Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

On the 11th was my friend's birthday, so the night before I made this cake for her birthday party. I wanted something easy that I had ingredients for or could easily get ingredients for, and this worked!

I used the same recipe for the cake as I did here except that I only used 2 layers. I still baked it for 30-35 minutes and it worked fine. I also used parchment paper which is a MUST. But everything else for that cake is the same--it's probably my favorite chocolate cake recipe now.

For the cream cheese frosting, I was originally going to make a red velvet cake for her but then the convenience store didn't have red food coloring, but I still stuck with a cream cheese frosting since I had all the ingredients for that. The cream cheese frosting recipe I tried was a new one, posted below. It was really great and I think it complemented the cake nicely...although I didn't eat the cake...so somebody who did get to try it should comment and let me know! It had a stronger cream cheese flavor than my other favorite used with these cupcakes. Ignore the lettering for her name--I didn't have food coloring so I just added some cocoa and was trying to rush so it looks ugly. That doesn't matter, because the taste was all that counted!

Cream Cheese Frosting
Recipe from Pinch My Salt

16 oz. cream cheese (2 packages), softened
1/2 cup unsalted butter (one stick), softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
pinch of salt

With an electric mixer, blend together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Turn mixer to low speed and blend in powdered sugar, salt and vanilla extract. Turn mixer on high and beat until light and fluffy. Use immediately or refrigerate, covered, until ready to use. If refrigerated, the frosting will need to be brought to room temperature before using (after frosting softens up, beat with mixer until smooth).

Lemon Coconut Bars

I was really scared when making this recipe because I wasn't sure what it was supposed to look like. The color seemed a little uneven when it came out and some of them tasted a little too much like flour, but I don't know if that was all in my head, because these were a hit! I feel like I'd want to change them around a little bit but people really liked them. Very lemony--I'd like a little more coconut flavor, which seemed more prominent when they were just baked other than after being refrigerated, but overall they were good and super easy to make!

Lemon Coconut Bars
Recipe From My Baking Addiction

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
3/4 cup cold butter or margarine
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup flaked coconut

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a 9 x 13 x 2 inch pan with foil or parchment paper and spray with non-stick cooking spray.

In a bowl, combine flour and confectioners’ sugar; cut in the butter until crumbly (I used my food processor and pulsed the ingredients until thoroughly combined).

Press into the bottom of a lightly greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, lemon juice and baking powder until well mixed. Pour over crust; sprinkle coconut evenly over the top.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack. Cut into bars.

Old Fashioned Yellow Cake

I put this cake together a while ago, but kept putting off putting it online. It was pretty good--I didn't have enough frosting to cover the whole thing so I quickly whipped up, with whatever ingredients I had, a spur-of-the-moment kahlua buttercream for the center. It would have been better with chocolate ganache or mousse, but I didn't have the ingredients. Overall, the cake was pretty good! The easiest & a really good cake recipe. I definitely want to re-try this one with a different kind of center. The frosting was light and so was the cake, so they went well together, but if I have enough ingredients next time I might opt for a light buttercream. I really have to do something about not having any ingredients for making something quality instead of opting for whatever's easiest...but it was a great change to make a yellow cake instead of everybody's same-old favorite chocolate stuff!

Oh, one more thing, I baked this in 9-inch cake rounds for 20-30 minutes.

Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake
Adapted by Cinnamon Girl Recipes from McCall's Book of Cakes and Pies

2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 + 1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 8-inch cake pans.

In a large mixing bowl sift flour and sugar, baking powder and salt.

Add butter, milk and vanilla. Beat with a hand mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes, occasionally scraping sides of bowl.

Add eggs, beat for 2 more minutes.

Pour batter into prepared pans, dividing equally among both. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Cool in pans on wire racks 10 minutes. Turn out and cool thoroughly on wire racks. Frost with cream cheese or whip cream frosting. If using whip cream frosting the cake must be refrigerated.

Whipped Cream Frosting

1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon sugar

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and chill with the whisk/beaters you will be mixing it with. Cover and chill for 30 minutes, then beat the mixture until stiff peaks form.

Kahlua Buttercream

4-5 tbsp butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp cocoa
1-2 tbsp kahlua
1 tbsp milk

Beat butter until smooth. Add powdered sugar, mix until combined. Add rest of ingredients & beat until fluffy.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Happy Halloween!!
Sorry I've been neglecting this blog! School & lack of ingredients happened...I have this recipe which was super easy to find the ingredients for. It was pretty good, pretty basic, everybody likes chocolate chip cookies and everybody likes bars, so it was good. Plus, I got to use not only the new pan my mom sent me (I now can bake recipes in a 9x13 pan!! instead of using 2 9-inch rounds, heh), but I also got to use the fall-themed sprinkles. I wasn't sure how they'd turn out on the bars, so I only sprinkled them on half (I didn't use the sea salt suggested in the recipe) but obviously could definitely have put sprinkles on the whole batch.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
Recipe from Two Peas & Their Pod

2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips
Sea salt, for sprinkling over bars-optional

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Spray a 9x13-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the melted butter and sugars together until combined. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla extract and mix until smooth. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix on low, just until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Pour cookie dough into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with the spatula. Sprinkle cookie bars very lightly with sea salt, if desired. Bake cookie bars for 25-30 minutes or until the top of the bars are light golden brown and the edges start to pull away from the pan. Cool bars on a wire rack to room temperature. Cut bars into squares and serve.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Coconut

I've been kind of distracted lately, but I'm still baking every now and then! Back on the day that I made those whoopie pies, I also made these chocolate cupcakes with coconut. They were good: I used the same recipe I did for this chocolate coconut cake a while ago. I think it would have been better if I'd filled the cupcakes or used a different cupcake recipe. As a cake, this was GREAT. As cupcakes, I think I expected a little more. Nonetheless, they were still pretty good and were definitely pretty! As you can see, I added sprinkles to some for the friends who don't like coconut so much.

Whoopie Pies (again!)

I've made whoopie pies before but wanted to try them again. I used the same cake/cookie recipe as last time, but changed up the frosting to be the same cream cheese frosting from the Red Velvet Cupcakes I made this summer. They were great! I loved this combination probably better than the buttercream last year, not that I remember that very much. I definitely want to try making different flavors of whoopie pies in the future, but I was just making them off what little variation of ingredients I have. I'm reposting the recipes below even though they can be found elsewhere on my blog.

Classic Chocolate Whoopie
Recipe from Whoopie Pies
Found on Bakerella

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a bowl, sift together, flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

In another bowl, beat butter, shortening and sugar with a mixer on low until just combined. Increase speed to medium and beat for about 3 minutes.

Add egg and vanilla and beat for two more minutes.

Add half of the flour mixture and half of the milk and beat on low until incorporated. Repeat with remaining flour and milk and beat until combined.

Using a tablespoon, drop batter on baking sheet two inches apart. Bake for about 10 minutes each or until pies spring back when pressed gently.

Remove from oven and cool for about five minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool completely.

1 Tbsp of batter should make about 48 two-inch cakes or 24 pies.
2 Tbsp of batter should make about 30 four-inch cakes or 15 pies.

Cream Cheese Frosting
Recipe from Annie's Eats

8 oz. cream cheese
5 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

To make the frosting, combine the cream cheese and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium-high speed until well combined and smooth, about 2-3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla extract. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until totally incorporated, increase the speed and then beat until smooth. Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.

Snickerdoodle Blondies

Sorry it's been a while--haven't had a lot of time to bake or post, but I definitely should have had these up last weekend! I made these in a fit of semi-rage a week and a half ago, but it's all better now. These are fabulous--a little too sweet for my taste, but very well-liked among my friends! I think I'd rather stick with regular snickerdoodles (or those awesome Chai Snickerdoodles, or my mom's Eggnog Snickerdoodles), but they were really easy to make! I made them in two 9-inch circular pans since I didn't have a 9x13 pan.

Snickerdoodle Blondies
Recipe by Dozen Flours
Adapted by Lick the Bowl Good

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup butter, at room temperature
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons white sugar (for topping)
2 teaspoons cinnamon (for topping)

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a 9 x 13 inch pan.

Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt and set aside. In large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla until smooth.

Stir in the flour mixture until well blended, then mix in cinnamon chips if using. Spread evenly in prepared pan. Mixture will be thick and resemble cookie dough. (I used my hands to press it down and smooth the top).

Combine white sugar and cinnamon in a little bowl. Evenly sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture over the top of the batter.

Bake 25-30 minutes or until surface springs back when gently pressed. Cool slightly. While still warm, cut into bars with a sharp knife.

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

I wanted to find a simple recipe that I could use without an electric mixer and without complicated ingredients, and came across this one. Luckily there was buttermilk at our local mini-grocery-store in collegetown. I didn't use hot coffee but the boiling water was perfect anyway.

This cake was for my friend's 21st birthday on friday, and it was a huge hit! I made 3 layers and the frosting was barely enough for me, just a warning. I couldn't find butter anywhere so I used store-bought white frosting...kinda cheated...but oh well it wasn't a big extra. People thought the cake was extremely moist and the frosting was very smooth, and so it was great, and could easily be my newest go-to chocolate cake, minus one huge detail: You DEFINITELY, in my opinion anyway, need to line the bottom of the cake pans with parchment paper. I didn't. They kinda fell apart. I managed to put them back together okay, but the middle layer looked pretty bad before I covered the whole thing with frosting.

Double Chocolate Cake
Recipe from Foodessa
Found on Pinch of Yum
Adapted by me

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup hot coffee (or 1 cup boiling water)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease three round baking pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper, greasing the top of that, and set them aside. In a large bowl, stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla extract; beat 2 minutes on medium speed. Stir in hot coffee.

Pour batter evenly between the three pans and bake on middle rack of oven for 30 to 35 minutes, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely on wire racks before frosting.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting
Recipe from Confessions of a Tart
Found on Pinch of Yum

2 sticks (1 cup) butter, room temperature
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (more to your tastes)
1/2 cup milk
2-3 cups of powdered sugar (more or less to achieve desired consistency)

Whip the room-temperature butter on medium speed. Shift to low and add cocoa powder slowly, spoonfuls at a time, until fully incorporated. Still on low, add in the powdered sugar (also one spoonful at a time), alternating with the milk, to achieve desired consistency and taste. Then, beat on medium speed until very light and fluffy, another 3-5 minutes. Add in more sugar if consistency is too thin.

The Baked Brownie

I made these at home--I think this is the last recipe I'm posting that I made at home, the rest will be from my new kitchen. They were definitely very good brownies, probably my favorites, though a kid tried them and didn't like them and that may be because of the coffee flavor (everyone else loved them).

Okay so funny story, I had the chocolate melting over the stove and got out the instant espresso powder to make this recipe, only to notice that it was a solid block dried to the bottom of the container. Wow. And I couldn't make these brownies without a coffee flavor for fear that they would not turn out as good, since these brownies were supposed to be some of the best...so I looked online for a substitute, only to find really, none. So I decided to take out some coffee from a bag (It was ground, though not as finely as the powder...okay so I have nooo clue about anything coffee except that I like my skinny flavored lattes from Starbucks) and ground it with my mom's mortar and pestle. And it seems to have worked, though I don't know how the flavor will change when I try this recipe with instant espresso powder. I think they taste great, and I ground the coffee fine enough so that there was no textural difference.

The Baked Brownie
Recipe from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking
Recipe found on Cakespy

1 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons dark cocoa powder
11 ounces quality dark chocolate (60-72%), chopped coarsely
8 ounces butter (2 sticks), cut into 1 inch cubes
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter the sides and bottom of a glass or light colored metal pan 9x13x2 pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, the salt, and cocoa powder.

Configure a large sized double boiler. Place the chocolate, the butter, and the instant espresso powder in the bowl of the double boiler and stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and combined. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water of the double boiler and add both sugars. Whisk the sugars until completely combined and remove the bowl from the pan. Mixture should be room temperature.

Add three eggs to the chocolate/butter mixture and whisk until just combined. Add the remaining eggs and whisk until just combined. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Do not over beat the batter at this stage or your brownies will be cakey.

Sprinkle the flour/cocoa/salt mix over the chocolate. Using a spatula (DO NOT USE A WHISK) fold the dry into the wet until there is just a trace amount of the flour/cocoa mix visible.

Pour the mixture into the pan and smooth the top with your spatula. Bake the brownies for 30 minutes (rotate the pan half-way through baking) and check to make sure the brownies are completely done by sticking a toothpick into the center of the pan. The brownies are done when the toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.

Cool the brownies completely before cutting and serving.

Chai Snickerdoodles

I cannot begin to tell you how delicious these cookies are. I like chocolate, but not as much as something different. Snickerdoodles in general are okay. But these are snickerdoodles with a chai twist, and they are SO. SO. Good. And easy. So if you want something different from the regular chocolate or the regular snickerdoodle, try these.

Chai Snickerdoodles
Recipe from My Madison Bistro

1 ¾ cups granulated sugar, divided
½ cup room temperature unsalted butter*
½ cup non-hydrogenated shortening*
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

Preheat oven to 400*F

Sift the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Cream 1 ½ cups sugar, the butter, and shortening on medium speed. Add eggs, 1 at a time, until mixed.

Reduce speed to low and slowly add the flour mixture until just combined, scraping down the bowl with a spatula as needed.

In a small bowl, mix the remaining ¼ cup sugar with the spices

Form dough into 1 ¼ inch balls and roll in sugar mixture. Place 2 inches apart on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes; cool 5 minutes on baking sheet before removing to wire rack to thoroughly cool.

*You can use all butter for this recipe, or substitute coconut oil for the non-hydrogenated shortening.