Food Lush

Candy Corner: Meyer Lemon Giveaway Winner

by Erik

Thanks everyone who posted -- there were a lot of great dessert suggestions, and I have the sneaky suspicion that I will be eating my way through the comments list for quite some time!

The winner was lucky comment number 19!  That means you, Janssen!

Also, congratulations to Caitlin who won second place.  I didn't originally have a second place but I went out and  looked at the lemon tree and I have what by all appearances is several hundred lemons still left and it's physically impossible for me to just throw them away, so, Caitlin will be receiving a small USPS flat rate box.

Happy eating!

Erik

German's Chocolate Cake

By Natalie

Did you know that it is called German's chocolate cake, not German chocolate cake? This new information is my world. This is one of my all-time favorite desserts. But I'm pretty particular about my German's chocolate cake. No store bought German's chocolate cake for me please. 

I made this cake this week for my work, because we were having a Death By Chocolate day at lunch. Doesn't that sound fun?! This cake is a little bit of a beast to make. Prepare your arm muscles for the 20 minutes of stirring when making the frosting. I had to phone Granny in the middle of stirring and ask her exactly what color the frosting needed to be before I could stop. Directions say 12 minutes, we stirred for about 30. Good thing my mom was there so that we could trade off stirring. This is what color it should be: a lovely ochre color

Oh,  and I insist that you slather this icing all over the cake, not just between each layer. Come on you worked hard on that icing, you should use it ALL.

Other fun parts of the recipe include beating in each yolk separately, and then later making the eggs white stand in stiff peaks. Then you gently fold in the the egg whites:

Since I only have 2 9" rounds, I only made the cake 2 layers, and then a dozen cupcakes. This was the best idea, because then I could have as many cupcakes as I wanted to "test out" the cake before I served it to my co-workers.

I've only made this cake twice, and after each time I make this I want to give my Granny a giant hug for ever making this cake for me! It is a lot of work, but totally worth the effort and calories.

You can find the recipe here, and the icing recipe here. Shhh! It's the recipe right off the Baker's German's Chocolate box.

If You Can't Eat Cupcakes, Display Them!

By Jennie

I'm the idiot who thought we should host Dessert Week on Food Lush even though I gave up sweets for 12 weeks about a month ago. Editing the site has been a little tough on my stomach this week, let's just say. But, silver lining, I have MANY posts bookmarked for the baking frenzy I plan to undertake come April.

In the meantime, I may not be able to eat cupcakes (one of my most favorite things on earth), but I sure can buy cupcake stands and look longingly at them.

Such as...

Vintage inspired dessert pedestal

Sharing Secrets Bunny Cupcake Stand

Tiny dots cake stand

Blue square dessert pedestal

Buttercream pedestal with fancy rim

And since, it's not really a cupcake post without at least one shout-out to a cupcake itself, here's a post I wrote way back in the day on Style Lush about Butter Lane, the home of the very best cupcake I've ever had.

What's the best cupcake YOU'VE ever had?

Nutella Bread Pudding

by Jen L.

I feel like I have to confess:  I used to be one of those people who thought bread pudding soudned like the nastiest thing in the world.  Then I had a great homemade batch packed with raisins and rum flavoring and I was sold on it.  This version takes bread pudding to the next level by adding the warm, soothing flavors found in a little jar of Nutella.  One of my cast members brought a batch of this stuff to rehearsal the other day.  The pan was full when I left the room to grab my camera, but when I returned a minute later, here's all that was left:

I quickly claimed the rest of the pan and ate it with that big serving spoon you see in the picture.  This has to be added to my list of favorite winter desserts.  Hope you enjoy it!

NUTELLA BREAD PUDDING

• 12 slices of day-old Challah bread
• 1 1/2 cups Nutella
• 2 cups light cream
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
  

Preheat the oven to 350°F Grease an 8-inch square baking dish with unsalted butter.  Make 6 sandwiches with the bread and nutella. Cut each sandwich into 6 to 8 pieces. Pile the sandwich pieces into the prepared baking dish.   In a small saucepan, combine the cream, salt, and vanilla and cook over medium heat until warm.  In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs. Slowly add the cream mixture, stirring constantly to make sure the eggs do not cook.  Pour the mixture over the bread and cover the dish with aluminum foil.  Bake on the center rack of the oven for 30 to 40 minutes, removing the foil after about 20 minutes. The finished pudding will be golden brown on top.  Allow the pudding to rest for at least ten minutes before serving.

 

"Better Than Sex" Cake

By Nora

I have to admit that this cake was the reason for one of my most debilitating entertaining failures, but not because the cake wasn't delicious and fairly easy to make. It was because after I made the cake I put it in the fridge next to a very large water bottle which then toppled over onto the cake minutes after I had finished frosting it. Despite my best efforts to fix said smushed cake with MORE frosting, I finally accepted that it couldn't be saved for the elegant presentation I had planned. My 25-year-old self was devastated, of course, since I had put so much hard work into baking it for the party I was throwing, but then after a few cocktails, the cake came out of the fridge anyway and was thoroughly enjoyed by a bunch of drunk party revelers who couldn't have cared less what it looked like.

I couldn't find the recipe I originally used, but I remembered it had pineapple and coconut in it. So when I searched for it online, I was surprised to find that there are quite a few cakes that claim to be "better than sex." Some have toffee chips, some are chocolate, some are drizzled with caramel. I guess that it's a pretty subjective phrase, and that the culinary equivalent to a roll in the hay is different for everyone. I will leave it up to you to decide whether this cake fits the bill in that department, but the one I found from Paula Deen is the closest I can find to the one I baked and destroyed nearly a decade ago.

{Photo courtesy of foodnetwork.com}

Tackle Worthy Turtle Cookie Bars

By Jessica

A long time ago, I used to work in an area with a lot of guys. Technical support guys, hardware guys, essentially the kind of guys that play quite a lot of video games and whose idea of social interaction might be a LAN party. To say that they got excited over food or baked goods would be an understatement. If any other department over ordered for meetings, it would only take one of my guys catching wind and all that excess food would be gone in a heartbeat.

It helped to ply them with baked goods, given that I often needed them to do some sort of special customer service task for me or get me parts that were hard to procure. I got the recipe for these cookies from a Land o' Lakes butter box and my fate was sealed. If ever I was spotted (all our mods were walled with windows that looked into the parking lot) carrying a tray or a glass baking dish, I would be surrounded in the hallway. I had to start making double batches, one to parcel out on my way in and one to actually make it to its original destination.

Ingredients:

Crust:

2 c All-purpose flour
1 c Firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 c Butter softened
1 c Chopped pecans

Topping:

2/3 c  Butter
1/2 c Firmly packed brown sugar
1 c Chocolate chips (the recipe calls for semi-sweet, I use a combo of milk and semi)

Heat oven to 350°F. Combine all crust ingredients except pecans in large bowl. Beat at medium speed until mixture resembles fine crumbs.

Press onto bottom of ungreased 13x9-inch baking pan. Place pecans evenly over unbaked crust.

Combine 2/3 cup butter and 1/2 cup brown sugar in 1-quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until entire surface of mixture begins to boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour evenly over pecans and crust.

Bake for 18 to 22 minutes or until entire caramel layer is bubbly. (DO NOT OVERBAKE.) Remove from oven. Immediately sprinkle with chips; allow to melt slightly (2 to 3 minutes). Swirl chips leaving some whole for a marbled effect.

Cool completely*; cut into bars.

*If you let this cool completely, the caramel can be very hard to get through with like a butter knife or the like. I cut them just this side of totally cool.

{Photo credit: Land o Lakes}

Molten Chocolate Cake

By Maura

In 2003, molten chocolate cakes were all the rage in New York City. I was fortunate enough to eat at a lot of nice restaurants that summer, and by the end I swore I would never eat a molten chocolate cake again.

Never say never! These little cakes remain one of my favorite restaurant desserts, but now you can whip them up right in your own kitchen. Wow your hubby! Bowl over your guests! Eat them all yourself!

 
[Image credit: Kraft foods]

Molten Chocolate Cake
Recipe from Kraftrecipes.com

Ingredients:

1 pkg. (6 squares) BAKER'S Bittersweet Chocolate

10 Tbsp.  butter

1-1/2 cups plus 1 Tbsp. powdered sugar, divided

1/2 cup  flour

3 whole eggs

3   egg yolks

18 fresh raspberries

Instructions:

Heat oven to 425ºF.

Grease 6 (6-oz.) custard cups or souffle dishes. Place on baking sheet.

Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on MEDIUM (50%) 2 min. or until butter is melted. Stir with whisk until chocolate is completely melted. Add 1-1/2 cups sugar and flour; mix well. Add whole eggs and egg yolks; beat until well blended. Pour into prepared cups.

Bake 14 to 15 min. or until cakes are firm around the edges but still soft in the centers. Let stand 1 min. Run small knife around cakes to loosen; carefully unmold onto dessert plates. Cut in half. Serve warm topped with remaining sugar. Garnish with berries.

MAKE AHEAD  Batter can be made the day before; pour into prepared custard cups. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate. When ready to serve, uncover and bake as directed. 

Homemade oreos

By Jen

Want to impress the pants off someone? Seeing as this is Valentine’s Week and all, that could very well be your end goal. (Heh.) Seriously, though, every time I make these homemade oreos, family, friends and colleagues beg me for the recipe. I wish I could take credit, but alas, kudos is due solely to Smitten Kitchen.

The food porn, er, I mean, photo, is all me, though. (You're welcome!)

Having made these oreos many, many times, the only thing I can say is -- other than: MAKE THESE, YOU WON’T BE SORRY -- if you make the cookies a little bigger, thicker and fluffier, the end result more closely resembles a whoopie pie than an oreo. Make them smaller, thinner and crisper, and you’ve got yourself an oreo -- only better. Personally, I prefer the whoopie pie method.

Whatever you do, though, enjoy one (or three) of these cookies with a tall, cool drink of … milk.

Perfect Bake Sale Cupcakes

by Katie

Image credit: me. (Relatedly: my office is very pleased that I write for Foodlush)

Look, I'm not going to front: while I very much enjoy baking from scratch, sometimes what I really want in a cupcake is the kind you get from a box --  light, sweet, and super moist. And many homemade cupcake recipes just do not fit the bill. They're too dry, or too dense, or too high-falootin' with their fancypants flavors. Just give me delicious yellow cake like the kind that comes from a box promising "pudding in the mix," okay?

Except... have you looked at the ingredients list on one of those box mix cakes recently? Kind of alarming.

Good thing I have this recipe, then. This recipe makes perfect yellow cupcakes that have that tried-and-true cake mix flavor and texture without any of the unpronounceable ingredients you'd find in your average box cake. 

(Note: if you don't have a kitchen scale yet, seriously: get one. It makes recipes like this much easier, and much more precise (no measuring cups to wash!) But because I know not everyone has a kitchen scale, I've included the ingredients in both formats.)

 

Fluffy Yellow Cake

 Makes 24 cupcakes or 2 9-inch rounds
2 1/2 cups (10 oz) cake flour (yes, cake flour is important here. All purpose will work, but texture will suffer).
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups sugar, divided (12.25 oz total)
10 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 cup of buttermilk, at room temp
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
6 large egg yolks, at room temp
3 large egg whites

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.  Add 1 1/2 cups (10.5 oz) sugar and mix together. 

3. Whisk together butter, buttermilk, oil, vanilla, and egg yolks. (This works much better if the ingredients are at room temperature and the butter has cooled- otherwise it can get clumpy.  I just whisk it all together in the large measuring cup I use for the buttermilk- one less dish!)

4. Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer or the whisk attachment of a stand mixer until starting to get foamy (about 30 seconds).  With the machine running, gradually add remaining 1/4 cup (1.75 oz) sugar.  Beat until stiff peaks form (this can take anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds).  Transfer the egg whites to a bowl and set aside.

5. Put dry ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer.  With the mixer running on low, slowly pour in the wet mixture (it should take at least 15 seconds to pour all the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients).  Stop the mixer and scrape the bowl.  Then turn the mixture to medium low and mix until fully incorporated (10-15 seconds). 

6. Gently stir 1/3 of the egg whites into the batter with a rubber spatula.  Then carefully fold in the remaining whites in 2 batches. Don't overmix, but make sure no white streaks remain.

7. Pour the batter into 2 9-inch round cake pans or 24 muffin tins lined with paper liners.  Bake 20-22 minutes for cake pans, 16-18 minutes for cupcakes, rotating the pans halfway through the cooking time.  Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto racks. Frost with your favorite frosting.  (I use the Magnolia Bakery recipe, below)

 

Magnolia Bakery Frosting

(note: this recipe makes a LOT of frosting. Good for a layer cake, way more than you need for cupcakes. I usually only make 3/4 of a recipe for cupcakes and still have plenty left over.)

1 cup butter, softened
6-8 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
Food coloring of choice (I use these, obviously)

Place butter in the mixing bowl.  Beat it for a few seconds to break up the stick shape.  Add 4 cups powdered sugar and the milk and vanilla.  Beat until smooth and creamy.  Gradually add additional sugar, one cup at a time, until frosting reaches the correct consistency.  

 

Grandma Ople's Apple Pie

By Kristie

Grandma Ople isn't my Grandma and, in fact, I have no idea who Grandma Ople is and if she even really exists. But every time I make this apple pie I give a little thanks to Grandma Ople because she wins in the apple pie department. (Is it wrong that I have so many 'American Pie' jokes floating around in my head right now?)

About 3 years ago I stumbled across this recipe on Allrecipes.com while I was browsing for a simple dessert to make for a gathering I was attending. With only 7 ingredients and 3 steps to the whole process it didn't take very long to decide that this was the dessert I'd be making.

Ya'll, I do not joke when I say that this is THE BEST apple pie I've ever had. No. Seriously. Go make it, report back to me and send all your thank cards to Grandma Ople.

 
Grandma Ople's Apple Pie

1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup water
8 Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced

Directions:

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Stir flour to form a paste. Add white sugar, brown sugar and water; bring to a boil. Reduce temperature and simmer for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, place the bottom crust in your pan. Fill with apples, mounded slightly. Cover with a lattice work crust. Gently pour the sugar and butter liquid over the crust. Pour slowly so that it does not run off.

Bake 15 minutes at 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C), and continue baking for 35 to 45 minutes.

{Image courtesy Allrecipes.com}