Slab Cakes - Chocolate Chip

 

Long time no blog! Haha. Time flies and stands still when you’re in the middle of a pandemic. And for some reason there is so much to do. I have been on a bit of a break from work and am trying out a ton of slab cake recipes that I found. The first one is a chocolate one and boy was it delicious and so moist and fluffy!

Ingredients for the Cake…

1/2 cup of margarine, melted and cooled

1 1/3 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup sour cream

Ingredients for the Chocolate Icing…

1 cup of margarine, softened

2 cups icing sugar

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/4 cup milk

2 tbsp. or more of mini chocolate chips or sprinkles for topping 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x13 inch pan. Line with parchment, leaving a 2 inch overhang on long sides. Grease parchment.

                                                        

Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.

Combine eggs and granulated sugar in the bowl and beat on high speed until thick and pale, about 4 minutes.

Add flour mixture; beat just to combine.

Add butter and vanilla; beat to combine.

Add sour cream; beat until smooth.

Scrape batter into prepared pan.

Bake until top springs back when lightly touched and a toothpick comes out clean and batter free about 30 to 35 minutes.

Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes.

Using parchment overhangs, lift out of pan and let cool completely on rack.

For the frosting…

Beat together margarine, icing sugar, cocoa, and milk on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

Spread over top of cake.

Decorate with chocolate sprinkles or I used mini chocolate chips which were so delicious.

 

Homemade Chocolates

Happy Chinese New Eve. It’s tradition to have your big meal on the eve so that you can have leftovers on the actual New Years day which is tomorrow so that you don’t have to cook and just be lazy. There is so much going on. There is Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, and Family Day. I couldn’t figure out which to blog about. I was inspired by last week’s revelation that Valentine’s Day was coming up but then there are these other things that we have blogged about in the past as well. Maybe I’ll do posts all month about them even though the holidays have passed.

Let’s do a Valentine’s post. I have recently taken up chocolate making in isolation, haha. Chocolates are always a tasty Valentine’s Day treat. I remembered as a kid I had made chocolate covered cherries so I decided to try it out. I bought a couple of molds on Amazon and then I went for it.

                                                         

I melted some semi-sweet chocolate then I used a food safe brush which I also bought on Amazon and I painted the outside layer of the molds. Then I placed the mold in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes until they were all hardened.

Next I placed a maraschino cherry into each of the molds and spooned a little bit of the cherry juice on top.

Lastly I cover each of the chocolate with more of the melted semi-sweet chocolate and then leveled them all off. Put them back into the fridge for at least 15 minutes. Try and keep them in there for a longer amount of time. An hour or so would be great.

Once they have been hardened in the fridge, then knock them out of the molds and place on a place and enjoy. If you have more than one mold then do a few at a time but if not, then repeat the process as many times as you want after you knock the first batch of cherries out.

Next I tried this but with cream fillings. I remember when I was little I had some yummy cream filled chocolates that my Aunt would bring from the States. They were so yummy so I am going to try these out.

You can use the same molds. Now for these, you can do semi-sweet or milk chocolate or even white chocolate. Your choice.

I found a base cream recipe. It’s basically a vanilla cream and then you can add flavourings. Some yummy flavours would be lemon, mocha, white chocolate, cherry, strawberry, orange, caramel (you can even melt caramels and just pour some in like a Rolo), coffee, vanilla, and mint. Those are just a few. I’m sure I could think up more. So many options but which one to start with. Maybe a Rolo type caramel one and two crowd pleasers like orange and mocha?

Cream Filling Recipe:

½ cup of butter

4 oz. of cream cheese

4 ½ cups of icing sugar

1 tsp. of cornstarch

Cream the butter and the cream cheese.

Slowly add the icing sugar and beat until fluffy.

Separate into a couple bowls and experiment with flavours.

I put about 3 tsp. of orange extract in one along with the zest from 1 orange and mixed that all up for an orange filling.

 

I also made a chocolate cream. I added about ¼ cup of cocoa and 2 tbsp. of melted semi-sweet chocolate to the base and then added in 2 tsp. of vanilla as well.

Then place them into your prepared chocolate molds and cover and harden.

Now taste test. Divine! These were gone pretty fast.

                                                              

Classic Brownies

 

What day is it? I totally have lost track. Everyday seems like it is the same as before and they all run into each other nowadays. Haha.

We are just starting November and the weather has gotten colder and we are all inside hibernating once again. I have been trying out some new recipes, the fluffy muffins from last time for example, and now I have tried out another, classic brownies. These are the brownies that are similar to the ones from the box that we are all used to having in our childhood. They are fudgy on the inside and crackly crunchy on the top. Take a look and make a batch to have on a cozy day inside with a nice big glass of cold milk.

Classic Brownie Recipe

You will need…

1 ¼ cup of flour

¾ tsp. of baking powder

½ tsp. of salt

1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

12 tbsp. of butter

2 cups of sugar

4 eggs

1tbsp. of vanilla

Butter a glass baking dish, 13x9 in size.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a large glass measuring cup or bowl in the microwave, stirring often.

Whisk the sugar into the chocolate mix and then the eggs.

Then fold the flour mix in this mixture in three separate additions.

 

Give the batter a good stir and then spoon into the glass dish.

                                                               

Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Cool completely, about 2 hours and then cut and serve.

Better than Robert Redford Part 2

Alrighty, today it’s part two of our Robert Redford dessert.

So when we met last, we had made the crust and puddings. Today we start off by making the cream cheese layer. Beat one brick of cream cheese (8 ounces) along with 1 cup of icing sugar. Whip up until smooth. Fold in about 2 cups of Cool Whip (that’s half of a 500ml container).

Spread this cream cheese mixture over the baked and cooled crust.

Now give the vanilla pudding a stir and spread that over the cream cheese layer.

After that, stir the chocolate pudding and spread that over the vanilla pudding layer.

If you plan on eating this right away you can do the final layer and topping now, if not, you can wait until you are ready to eat it. I made this over three days so I waited.

When you are ready, spread a nice thick layer of Cool Whip over the top. The remaining container from the cream cheese filling wasn’t quite enough so I actually used almost half of another 500ml container.

Finally use a vegetable peeler and peel a block of semi sweet chocolate. I used Bakers squares. Cut and serve. This was delicious. People had seconds and even thirds! Divine. 

Better than Robert Redford Cake

I bet you are intrigued by the title. Before we get to that, Happy October. September flew by as has all these months and weeks, haha.

This week we’re trying a new recipe. My mom found it in her recipe box. She first made this about 20 years ago and it is a recipe of my grandmother. We are making Better than Robert Redford cake. This cake involves pudding, chocolate, and whipped cream. It also has five layers of goodness.

I’m making this cake a little differently. It does take a little while as there are a few steps so I started yesterday and will show you what I have so far and then share with you the rest and the finished product next week. I want to have the cake ready for Friday so two days in advance is pretty good for timing.

So here we go…

For the crust part of the cake you will need…

1 cup of flour

1 cup of crumbled graham wafer crumbs or chopped walnuts (your choice; we have a nut allergy)

½ cup of melted butter

Mix all these things together and then press in a buttered 13x9 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

                                                         

Allow to cool and cover before refrigerating.

I also did the pudding in advance. It is instant pudding that you have to use but I always worry about things setting.

So you’re not going to quite follow the box instructions.

Make the puddings in two plastic sealable containers.

                                                      

For the vanilla, use two of the big 153 gram boxes and add two cups of milk. Whisk for two minutes then put in the fridge.

                                   

                                             

The chocolate pudding comes in a 170 gram box so use two of those and add the same amount of milk and whisk and put that in the fridge as well.

                                              

That’s part one. Come back next week to see the finished product.