Cakes

Flourless Chocolate Cake (also known as Jane’s Birthday, part 2)

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

For those of you who were wondering why Jane was the only one whose birthday cake was chocolate, this post should serve as clarification for your questioning minds.  Jane, who is I swear the sweetest person in the universe, just happens to be allergic to a dear little thing called gluten.  This being said, there is gluten in things that I could never possibly imagine – licorice, Caramilk chocolate bars, etc. etc.  Needless to say, I would die.  Jane, on the other hand, is a super trooper (yes, like the ABBA song) and, since I always feel horrible for making Friday treats she can’t eat, I knew I needed to make her an extra special cake for her birthday.

That’s where this flourless chocolate cake came in.  Meant to serve as a joint birthday/happy last summer orientation day cake, the pressure was on.  I spent countless hours searching the Internet in and out for a gluten-free cake recipe that I thought I could duplicate.  I finally found this awesome blog, Gluten Free Goddess, which then led me to find this recipe.

Since there is (obviously) no flour in this cake, the ingredients were quite unlike what I was used to.  This cake contained a hell of a lot of chocolate – five dark chocolate bars to be exact.  Seeing me carting six chocolate bars through my check out (yes, I bought an extra milk chocolate bar just for me) my overly-curious grocery store cashier kindly asked me if I had just suffered an unfortunate break up.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

This cake also contained EIGHT eggs, the most I have ever used all at one time, including during omelette and breakfast making.  My fridge resources were exhausted.  Another ingredient I was unsure about was the coffee required for this recipe.  In the end, I took a leap of faith, bolted to my local Starbucks and ordered a grande bold to go.  Following what the recipe requires.. always a good choice.

The end result of this cake was a luscious, dense dessert where one could taste just a hint of coffee.   A little less solid and cake-like than what I was used to, it reminded me more of a giant brownie than anything.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still delicious, but I think this whole gluten-free eating thing could take a little getting used to…   Also, made some simple chocolate icing to go on top and added some coloured sprinkles, just for fun!

Apple Torte

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

With the weather having cooled off enough for me to cook without breaking out into a sweat, I decided it was time to rev-up the oven and bake again.  Craving something with apples in it, I was perfectly pleased with the simplicity of Canadian Living’s Apple Tort recipe.  The recipe also allowed me to pop down to the NEW specialty grocery market in my neighbourhood and pick up some apples (I used spartan).  This store is actually a two minute walk from my house, and will be a great place to go to pick up last minute blogging ingredients for foodie adventures in the future!

In the past, I’ve made one other apple dessert using a Canadian Living recipe (see the results: layered apple cake, a father’s day treat), and this apple torte turned out just as well, if not better, than that cake (and it was good!).  Being a huge fan of toasted almonds, I sprinkled an extra handful on top of the torte, along with some brown sugar, to add some colour to the top of the dish.  My pictures (and taste buds) benefitted from these last-minute additions, and they made the torte wonderfully photogenic.

Pool Party Cake (!!!!!!!)

~ Hilary ~ 9 Comments

Before I begin this post, I feel it is important to note the following:

What you will see below is the cake of my childhood dreams.  When I was young, my mom had a copy of Canadian Living’s “Kids in the Kitchen“cookbookwhich I would flip through occasionally, wondering how in the world one was able to cook.  Now, a decade later, I return to my humble beginnings to complete the pièce de résistance of all Canadian Living cakes: The Pool Party Cake(each word deserves a capital letter because, to me, it is a holy entity of awesome). To be honest, I’m a little surprised my mom didn’t make me this cake as a child; I guess there were very few pool parties to go to in Northern Ontario and my birthday was in winter…

When I first heard back in June that we were planning to have a potluck at work, I very nearly had a happiness heart attack.  I KNEW that the time had finally come for me to make this cake, and that the world was finally prepared to be exposed to its sheer wonder.  Also, the cake kind of doubled as a surprise birthday cake for one of my wonderful work supervisors, Jeremy, who was (against his will) getting a belated birthday celebration at lunch.

Let the cake-making begin: Buying all the candy supplies was the hard part – I spent a solid half hour in the Bulk Barn, carefully measuring out gummy candies and determinedly marching up and down the aisles in search of the elusive vanilla wafer cookie (turns out I needed to get them at Walmart).  A short time later, my shopping was complete, and with my new 9×13 glass cake pan filled with goodies, I waltzed (bused) home, anxiously wondering what the results of my cake attempt would be.  Due to some sort of miracle, the cake turned out perfectly.  Despite a minor meltdown that occurred when a deep crack developed through the middle of the cake, the process was rather uneventful and my neuroses was kept at bay for the most part…

Of course, my adventure to deliver cake to potluck continued this morning when I had to find a way to transport said item to school.  Normally I would just ride my bike, however, I had invested too much time and emotion in this cake to see it slide off my handlebars and run over by my Schwinn bicycle.  And so, my worried ass took a cab to school and, in an attempt to pay the driver with my debit card, almost granted the cake a death-by-debit-console-falling-in-pool disaster.  Luckily, everything except my sanity made it to work in one piece.

I would also like to note one final thing: if someone on Ace of Cakes somehow stumbles on this post, please give me a job and/or let me tour your shop.  I promise I would only freak out a little.

Hilary and Cake: an intimate moment. Also, note the wafer cookie entering my mouth…this was because of a failure in cake architecture that caused several half-wafer pieces to come unattached from their other sides.  Beware future cake-makers.


Some happy potluck-ers/amazing co-workers, pre-cake arrival, pre-food coma.

Arrival of cake for the birthday boy!


Happy Belated Jeremy!
(Thank you Iman and your ever-speedy facebook uploads for these last two pictures)

END OF STORY? I am addicted to making cakes.  Next time, I try conquering fondant.

Gord’s Dinner, Part Three: Chocolate Volcano Cake

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

BY FAR THE MOST DELICIOUS, DELICATE AND DIFFICULT THING I HAVE EVER MADE.  I am so proud.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.  In my mind, these chocolate volcano cakes are the Holy Grail of dessert and, being a self-proclaimed chocoholic, I knew I would go to extreme measures to ensure that they were completed perfectly.  The recipe was from Canadian Living, obviously, and the preparation instructions originally scared me to death.

Here are a few things I learned from these cakes/morsels from heaven:

1. How to separate the yolk from the egg white
1a. When you continuously blend egg whites, a heavenly, peaked mixture comes into existence.  I knew this happened, I have just never experienced the magic before.
2. These cakes are called volcano cakes for a reason.  One of them blew up as I tried to pick it up.  My counter consequently suffered a chocolate flash flood.
3. A set of six ramekin dishes for $9 is the best investment a girl can make.
3a. I need a second job to afford all the extra dishes I am buying to make my food plating a pretty process.
4. The picture below DOES NOT do this cake justice.  If I could include a scratch-and-eat feature on wordpress, I swear you would all love me.

Father’s Day Meal

~ Hilary ~ 2 Comments

Since I went home for Father’s Day weekend, I decided to take full advantage of the occasion and the home food resources to make a meal for my family.  Also, I took a trip to the local Chapters yesterday, where I got a few new cookbooks, including Canadian Living’s Make It Tonight cookbook!!  Oh happy day!  I also got two other new cookbooks, which I’m sure I will be mentioning in future posts, so stay tuned to find out more about those.

In honour of this new cookbook purchase, I decided to take two recipes from it to make tonight’s dinner.  Something noteworthy: I tried black olives tonight for the very first time, as they were an ingredient in the pasta I made.  As you can see below, I entered my quest to try olives optimistically…

…BUT, that smile very rapidly deteriorated into a cringe, when I decided that I wholeheartedly DO NOT like olives.  At least I tried them right?  All that was left on my plate at the end of the night was a sad looking pile of olives.  Apologies Veggie Gods.

Okay, so back to the meal…for the main dish, I made Pasta with Peppers, Tomatoes and Olives(yuck to the olives, YUM to the rest of the meal).  It was kind of odd to have a pasta dish without a semi-dominating sauce, but this was something new that took advantage of some amazing, fresh produce.  Also, I love home-time… we had fresh parsley!!  This never happens!!  It was great.


For dessert, I made a Layered Apple Cake, also from the Canadian Living cookbook.

It had a delicious graham cracker crumb base and top, with a soft, scrumptious apple cake centre.  SO GOOD.  Add some ice cream, and I have officially reached my foodie heaven.  I seem to be starting a trend…whenever I bake at home, it always seems to be a pasta dish and a cake crumble.  Perhaps I will try my hand at BBQ-ing next time?

Back to Ottawa tomorrow, and back to my student house hole-in-the-wall-kitchen.