Magic Chocolate Flan Cake

Today's sweet treat is really special: Magic Chocolate Flan Cake. Yum! The name itself is good enough to eat.

In this recipe, tender, homemade flan is perched on a scrumptious layer of rich chocolate cake drizzled with warm caramel sauce. Built in a Bundt pan, this mouthwatering dessert is not only elegant, but "magical" too. First, you coat the bottom of the pan with a thin layer of the caramel; next, you add the cake batter; last of all, you pour in the liquid flan. Then, while the dessert bakes in the oven, the cake and flan layers miraculously swap places! Some say this process is purely science, but I like to think it's my little kitchen elves hard at work. :)





I won't mislead you--this wasn't the easiest baking project I've ever done. I started mixing ingredients at 8 in the morning, and we ate our first piece around 11 PM. There's also quite a bit of patience required--not to mention dishes to be washed--but trust me, the end result is completely worth the effort. You just can't beat the "wow" factor of this marvelous cake once it's sitting on a serving tray in front of guests. Just be sure to save a slice for yourself!

Happy baking!

Layer 1: Caramel Sauce

Magic Chocolate Flan Cake
From Cook's Country magazine, January 2013 issue

Cake
1/2 C caramel sauce or topping
1/2 C plus 2 T all-purpose flour
1/3 C cocoa
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
6 T unsalted butter
1/2 C buttermilk

Layer 2: Chocolate Cake

1/2 C sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Flan
2 (14-oz) cans sweetened condensed milk (Borden Eagle Brand recommended)
2 1/2 C whole milk
6 oz. cream cheese
6 large eggs plus 4 large yolks
1 tsp. vanilla extract

FOR THE CAKE: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 12-cup nonstick Bundt pan. Microwave caramel until easily pourable, about 30 seconds. Pour into pan to coat bottom. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in bowl; set aside. Combine chocolate and butter in large bowl and microwave at 50 percent power, stirring occasionally, until melted, 2 to 4 minutes. Whisk buttermilk, sugar, eggs, and vanilla into chocolate mixture until incorporated. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Pour batter over caramel in prepared pan.

Layer 3: Homemade Flan

FOR THE FLAN: Process all ingredients in blender until smooth, about 1 minute. Gently pour flan over cake batter in Bundt pan and place pan in large roasting pan. Place roasting pan on oven rack and pour warm water into roasting pan until it reaches half-way up side of Bundt pan. Bake until toothpick inserted in cake comes out clean and flan registers 180 degrees, 75 to 90 minutes. Transfer Bundt pan to wire rack. Let cool to room temperature, about 2 hours, then refrigerate until set, at least 8 hours. (Remove roasting pan from oven once water has cooled.)

Place bottom third of Bundt pan in bowl of hot tap water for 1 minute. Invert completely flat cake platter, place platter over top of Bundt pan, and gently turn platter and pan upside down. Slowly remove pan, allowing caramel to drizzle over top of cake. Serve.

Valentine Cake & Sprinkles Snacks

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

This year, say "I love you" with a perfectly delicious, oh-so-sweet batch of Valentine Cake & Sprinkles Snacks! Remember making puppy chow or Muddy Buddies as a kid? That's what these little guys are like--just swap the peanut butter and chocolate for white confection and cover with powdered sugar and cake mix! Yummy!

It's easy to love these tiny snacks. They're easy on the wallet, since you likely have a lot of the ingredients on hand. They're simple and super fast, so they're great if you're in a time crunch. Best of all, you can tailor these treats to suit any occasion: pink and blue sprinkles for a baby shower, snowflake sprinkles and red velvet cake mix for Christmas, etc. I'd love to hear all about the fun twists and turns on which you take this recipe!

 

Divvy them up to classmates and co-workers in little cellophane bags tied with pink ribbon or take out boxes covered in shiny heart stickers. Toss them together with pretzels and marshmallows for a party mix worthy of any church gathering or Cub Scout activity.

The original recipe for this goody comes from my mom, who found it here. Please check out the site, as it has so many cute, cute, cute recipes and photos! In the end, I tinkered with the original recipe a bit, based on the upcoming holiday and what I had in the cupboard. Here we go:

Everything you need (minus the white candy melts--oops!)

Valentine Cake & Sprinkles Snacks

5 C Chex cereal
5 oz. white candy melts
5 oz. white chips
3/4 C cake mix (I used Funfetti, but any white cake mix will do)
1/4 C powdered sugar
Heart sprinkles (I used Wilton Micro Hearts)

Pour cereal into large bowl.

Melt white candy melts and white chips in microwave, stirring well. Be sure chocolate doesn't scorch. Carefully fold white confection mixture into cereal until cereal is completely coated. Generously shake sprinkles over mixture, using same folding technique.

 

Pour cake mix and powdered sugar into gallon-sized zip-top bag and shake well. Pour cereal mixture into bag and shake until cereal is completely coated.

Chocolate Cake Batter Cocktail

Chocolate milk in a fun glass? Nope, it's a chocolate cake batter cocktail!

As a little one growing up in my mother's kitchen, I spent a good chunk of my childhood measuring flour and sugar, mixing dough with a wooden spoon, spilling flour and sugar, and generally getting in my mom's way. We would always use these yellow and green Tupperware measuring cups and this beautiful cream-colored ceramic mixing bowl with pink and blue trim, which was passed down from my great-grandmother.

Learning to bake in my mom's kitchen!

Like any kid, however, I knew the best part about baking was licking the spoon once our cakes and cookies were in the oven. (These were the days before we all bit our nails over salmonella poisoning possibilities.) Now, as an adult, I'm able to resist the temptation to eat cake batter right out of the bowl. But that doesn't stop me from enjoying a good chocolate cake batter cocktail.

That's right...I said chocolate cake batter cocktail. It's love at first sip. Taking my inspiration from the Cake Batter Martini at How Sweet It Is, I mixed together a lovely little concoction made of rum, creme de cacao, heavy whipping cream, Godiva chocolate liqueur, and--you guessed it--UV Cake vodka! Pour it all into a dainty martini glass rimmed with cream cheese frosting and nonpareils, and you've got the answer to all of your sinful cravings.


Now, I must warn you--as sweet and cutesy as this liquid indulgence seems, it packs a heavy punch. Slurping and chugging are not advised, and please enjoy in moderation. Feel free to mix and match your flavorings, too--spiced rum with buttercream frosting and chocolate sprinkles, for instance. Here's my recipe so you can try it out and decide what your tastebuds like best:

Chocolate Cake Batter Cocktail

1 oz. rum
1 1/2 oz. UV Cake vodka
1 1/2 oz. creme de cacao
1/2 oz. Godiva chocolate liqueur
1 oz. heavy whipping cream
Frosting of your choice
Rainbow sprinkles or nonpareils

Generously fill cocktail glass with ice. Pour ice into cocktail shaker. Dab frosting around rim of glass using a small spoon or spatula. Pour sprinkles onto a plate or shallow dish and press frosted glass rim into sprinkles. Gently press sprinkles with your finger to ensure they stick. Pour remaining ingredients into cocktail shaker and shake together until the outside of the shaker condenses. Strain into cocktail glass.

Zooper Cute Carousel Cake

Hey all! What's baking?

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates--my summer has been crazy busy and chock-full of travel, work, and family events. Hopefully, this is the start of a more normal blogging routine.

Earlier this summer, we threw my adorable nephew a fantastic, fun-and-food-filled first birthday party. My in-laws prepared the majority of the main meal: cheesesteaks, hoagies, pizza, salad, etc. Luckily for me, I had the honor of baking the best little birthday boy ever his first little birthday cake ever!

I wanted my nephew's cake to be something cute, whimsical, and representative of all of the joys of turning one year old. After discovering these adorable cupcakes on my Betty Crocker recipe app, I knew exactly what I would bake: a giant carousel cake complete with rainbow sprinkles and adorable animal cracker figures!

My nephew celebrating with a slice of cake

I decided to wing it and recreate this edible merry-go-round on a larger scale using my favorite cake and frosting recipes, allowing for one white cake layer and one chocolate layer. However, any good cake and frosting combo will do (even store-bought or packaged mixes), so try this with strawberry, coconut, red velvet, or Funfetti cake and dress it up with chocolate or cream cheese frosting. The chocolate pudding layer can also be substituted with custard, extra frosting, or another pudding flavor.

 The sky truly is the limit with this super fun cake. I used plain Barnum's Animal Crackers for my creation, but it's more than OK to use iced animal crackers, animal-shaped cookie cut-outs, or even plastic animal figurines instead. Remember: carousels (and this cake) are meant to be fun and playful; let your creativity take over and shine.

Zooper Cute Carousel Cake 

Ingredients:

1 10-inch white cake

1 10-inch chocolate cake

1 3.75-oz. instant chocolate pudding

Frosting (any color)

1 2.125-oz. box animal crackers

Pretzel rods

1 C semisweet chocolate chips, melted

Multicolored sprinkles, jellybeans, chocolate-coated candies, or other decorative candies

Plastic drinking straws

10"x10" piece scrapbook paper

Place chocolate cake on cake tray or cake carrier. Prepare chocolate pudding according to package directions. Spread thin layer of pudding on top of chocolate cake (there will be extra pudding). Gently center white cake on top of pudding layer. Spread frosting over top and sides of entire cake. Gently shake sprinkles over top and sides.

That's the way the cake crumbles!

Open box of animal crackers and discard broken animal crackers. Arrange whole animal crackers on a clean baking tray face-down. Melt chocolate chips in microwave, about 1 minute. Working one at a time and using a small spoon, dab a small amount of melted chocolate onto the back of each animal cracker and immediately place a pretzel rod vertically onto the chocolate. Press gently to ensure pretzels stick firmly to chocolate. Let completely dry for 20-30 minutes.

Once animal figures are dry, arrange them in an evenly-spaced, circular pattern around the perimeter of the top cake layer. Animal faces should be facing the outside of the cake while the pretzel rods should be toward the center of the cake. Decorate with jellybeans, chocolate-coated candies, etc. as you wish.

Use a compass to draw as large a circle as possible on scrapbook paper. Cut out circle. Cut a slit into the middle of the circle. Fold paper into a cone/tent shape and tape together. Tape plastic straws to center and sides of paper tent. (These will be the "support beams" for the carousel tent.) Carefully place paper tent on top of cake, gently sticking straws deep enough into the cake so that the tent will not fall over.

Voila--you've got a zooper cute carousel cake!

My First Cake Sale!

I'm so excited, guys 'n' gals! I just sold my first pre-ordered, full-sized cake! It was a delectable devil's food cake with chocolate ganache and marshmallow cream filling for a woman who enjoyed my cupcake version of this sweet treat so much, she just had to have a larger version for her birthday.

 

I am very grateful for this opportunity to showcase my baking and get a little boost into the baking business. It makes me happy to know that my cake is being used for a special occasion and that in some small way, I may have brought a bit of joy to someone. Hopefully the cake was a hit and they'll be back for more! :)

Italian Rainbow Cookies

Hello fellow bakers and cakers!

Since I was a little kid delighting in bowls of Neapolitan ice cream in front of the TV, I've carried on a love affair with multicolored, layered desserts. Whether it's a refreshing yogurt parfait, a pretty diamond-shaped Girls Day mochi, or my mom's famous fruit trifle, I've always been enamored by the dainty, whimsical presentation of layered sweets.

And that is exactly why I have been dreaming of Italian Rainbow Cookies for months. These flashy petite treats contain all the goodness of almonds, dark chocolate, and fruit preserves baked into seven adorable layers, that, when stacked together, resemble the Italian flag. This unique combination of main ingredients makes for a complex and sophisticated cookie with a distinctly European flavor. It's the type of thing you can picture your archetypal Italian-American grandmother baking with love for family get-togethers.

So how did I sink my sweet tooth into this fanciful, half-cookie, half-cake, you ask? It all started when I was talking to my mom about the different desserts we bake fresh at T.O.P.S, and she suggested creating a "signature" dessert for which our restaurant could become known. Before I could say "Jumping Jellybeans!" Mom was mailing me all manner of sweet inspiration, both from local newspaper clippings and her own recipe collection.

One recipe for Neapolitan Refrigerator Cookies, cut from Betty Shimabukuro's "By Request" column in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, stood out in particular. Although this recipe was for a tri-colored slice-and-bake cookie, the column also mentioned a more elaborate, almond-fruit preserve cookie enrobed in melted chocolate.The idea stuck in my mind.

A few weeks later, I stumbled upon the lovely Italian Rainbow Cookie Cake on one of my new favorite blogs, Always Order Dessert. I was intrigued to learn that the blog's author, Alejandra Ramos, got her foot in the door of the baking business by selling dozens of these extraordinary cakes. My curiosity was piqued; this kind of stuff just had to be good.

I finally realized Fate was bringing me together with these awe-inspiring cookies when I re-opened my May 2011 issue of Bon Appetit ("The Italy Issue") and found yet another recipe for them! You can find their recipe for Italian Rainbow Cookies, which I ultimately used, here.

To tell you the truth, I was nervous about baking Rainbow Cookies. With all of the beautiful examples that had come before me, I had a lot to live up to. In between all of the mixing, melting, freezing, stacking, pressing, and my lone 9"x13" pan, I was also looking at an all-day baking project. And most of all, Steve, my primary taste tester, isn't much of a marzipan or almond extract person, so I wasn't sure he'd go wild for them. In the end, however, the cookies baked up splendidly and I had a blast! The cookies were dense and moist, with a slightly spongy texture and nice, even layers. Although I don't see myself making these glittery little gems on a regular basis, they might reappear in my kitchen over the holidays. As they say in the cooking world, it was love at first bite.

Boozey Baking: Kahlua-Vodka Cake (Black Russian Cake)

I have been in one big baking frenzy as of late, and it all began with one of the sweetest introductions I've ever had: someone recommended that Steve and I try the delectable new UV Cake. Manufactured by Minneapolis' own Phillips Distilling Company, UV Cake is a brand new white cake-flavored vodka that is as sensational as it is "sinsational." It smells just like a sweet piece of birthday treat--and tastes even better. As soon as I took a sip, I knew I had to bake with it.

UV Cake Vodka on the left and Kahlua on the right

Now here was the problem: being neither a connoisseur of premium liquors nor a heavy drinker, I'd never before done any boozey baking! My recipe collection was bare!

After receiving encouragement from my hubby and my friend Alysha over at loVeLySh, I started searching for a good vodka cake recipe online. There were recipes for White Russian Cakes and Harvey Wallbanger Cakes; there were recipes for fruit-flavored vodkas and for mixing vodka with chocolate chips. But my baking instincts said to keep looking, to find the perfect mix of ingredients that would place the UV Cake on center stage without masking the vodka's innate yumminess. That's when I found this outstanding little number from cdkitchen.com. Bellissimo!

This cake truly made me happy while I was baking it. (And no, it's not because I was drinking and baking!) It was so easy to prepare, I had little to no interruptions, and the ingredients were all close at hand. Besides, there's something simply wonderful about a heated glaze or frosting--like a rich, silky ganache for cupcake dipping or a mudslide of molten sugar cascading over a pan of crumbly cake doughnuts--that you simply don't achieve by beating powdered sugar and butter together for cold, fluffy cake topping.

The delicious

As the contents of my icing pot cooked and caramelized, their scrumptious scent wafted into the air, conjuring fond memories of old-time candy shops in places like Stillwater and Des Moines, watching mustachioed candymakers prepare belts of taffy and knock apart slabs of peanut brittle. I closed my eyes, placed a tiny sample of the icing on my tongue, and immediately tasted a harmonius blend of buttery toffee and spiked sugar that just blew me away.

The final verdict? Outstanding! While this cake may be a little strong for children and non-drinkers, it is beautifully soft, spongy, and a nice accompaniment to coffee or tea. Just as the cake and icing go together remarkably, so do the Kahlua and UV Cake (although any good vodka should do the trick). About a week later, the cake has kept surprisingly well in the fridge, so best of all, I can continue to share it with family and friends around me.

Tomato Sauce Cake

First and foremost, today I'd like to wish my wonderful husband, Steve, the BIGGEST and BEST birthday ever! On Sunday, we threw him a fun-filled surprise party, complete with friends, family, eats, and sweets. Happy Birthday, Honey!

It's lucky that we had the party when we did, because here I am, two days later, stuck in bed with an awful cold. After spending the past thirty hours either sleeping or watching movies on Lifetime, I dragged myself downstairs and attempted to salvage part of the day by blogging. 

So here we go--this is how I finally got around to writing about a heritage recipe for Tomato Sauce Cake belonging to my Grandma T. As a child, I grew up identifying my grandmother with many warm, joyful things: the aged, pea green futon I'd take naps on at her house in the afternoon, the thrill of watching her soybean plants clamber toward the sky, the unbeatable taste of a lunch made up of chicken noodle soup and saloon pilots with guava jelly for dessert. If there is one thing I learned from my grandma, it's the philosophy of simple goodness: that the best things in life are the little things, and that a recipe need not be frou-frou to make an impact.

That's where the Tomato Sauce Cake comes into play. Sweet, moist, and with a tender crumb, this cake imparts a delicious--albeit puzzling--flavor. Resting amongst the branches of pumpkin, spice, and carrot cakes in the baking family tree, it's no wonder that Tomato Sauce Cake is sometimes referred to as "Mystery Cake," according to the good folks at www.foodtimeline.org.

When I first discussed the recipe with my friend Frannie, she mentioned that it seemed like an old Depression-era recipe, the kind of thing home bakers would make when chocolate and cream were luxuries. The idea made sense. Grandma's recipe lists very basic ingredients, things that most housewives of her generation would keep on hand. There are no nuts, raisins, or coconut flakes to dress it up. While other similar recipes call for a can of tomato soup, my grandmother's calls for watered-down tomato sauce. Although I imagine this cake would be terrific when topped with cream cheese frosting, all I gave it was a slight dusting of powdered sugar, because Grandma didn't include a frosting recipe. Come to think of it, most of my grandmother's cakes don't have frosting.

Here's the recipe. It just lists the ingredients necessary, as well as the baking time and temperature. In conducting previous cookery research, I've discovered that many old-time recipes (we're talking colonial America here) didn't include detailed instructions for preparing dishes because it was assumed (due to traditional gender and family roles) that the reader was skilled enough to know most prep techniques and to understand the implications of a recipe. I'm guessing the concept is similar with Tomato Sauce Cake--perhaps my grandmother jotted down the recipe from a friend or neighbor, simply writing down the ingredients because the order and method of preparation were inherent to her. Whatever the reason, she deserves to be thanked for this recipe and for teaching me the value of sweet simplicity. Thanks, Grandma!!

Tomato Sauce Cake

1 C margarine or butter

2 C sugar

4 eggs

1 8-oz. can tomato sauce blended with 3/4 C water

3 C flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 T baking powder

3/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.