Guinness Chocolate Cake

I was thumbing through Nigella Lawson's Feast recently and slowed down when I hit the Chocolate Guinness Cake.  I figured what better time to try Chocolate Guinness Cake than right before St. Patrick's day.  I'm not a beer drinker, I am pretty sure this is the first Guinness that's ever passed my lips.  While I can't say I'll change my drinking habits any time soon I can certainly say there's certainly going to be more of this cake in my future.  The batter comes together in a snap.  Once baked the cake is dense without being heavy and moist without being fudgy.  The icing helps add some sweetness that is missing in the cake but is otherwise slightly disappointing.  I love cream cheese frosting but I don't think it complements the chocolate cake (the contrast also makes the cake extremely difficult to photograph with my iPhone) beyond adding sweetness which helps balance the slight bitterness of the cocoa in the cake.  When I make this again I am going to top the cake with chocolate ganache instead.

Original German Chocolate Cake

The man of the house will tell you that there are three desserts that he really likes; thin and chewy chocolate chip cookies, pecan pie and German Chocolate Cake.  The German Chocolate Cake he grew up with is the original recipe printed on Baker's brand German Chocolate bars.  Apparently this is the cake he requested for all of his childhood birthdays and I didn't want to go messin' with a good thing when I made this German Chocolate Cake last weekend.  I was honestly surprised at the complexity of the cake recipe found inside the box.  I figured this recipe would be one step removed from the boxed, add water, eggs and oil variety, but soon found out that I would be whipping egg whites into stiff little peaks and stirring constantly at my stovetop to make the gooey coconut-pecan filling that elevates German Chocolate Cake to crave-worthy status.  The chocolate cake layers are light and are not overwhelmingly chocolate-y.  They are a perfect counterpoint to the sinfully rich and decadent coconut pecan filling.

Chocolate Silk Pie

This pie recipe is nearly identical to the coconut cream pie recipe I posted a few weeks ago and is a testament to the versatility of a good basic recipe.  Rather than adding toasted coconut to the finished pudding you simply add in semisweet chocolate pieces.  The resulting filling is thick, creamy and decadent without being overly sweet.

I again made the pre-baked pie crust from the New Best Recipe cookbook and again ended up with a shrunken, bubbled and misshapen (though tasty) final product.  Hopefully I'll be able to post a winning pre-baked pie crust recipe in the future.

In the meanwhile, use whatever pie crust works for you and enjoy this extremely easy and delicious chocolate silk pie recipe.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

 

I am way late to the party, but this was actually my first time making a flourless chocolate cake.  I attempted to make a flourless chocolate waffle like the ones featured in the Great American restaurants a few years back, but that turned out to be more of a flourless chocolate omelet.

As I've mentioned before, my boss has a serious sweet tooth and, in the interest of office harmony and future raises, I try to bring him a little treat here and there.  This week he chose a flourless chocolate cake after I denied his first request for the, impossible to duplicate, flourless chocolate waffle.  I ultimately selected the following recipe at random after realizing no two cooks makes the ubiquitous dessert the same way and all of the reviews for all of the variations were entirely positive.  The preparation for this recipe is simple and quick.  The cake.. worth savoring.  Because this recipe requires that the cake be refrigerated overnight it's a perfect make-ahead dessert for events where you won't have a free oven until long after dinner is over.

Chocolate Eclairs

 My boss is a man who doesn't mess around when it comes to desserts.  He's a guy who, in the summer months, will close our office so we can go get ice cream cones.  When he asked for Chocolate Eclairs last week I knew I should oblige.  I used Gale Gand's recipe with few modifications and wound up with delicious, though somewhat enormous, eclairs.  Perhaps I am less familiar with jumbo size hot dogs than I thought, but my 5" lengths of dough transformed into submarine sandwich sized eclairs.  For more manageable portions pipe dough into 3 - 3 1/2" lengths.

Cinnamon and Chocolate Bread Pudding

I have been baking lots of bread lately and had a ton of stale bread in my freezer just waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. Finally, I decided upon bread pudding since most of the leftover bread was either challah, french, or a lightly sweet molasses loaf. I'm not a huge fan of raisins in baked goods so I opted for chocolate chips. The results were excellent.  The base recipe was adapted from The New Best Recipe Cookbook.

Pain au Chocolate

Having been stranded at the farm with feet of snow piling up around us, I decided to try my hand at Chocolate Croissants, aka Pain au Chocolate. I selected Jacques Torres' recipe and proceeded with a few minor tweaks.