Irish Car Bomb Brownies

Just a quick recipe post! I hope everyone's St. Paddy's Day was thoroughly enjoyed with plenty of family, friends, beer and whiskey. I was bartending, and it wasn't too busy during the day (most likely due to the restaurant's lack of Irish affiliation), but we still had fun! We kind of made it our mission to fit as much green into our black-on-black uniforms as possible.

I was hoping someone at the bar would order an actual Irish Car Bomb, it being St. Paddy's and all. But I guess mid-afternoon is a little too early for those. Luckily for me, I had about an hour between working out and heading off to work, and that left me just enough time to whip up some Irish Car Bomb Brownies.

These brownies have a texture closer to fudge than cake-like brownies because there's no leavening agent used (like baking powder or baking soda). The recipe is adapted from a gluten-free version I found on The Dusty Baker. Since I have no reason not to use gluten, I decided to put it back in (duh). But if for some reason you're on a gluten-free diet, by all means follow their original recipe!

Irish Car Bomb Brownies

Guinness Brownies
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
3/4 cup cocoa powder (I use Valrhona since it's super dark, but any good cocoa will work!)
1/2 cup Guinness
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup AP flour
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an 8x8 square baking dish (or something similar) and line with parchment. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and whisk in cocoa until smooth. Mix in beer. Add sugar and whisk until it's dissolved (about a minute). Transfer mixture to large bowl and cool slightly. Add eggs and whisk until completely combined. Fold in flour and salt, and pour into baking dish. Bake 15-20 minutes until middle is set. Cool before frosting.

Jameson and Baileys Ganache 
1 cup chopped dark chocolate or dark chocolate chips
1 cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp butter
1 oz Jameson Irish Whiskey
1 oz Baileys Irish Cream

Place chocolate in a medium-sized bowl. Heat cream just until it begins to bubble. Pour over chocolate and let sit for a couple minutes. Begin slowly mixing the chocolate and cream mixture until all chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Whisk in butter, Jameson and Baileys. Pour on top of cooled brownies, and allow to set for a few hours at room temperature before cutting and serving.


Check back soon for a second review of some eateries in NYC! Have a wonderful night!

Loco Cocoa Cake!

This post is devoted to my incredibly supportive, loving, intelligent and crazy dad. Today is his birthday! Happy birthday, Dad! 

I can thank him for my competitiveness, my need to challenge myself, and my spontaneity. He's the one that runs beside me, gives me a glance and the next thing you know we're sprinting until one of us burns out. He's there 10:00 in the morning on my birthday doing a shot of tequila with me (though we opted for 10pm this time around). He's the one you can say "I kind of feel like going on a road trip," and his response is, "Which car should we take?" And I can always count on him walking through the door with his enthusiastic, "Hey Mandy May!" every day when he gets home from work.

All in all, my dad is a pretty awesome guy.

And that means he needs an awesome cake. One that's not usual, a little surprising, and definitely keeps you on your toes.

Two years ago for his birthday I made what I like to call "The Man Cake," which was a cake made with his own Pumpkin Ale topped with a bacon buttercream, made with bacon fat and butter. Oh, yeah. I did that. And I topped it with crumbled bacon.

Since The Man Cake was pretty out of the box, I needed to come up with something that was at least comparable this year.

I decided on a chocolate cake, soaked in Patron Xo Cafe Dark Cocoa tequila, filled with cayenne-chocolate custard and topped with a spicy dark chocolate ganache. Loco Cocoa, no?

The cake was made from my favorite chocolate cake recipe, cut into four layers, and doused in the tequila. I filled the cake with my standard chocolate custard recipe with about a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne added in (we like things spicy! Adjust according to your tastes). I frosted the cake with a dark chocolate ganache that also had cayenne and a little cinnamon added. The cake was decorated with shards of chocolate sprayed with edible gold and amber sugar.

I'm very blessed to have such a wonderful dad who keeps up with my crazy life and supports me every step of the way. Hope you had a great day, Dad!

"And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers..." Malachi 4:6

Chocolate Bacon Brownies

Woah 2012! How are everyone's resolutions going? The gym is a zoo three days a week still, so I guess they're going strong. Speaking of which, have you ever watched animals using a treadmill? It's pretty awkward. Did you see what I did there? ;)

Anyway, I hope your new year has started off great. I don't know what the resolutions were like in your household, but the morning of our new year started out with us eating as many cinnamon buns as we could until we found a hidden lucky coffee bean. It's going to be a good year.

What? You didn't do that?

My family decided to start a new food tradition this year since last year's pork and cabbage and lentils seemed to give us NO luck. So this year Dad presented our new tradition, loosely based on an idea from Norway (can someone tell me where he finds this stuff? I'd like to see the Google searches on that man's phone): an almond is placed in a pot of rice pudding, and whoever gets the almond in their dish is supposed to have luck the rest of the year. I say loosely because rice pudding is not a favorite in our household, especially if raisins are involved, and my brother now deathly allergic to almonds (looking back this sounds like a terrible idea...). And since we're American and not Norwegian, we replaced the rice pudding with cinnamon buns and the almond with a coffee bean. HELL YES.

To make a long story short, my older brother ended up getting the coffee bean, and has had the worst luck of all of us ever since (apparently accidentally shaving off your beard is super tragic in the man-world).

So if you're looking for more luck this year, I say ditch the resolutions and start shoveling baked goods down your throat. And a half pound of bacon. And you should start with these Chocolate Bacon Brownies.

I apologize for the quality of this photo. The big fancy camera decided to be stubborn so my cracked and slowly dying phone saved the day. 

These brownies start with a chocolate cookie, pretzel and bacon fat crust. Stay with me....The crust is topped with bacon and chocolate chip brownies, and the whole thing is covered in dark chocolate bacon ganache with chopped bacon and crushed chocolate cookies. If that doesn't ooze luck I'm not sure what does. Let's start this year off right, folks.

Chocolate Bacon Brownies
Chocolate Pretzel Crust
1 cup ground pretzels
1 cup ground chocolate wafer cookies
3 Tbsp bacon fat
3 Tbsp melted butter
1 Tbsp sugar

Toss all ingredients together and press into the bottom of a greased 9x13" baking dish.

Bacon Brownies (Brownies adapted from Hershey's)
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp espresso powder dissolved in 1 Tbsp hot water
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup cocoa powder (I use Valrhona)
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 pound bacon, cooked and chopped (1/4 cup reserved for topping)
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt butter and sugar in microwave on high for 2 minutes. Stir to combine and let cool slightly. Mix in eggs one at a time and stir in espresso and vanilla. Add cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt, and mix until just combined. Fold in bacon and chocolate chips, and pour batter over chocolate pretzel crust. Bake 30-35 minutes.

Bacon Ganache
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1 cup heavy cream
2 Tbsp bacon fat
1/4 cup bacon, chopped and cooked (optional)
1/4 cup ground chocolate wafer cookies (optional)

Place chocolate chips in heat safe bowl. In the microwave or on the stove, heat heavy cream until just before it boils. Pour cream over chocolate and let sit for a couple minutes. Slowly whisk chocolate and cream mixture until chocolate is melted and smooth, then stir in bacon fat. Pour on top of cooled brownies. Top with bacon and chocolate cookies, if desired.




Or go eat a salad or something.

Chocolate Kahlua Cupcakes and a Cowboy Hat Cake

So I don't have a new recipe for you, which is a little bit of a cop-out cause I haven't posted in a while. Bear with me.

I've been busy pretending I'm in college again. Which for me would actually mean recipe testing and baking every hour of the day, and I'd probably have 17 new recipes for you. So really I've been busy pretending I'm in college for the first time while I'm visiting my friends and going to alumni weekend. And you know what it's taught me?

I'd be really good at being homeless.

First of all, if I didn't have to primp for my job every day, I wouldn't feel the need to mess with doing my hair or wearing attractive clothes. Flannel=perfection. As long as I could bathe I'd be a happy permanent camper, and as I've mentioned in this post, give me a puddle and a bar of soap and I'll be just fine (Note: puddles can also be substituted for fountains). Also, I got some practice sleeping in my car and it was pretty cozy. You wake up and everything you need is right there! Jump in the driver seat and the world is at your gas pedal. So maybe I couldn't be street-homeless, but more of the live-out-of-a-car homeless type. Plus you start to learn which places have accessible outlets and bathrooms you don't have to buy anything to use.

Are you impressed yet? Why is that look of disgust on your face? I'm just saying, if it was between you and I being homeless, I might volunteer for the job (really, you should be thanking me...). The only problem, I don't think I'd be able to do this whole baking-blogging thing for very long, and that might drive me crazy. So I'll just continue being a non-homeless person (Thanks, parents, for letting me live here! Don't kick me out now!).

Speaking of the live-out-of-a-car homeless type, I have a friend that does this. Okay, so we're not like BFFs, but we hung out once. And by "hung out" I mean we went fishing at midnight. And by "we" I mean I didn't go there with him, we just happened to be doing the same thing at the same place at the same time. So I guess it was only natural that we struck up a conversation. Also, I suggest you listen to this song. It's only appropriate.

His name was Dave, and he was there with his friend Rusty and we had a great time. Until Dave showed me the laser pointer he found and figured out how to smoke stuff out of it. That's when I called it a night. To be fair, at first I didn't know I was basically intruding on his home next to the river. I thought he just needed to get out of the house and away from his wife for some prime time fishing. It was only when we parted and he said, "Okay well I'm gunna go take the truck back to the tracks now," when I realized. Then good ol' Rusty goes, "Yeah I'm gunna head home and go in the hot tub." HOT TUB?! Dave's gunna go sleep in his truck and you're gunna go home to your luxurious, bubbling hot tub? Dave didn't seem too jealous though. And by then I could slowly back away and disappear into the night. But not forever. The next morning on my run I saw Dave! "Hey, Amanda!" "Hey there, Dave!" And we never crossed paths again.

I wonder what Dave's doing these days. Well, I can't tell you that, but I can tell you what I'm up to. I'm  making cowboy hat cakes and cupcakes with Kahlua in them, and you can, too!

So what I should have done is take pictures of each step of this cowboy hat cake so you could just look at the process instead of enduring my awkward, incoherent babbling. But I didn't....so here goes.

The very first thing I did (a week ahead of time) was cut the brim of the hat out of chocolate fondant, and allowed it to harden into shape by placing it on top of, stay with me....an upside-down cowboy hat. I had to do this step THREE times. Even though I set it out a week ahead, the fondant just wouldn't harden enough to support the cake. So two days in advance I made the same thing out of gum paste I dyed brown kneaded with chocolate fondant, and by God it worked. You can just skip right to that step and avoid all the stress and frustration, if you'd like.

I made two batches of chocolate cake batter so I'd end up with three cake layers and a dozen cupcakes. Once the cakes were cooled I brushed them with Kahlua and stacked them with ganache in the middle. Then I started hacking at it with a knife til it looked like the top of the hat! There's really no fancy method to do it, just have an idea of what you want to end up with and gradually saw off cake wherever you see fit. It's all going to get covered anyway so it doesn't have to be pretty! Take too much cake off? Just put a dab of ganache and stick some cake scraps on there to fill it in. It's fairly forgiving, just take your time!

Next, I coated the sculpted cake in buttercream and set it in the fridge to harden a bit while I rolled out the fondant. Then I just covered the cake with the fondant, smoothed it out and cut the excess. I dyed some of the leftover fondant a darker brown and cut three really super long strips and braided them for the leather rope around the hat's base. And made the medallion looking thing that I painted with edible gold paint.

When you're sure the brim is hardened enough, the cake can be assembled. I put a bit of extra sticky fondant on the cake board to secure the brim in place. I did the same thing when attaching the cake to the brim. Actually that's untrue. I totally forgot to secure it all to the cake board which was really stupid of me. So I had to lift the whole finished cake up and then put the fondant underneath to attach it, which is also a frustrating step that you may skip.

The final steps were attaching the fondant medallion and braid with some melted chocolate (if you use chocolate candy melts it'll dry a lot faster), and painting the whole thing with brown food coloring to give it the look of leather.

With the cupcakes I just cut out a bit in the middle, brushed on some Kahlua and piped in some ganache. Then I put the cake back that I cut out and topped them with buttercream, a chocolate-covered almond and some cocoa powder. Done and done!

Thanks for putting up with my extra wordy post. I'll be sure to come up with more exciting recipes now that I'm no longer practicing being homeless and have an oven and the Internet within reach.

Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Cake

A wonderful day off from work! The sun is shining as summer comes to an end (gag), the birds are singing and the squirrels are plumping up for the colder weather that is approaching.

Not.

Well I do have the day off from work today, but it's because I'm sick. Other than that it's pouring and the birds are too depressed to sing because summer is ending...but I'm pretty sure the squirrels are still really fat. Anyway, I'm thinking it's a standard case of strep throat.

Let me tell you a little bit about the relationship between strep throat and I. That's right, we have a relationship.

Growing up, my year would not be complete if I didn't get strep throat a few times. Sometimes the smell of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or cement glue can bring someone right back to their childhood. Give me a whiff of liquid Amoxicillin and I'm 8 years old again, with a closed throat and only canned peaches to get me through (mental note: have someone pick up canned peaches on their way home from work).

Well I haven't gotten a good case of strep throat in a while, so I guess it's long overdue. Actually when looking for medicine in the cabinet last night, it had all expired somewhere between the golden years of 1991-1994. Yep, definitely still effective.

So don't mind me while I lay on the couch and eat soggy Rice Krispies all day. At least I can devote my day to blogging! No baking though....I don't think people would appreciate cookies laced with strep.

Sounds sketchy.

Since I don't have anything new I can make and share with you, I'll share a recipe from Valentine's Day a few years ago. Don't ask questions, just go with it.

I wanted to make a strawberry cake for this particular Valentine's Day. But when searching through recipe after recipe, they all contained Jell-O and food coloring and while I'm sure they're wonderful and tasty and beautifully pink, it just seemed....wrong. But I finally found one on another blog (Confections of a Foodie Bride--check her out if you haven't already!), and it was perfect.

Then I filled the cake with a quick strawberry jam, frosted it with a light pink vanilla buttercream, covered it in chocolate ganache, swirled in some white chocolate hearts and topped it with chocolate-covered strawberries. If that doesn't scream love, folks, I'm not sure what does.

Oh, and it sparkled. TAKE THAT.

Strawberry Cake
Adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride

2 ¼ cups cake flour

1 ¾ cups sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

12 Tbsp (1 ½ sticks) softened butter
1 cup pureed fresh strawberries

¼ cup room temperature milk

4 eggs, beaten

1 Tbsp vanilla

¼ cup plain Greek yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, and grease and flour two 9” cake pans. Add dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) to mixing bowl. Add butter and mix just until butter is incorporated and texture is crumbly. Add wet ingredients (milk, eggs, vanilla and strawberry puree) and mix to combine. Fold in yogurt. Divide batter evenly between pans and bake 25-30 minutes until toothpick inserted in middle comes out with no traces of batter, but not completed dry (should have some moist crumbs attached). Cool cakes completely.

Quick Strawberry Jam

1 cup chopped strawberries
1-2 Tbsp sugar (as much or as little as you'd like to get desired sweetness)
1/4 cup water (juice can be substituted)
2 tsp cornstarch mixed with 2 tsp water

Add all ingredients to a saucepan over medium heat. Slowly bring mixture to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Allow mixture to cook until liquid is reduced and thickened. Transfer to a bowl, cover, and put in the refrigerator to cool completely before using.


Chocolate Ganache
Adapted from Fine Cooking

1 lb. chopped bittersweet chocolate or chocolate chips
2 cups heavy cream
2 Tbsp softened butter

Place chopped chocolate in a heat-proof bowl. Heat heavy cream in a saucepan over medium heat just until it begins to bubble (not boiling!). Pour hot cream over chocolate and let sit, untouched, for 3-5 minutes. Slowly begin whisking chocolate-cream mixture until chocolate is melted and smooth. Add butter and continue to whisk until completely incorporated. Cool ganache at room temperature before using, just long enough so it's still able to be poured (if you let it sit overnight it'll become thick, perfect for frosting a cake).

For the pink buttercream, I just used the vanilla buttercream recipe I've mentioned before and added a few drops of pink food coloring to reach the desired color. For the chocolate-covered strawberries I used dark and white chocolate candy melts and went crazy with it!

To assemble the cake, I filled it by putting a layer of buttercream then topped it with the cooled strawberry jam. I frosted the whole cake with the pink buttercream, poured on the chocolate ganache, then used melted white chocolate to make the heart designs on top (start with just a dot of white chocolate then pull a toothpick through the center--voila!). Finally, I topped the cake with some gold luster dust (so it shimmered, obviously) and the chocolate covered strawberries.

Happy Valentine's Day! ....I mean, Happy Day After Labor Day! Hope it's a good one...now bring me some peaches.

Southern Homemaker Cake

I start work in a restaurant on Monday. I couldn't be more excited! I'll finally get paid for being around food even if I'm not making it, instead of being around payrolls (which is equally as exciting with all those paper cuts...and ringing phones...and freezing cold offices. Just, you know, not for me.). And as with any new job, I'm a little nervous. But I'm not nervous about what I'll be doing or who I'll be working with. No. There's only one thing I'm nervous about....

TRIPPING.

I feel it's kind of important in this blog for you to get to know me as much as my food, and I've tried pretty hard to give you some insight into who I am and what I'm about. Well, you wanna know something? I'm clumsy.

Memorable Clumsy Moments:
-Four years old: Mama thinking I need glasses because I constantly miss the doorway and run into the wall.
-Ninth birthday: Missing a branch while climbing trees with all my nine-year-old friends and breaking my wrist.
-Not too long ago: Falling on the treadmill while running at the gym. Worst. Fear. Come. True.
-Daily: Falling upstairs, whacking my head on the top of the car door, and/or tripping over sidewalk cracks.
-Miss New Jersey USA 2009 Pageant: Round two of evening gowns, tripping over my dress in front of hundreds of people.

Okay, that didn't really happen, but I pictured the scenario nonstop until it was over and I successfully was able to move one foot in front of the other on stage in blinding light. How horrified did you feel for me just then though? You were probably like, "Wow this girl is really is embarrassing and if I'm seen reading her blog her embarrassing-ness is probably going to seep through the screen and infect my life forever so I should probably just exit out of this now while I still have a chance." But you don't have to do that, cause I'm not that embarrassing.

I digress.

So now that I'll be wearing high heels every day and walking constantly, the risk of tripping greatly increases. I'm sure I could throw together a line graph or a flow chart that demonstrates these relationships, I mean, if you're more of a visual learner.

I wonder if classy Southern women are clumsy? I bet they're not.

So I made this cake today. I call it my "Southern Homemaker Cake," just because when I looked at the finished product I could see it sitting on a dining room table next to a giant plate of fried chicken, like it was effortlessly thrown together (I wish I could say it was effortless...). And don't question the cake and fried chicken combo--you know you'd love that meal.

This is my go-to chocolate cake recipe. Technically Allrecipes.com calls it "Chocolate Mocha Cake," but no one ever picks up on the coffee flavor, so I just use it as plain, amazing chocolate cake. I usually change recipes around and tweak them here or there, but this one's so good as is, no tweaking needed.

Chocolate Cake
From Allrecipes.com

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp instant espresso powder
1 cup hot water (I use hot coffee)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease two 9" round cake pans. Put all ingredients, except espresso powder and hot water/coffee, in mixing bowl. Combine and mix on medium-high speed for 2 minutes. Dissolve espresso powder in hot liquid then slowly add while mixer is on low speed (batter will be on the thinner side). Transfer to cake pans and bake 30-35 minutes until toothpick inserted in center comes out mostly clean.

SO EASY.

Vanilla Buttercream
I use Wilton's recipe, which also doesn't need tweaking!

1/2 cup butter*
1/2 cup shortening*
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp milk
*Sometimes I use a full cup of butter and omit the the shortening, or all shortening can be used for a more pure-white frosting.

Cream butter and shortening together. Slowly add sugar until completed incorporated. Add vanilla and milk and whip until light and fluffy. More or less milk can be added for a softer or stiffer frosting.

Cherry Buttercream Filling
1 cup vanilla buttercream
3/4 cup chopped cherries, divided
1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp sugar, more or less depending on the sweetness of the cherries

Simmer 1/2 cup of the cherries, water and sugar together over medium heat until liquid reduces by half and a syrup has formed. Cool cherry syrup. Slowly whisk into vanilla buttercream until fully incorporated. Stir in remaining cherries. Frosting will be thin and best used as a filling.

I decorated the cake with fondant and gum-paste blossoms, but it by no means needs the extra work! Because the amount of work is directly related to the amount of devastation when you trip carrying the cake and and it explodes on the floor. Luckily this hasn't happened...yet. 

PS- Happy Birthday Mrs. Miley!