Thanksgiving Top Chef Cook-off with Chocolate-Cayenne Cocktail Cookies on the 50th Day

  Page 164 in the November 2011 issue of Food and Wine: Chocolate-Cayenne Cocktail Cookies! This blog has reached the 50th day half-way point with these snappy little treasures. While the Top Chef prize went to a pumpkin cheesecake baker with a beautiful singing voice, which I think certainly swayed the judges, this unusual pastry was really in a class by itself: salty-sweet hors d'oeuvre cookies.  Can't wait to make these again!

Days 48 and 49, Boston Cream Pie

    

     What's the best layer cake for Boston Cream Pie?  Well, that all depends. 
     If you feel there's never enough chocolate in your world, Michele's Sin City Chocolate Cake layers will get you there, to a more-chocolate universe. We loved that. 
      If you're a BCP purist like my friend L., make Michele's One Two Three Four Golden Layers,  page 156 in  150 Chocolate Cakes.  We  loved that too, as did L. and her family.   Both times I used Jurgen's Chocolate Glaze - again from Michele's book.  This is a superb, delicious, shiny glaze.  And both times the essential cream was New Basics pastry cream, page 653 in The New Basics Cookbook, an especially rich and gooey filling.

Day 47, Whereupon the Freeze-and-Ship Chronicles Continue. Sin City Chocolate Cake with Buttercream Frosting Really Does Travel.

Perfect day and time for mailing cakes...

   Baked a new one and shipped it south hoping the weather holds and the USPS maintains its recent 3-day delivery trend.
   Here is a way to ship a frosted single-layer cake in the mail.  Use those 8 x8 inch recycled disposable aluminum pans with plastic covers.  Bake your cake, and freeze it.  Make a full batch of Michele's Beginner's Buttercream. Pop the little cake out of its pan, and apply frosting liberally to the bottom inside of the pan so the cake stays put in there.  Return the cake to its home pan, and liberally ice the top. Snap on the plastic cover, and freeze it again.  Retrieve from the freezer and wrap generously with plastic wrap and tape.  This way it's less likely to lose moisture.  Place the entire thing in a huge Ziploc freezer bag in case it's stranded somewhere hot.  You don't want melted buttercream oozing all out in the mail truck.  Place a frozen cold pack - the kind you would put in a lunchbox - in a sealed baggy on the bottom of the cake pan.  Tape that in place.  Shove the whole thing in an insulated shopping bag.  This will fit in a medium-sized USPS flat rate box and mail for about $10.  Mark your box "This side up".  Know the pickup times for your Post Office, and send your frozen cake right before the truck comes.


   Reportedly, the cake arrived in beautiful, delicious condition on the third day,  buttercream only slightly smooshed on one end.

Sin City Chocolate Cake on Days 45 and 46



Sin City Chocolate Cake in Two Layers With Chocolate Buttercream Frosting



  Recently a fellow traveller and chocolate enthusiast asked me for a simple but great chocolate cake recipe.  I had to pick this one.  Dense and intense, making 3 generous layers in one batch, rising enough for respectable layer cake, Michelle Urvater's Sin City Chocolate Cake Layers recipe is the clear choice.  I return to it over and over.  Page 150, Chocolate Cake.

   Two layers went to an office potluck with my first husband, slathered in chocolate buttercream frosting. (The cake, not the man, was slathered.) Reportedly, it was loved and immediately, entirely consumed.



   That third layer now waits in my freezer.  Today it will get its thick coat of icing, be boxed, and return to the freezer, and tomorrow it will embark on it's postal trip to the capital of a large southern state.  My sister, the chocolate cake book-buying benefactor, should find it in her mail this week. May cooler weather prevail.   If the frosting is disheveled, she can serve it with whipped cream and Wilderness pie cherries.  Maybe she should do that anyway.

   Uh-oh.  As soon as the little single layer Sin City Chocolate Cake was frosted, somebody (somebodies) ate it. 

    If an 8"cake is travelling or for some other reason being served from the pan, so all it needs is frosting on top, this recipe is just enough.  For a more elegant presentation ( if elegance can happen with a disposable aluminum pan), shave contrasting chocolate generously over the top.



Just Enough Buttercream

4 ounces unsalted butter (1/2 stick) at summer room temperature

1/4  cup confectioners'  sugar (If there's no powdered sugar, granulated sugar can be ground up in a             blender.  This may lend your frosting a gritty, interesting texture.)

3 ounces Ghirardelli white chocolate - broken, melted, cooled

1 tsp orange liqueur



Cream the butter with the sugar.  Add the chocolate, and beat thoroughly.  Sprinkle in liqeur, and beat one more time until the texture pleases you.





Day 44: Yet More Snow-Flecked Brownies in the Mail



Baker's Assistant


HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY, CALEB!
I hope this kind and diligent college student agrees with me that late is truly better than never, because these brownies, now frozen and mailed, are probably not going to get there on his birthday. Caleb insists this is his favorite brownie, so perhaps a little delinquency can be tolerated.  They are en route to the most progressive city in the state and quite possibly the most liberal place in the noncoastal American West.  It's not far. Maybe he'll receive them Tuesday.

Day 43 - Ashley's Symphony Brownies

  Oh, my God, these are good.   These brownies are fast and decadently delicious.  You can ship these babies out,  cooked and ready-to-eat or as ready-to-bake components.  (That way your recipient can enjoy them hot from his oven.)
   The amazing Ashley gave me this recipe, and she's not just phenomenal for brownies.  You'd never guess to look at her, but this petite, brilliant fireball can deadlift 225 pounds.  She once retrieved a tiny but really important piece of jewelery off the bottom of  the cold and fast Comal River with the help of two good girlfriends and toy snorkel mask.   Here's her recipe, which she got from her mama, who thinks she probably snipped it from a San Antonio newspaper years ago.

Symphony Brownies
2 boxes Ghirardelli Brownie Mix (Double Chocolate or Chocolate Walnut)
3 extra-large (7ounce) Hersey's Symphony Milk Chocolate Bars...with almonds and toffee if available

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Prepare 2 batches of Ghirardelli's Brownie mix as directed on the package, in separate bowls.  Spread 1 prepared bowl of mix into a greased 9 X 13 pan.  Top batter with candy bars.  Pour on the second bowl of brownie mix.  Bake  for  40 minutes - NO LONGER. Keep a close eye on these so they don't overcook.  Cool completely before you slice them. Makes 24 servings.

If you don't know what a deadlift is, just like I didn't, you can be educated on YouTube, Kat 225 deadlift at 96-98 pounds.

Hersey's Sugar Free Chocolate Chip Cookies - Day 42

   While Walmart gives way too much money to the Republican party for me to ever enjoy shopping there, it is in fact the closest grocery store to my house, and it stocks the largest variety of chocolate for many miles, outdoing Kroger, Albertson and Safeway by far.  Walmart sells Hersey's chocolate, oh-so-preferable to Nestle.  This box store stocks  sugar free chocolate chips, a rare find anywhere.  Sometimes I have to buy chocolate at Walmart.  The cookie recipe on back of Hersey's Sugar-Free Chocolate Chips works perfectly, makes a surprisingly tasty cookie, and delighted my parents when they received their batch in the mail.