely cool. Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.