Recipes Discovered

Banana Crunch Muffins

Since Seth loves banana, and I had a few very ripe bananas that needed to be used up, I decided to make banana muffins. The batter is very similar to a banana cake batter, with the addition of walnuts, coconut, and granola. The granola seems a little odd, but it gives the muffins a nice crunch. The muffins are really moist and wonderful on their own, no need for frosting. And I had much better luck getting the paper off these muffins than with the apple crumb muffins.

Apple Crumb Muffins Recipe

Seth wanted an apple cake and I wanted a coffee cake, so somehow we compromised on these Apple Crumb Muffins. The muffins are simple to make, since they are made from a standard crumb cake batter (with chopped apples), just baked in muffins tins. The topping is butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans. One of the recipes I read called for melting the butter in the topping, which I thought kind of made sense since it would be easier to mix together. Do not do it! Because the butter was already melted. the topping just ran off the muffins instead of making a crunchy top, and it made some kind of glue that fused the muffins to the paper liners making it nearly impossible to get the paper off without destroying the muffins. On the upside, the muffins taste really good. They are very moist, and aren’t overly sweet. Just watch out for the paper while you are eating them.

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes Recipe

Having a lot of leftover egg yolks and chocolate ganache from the cake I made earlier this week, I decided to make Boston Cream Pie again, but this time in the form of cute little cupcakes. Instead of a sponge cake, I made traditional vanilla cupcakes, filled them with pastry cream, and topped them with chocolate ganache. Although they were a little more work to make, I think they are a lot more “eater friendly”, if that makes sense. They hold up better as well. The cupcakes turned out really well, especially since it was my first time actually filling cupcakes. I’ll have to do some research now to find some other cupcake fillings.

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!

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.