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.

                                                              

Black Forest Cake

For the next few weeks I am going to do a mini theme; that theme is cake! Who doesn’t love cake? Over the Summer and time at home, I have been trying out cakes that I haven’t had time for before. One of my absolute favorites is Black Forest Cake. I love the whipped cream mixed with the dark chocolate cake. I’ve never had the time to make one before so I thought I would give is a try. Here we go…

Make sure you have time to do this as there are lots of steps.

You will need…

Filling

2 cups of canned cherry filling

Whipped Cream:

¼ cup of sugar

1tbsp. of cornstarch

3 cups of heavy cream

1 ½ tsp. of vanilla extract

Cake:

I used my go to chocolate devil’s food cake recipe for this…

½ cups of cocoa powder

1 ½ cups of boiling hot water

1 tsp. of baking soda

½ tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. of salt

1 ½ cups of flour

½ heaping cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 tsp. of instant coffee

10 tbsp. of softened butter

1 ½ cups of brown sugar

3 eggs

½ cup of sour cream

1 tsp. of vanilla

Butter and powder with cocoa powder, two 9 inch cake pans and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all of your dry ingredients in one bowl.

Then in a glass measuring cup, add in the boiling hot water, chocolate chips, instant coffee, and cocoa powder and stir until all is melted and dissolved.

In your mixer's bowl, cream the butter and then add the sugar until fluffy. Slowly add in the eggs one at a time. Then add in the sour cream and vanilla and beat until it is all incorporated.

Now on low, add in a third of your flour mix, then half of the chocolate repeat until all is added. Give it a final stir at the end to make sure everything is mixed in.

Divide evenly into the cake pans and bake for about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

For this cake, I needed three layers so what I did since I only had two pans was pre divide the batter three ways and then I baked the first two. After they came out I washed the pan and re-powdered and buttered and lined it and baked the  third layer. They will be a bit thinner than your regular cake but put together it will look like a big layer cake.

Now back to the Black Forest Cake.

So after baking the cakes and letting them cool completely, I started on the rest of the cake elements.

You can be super elaborate with your filling. I wanted to keep it simple so I bought a can of cherry pie filling and I strained the cherry goo from the cherries. I had a measuring cup of cherry syrupy goo and then a bowl full of mashed cherries with a little bit of syrup on them.

On all of the layers of the chocolate cakes, I poked some holes (not all the way through) with chopsticks and I brushed on some of that cherry goo and I really saturated the layer especially the middle and bottom ones. Let those sit.

For the whipping cream, I whisked the sugar and the cornstarch together in a small saucepan and then I whisked in ½ cup of cream. Bring to a simmer whisking it constantly. Once it thickens take the mixture off the burned and allow it to cool about 30 minutes.

                                     

While that is finishing cooling, whip 2 ½ cups of cream and vanilla on low speed until frothy looking. Then increase the speed and whip this mixture until it starts to thicken. Now slowly add in the cooled cornstarch mixture until soft peaks begin to form.

                                     

Now to assemble the cake. This can be a bit messy. On your plate or platter, place on of your layers of cake down. Spread ½ cup of the whipped cream on it and then on top of that spoon half of the mashed cherries. Now place another layer of the cake on top of that one and repeat the same process but use up all of the cherries.

               

Once all of your layers are on, use the rest of the whipped cream to “ice” your cake. You can shave some chocolate or what I did was melt semi-sweet chocolate chips the day before and cut it up into little bits and put them all over the side of the cake.

Top the cake with some more of the chocolate, I made a little circular mound (about 6-8 around the cake) and then topped that with a maraschino cherry.

 Slice and serve. You want to eat this sooner rather than later so the whipped cream doesn’t lose it’s stiffness.

Nice Cream

Happy August! It’s been a hot one so far and what is better on a hot day than ice cream! Today we have a healthier option so you can have more of it! Take a look at Nicole’s nice cream that she made not too long ago on one of our hot Summer days.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Nice Cream

6 bananas, chopped and frozen
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup peanut butter (I used natural, unsalted)
Salt
1/4 cup Milk of choice (optional, for consistency)

Slice the bananas and freeze at least overnight.

Place all ingredients into a high powered blender or a food processor and blend on high until smooth. In a high power blender like a Vitamix, you may not need the milk, but will probably need it in a food processor.

If you like soft serve, you can eat right away. Otherwise scoop it into a freezer safe container and put in the freezer to harden. Depending on how long you freeze it, you may want to leave it out for a few minutes so it’s easier to scoop.

Add your favourite toppings and enjoy!

Notes:
- Can easily substitute almond butter or any other nut or seed butter.
- You probably shouldn’t use a regular blender as blending the frozen banana can be really hard on the motor. If you don’t have a high power blender, use a food processor.