S’mores Cake

October 31, 2010December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

As far as desserts go, I’m pretty sure this cake represents me completing a s’mores hat trick. Earlier this week I was feeling a little glum; I had so much school work to do, I hadn’t been home except to sleep for a few days straight and I was just overly frustrated at the lack of blogging and delicious food eating I had been doing lately. In true Hilary fashion I went upstairs, turned on some Taylor Swift and started singing at the top of my lungs. The combination of baking and singing (poorly) were the only two things that could cure my slump.

I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to make when I first went upstairs, however I very quickly decided that s’more-ing it up was the absolute only thing to do. I originally wanted to have chocolate cookie crumbs on the bottom of the dessert with a graham cracker cake on top of that, but I was faced with an obstacle of terrible proportions. Did you know that chocolate crumbs go bad? Me neither, but for some reason these smelled really sweet and tasted chalky. I’ve had them since the summer, but I thought that stuff was sort of non-perishable. Apparently not. Thank god my roommate Alex came up and insisted on eating the crumbs, otherwise I wouldn’t have found out about the mystery flavour until post-baking. Not good.

So in the end, here was the anatomy of the cake:
– Graham cracker cake (recipe adapted from Annie’s Eats)
– Melted marshmallow*
– Chocolate glaze
– Graham cracker crumbs

*HOLY melted marshmallows have the sticking power of Krazy Glue. I almost permanently pasted several kitchen utensils to the counter. Once I melted the little buggers and tried to spread out the marshy layers with my fingers, I very quickly learned that I either had to find some way to (pardon my language) lubricate my fingers otherwise suffer a sudden tragic death from marshmallow stickyness. For said lubrication, margarine was very handy. Thank you greasy fats.

PS: Halloween wrap-up post to come tomorrow!

Chocolate Brownie Turtle Cake

October 18, 2010December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

Mom: if you’re worried as to why I’m posting this at 11:30 at night, it’s because this is the only free second I have had today. As much as you say blogging should not be my priority, I can’t help it, and this cake needed to be shared with the world. I will sleep soon, green tea is making me drowsy.

This past Sunday night I was all prepared to make a nice end-of-the-weekend dinner for myself, and was pleasantly surprised when I found out that Natalie’s dad was in town and was making all the roomies supper! Seeing that I could no longer make dinner, and obviously wanting to show off my culinary skills to an outside audience, I knew I had no choice but to make dessert.

I had post-it noted this recipe from way back in the summer. It is from my 1980’s Canadian Living family cookbook and is so old that it can’t even be found on the website’s recipe index. With no picture to go off of and the request for loads of chocolate, I went into this one blind-sighted, on nothing but a wing and a prayer. I don’t think I’ve ever bought so many packages of Baker’s chocolate squares (two boxes of semi-sweet and an unsweetened box). The amount of chocolate I had at my check-out could only be matched by the amount I once bought to make my gluten-free chocolate cake. Mind blowing. This recipe also incorporated a beloved Duff family chocolate: the turtle. For as long as I can remember my parents have shipped over boxes of turtles to my relatives in Ireland for Christmas (can you believe they don’t have them?!), and this cake was just like a walk down memory lane.

Now I don’t know why, but I always seem to insist on making some sort of complicated layer cake, which requires baking, chilling, heating and freezing. This being said, this cake was under progress the entire day.

Anatomy of the Cake:
Layer 1: delicious brownie
Layer 2: crushed pecans (only because I totally forgot to mix them in with the brownies, my bad!)
Layer 3: melted caramels
Layer 4: chocolate glaze garnished with pecan halves

The result of this dessert was chocolate comas all around the table and an overall hyper state of mind. To put things into perspective, this is how high on sugar some of us were:

Overall rating: delicious, but in SMALL quantities. I could take the chocolate rush because I am used to frequent sugar fixes, but poor Brittany (amateur!) was suffering from a chocolate hangover for a full day. Be wary, non-chocoholics.

Lemon Sour Cream Loaf

October 6, 2010December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 4 Comments

My goodness, I have been such a slacker with blogging this past week! It has been four days since my last post, a record-breaking amount of time since the summer began. This is my oath to the blogging world to try and be better. School is absolutely crazy right now, and I am running around left, right and centre trying to get journalism stories organized before Thanksgiving. Right now it looks like October may just be the month from hell, but I will try my very hardest to charge on through, treating my hard work with delicious meals every once in a while!

I made this loaf last week. The reason why the pictures you see below were taken inside was because I made this little baby at 9 p.m. and, by the time the next day rolled around, the majority of it was gone (yes, this was also due to my near midnight snacking, I had a stomach ache). That being said, no pictures were able to be taken outside, to my great dismay.

This lemon sour cream loaf is actually just Canadian Living’s Lemon Yogurt Loafwith, you guessed it, sour cream. Why is sour cream in absolutely everything I make nowadays, you ask? I have no idea, but it is good. The original recipe called for the use of “balkan-style plain yogurt,” something I have never heard of. Apparently it’s like a low-fat yogurt or something? Not too sure. Whatever, our fridge was crowded beyond belief (I blame all the plastic containers of spinach) and I needed to use up this sour cream.

When Canadian Living says “use parchment paper” in your loaf pan, I definitely recommend you follow their instructions. Unfortunately for me, our lowly student home had run out of parchment paper just a few days earlier, and I instead was forced to heavily oil the pan as an alternative. This worked…sort of. After the loaf was semi-cool, I could be seen standing over the deep freeze (I use it as a counter), whacking the bottom of that pan like there was no tomorrow. After a substantial shaking and use of brunt force, the loaf surrendered to my attempts, and plopped nicely down on the cooling rack, with a mere chunk taken out of the bottom. Needless to say I bought parchment paper the very next day.

Finally, the reason why the surface of this loaf looks like it has reflective properties is because of all the delicious lemon glaze I put on it! The glaze was just icing sugar and lemon juice, and the loaf soaked it up like a sponge. Absolute heaven.

Sour Cream Chocolate Crumb Cake

September 12, 2010December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

Pre-blog post statement: My roommate Ariel and I just finished a glorious afternoon of “shaking it like a polaroid,” Outkast style. If anyone is ever looking for some sort of rainy afternoon activity, I highly suggest a dance off.

Okay, cake post…

I must admit, it is certainly nice to have 4 out of my 5 roommates back in the house. Their arrival meant that I did not have to carry this cake on my bicycle to work nor did I have to sit in my pjs watching Rogers on Demand and eating the entire thing myself. I made this cake on Friday afternoon and, by the time Saturday morning rolled around, there was hardly any cake left in sight. Turns out a few of my roommates get quite ravenous after a night out and speedy cake ingestion is the result.

Now, for some inexplicable reason I appear to be drawn to two types of cakes. Inadvertently, my past two cakes have both involved sour cream and chocolate, ingredients which one would think would be fairly easy to avoid while baking. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not falling into some sort of rut…it’s just that sour cream chocolate cakes happen to be ridiculously delicious!! In all fairness, I very easily could have left the chocolate out of this one since it was just mixed in at the last minute (keep that in mind if you’re not a huge chocoholic like myself!). Also, anything that has “crumb” in the title always seems to attract me, so perhaps that is another thing that drew me to this dessert. The only thing that potentially could have been improved on this cake was the moistness level – I am a huge fan of moist and undercooked things, so that was my only issue. No big deal though!

Oh, PS this cake was from the September issue of Canadian Living and, once again, the recipe isn’t yet posted on their website, so I’ll post it on my recipes page as soon as I get a second to breath (school = slightly overwhelming already).

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Cake

September 2, 2010December 31, 2011 ~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

For as long as I can remember my mom has been making this cake. This was the dessert that, when I was young, kept me sneaking into the kitchen to trim the slightest of pieces off the cake, hoping she wouldn’t notice and somehow punish me with her evil dietician ways (kind of like this time I tried to masking tape shut a bag of chocolates, but that’s a whole other story…).

For any students who may read my blog, this chocolate chip cake is actually the most easy dessert in the world. If you’re ever having any sort of guests over, or just wanting to plain out spoil yourself, this cake is decadent, moist and delicious – the perfect fix for both chocolate and cake cravings alike. As an added bonus, any leftovers (hmmph, yeah right) also freeze wonderfully, and can be pulled out of the freezer last minute to stifle any midnight sugar cravings.

The three pictures you see below were again taken on the deck of my Sudbury home. It’s quite different than taking pictures on my shaded Ottawa patio, and I was happy to have the bright evening light photograph in my favour.

Since this is a recipe that requires typing, I’ll post it right under the pictures! Also, wondering where the hell you’re going to get a bundt pan? Try rummage sales (where I got my vintage forrest green one) or Value Village. Always an adventure.

Recipe
– 1 cup melted butter (or half butter, half margarine)
– 2 eggs
– 1 1/2 cups of granulated sugar
– 1 cup of sour cream
– 2 tablespoons of milk
– 1 tablespoon of vanilla
– 2 cups of flour
– 2 teaspoons of baking powder
– 1 teaspoon of baking soda
– 1 cup of chocolate chips

Blend ingredients together well. Pour batter into a greased and floured bundt pan. Bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean and cake springs back when touched.