Flourless Chocolate Cookies

I had a business meeting at a fancy hotel recently. They had a tray of assorted desserts and treats displayed and some of them were gluten free. I typically never try the hotel catered desserts and was not especially drawn to those that were gluten free, but I tried these small flourless chocolate cookies they had out as someone else was raving about them.

OH-MY-GOODNESS - they were decadent. I had two of them (yikes) and set out that evening to discover a recipe to try to create them myself. This version tasted pretty darn similar, but they baked flatter than the ones I had tried.

The batter was very silky and filled with chocolate pieces. I used yummy Guittard chocolate discs so the pieces were larger than typically chocolate chips.

I put Maldon sea salt flakes on some of the cookies and they were definitely my favorites. I'd sprinkle more of them with sea salt next time before baking them. 

I made these on Super Bowl Sunday for an easy to grab dessert treat, but they were so yummy and there were so many of them that I couldn't keep them around the house. I packaged them up to gift to a few people and take to my colleagues to enjoy.

German Chocolate Cake

German chocolate cake is my dad's favorite dessert.  So, when he visited for Thanksgiving, this had to be on the menu -- along with pumpkin and apple pie, of course. I researched a lot of recipes and ended up using the recipe from Tastes Better From Scratch. It does taste better than any other German chocolate cake I have ever had and this was confirmed by my dad who has tasted for more variations of this cake than I.

First I baked the chocolate cakes in spring form pans and then made the chocolate frosting. I just put chocolate frosting between the layers, but in the future I will try using the pecan coconut frosting in the middle in addition to the top as I had extra (and it's SOOOOOO good).

This chocolate frosting recipe was so nice and smooth. 

The pecan coconut frosting came together nicely. I thought it was going to be too runny at first, but it thickened nicely when it cooled down. 

I put the chocolate frosting between the layers and on the outside. I spread the pecan coconut frosting on top and then used the extra to pipe a little design around the sides.  

I typically do not like chocolate cake as it's drier than other cakes, but this cake was moist and flavorful. It was unlike any other chocolate cake recipe I have tried. 

Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes

My mum has made these yummy cupcakes since I was little. It was always a favorite at school birthday celebrations or as a treat at home. 

I'm not the biggest fan of chocolate cake, but these...these cupcakes with the airy chocolate cake and the big glop of cream cheese in the center.  These are amazing. 

I made the chocolate cake batter first and put it in the cupcake papers, then mixed up the cream cheese filling to drop into each cupcake.  These are the ultimate creamy filled cupcakes without having to inject the filling. 

I dropped a heaping tablespoon of the cream cheese-chocolate chip mixture in each one and they are ready to bake.  

Here they are prefectly baked and ready to enjoy. 

The beautiful thing about putting chocolate chips into the cream cheese is that you end up with melted chcolate inside cream cheese INSIDE chocolate cake!  They are especially amazing when they're warm with a nice cold cup of milk. 

Ingredients:

Chocolate cake:

1 C. sugar

1 1/2 C. flour

1/4 C. cocoa

1 t. salt

1t. baking soda

1/2 c. oil

1 T. vinegar (white or apple cider)

1 t. vanilla

Cream cheese filling:

One 8 ox. package of cream cheese

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/3 C. sugar

1 pinch salt

6 oz. chocolate chips

Directions:

Cake: Mix all ingredients well and fill cupcake papers 1/3 to 1/2 full with the cake mixture.

Filling: In a small bowl, combine the cream cheese, egg, sugar and salt. Add the chocolate chips and mix together. 

Drop a large spoonful of the cream cheese-chocolate chip mixture on top of each cupcake in the raw batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until firm. 

Mummy Cupcakes

I haven't done many fun baking projects lately and it had been a while since I had whipped together some buttercream and played with fondant. So, I became a bit inspired over the pre-Halloween weekend.  Last year, I made ghost cupcakes for a friend's halloween party. This year, I thought I'd try these mummy cupcakes.

 I made white chocolate fondant again. While it was pretty simple to knead it together and roll it out, the time intensive part was in cutting all the "bandage" strips and making the mummy faces. 

I made devil's food chocolate cupcakes, vanilla buttercream for the base, some candy eyes and then all the cute little white chocolate bandage strips to make the mummy faces.

They don't look very scary at all, but they're fun to unravel and eat.

Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Hearts

I love shortbread and have made these little shortbread hearts several times before. I usually make shortbread each Christmas with different dried fruit and nuts, but these are fun for Valentine's Day. This is a Martha Stewart recipe and the shortbread itself is very easy to make.  I chilled it overnight and then let the dough come to room temperature the next day.  I used this fun fluted edge heart cutter that I liked more than the straight edge hearts.

I like to make the cookies nice and thick.  This way they aren't thin and crispy and are nice and soft.  The trick is to roll out the dough to a consistent thickness so they bake evenly.

For the chocolate dipping sauce, you just mix some bittersweet chocolate and canola oil together and melt in a double boiler.  I just dredge the edge of the cookie in the chocolate and let them dry on parchment. 

I didn't even let them dry before I grabbed one to have with a cup of coffee this afternoon. YUM.

Chocolate-Espresso Lava Cakes

This dessert has been a staple in my family for the past 10+ years and we decided to make them on New Year's Eve this year.  This is the perfect rich and over indulgent dessert to have on the last day of the year! Plus, with the espresso, they were the perfect pick-me-up to try to keep us awake to ring in the New Year!  I know...it's so lame that I have a hard time staying up that late, but true.

It's a dense cake with a rich chocolate flavor that is intensified by the espresso.  The best part?  The lava!  It has the perfect gooey chocolate center from the melted chocolate chips.

I do like individual desserts and these have to be so everyone has their own portion of molten lava.  You just pile on the chocolate chips in the center of the batter.

Then press them in with the back of a spoon to make sure it melts inside the cake as it bakes.

They puff up a little bit and almost look like chocolate souffles.  But, no, these are rich chocolate cakes that are crispy on the outside edges and filled with hot melted chocolate on the inside. 

Because they are so rich, the addition of the whipped cream is a refreshing way to top it off.  The recipe calls for adding espresso powder to the whipped cream, but I like it plain and just enjoy the addition of the espresso powder in the cake itself. You decide on the whipped cream, but a glass of milk is essential!

Recipe for Chocolate Espresso Lava Cakes

Ingredients for cakes:

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

5 t. instant espresso powder (or instant coffee powder)

1 1/2 t. baking powder

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted

1 cup sugar

1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 1/2 t. vanilla extract

1/4 t. almond extract

12 tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips (about 4 1/2 oz.)

Ingredients for whipped cream:

1 cup chilled heavy whipping cream

3 T. powdered sugar

1 t. espresso powder

Directions for cakes:

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder and baking powder into a medium bowl.  Place the butter in a large bowl; add both sugars and whisk until blended. Whisk in eggs one at a time, then vanilla and almond extracts. Whisk in dry ingredients to wet.  Divide batter among 6-8 greased ovenproof mugs or ramekins and place chocolate chips into the center of each cake and press chips into batter with the back of a spoon. Refrigerate for at least one hour (or up to one day). Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake cakes uncovered until cakes are puffed and crusty and tester inserted into center comes out with thick batter attached.  Place warm ramekins or mugs on a plate to serve with whipped cream.

Directions for whipped cream:

Combine the cream, powdered sugar and espresso powder in a medium bowl and whisk until peaks form. Spoon a generous dollop on top of the cake!

Christening Cupcakes

A friend of mine asked me to make some cupcakes for her daughter's christening this weekend.  I was very honored, of course, and took the challenge on.  I really don't do a lot of baking for order and mainly just bake for fun, family gatherings or to try something new.  So, I have to admit I was a bit nervous to make sure I created something that was special enough and tasted amazing too.  We talked through flavors and decorations and while she thought chocolate would be good, she left it to me to come up with colors and decorations for her. 

I was thinking of doing some fondant or marzipan cut outs in white on a colored buttercream, but I had difficulty finding small fondant cutters in the shape that I was looking for - crosses and doves.  However, at my baking supply store, they do have candy making supplies and I found these great chocolate molds. While it was a little tedious, it was quite easy to do and I love how they turned out.  I melted down my white chocolate pieces in a glass measuring cup in the microwave, poured it into the molds, tapped them to get the bubbles out and let them set for around 10 minutes in the freezer.  Just like the lady at the store said, they popped right out after I took the trays out of the freezer. I made chocolates!

I tried a different chocolate cupcake recipe for these.  I used the Devil's Food Cupcake recipe from my Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book.  I LOVE this recipe compared to others I've tried.  The cake is much more dense and moist and has a nice rich flavor (yes, I had to sample one!).  I made a simple vanilla buttercream frosting with the white chocolate decorations. 

I was so happy I remembered to get a few cupcake bakery boxes to transport them in.  Plus, it makes them seem professional when they're packaged nicely. 

I really like the color of these.  They remind me of the Wedgewood jasperware pottery that I have a small collection of. I hope she likes them!

Jaffa Cupcakes

Aren't these the cutest little clementine oranges you've ever seen? They're not the real thing though. The real oranges are in the bowl in the background. These little cuties are made from marzipan! They were pretty easy and very fun to make. I decided to make these to top some cupcakes I was creating for my little brother's birthday.

He LOVES the English Jaffa Cakes which are these chocolatey-orangey (McVitie's terms) biscuits. We can find them in the U.S. now and I'm always buying him a box for his birthday or Christmas. We visited a cupcake shop together recently and he commented that nobody makes a chocolate-orange combination. So, I vowed to him that I would...and here it is! I made chocolate cupcakes with a homemade orange buttercream and topped them with my homemade marzipan crafted into tiny little clementine oranges.

Overall, they turned out quite good, but I did have a few hiccups (I mean learning experiences) along the way.

First of all, I think I filled my cupcake papers just a little too much. So, while they rose nicely and baked perfectly, they were a little too full and some of them stuck to the cupcake tin a little. They don't even look that full, but it's best to keep them only 1/2-2/3 full.

I also tried using these new cupcake papers called "If You Care." They are unbleached, which I thought was good and while I was trying to be a good environmentally conscious baker, they didn't work out so well. While they boast "better non-stick performance" that apparently not only meant they wouldn't stick to the pan, but also that the cake wouldn't stick to the paper. The cupcakes that I baked in these papers, were coming away from the paper and looked awful. I was lucky that I baked half of them in just plain white (yes, probably bleached) cupcake papers, but they turned out better (the one on the right).

Ok, so that's my venting about the cupcakes out of the way. Now onto the fun part - the little marzipan clementines.

I started with my smallest packet of frozen marzipan that I made from scratch earlier in the year. I thawed it in the refrigerator overnight and then let it come to room temperature the next day. As I did previously when I made the marzipan tulips, I reconstituted the marzipan using a little light corn syrup and it came together and was ready to mold in no time.

The first step was to make it orange, so I used an actual clementine orange as my subject and used AmeriColor Electric Orange (163) that was cut into the marzipan before I kneaded it. After having green and pink hands for a few days after coloring fondant for my birthday cake, I decided to wear some gloves to knead the orange color into the marzipan.

I was pretty happy with this nice bright orange color and molded it into a log first.

I cut the log into eight somewhat equal pieces.

Then, I cut each of the eight pieces in two and this was the size I used for rolling them into 16 little oranges.

One tip that I almost forgot about (and had to re-roll a few) was to place them on plastic wrap after molding them as it's pretty sticky.

I love this idea that I read about. To give the oranges their stem, I used whole cloves with the bloom from the middle removed.

Then they were rolled over my ceramic spice grater for the "dimpled" effect. However, I find that marzipan (especially homemade) has a little texture to it anyway from the ground almonds.

Here they are, my heaping bowl full of marzipan oranges. Now onto decorating the cupcakes...

I ended up making my own recipe for the orange buttercream. It ended up having a nice light orange flavor, but not too overpowering (see recipe below).

I piped on the frosting as I thought it would look nicer with the orange zest in it. While I definitely need to work on my piping skills (and am trying desperately to get into that course in culinary school), this was a little more difficult to pipe because it had a looser consistency with the orange juice I added in. Perhaps, I should have added a bit more powdered sugar to hold it together more, but it worked out just fine. I chilled the cupcakes overnight and it held together nicely. I just let them come to room temperature before I placed the marzipan oranges on top and served them.

While I learned a few things along the way, I was quite happy with my Jaffa cupcakes. My brother was too, but admitted that he felt I had gone through way too much trouble for him to just inhale it in less than a minute.

Recipe for Orange Buttercream:

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter

4 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1-2 teaspoons fresh grated orange peel

4-6 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice

Beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add in the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat on low (so it doesn't fly everywhere). Beat in the vanilla and orange peel. Add the orange juice a few tablespoons at a time for taste and consistency. Note: I used a little over 6 tablespoons and it had a nice flavor, but the consistency was a little loose.