Let me start by trying to describe my unholy, unhealthy obsession with custards. I love custards. I love them with a passion equal only to pork, and we have already discussed my love of the pig. Whenever I pick up a dessert menu, the first thing I look for is a custard. I have no idea what it is about them – there are certainly desserts that taste as good and in some ways better – but the combination of the taste and the texture just really work for me. Zabaglione, crème brulee, flan, you just can’t go wrong.

I could get into the history of it – custard has been around since the Middle Ages (which, by the way, happens to be the coolest period of time in history) and possibly longer – but the truth of it is, panna cotta isn’t really a custard. At least, not technically. It has more in common with Jell-O in terms of chemical structure, and there’s not a drop of egg involved. But, when made right, it has a texture and flavor to rival any crème anglaise.

I chose to balance mine – a vanilla panna cotta – with a dense, rich bittersweet flourless chocolate cake, baked in a sheet pan and cut into triangles with a child’s shapesorter block, because I’m MacGuyver in the kitchen, guys. To cut down the richness and add a hint of tart, I had Paris Hilton serve it.

….

Just kidding. I whipped together a sauce with the juice of two blood oranges. Recipes below!

Vanilla Panna Cotta

from Mark Bittman

You will need:
3 cups cream, or 1 1/2 cups cream and 1 1/2 cups half-and-half
1 package (1/4 ounce) unflavored gelatin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar

Pour 1 cup of the cream in a medium saucepan and sprinkle gelatin over, let sit for five minutes. After, cook over low heat, stirring, until gelatin dissolves completely. (I had to turn my heat up a little thanks to an electric range and altitude, and it took me a while to get it to dissolve completely.)

Add the rest of the cream and the sugar to your gelatin mixture and heat gently, just until the sugar dissolves. Add the vanilla and stir to combine. Pour mixture into 4 large or 6 small custard cups and chill until set, about 4 hours. If you want you can serve right in the cup, or you can unmold as I did. Use a knife and dip the container in hot water for a few seconds to help release.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

adapted from A Mingling of Tastes

You will need:

2/3 c plus 2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter
9 oz quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
4 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

I used Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips, and the flavor was just exactly where I wanted it to be. Bittersweet can have an edge to it that I, as a chocolate lover, really enjoy but my husband, who is a milk chocolate fan, doesn’t so much. This meets nicely in the middle.

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line an edged baking sheet with buttered parchment paper.  In a large bowl, combine the sugar, cocoa and salt. In a separate bowl or container, whisk the vanilla with the eggs and then add to the sugar mixture, stirring to combine.

In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the chocolate and, stirring constantly, melt completely. Remove from heat and add to sugar mixture, whisking until combined – it should be thick and pretty smooth.

Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth into corners. You want it to be as even a thickness as you can. Bake for about 25 minutes – the top will be crusty, like a brownie, and the inside will be dense and thick. I let mine cool overnight before cutting and recommend the same to you. (the original, delicious sounding recipe at the source is a thicker, traditional cake baked in a 9” springform, if you aren’t interested in cutting out shapes.)

Blood Orange Sauce

Fruit sauces are  really easy to make. I happened to have blood oranges on hand – exactly two, in fact, so I made a blood orange sauce. It consists of bringing 2 Tbsp of sugar and the juice of two oranges to a boil and simmer until it reaches your desired thickness.

The thing with copycat recipes is you are never sure how close they’re going to get to the real thing. For instance, Food Network magazine had a copycat recipe for the OG’s salad dressing, which we all know is basically the best part of going there. I was all set to enjoy a delicious salad, my tastebuds were dancing with anticipation, then I took a bite and drowned in a deluge of disappointment. (raise your hand if you were embarrassed for me upon reading that!) It was good, don’t get me wrong, but when you are expecting a particular flavor and embark upon finding that flavor, when it doesn’t arrive it just feels a little cruel, that’s all.

I think with some tweaking this could be very close, but as it is, it’s delicious. I don’t think anyone would be too disappointed with the results and it’s moderately low-effort to achieve.

Lemon Cream Cake

For the cake itself, you have two options. One, buy yourself a box of white cake mix. I am not a snob about these things. If I want something to be foolproof and tasty, I go with the box because I cannot be trusted to bake well from scratch. Besides, Duncan Hines yellow butter cake with no frosting makes a delicious breakfast. Don’t judge me.

The second is to bake from scratch. I have struggled with this repeatedly, and the recipe I’m going to share with you is the closest I’ve come to how a cake should be. I overbaked it so it was dry, but that’s because I’m an amazing baker, not because the recipe is crap.

Vanilla Cake
adapted from Betty Crocker.
(this will make 3 9" rounds or 2 9" rounds and 12 cupcakes)
2 2/3 c. all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder (2 for 3500+ ft)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 c. butter or margarine, softened
1 1/4 c. sugar
2/3 c. milk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
4 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease (with shortening or butter, this is not an ideal application for pork fat) and flour your cake pans and/or line muffin pan with cupcake liners. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Whisks are great for this.

In another bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream your butter and sugar together until fluffy. Turn speed down to medium and add in flour, milk, eggs and vanilla. Adding flour works best in sections because when it collides with the force of the beaters, it explodes into an hour of cleanup. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Keep beating for 2 more minutes and then section evenly into your pans.

Recipe says to bake 25-30 minutes. It may be high altitude but at 25 minutes, mine were overdone. I would start checking after 20 minutes. If a toothpick comes out clean, it’s done.Let sit for 10 minutes, then turn out of pan and let cool on a rack.

Lemon Cream
(adapted from Meemo’s Kitchen)
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
2 c. confectioner’s sugar
4 tsp. lemon juice
Zest of 1 lemon
1 c. heavy whipping cream

As stated, this requires two bowls. I am a chronic recipe follower so I did as mentioned and whipped the cream in a stand mixer and the cream cheese with a hand mixer, but I think in the future I’d whip the cream first and store it in another bowl, then use the stand mixer again to beat the cream cheese. Anyway.

Combine the cream cheese and the confectioner’s sugar with a mixer until smooth, then mix in the lemon juice and zest.

In another bowl, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Fold whipped cream gently into cream cheese mixture.

It’s – dare I say – a piece of cake from here on out. For the cake, be very generous with the frosting on your middle layer(s), throw on the top layer and frost until covered. For the cupcakes, apply however you’d like. I have a giant star-shaped piping tip I use with a ziploc to do mine.

Cool in the fridge for 3 hours before serving, and keep in the fridge after that as well. This is a cake best served cold. Enjoy!

Carrot cake is one of those great mysteries, like zucchini bread or pumpkin rolls, that does not taste like the ingredient for which it is named, and it’s probably because of this that it’s so tasty. After all, no matter how good some maple-glazed roasted carrots can be, they are not something I want for dessert.

Carrot cake is also one of those fine desserts that not only allow but encourage you to be delusional about what you’re shoving in your mouth in totally unacceptable portions because, hello! there are vegetables in it! Everyone knows that a vegetable-based dessert automatically negates any unhealthy qualities that, say, 2 cups of sugar or a cup of oil may contain, let alone a frosting based on entirely too many fats and sugar.

So, join me in my delusions (that giant slice you see? that was for me) and make a moist, delicious, totally 100% healthy (in my head) carrot cake that does not taste like carrots.

Honestly, since Deb from Smitten Kitchen already made and posted this recipe there is no need for me to do so, because I am pretty convinced she can do no culinary wrong, but maybe you’ll get something from my experience anyway.

Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese frosting

Note: while her recipe is intended for cupcakes she helpfully included instructions for a layer cake, for which I am grateful since I fail so hard at cupcakes.

You will need:

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups canola oil
4 large eggs
3 cups grated peeled carrots
1 cups coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)
1/2 cup raisins (optional)

(frosting recipe follows cake recipe)

Preheat oven to 350°F.* Grab a bag of carrots from the refrigerator and stare at them, knowing that Deb recommends finely shredding them and yet also knowing that you have a perfectly good shredder plate for your food processor that would make quick work of the job. Have a moment of temporary insanity that demands you go with Deb’s recommendation. Spend next twenty years peeling and shredding with a hand-held fine grater enough carrots (about 6 large) to equal 3 cups.

(hyperbole note: it actually only took about 15 minutes and was not bad at all)

Once your carrots are a shredded orange mess, combine your flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger in a bowl and give it a whisk to mix it all together. Toss your sugar and obscene amount of canola oil in a separate bowl and whisk until the sugar is saturated. Add an egg at a time, whisking after each to get it all good and eggy. Is an egg an emulsifier? I can’t seem to keep these things straight.

Once your sugar mixture has been thoroughly eggified, add your flour mixture and stir it until all the flour has been incorporated. I have helpfully included a photo that will show you what this process looks like, just in case:

At this point, feel free to stir in your carrots, though I should warn you that if you choose not to add carrots you are no longer actually making carrot cake. "But Alicia," you might wonder, "what kind of cake would it be if I didn’t add carrots?" I think it would just be cake, and if you don’t like carrots why the hell are you making this recipe? Let’s move on.

With the carrots in the mix, and the raisins and nuts if you chose to use them (I did, but I used pecans because they are delicious – are you a pee-can or peh-cahn person? inquiring minds…) you will have a bowl of glorious mess that vaguely resembles a substance you might find somewhere unsavory, like a fraternity bathroom after a party. I am unfortunately not exaggerating.

I know. I wish I was wrong, too. I made the layer cake so play along with me. Grease up two 9" round cake pans with butter (I used margarine, mostly because I was too lazy to unwrap another stick of butter) , line the bottoms with a round of wax paper, butter the paper and shake some flour around to coat it all. Tap out the excess. Fill the rounds with an equal amount of batter.

If you are ridiculous like me, you actually weighed out equal portions (2 lbs, 4 oz if you must know). If you are a less ridiculous person, you could eyeball it to a reasonable guess. Pop it in the oven for 40 minutes or so, stick a tester in the center to see if it’s done and if it is, take it out of the oven.

Let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then remove from pans to cool completely. You really don’t want to frost a warm cake, no matter how tempting it may be. Plus, you’ll want to even out at least one side for frosting and layering and that’s a lot easier with a cooled cake. I took too many pictures to make up for my lack of earlier prep work, so have an additional cake photo after it has been removed from the pans.

I’m sorry. I just didn’t want it to go to waste, you know? Anyway, it’s time to make the frosting.

You will need:

Two (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup

Do you remember how on tests they’d always start out by saying read all the directions or questions before answering, and there would be some trick at the end so if you didn’t read it all first you’d get to the last question and it would be some instruction designed to trip you up, like instead of filling in the circles you were supposed to underline them? This is kind of like that, because if you didn’t read this part you now have to wait until your cream cheese and butter have softened to make the frosting. Unintentional fail on my part and I apologize for it. But for the rest of you, here are two ways to move forward.

Deb’s recipe says to combine all four ingredients on medium speed in a stand mixer. I did this, starting on the lowest speed because have you ever tried throwing some confectioners’ sugar in a stand mixer on medium speed? Your kitchen ends up looking like the aftermath of a wild night at Lindsay Lohan’s house. I think there’s still sugar in the joints of my cabinetry. After a few minutes, it all comes together and it’s fine that way.

I do think, however, that beating the cream cheese and butter together first and then gradually adding the powdered sugar and syrup would give you better control of the texture. This is a very creamy frosting, and if you’re used to buttercream it might throw you off (it threw me off, as I will explain in a bit) even after you let it "set up" in the fridge. I also wonder how this would be if you only used 1 8 oz block of cream cheese, or even 12 oz total and used 4 or so ounces of heavy cream instead and whipped the crap out of all of it if it wouldn’t have an even better taste and consistency. Or maybe even some pudding. Just some random thoughts there.

Anyway, so make your frosting and throw it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so to set up. Kill some time by not letting that leftover beater frosting go to waste and put it to good use on a nearby sugar cookie.

After you finish your cookie, it’s time to level off one of your cakes for layering. Precise people will likely have a tool for this such as this. Alton Brown fans may remember that his version was made with a hacksaw blade, if I recall correctly. While I no doubt will own such a thing at some point in my future, I went with the imprecise method of the eyeballed bread knife leveling. No one in this house cares if my cake is lopsided except me, so it works for us as I can cope with it. For now.

It looks OK, right? It doesn’t even matter anyway because I’m flipping it over and frosting the bottom. I am under the distinct impression that this is not the correct way to frost a cake, but I don’t give a damn.

I did however give enough of a damn to line the bottom of my platter with waxed paper though. This will let me make a mess while I frost the cake without letting me get frosting all over the plate. Note that this is not a single sheet, but four strips of paper that can be easily slid out from underneath the cake for that clean, fresh look.

So, being a genius, I decide to not be as impatient as I normally am by trying a crumb coat. Now, with a buttercream frosting the crumb coat will give you a smoother finish for the rest of your frosting – it’s a thin layer slathered on and allowed to set so as to keep crumbs in check and provide a smooth surface for the final layer and any decorating. As it turns out, this cream cheese frosting does not set like a buttercream so I basically wasted an hour waiting for it to harden a little when it had no intention of doing so.

So I just slapped the rest of it on and patiently waited for dinner to come and go so that I could try it out. As it happens, folks, this is a damn fine cake that would be perfectly edible without the frosting, and in fact would make a really good breakfast loaf if you ask me. I may in fact try it that way next time, with a maple glaze instead of frosting and some oats and/or whole wheat flour for additional bulk. This frosting is not buttercream and being my father’s daughter (he makes delicious frosting) I am definitely partial to that texture, but this creamy stuff does go very well and the maple syrup adds just the right flavor to something that would otherwise be overly cream-cheesy. It’s also a fast, simple recipe – just imagine if you bought pre-shredded carrots, it would literally take an hour from start to finish. Try it out, let me know how it goes!

* high altitude note (4000 ft) – I added an additional tablespoon of flour and preheated the oven to 375, turning it back to 350 when the cakes were in the oven. Whether this was necessary, I have no idea, but I hate risking it with cake.

(slightly unrelated note: the next batch of posts are not being posted in the order in which they were created; I have a bunch of backlogged photos and mini-posts from Facebook of all places that I’m transporting here. )

Just look at those things. When I ran across Bakerella’s blog for the first time I sat and stared in awe at the completely adorable treats she manages to produce time and time again. In fact, you should go there right now and look at these Snow Globe Coca-Cola Cupcakes. As someone who consistently fails at cupcakes (I don’t know why, I really don’t) I just love looking at the edible art other people seem to be capable of creating.

Anyway, I believe it’s reasonable to say that her Cake Pops and subsequent Cake Bites have earned her a special place in the dessert world and the recipe is so easy it’s almost ridiculous, so I tried them out to give to friends who were gathering shortly before Valentine’s Day. What I greatly underestimated was the volume and the time involved in their creation.

There are three basic ingredients:

1 box of cake mix

1 tin of frosting

Candy melts and/or chocolate/almond bark

And one very useful tool:

Mini peanut butter cup candy mold

In my case, I had a box of white cake mix leftover from my when my Dad made my wedding cake, and I thought some cherry frosting would be festive considering the upcoming holiday. The trick to the cake balls is using the right ratio of cake to frosting, and I did it wrong. First you bake the cake and let it cool. Then you crumble it all up in a bowl, and add the frosting. It makes like a dough, but it’s cooked. Well, you should really add the frosting in segments and keep checking the texture, because I just dumped the whole tin in and I had a sticky, gloppy mess. I managed to make it work anyway by chucking it in the fridge for a few hours, because you have to roll the mixture into little balls and I am not kidding about the sticky, gloppy mess part.  Anyway.

Once mine were all rolled, I stuck them in the freezer while I melted the chocolate bark in the microwave. When it had melted, I used a spoon to transfer some into each cup mold – enough to hold the cake ball in place and take the shape of the cup. Once the cake balls were in, they went back into the freezer for a few minutes to set. 5 minutes or so later, I took them out of the freezer, gently wiggled them out of the molds, and repeated the process what felt like a million times.

Next up, I melted the white almond bark – I thought it would be cheaper than candy melts but it actually wasn’t, they are priced roughly the same. Holding the cake ball by the candy bottom, I dipped the tops into the bark and used a small spoon to fill in any missing spots

I only topped 6 at a time so that I could get the decorations on before the bark set. If you manage more than that, you are more awesome than I am.  Also, it should be noted that this recipe makes A METRIC BUTTLOAD so I hope you have an event or a lot of friends to give these to. Think I’m kidding? Let me show you another picture.

Yeah, I wasn’t. I think I had something like 55 of them. You may also notice that the Hershey’s Kissables I used as decoration on some of them, particularly the pale pink ones, make these look alarmingly breast-like. Now, there’s nothing wrong with boobs but I’ve never particularly wanted to eat one. Luckily Warren came home from work and pointed this out to me so that I could place the remainder at an angle instead.

Overall, I’m really happy with how they turned out and the idea is absolute genius, because they are so cute I could just hug them. I will say, whether it’s the cake balls themselves or the combination with the candy or the frosting I used, they were painfully sweet to me. The flavor under the sugar was nice, but I absolutely could not get beyond the sweetness. Can someone who has made them using the red velvet cake with the cream cheese frosting verify whether this is the expected result or if mine were just the wrong combo?