I finally tried my last recipe from my pile that has been on our breakfast nook for years. It’s a Barefoot Contessa recipe that my mom cut out for me. It’s a Valentine’s recipe that she calls Chocolate Ganache Heart Cake and makes in a heart shaped pan. I just used a 9″ round cake pan. I also modified the recipe to use real ingredients…instead of 2 cups of Hershey’s syrup! I used a combo of homemade hot fudge and cocoa powder and cane sugar as a substitute. I also just kept the cake in the pan when I poured the ganache on top to make it easier/less messy. Plus I didn’t want to waste any of the ganache 🙂

This turned out awesome!! I could not stop taking little tastes of it all afternoon/evening 😛  I think I’ll be paying for it today. But it is just so good. I can’t have this around me too often. Justin and Rebecca (and Abram 😉 gave it great reviews as well. It’s a dense, chocolaty, moist, gooey cake. Perfect topped with homemade chocolate and/or vanilla ice cream (Justin had his with both last night :). I’ll post the recipe the way I made it.

Chocolate Ganache Cake

1 stick unsalted butter at room temp
1 1/2 cups organic cane sugar
4 large eggs
8 oz. homemade chocolate sauce
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 cup organic AP flour

For the Ganache:
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 oz. good semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 tsp. instant coffee granules

Heat oven to 325. Butter and flour a 9″ cake pan (I always line mine with parchment paper to be sure the cake doesn’t stick).

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Mix in the hot fudge, cocoa powder  and vanilla. Add the flour. Mix until just combined. Don’t overbeat. Pour into the pan and bake about 45 minutes, until just set in the middle. Let cool thoroughly in the pan.

For the ganache, heat the cream, chocolate and coffee in a double boiler just until the chocolate melts and the ganache is smooth.

Place the cake upside down on a wire rack and pour the warm glaze evenly over the top. Transfer to a serving plate. Or just keep it in the pan and spread the ganache over top.

Do not refrigerate the cake after it’s glazed.

After making thin mint cookies last week I decided it would be fun to experiment with other cookie remakes. The chocolate mint reminded me of Keebler Grasshopper cookies. Before we started eating real food Justin ate those quite often. He also enjoyed the deluxe grahams. So yesterday I did a play on those. I made chocolate covered grahams and chocolate mint covered grahams. So delicous! And much healthier than something you’ll eat out of a box. No HFCS. No hydrogenated oils. No vegetable oils. No refined sugars. Love it!

Homemade Deluxe Grahams and Deluxe Minty Grahams

Graham Crackers

2 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup cane sugar or sucanat
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon (you can use less. I like it with a lot)
6 Tbsp. honey
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup butter or coconut oil (I generally use 1/4 cup of each), melted
Chocolate Coating

12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate
1/3 cup cream
peppermint oil (optional)

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Graham Crackers:

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the wet and mix until a ball of dough forms. If the dough is too try add more honey or butter/oil.

Split dough in half. Roll each half on parchment paper. Cut into squares with a pizza cutter. Place parchment paper on two baking sheets. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. Turn off oven. Leave crackers in the oven about 10 minutes to crisp. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

Chocolate Coating:

Melt the chocolate and cream in a double boiler. Add a few drops of peppermint oil if you want chocolate mint grahams. Dip graham crackers into the chocolate, coating both sides. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet (I just reuse the pans/paper the graham crackers baked on). Place in the refrigerator to harden.

Store in an airtight container. If your house is warm you should store them in the refrigerator or freezer.

We got strawberries and rhubarb at the farmer’s market this week. A great combination for a spring dessert. Justin asked for a pie. But Rebecca insisted that we make a cake. She won 🙂  I did a quick search for a recipe yesterday morning and found one that looked good from Betty Crocker. It’s strawberry rhubarb upside down cake. I’ve never made any kind of upside down cake. But this looked good.

This turned out to be quite simple to make. And it tastes great!!! All four of us really enjoyed it. I modified the recipe since I don’t use boxed cake mixes. I made a modified version of my usual white cake (also a Betty Crocker recipe).

If you’re looking for a new way to use rhubarb and strawberries give this is a try! I know I’ll be making it again. Serve it with homemade vanilla ice cream, and it’s a perfect summer treat.

This post is linked to Fat Tuesday.

Strawberry Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

1/4  cup butter
1 cup packed organic brown cane sugar
2 cups sliced fresh strawberries
2 cups chopped fresh rhubarb

2 1/4 cups organic AP flour
1 2/3 cup organic cane sugar
2/3 cup palm shortening
3 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. organic vanilla
3 eggs

Whipped cream or homemade vanilla ice cream, if desired

Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan). In 13×9-inch pan, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over butter. Arrange strawberries on brown sugar; sprinkle evenly with rhubarb. Press strawberries and rhubarb gently into brown sugar.

In large bowl, beat cake ingredients with an electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds, then on high speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour batter over strawberries and rhubarb.

In June of 2009 I came across a recipe on 101 Cookbooks for homemade thin mints. I printed the recipe…and put it in a pile somewhere. And there it sat. Now three years later, I finally got around to making them yesterday.

The recipe is very simple. It’s a chocolate wafer that you dip in melted chocolate. It tastes very good. But I had some issues with the wafer dough. It was kind of crumbly. When I took the cookies out of the oven  they would fall apart if I touched them. After they cooled I could handle them ok. But when I started dipping them in the chocolate they sort of melted and crumbled (maybe I made them too thin?). So I only dipped a few of the cookies. For the rest I just spread the mint chocolate over the top. Not quite as good as a fully coated cookie, but they still taste fine. I was pressed for time so I went simple with the shape. I made squares (using a pizza cutter) instead of cutting out individual circles and trying to re-roll the dough.

Overall this is a really good cookie. It does taste like a thin minty chocolaty cookie. I can’t really compare it to the Girl Scout version since it’s been at least 15 years since I tasted one. If I make these again I’ll try to get the dough a bit more moist and see if that helps. I didn’t have pastry flour, so maybe that made a difference as well. Maybe I’ll try adding an egg next time. And adding a little heavy cream to the chocolate might make it thinner and easier to dip such a delicate cookie. It was pretty thick. I guess I’ll just have to make more soon to try. 🙂

Homemade Thin Mints

Chocolate Wafers:
8 ounces organic butter, room temperature
1 cup organic powdered sugar
1 tsp. natural vanilla extract
1 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. fine grain sea salt
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

Chocolate Peppermint Coating:
1 pound good quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
natural peppermint oil to taste

Preheat your oven to 350. Racks in the middle zone.

Make the cookie dough: In a mixer cream the butter until it is light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and cream some more, scraping the sides of the bowl a couple times if necessary. (Add egg??) Stir in the vanilla extract and then the salt and cocoa powder. Mix until the cocoa powder is integrated and the batter is smooth and creamy, sort of like a thick frosting. Add the whole wheat pastry flour and mix just until the batter is no longer dusty looking, it might still be a bit crumbly, and that’s o.k. You don’t want to over mix and end up with tough cookies.

Turn the dough out onto a counter, gather it into a ball, and kneed it just once or twice to bring it together into once nice, smooth mass. Place the ball of dough into a large plastic bag and flatten it into a disk roughly 3/4-inch thick. Place the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes to chill. (Might be easier to roll it in a log, freeze it and then just slice thin rounds…I’ll probably try that next time.)

Roll out and bake: Remove the dough from the freezer and roll it out really thin, remember how thin Thin Mints are? That’s how thin you need your dough, about 1/8-inch. You can either roll it out between two sheets of plastic, or dust your counter and rolling pin with a bit of flour and do it that way. Stamp out cookies using a 1 1/2-inch cutter (this time I used one with a fluted edge, I’ve done hearts and other shapes in the past). (I used a pizza cutter to cut them into squares…much easier and no waste) Place cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely on a baking rack if you’ve got one.

Make the peppermint coating:
While the cookies are in the oven you can get the coating ready. Slowly melt the chocolate in a double boiler (or glass bowl over a pot of simmering water), stirring occasionally until it is glossy and smooth (add heavy cream to thin if necessary). Stir in the peppermint extract. If you think the chocolate needs a bit more peppermint kick, add more extract a drop or two at a time – but don’t go overboard (I used 4 or 5 drops for a half recipe).

Finishing the cookies: You are going to coat the cookies one at a time and then gently set them on a parchment-lined baking sheet to set. Drop one cookie into the chocolate and (using a fork) carefully make sure it gets fully coated. Lift the cookie out of the chocolate with the fork and bang the fork on the side of the pan to drain any extra chocolate off the cookie. You are after a thin, even coating of chocolate. Place on the aforementioned prepared baking sheet, and repeat for the rest of the cookies. Place the cookies in the refrigerator or freezer to set. They will set at room temperature, it just takes much longer, and I prefer them straight out of the freezer anyways 😉

Make 3 or 4 dozen cookies.

I love ice cream…if you hadn’t noticed. Rebecca and I make ice cream almost weekly with our fresh, raw cream. This week we decided to try a new flavor – sea salt caramel. Oh My Goodness…this is awesome! One of my favorite flavors we’ve made by far. I still used my usual base recipe of cream, egg yolks, vanilla and maple syrup. But I added our homemade caramel sauce and a bit of sea salt. This is truly heaven in a bowl 🙂

I never measure ingredients when I make ice cream. Rebecca and I prefer to taste as we go to get it just the way we want it 🙂  I’ll do my best to give quantities. If you try it be sure to taste your batter before putting it in the mixer to be sure it’s the way you want it. And a great tip I’ve learned with all of my ice cream experiments is to make the batter a little overly sweet. The ice cream loses some of its sweetness when it freezes.

I only took pictures right out of the mixer, before I put it in the freezer. So it looks a bit liquidy. Don’t let that fool you. It is amazing! Even Abram devoured it. I had to cut him off so he wouldn’t get a tummy ache 🙂  If you really want to go over the top drizzle some extra caramel sauce on top. It won’t take much of this ice cream to satisfy your sweet tooth.

This post is linked to Fresh Bites Friday and Fight Back Friday and Fat Tuesday.

Sea Salt Caramel Ice Cream

3 cups cream
3 egg yolks (optional)
2 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup maple syrup
3 Tbsp. honey
1/3 cup caramel sauce
1/2 – 1 1/2 tsp. sea salt

In a blender combine all ingredients (I use my Vitamix to mix ice cream batter). Taste. Adjust caramel and salt quantities to taste. Pour into ice cream maker (I use a Kitchen Aid attachment) and process (mine takes about 20 minutes). Store in a plastic or glass container in the freezer.

Tuesday we made some awesome caramel sauce with our extra cream. But I didn’t use all of the cream. So yesterday we used a little more and tried butterscotch. I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It is so simple to make (only takes about 5 minutes) and is sooooo good. I like the butterscotch even better than the caramel. Rebecca and I sampled a little on homemade vanilla ice cream. A little piece of heaven 🙂  I think we might have homemade butterscotch sauce on hand more often now 🙂

Butterscotch

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed organic brown cane sugar or sucanat
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 tsp. unrefined sea salt, plus more to taste
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract, plus more to taste

Melt butter in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the sugar, cream and salt and whisk until well blended. Bring to a very gentle boil and cook for about five minutes, whisking occasionally.

Remove from heat and add one teaspoon of the vanilla extract, stirring to combine. Dip a spoon in the sauce and carefully taste the sauce (without burning your tongue!) to see if you want to add additional pinches of salt or splashes of vanilla. Tweak it to your taste, whisking well after each addition (I used about 3/4 tsp. salt and 1 1/4 tsp. vanilla).

Serve cold or warm over vanilla ice cream. The sauce will thicken as it cools. It can be refrigerated in an airtight container and reheated in a toaster oven or small saucepan.

Every week I skim some cream from our fresh milk. Most weeks I have a purpose for it…and often wish there was more! This week I didn’t have an urgent need for it. I have plenty of sour cream. I think we are even good with homemade ice cream. So I decided to make caramel sauce…something to go with our fabulous homemade ice cream 🙂

I’ve made caramel before, but it never seemed to work properly. I followed the directions, but I would cook it and cook it and cook it and never get it up to temp. So I decided to try a new recipe. I found one that looked simple on Lick My Spoon for Salted Caramel Sauce. There are good step by step directions. And you don’t have to monitor the temperature.

I gave it a go yesterday. It turned out very well. And it was quite quick and simple. I just made regular caramel, not salted. But I’m sure that would be very good too. It tastes great right after making it. As it cools it gets a lot thicker. It would be great for dipping apples when it’s cold. You simply warm it a bit to soften it to use on ice cream. Homemade caramel is a simple and delicous treat.

Caramel Sauce

When the liquid sugar hits a dark amber color, add all the butter to the pan. The mixture will foam up and thicken. Whisk until the butter has melted. Once the butter has melted, take the pan off the heat.

Add the cream to the pan (the mixture will foam up again) and continue to whisk to incorporate.

Let cool in the pan for a couple minutes, then pour into a glass jar and let cool to room temperature. Don’t worry if the sauce seems a bit too thin at first, it will thicken as it cools. Store in the refrigerator. Warm before serving to loosen it up again.