Texas Sheet Cake

My friend Jack's birthday is today, and yesterday me and my roommate Lucy hosted a party for him in our apartment (we live right across from each other, and our apartment is bigger). For his birthday I made him a cake--I was kind of afraid of making a sheet cake, and this was the first cake in this oven that I baked, so I was a little nervous, but it turned out fine. Everyone thought they were brownies, but it tasted cakey enough.

I made a Texas Sheet Cake because Jack's from Texas...yeah I'm clever, I know. I just looked up the reason for it being called "Texas" sheet cake, and apparently it got its name for the chocolatey taste being as big as Texas...? Interesting. Anyway, yeah it was chocolatey. I wish I had a mixer to mix it though, because the chocolate mixture didn't mix completely with the flour mixture, which wasn't a big deal--it just looked like it had white-cake sprinkles in it or something.

Lucy loved the icing, and coming from someone who absolutely detests frosting, I guess that's a good thing. This isn't my ideal cake--I'd prefer to have a layered cake that you need some skill in making, not just mix, pour, heat the icing, pour immediately, and serve in the pan...but what can you do? At least it made this super easy!

Texas Sheet Cake
Recipe from Allrecipes

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 cup butter
1 cup water
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

6 tablespoons milk
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 10x15 inch pan.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat in the sour cream and eggs. Set aside. Melt the butter on low in a saucepan, add the water and 5 tablespoons cocoa. Bring mixture to a boil then remove from heat. Allow to cool slightly, then stir cocoa mixture into the dry ingredients, mixing until blended.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

For the icing: In a large saucepan, combine the milk, 5 tablespoons cocoa and 1/2 cup butter. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat. Stir in the confectioners' sugar and vanilla, then fold in the nuts, mixing until blended. Spread frosting over warm cake.

Chocolate-Pumpkin Layered Brownies

Last Saturday I made these to bring to my friend's Halloween party. I didn't have a square pan, so I stuck them in a 9-inch round pan and they worked fine. I also cut the brownies smaller and it made a lot more that 16--they were pretty tall brownies so it didn't matter that I cut them smaller. They were a big hit! I thought the pumpkin flavor was the perfect amount!

Chocolate-Pumpkin Layered Brownies
Recipe by Martha Stewart

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for pan
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups solid-pack pumpkin
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts or other nuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch square baking pan or dish. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper; butter lining.

Melt chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, cayenne, and salt in a large bowl; set aside. Put sugar, eggs, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment; beat until fluffy and well combined, 3 to 5 minutes. Beat in flour mixture.

Divide batter between two medium bowls (about 2 cups per bowl). Stir chocolate mixture into one bowl. In other bowl, stir in pumpkin, oil, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Transfer half of chocolate batter to prepared pan smoothing top with a rubber spatula. Top with half of pumpkin batter. Repeat to make one more chocolate layer and one more pumpkin layer. Work quickly so batters don't set.

With a small spatula or a table knife, gently swirl the two batters to create a marbled effect. Sprinkle with nuts.

Bake until set, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack. Cut into 16 squares.

Chocolate Truffles

This isn't a very good Halloween-y post, but I guarrantee I'll post some of those starting next week. For now, I made these on Sunday. I halved the recipe without any trouble, though that did mean that things cooked faster. I used vanilla extract, and just used toll house chocolate chips because that was what I had. If I make them again, I definitely want to use better quality chocolate, but they were still good and the recipe still worked!

I put them in a cute, handmade box and gave them to my boyfriend for our 6-month anniversary :)

Chocolate Truffles
Recipe by Martha Stewart

8 ounces best-quality bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon liqueur, such as triple sec or framboise (optional)
Unsweetened cocoa powder, for rolling

Put chocolate into a large heatproof bowl. Bring cream just to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat; pour over chocolate in bowl. Stir in liqueur, if desired. Cover with plastic wrap; let stand 10 minutes. Stir until smooth. Let stand until thick, about 15 minutes.

Pour chocolate mixture into a shallow 8-inch dish or pie plate. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until mixture is very cold and set but still pliable, about 30 minutes.

Using a teaspoon or a 1/2-inch melon baller, scoop balls of chocolate mixture, transferring them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper as you work. Refrigerate truffles 10 minutes.

Using hands dusted with cocoa powder, dip each truffle in cocoa powder to coat, then quickly shape truffle into a rough round. Refrigerate truffles in an airtight container until ready to serve, up to 2 weeks; before serving, reshape into rounds, and roll each truffle in cocoa powder, if desired.

Dorie Greenspan's Chewy, Chunky Blondies

Finally I baked again. I'll probably bake once a week and update on the weekends from now on until I get a break from school. For this recipe I used butterscotch chips, left out the walnuts, and for the chocolate used chopped up pieces of Ghiradelli 70% cacao for 4 ounces that was the bar, and then about a fourth a cup for semi-sweet chocolate chips. I'd been wanting to make something with coconut and butterscotch for a while, so I'm glad I finally got around to doing it!

Chewy, Chunky Blondies
Recipe from Dorie Greenspan's
Baking: From My Home to Yours
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups (packed) light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or 1 cup store-bought chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips or Heath Toffee Bits
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 9×13-inch baking pan and put it on a baking sheet.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add both sugars and beat for another 3 minutes, or until well incorporated. Add the eggs one by one, beating for 1 minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing just until they disappear into the batter. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chips, nuts and coconut. Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and use the spatula to even the top as best you can.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the blondies comes out clean. The blondies should pull away from the sides of the pan a little and the top should be a nice honey brown. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for about 15 minutes before turning the blondies out onto another rack. Invert onto a rack and cool the blondies to room temperature right side up.

Cut into 32 bars, each roughly 2-1/4 x 1-1/2 inches.

My New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is my first CCC recipe I'm posting. I used to only make the original Toll House recipe, and then found a great recipe that I thought would be my favorite, and then I decided I wanted to find a crispy chocolate chip cookie recipe and found this. Although not crisy entirely, it's crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside...and oh my god, this is the best chocolate chip cookie I have ever made. EVER.

After the first bite I thought I was dreaming. And then got scared that I would end up eating the entire batch (all 15 monstrous cookies), but remembered that they had to go somewhere (to my friends...) so that I couldn't eat anymore. Good excuse. Plus, honestly, this cookie filled me up. Just one cookie...albeit the size of 3 or 4...so good. I honeslty don't want to find out the nutritional value of these suckers.

I didn't have any cake flour so I substituted with 1/8 cup cornstarch + 7/8 cup AP flour.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe from My Madison Bistro

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
12 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325*F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and position oven racks in the middle of oven.

Sift together dry ingredients into a small bowl. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the melted butter and sugars, and stir with a wooden spoon until mixed. Add the egg and yolk and stir until well mixed. Add vanilla, stir to combine.

Add flour mixture to sugar mixture, stir until just a trace of flour remains. Add the chocolate chips and stir to combine. Using a large spoon, mound about 1/3 c of dough (these are large cookies) onto the baking sheet, about six cookies per sheet.

Bake for 16-19 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Cool for five minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack.

Banana Bread

I've been wanting to bake banana bread for a while, so as soon as my landlord claimed my oven fixed, I started gathering the ingredients I needed for when I had time. So on Saturday I finally made it! And it worked! Actually, I was impatient and so the bananas weren't really overripe and it still worked great. It wasn't sweet, which I didn't want anyway. My oven still has a lot of kinks that I don't understand yet so after 50 minutes the top got a little overbrown in some places but that's okay that was my fault. Next time if I make this recipe again, I want to try adding the walnuts (and using reallly ripe bananas)! I used Fage 0% greek yogurt because I forgot about buying plain yogurt and that's what I had. Next time I might want to try using not low or nonfat yogurt, but I love greek yogurt so I might still have to use that.

Banana Bread
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated by Christina

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse (optional)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 very ripe, soft, darkly speckled large bananas, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
6 tbsp of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Turn on the oven to 350F.

Butter and flour the bottom of a loaf pan.

Mix the mashed banana, eggs, yogurt, melted butter and vanilla in a large bowl.

Stir the walnuts into the banana mixture (doing so will reduce the risk of over-mixing).

Sift flour, sugar, salt and baking soda into the banana mixture.

Using a rubber spatula, very, very, very gently mix the flour with the wet ingredients. Stop as soon as the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be chunky instead of smooth.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean after inserted into the bread.

Let the bread cool in the pan; slice and serve.

Waffle Frolic

I'm happy to say that I'm finally DONE with this last week before my 4-day weekend...it was a long, long, longgg week. So I don't have a new recipe as promised, but tomorrow I'm planning on testing my oven to see if it really DOES work or if it is indeed broken, so there will be new food on Tuesday!

Instead I'll post pictures of this yummyyy waffle place I went with some friends last night, Waffle Frolic. Gooood waffles. I'd been wanting waffles for a while, haha. Although it might have been a little pricey considering hey, you know, they're waffles, and the toppings aren't that extraordinary, I thought it was worth it (since I don't have a waffle maker and access to these toppings would give me more than what I want for a larger price...if that makes sense). So basically at Waffle Frolic, you go in and choose your type of waffle and then order ingredients separately in any combination you could want.

The waffles above are my friend Marrisa's waffles, with lemon curd and pumpkin butter and I'm not sure what else. I should have tried at least one of those two things, they sound so good...

So the above waffles are what I got, with blueberry yogurt (made in the restaurant, apparently) and strawberries. Yumm I love strawberries. I was really tempted to get whipped cream but I really, really like yogurt.

I'm posting this one last cuz it's most impressive, haha. These are David's waffles, with I guess strawberries, chocolate? and whipped cream...man waffles are so good.

Brownie cut-out Cookies

Yesterday night I decided I was way too stressed to even write a post for an old recipe. This morning I decided that, it was okay, I could spend two minutes writing up a post...so here I am and here it is. I may not post Tuesday but I PROMISE you, even if next Saturday is not a new post, the following Tuesday WILL BE!!

These were fun to make, and were a good chocolate roll-out cookie recipe. I made them with my BFFL Kristin, who got me the cookie cutters :)

Brownie roll-out cookies
Recipe by Deb's mom

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup lightly salted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Whisk dry flour, salt and baking powder in bowl and set aside. Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and cocoa in mixer. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least one hour.

Roll out cookie dough on floured counter. Cut into desired shapes, brushing extra deposits of flour off the top. (It does disappear once baked, though, so don’t overly fret if they go into the oven looking white.) Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 8 to 11 minutes (the former for 1/8-inch thick cookies, the latter for 1/4-inch cookies) until the edges are firm and the centers are slightly soft and puffed.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Chocolate Dalmations

Okay, so I haven't baked anything new...still. Now I have an excuse other than homework! I'm sick, or I think I am, because these past few days I've had this really annoying sore throat. Yesterday I had all the symptoms of a fever EXCEPT for the actual fever...weird. Today I just have the sore throat, so hopefully it's getting better.

Also, I have like...no ingredients...and no working oven...soooo. But anyway, these were really good cookies that I made in March. They kinda tasted shortbread-y and were just perfect and bite sized, I could have eaten the whole batch except there were wayy too many so maybe not.

Chocolate Dalmations
Original recipe from Marcel Desaulniers' Death by Chocolate Cookies
Recipe adapted by Peabody

4 ounces of white chocolate, chopped into ¼ inch pieces
¾ pound unsalted butter, cut into 1 ounce pieces
1 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
4 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
12 ounces semisweet chocolate mini-morsels

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Melt chocolate in a double boiler over medium heat. Use a rubber spatula to stir the chocolate until completely smooth, about 2 minutes.

Place the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle. Beat on medium for 4 minutes until light(but not fluffy). Add the vanilla extract and the melted white chocolate. Beat on medium for 1 minute. Operate the mixer on low while gradually adding the flour and salt. Mix for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the chocolate mini morsels and mix on low for 30 seconds. Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a spatula to finish mixing the ingredients until thoroughly combined.

Portion the dough into 48 slightly heaping tablespoons-sized pieces. Roll each portion into a ball. Place the dough balls onto a non-stick baking sheet, fitting 12 to a sheet. Place the baking sheets in the center rack. Bake for 14-16 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through the baking time. Remove the cookies from the oven and cool at room temperature.

Cookies n Cream Fudge

Sorry sorry sorry sorry this is really old! I made these over a year ago. I realllly wanted to try them. I do remember they were SUPER good though! And super easy to boot! So great. But anyway, school life is getting very hectic right now: I'm trying to find apartments for next year, I'm trying to finish and manage group projects, I'm trying to study for exams and I'm trying to get the rest of my homework done on the side...you know, typical college stuff. So I didn't have time to bake up anything new, but here's an old recipe I used last summer!

Cookies n Cream Fudge
Recipe from Eagle Brand

3 (6 oz.) packages white chocolate baking squares
1 (14 oz.) can Eagle Brand® Sweetened Condensed Milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 cups (about 20 cookies) coarsely crushed chocolate creme-filled sandwich cookies

Line 8-inch square pan with wax paper, extending paper over edges of pan.

Melt white chocolate squares with sweetened condensed milk and salt in heavy saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat; stir in crushed cookies. Spread evenly in prepared pan.

Chill 2 hours or until firm. Remove from pan by lifting edges of wax paper. Cut into squares.