Ooey Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake

I would like divert your attention to this Ooey Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake. I saw it Saturday on Dessert First, hosted by Anne Thronton, on the Food Network. Have you ever been in that situation of when you first see something and you’re like “Oh my God, I have to make that?” That’s how it was for me. I saw this and I instantly knew I had to make this cake and I thought, why not for Easter dessert?

The first thing I want to tell you is that this is seriously one of the simplest cakes you can ever make. There is no electric mixer required and cleanup is a snap! Also, if you’re one of those people that don’t eat cake, cookie or whatever batter because you’re afraid of the uncooked egg in it, you can’t use that excuse with this recipe; there is not once trace of egg here. The batter tastes really fudgey and tastes so delicious! However, it is really hard to spread onto the pan, it is so thick. This cake also rose to incredible heights! I was a little disappointed when I realized the batter just barely covered the bottom of my square pan, but boy did my eyes grow wide when I took it out of the oven! The cake had probably tripled in size (then sunk down just a little bit as it cooled, but no biggy). I could see the pudding part of the cake ooze out of the sides. When I stuck a skewer into the cake to see if it was done, I expected to see a stream of chocolate pudding coming off, but the skewer came out completely clean, even though I could see the liquidy chocolate on the side. I don’t know why, but this amazed me.

Now the taste was just as fudgey as it looked./ I’m pretty sure that if I had used a better quality cocoa powder, the cake would have tasted richer, and more decadent, but all I had on hand was unsweetened Hershey cocoa powder. The pudding was absolutely phenomenal too. It looked and tasted just like regular chocolate pudding; it wasn’t like uncooked batter like you see in lava cakes like I expected. Like I said before though, I really wish I owned a better quality cocoa powder because that would just amplify this cake in so many ways.

Mmm, fresh out of the oven goodness

This was the first piece, so it's a little dishevelled, but it's a great picture of the pudding layer

I hope everyone who celebrates Easter had a wonderful holiday and to those of you who don’t: I hope you had a marvelous Sunday.

After it had been in the fridge over night, I got a better picture. Doesn't it look yummy?

Ooey Gooey Chocolate Pudding Cake
adapted from Anne Thornton
9 servings

Ingredients
½ cup + 1 tbsp sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ milk
5 tbsp butter, melted
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
-
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup hot water

Directions

1. Heat the oven for 350 degrees F
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Pour in the milk, butter and vanilla and mix until combined. The batter will be very thick, you may think you need an egg, but trust me, you don’t.
3. Plop (yes I said plop, there is no other word to describe this) the batter into an UNGREASED 9 inch square baking pan and level off with a rubber spatula.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugars and cocoa. Sprinkle on top of the cake, distributing evenly. You may need to spread it a little by hand. Pour the hot water on top of the sugar mixture. Whatever you do, don’t stir the water in, just leave it be.
5. Carefully place the cake on the middle rack and bake for 25-30 minutes. It will look a little funny on top, and you may see batter-like liquid coming up from the sides, that’s ok. This is what you want; this is the pudding part. Let stand on a cooling rack for 10-15 minutes, then you can slice and serve or put plastic rap on top and put it in the fridge.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1 square
Calories 207.7 Total Fat 6.7 g Saturated Fat 0.2 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.0 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.1 g Cholesterol 17.8 mg Sodium 183.5 mg Potassium 1.3 mg Total Carbohydrate 35.4 g Dietary Fiber 0.7 g Sugars 23.4 g Protein 2.5 g

Cake Slice Bakers - April 2011: Cold Oven Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Hey everyone! These past couple of weeks have been really special. I want to say about three weeks ago my sister found out that she was finally getting her own horse. It has been her dream to a horse since basically forever and just last Sunday, she feel in love with a horse named Apollo. He is gorgeous and my sister was so happy that she sobbed with happiness for a really, really long time. Also, about two weeks ago I got to attend the Masters with my dad, which was really fun and I enjoyed being there with him and the people watching and the golf watching. It was all just a blast. Now finally, Sunday was prom night for my school, and although I didn’t go to the dance, I went to the school sponsored after prom party which runs from midnight to five in the morning. I don’t know how I managed it, but I stayed up the whole time and played games with friends and ended up winning some really cool prizes.

Speaking of special, lets get on with a very special cake. This month’s cake for the Cake Slice Bakers is the Cold Oven Cream Cheese Pound Cake. This first thing that makes this a special cake is that it is cooked while the oven is preheating. This means that you don’t reheat your oven until the cake is finally made, only once the cake is in the oven, you can heat up the oven.Now, I’m sure that you can probably preheat the oven and then bake the cake, but I’m not positive you’ll get the same results. Second off, this is a very tender cake and it is probably one of the best cakes made from Cake Keeper Cakes, I think. This cake is very moist and a very good mix between light and airy and thick and dense. I can’t really describe it. And the taste is phenomenal. I really wish I had added more lemon zest to it because the lemon flavor wasn’t coming out as much as I’d like, but that’s what you get when you don’t own a zester and you’re trying to zest a lemon with a cheese grater, ha ha. I think it also had to do with the fact that I’ve never really zested anything before and I was just tired of zesting a huge lemon.

This cake also had a nice outer crust to it. I ate the first slice of cake after it had been inverted onto a plate, so I got a lot of crust and it was superb. I like crusts, I don’t know why, I just do. Now it may seem weird to talk about a cake crust, but it’s an important part of the cake. You don’t want a spongy crust because it doesn’t add to the texture of the cake and you don’t want a burnt crust because then no one will want to eat the cake if they take one look at the exterior and thing it’s burnt! This cake had a perfectly crisp crust, golden brown, crust and it defiantly passed the crust test.

Now, I made this cake into a standard loaf pan because I don’t own a bunt pan and I didn’t want a whole bunch of cake because what usually happens is that I end up having to eat most of it because no one else wants to eat my stuff after a day or so. Well, right from the start, I had this dilemma. The recipe called for a 12 cup bunt pan and I had no clue how much my loaf pan could hold, so I tried measuring it and then looking up to see what it’s capacity was, only to find out that I can’t seem to measure a stupid pan. So I poured cups and cups of water into the pan until it was almost filled and this gave me 6 cups, so I assumed that the capacity was 6 cups so I would just have to half the recipe. The only thing is, my fellow Cake Slice Members said that the recipe produced a lot of batter and I would need thee, maybe even four!, loaf pans. So I went with my gut, and divided the recipe by three, better to have a little smaller cake than a tin that’s overflowing with batter. Well after I poured the batter into the pan, I realized I probably could have gone with the half of the recipe, but that’s ok because this was a perfect little pound cake.

This was such a silky smooth batter. I could have eaten the entire batter, uncooked.

I had a little mishap with the cake being stuck to the bottom, but it was easily repairable. Just make sure to flour the greased pan before pouring in the batter.

It was like a cloud on your tongue, so delicious!

Cold Oven Cream Cheese Pound Cake
slightly adapted from Cake Keeper Cakes by Lauren Chattman
makes about 10-12 servings

Ingredients
1 cup cake flour*
½ tsp baking powder
1/3 tsp salt
5 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
2 2/3 oz. cream cheese, softened (used 1/3 less fat and it didn’t seem to do any harm)
¾ cup + 2 tbsp + 1 ½ tsp sugar
2 eggs, room temp.
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon zest 

Directions

1. Grease a standard loaf pan and dust with flour. Do this because I didn’t use flour and my cake stuck to the bottom a little bit. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium sized bowl and set aside.
2. Combine the butter, cream cheese, and sugar into a bowl of an electric mixer and cream them together until fluffy. This should take about three minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
3. Next, on medium speed, add the eggs in one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and lemon zest.
4. With the mixer on low, gradually add in the flour mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. After the final addition, mix the batter for 30 seconds, then stop.
5. Add the batter to the loaf pan and set it on the middle rack. Now you can turn on your oven to 325 degrees F. Don’t open the oven door until the cake is fully cooked, about 45 minutes, or until it is lightly browned on top and when a tooth pick is inserted into the middle, it comes out clean.
6. Let the cake cool in it’s pan for 15 minutes before inverting it onto a cooling rack. Let the cake completely cool before slicing. You can keep the cake in an airtight container or wrapped in plastic wrap for up to three days, if it lasts that long.

* To learn how to make your own cake flour go here.

Nutrition Facts
serving size: 1/10

Calories 188.6 Total Fat 7.7 g Saturated Fat 1.1 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.2 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.4 g Cholesterol 56.0 mg Sodium 156.5 mg Potassium 14.7 mg Total Carbohydrate 27.1 g Dietary Fiber 0.0 g Sugars 18.0 g Protein 2.8 g

Nothing to do for Once

I would like to apologize for the smallish hiatus I took. I’ve been so wrapped up in school stuff that I hardly don’t have time to bake! I would have made something last weekend, but I was at the Masters with my dad. It was actually pretty cool. I was pulling for McIlory and he was doing so great, but then nerves got the better of him on round 4. I felt so bad for him :(.


Now, back to school stuff. Today was the first day in a loooooong time where I didn’t have a single thing to do for homework or to study for some test. I was telling my friend today that I have absolutely no clue what to do with myself when I don’t have any homework because it’s such a big part of my high school life. Well the other day I saw on Joy the Baker’s blog that she had brown butter cookies and I’ve heard that brown butter can taste really good when it’s put into baked goods and I told myself I would make them this weekend. (If I had time that is.) So because I had nothing to do today, I made those cookies, but made a couple adaptations. I still have butterscotch chips left over from when I made the blondies way back when and I didn’t feel like going to the store to buy chocolate chunks and coconut, so I used the butterscotch chips, plus I also halved the recipe since I didn’t want to be baking for an hour!

The cookie ended up having a crusty exterior and a slightly soft interior. It’s a good cookie, but nothing to rave about. Joy's of course look like perfection, haha. Oh well, I'm glad I just had some time to actually bake something. Plus I had fun working with something I've never worked with before.

I like it better when dough isn't, well, dry. I got kind of frustrated when scooping the batter onto the sheet.

They do look pretty though, don't they?

Mmm, butterscotch chips!

Brown Butter Butterscotch Cookies
adapted from Joy the Baker
makes about 30 cookies

Ingredients
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and browned
½ cup sugar
~½ cup brown sugar
½ tbsp vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups all purpose flour
~½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 egg
½ cup butterscotch chips

Directions

1. In a medium skillet set to medium heat, place butter in and wait for it to melt and brown. It will bubble and fizz for a little while, which is good. Once the bubbling has subsided wait for the butter to turn a brown color and as soon as it does remove from heat and place into a small dish and allow it to cool for a few minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking dish with parchment paper.
3. In the bowl of an exectric mixter fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugars and the butter on medium speed for about 2 minutes (it will be grainy, don't worry). Next, beat in the egg for another 2 minutes (the mixture will be very smooth afterwards). Add in the vanilla.
4. In a medium bowl, wisk together the flour, salt and baking soda. Once combined, slowly add into the sugar and butter mixture until just combined. The dough will be very dry. Fold in the butterscotch chips.
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes, just make sure the edges are slightly brown and the centers are squishy. Once done baking, cool on the pan for about 5 minutes and then transfer onto a wire rack.

Nutrition Facts

servince size: 2 cookies

Calories 177.9 Total Fat 8.3 g Saturated Fat 1.7 g Polyunsaturated Fat 0.1 g Monounsaturated Fat 0.1 g Cholesterol 28.3 mg Sodium 95.0 mg Potassium 18.6 mg Total Carbohydrate 25.0 g Dietary Fiber 0.3 g Sugars 18.0 g Protein 7.4 g