Recipes Discovered

Heaven and Hell Cake Recipe

I saw a picture of this cake awhile ago and found it very intriguing. Apparently, it’s a signature dessert at a restaurant in Texas, but really it’s just devil’s food cake and angel food cake layered with a peanut butter mousse and covered in chocolate ganache. It’s a little time consuming to make, since the cakes bake separately at different temperatures, but it’s not overly difficult. My devil’s food cake collapsed a bit in the center, but with all the peanut butter mousse, it doesn’t really matter. Two things about the ganache though. One, make it as soon as the cakes come out of the oven because it takes awhile to cool down and thicken up. Two, I only used half the ganache and still thought it was a bit overwhelming, so I would definitely halve it next time. As for the final result – the cake looks very cool. It has a lot of contrast that make it visually impressive. The peanut butter mousse tastes incredible and would make a good filling for any cake. The delicacy of the angel food cake was lost a bit in the cake, but I don’t really think it’s supposed to stand out. Overall, it’s a very good and very rich cake – cut into very small slices and enjoy!

Cream Cheese Chocolate Bundt Cake

I know this isn’t the best picture, but this cake is really good. The recipe calls for a cake mix, but I love this chocolate cake so much, I will use any excuse to make it. This time, I put it in a bundt pan and then made a filling of sweetened cream cheese and pecans. The result is a rich, moist chocolate cake with a gooey, delicious ring of filling inside. There is no need for icing, but a dusting of powdered sugar wouldn’t hurt anything. The only problem I had with the cake is getting it out of the pan. Even though I sprayed the pan, the cake stuff stuck, so I suggest heavily greasing the pan. But even if the cake falls apart (as mine did), it still tastes great!

Tipsy Turtle Cake

Since I couldn’t find a recipe that I liked for a chocolate caramel cake, I decided to combine several recipes together and came up with this Tipsy Turtle Cake. The cake layer is the Chocolate Guinness Cake that I made a few weeks ago. A caramel chocolate filling is baked right into the cake by baking half of the cake batter, pouring the filling over the cake, and then topping that with the remaining cake batter. To top the whole thing off, a sweet caramel frosting with pecans. Together, it makes a very rich, delicious cake. However, I would probably make some changes the next time I make this. The cakes are pretty delicate, so to remove them from the pans and try to make a layer cake is a bit tricky. I would probably make this into a 9×13 sheet cake next time to avoid the cakes breaking apart. The frosting is incredibly difficult to work with as well because it hardens almost immediately. Making the cake into a sheet cake would also solve this problem because you could just pour the frosting over the cake all at once, but the filling is sweet enough, I don’t think the cake necessarily needs the frosting. I think I would just sprinkle additional pecans on top of the cake batter before baking it the second time and skip the frosting all together. However you make it, the cake is sweet and gooey – a definitely keeper even if it’s not the prettiest cake.

Almond Joy Oatmeal Cookies

I like Almond Joy candy bars. What’s not to like? Chocolate, coconut, almonds – all very good things. I decided to try to turn the taste of an Almond Joy into a cookie. I found a few recipes, but I really wanted to create the chewiness of the candy bar, so I settled on an oatmeal version. Essentially, the recipe is an oatmeal cookie with the addition of dark chocolate, coconut, and toasted almonds. I had to chill the cookie dough for about 20 minutes so the cookies kept their shape, but other than that, I pretty much just followed the recipe. The cookies turned out good – like an oatmeal cookies with chocolate, coconut, and almonds. It’s not exactly like an eating an Almond Joy, but it’s like eating a really good oatmeal cookie.

Whoopie Pie Recipe

Seth and I were making one of our many drives between State College and Virginia a couple days ago when we stopped at a small mini mart. At the counter, they were selling whoopie pies, which is made with two small chocolate cakes with a creamy white filling. It’s a very traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dessert that I had a lot growing up, and just seeing them brought back a ton of memories. It also made me very hungry, but there was no way I would pay two bucks for one when I could easily make my own. I first had to call my mom for the recipe and then call her again and verify it was the correct recipe, which she assured me that as odd as it sounds, it was correct. The chocolate batter is similar to chocolate cake, but thicker. It needs to be thick enough to keep its shape when dished onto a cookie sheet. I had to add about 2 tablespoons of flour to get the right consistency. The filling was the strange part. The recipe calls for mixing egg whites, vanilla, powdered sugar, and flour together first before adding more powdered sugar and shortening. As my mom said, it sounds odd, but it came out perfectly. At the mini mart, they also sold whoopie pies with peanut butter filling. I was curious, so I mixed some peanut butter into half of my filling. Although it was good, it was too much like a chocolate peanut butter cupcake and not enough like a whoopie pie. Traditional is definitely the way to go with these. And on a side note – apparently whoopie pies are also known as gobs and black-and-whites. Seth claims he knows them as moon pies, but I told him that’s a different thing all together.