Chocolate Sheet Cake and Chocolate Frosting

My baby boy turned 6 years old this past week! Six!!!! I can hardly believe it! (Okay, I'll stop with the exclamations.)

We had a small family party with one of the boy's favorite dinners (spaghetti and meat sauce) and I had him help make and decorate this cake as his official birthday cake. He loves helping me bake, and he was so excited to decorate his cake all by himself. The Pioneer Woman website describes this cake as "the best chocolate sheet cake ever" and I agree. It was the BEST chocolate sheet cake ever. Moreover, it made a huge cake so we had a lot of leftovers. When this moist, delicious, chocolaty wonder-dessert was stored in the fridge the texture turned into the consistency of a cake brownie. YUM! It was seriously like have both cake and brownies from one recipe. Awesome!

Chocolate Sheet Cake and Chocolate Frosting
From: The Pioneer Woman website

Ingredients:
FOR THE CAKE:
2 cups Flour
2 cups Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
4 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa (I used dark chocolate cocoa powder)
2 sticks Butter
1 cup Boiling Water
1/2 cup Buttermilk
2 whole Beaten Eggs
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Vanilla
_____
FOR FROSTING:
1/2 cup Finely Chopped Pecans
1-3/4 stick Butter
4 Tablespoons (heaping) Cocoa (I used dark chocolate cocoa powder)
6 Tablespoons Milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla
1 pound (minus 1/2 Cup) Powdered Sugar

Directions:
Note: I use an 18x13 sheet cake pan.

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt.

In a saucepan, melt butter. Add cocoa. Stir together.
Add boiling water, allow mixture to boil for 30 seconds, then turn off heat. Pour over flour mixture, and stir lightly to cool.

In a measuring cup, pour the buttermilk and add beaten eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir buttermilk mixture into butter/chocolate mixture. Pour into sheet cake pan and bake at 350-degrees for 20 minutes.

While cake is baking, make the icing. Chop pecans finely. Melt butter in a saucepan. Add cocoa, stir to combine, then turn off heat. Add the milk, vanilla, and powdered sugar. Stir together. Add the pecans, stir together, and pour over warm cake.

Cut into squares, eat, and enjoy!

(Here is the cake with just the pecan-chocolate frosting.)

(We topped our cake with candy and sprinkles and toys; just to make it more birthday-appropriate.)

(Here is the boy posing by his cake masterpiece. Notice the spot of chocolate on his chin...)

Panettone Bread Pudding

What is a holiday meal without a Barefoot Contessa recipe???? I don't think you can actually consider it a holiday! This is my one "new" recipe that I am experimenting with this evening. I saw it demonstrated on Ina's show, and then found a Panettone at Trader Joe's. How fortuitous! Panettone is not easy to find in Arizona; I only see them around Christmastime. Obviously, I was meant to try this dish!!!
Panettone is an Italian eggy, cake-like, sweet bread that is usually studded with dried, candied fruit...but it is not a fruit cake! I think the one I have has raisins and candied orange peel in it. I think it originated in Norther Italy, and is a very traditional treat this time of year. It is light and flavorful and it makes great French Toast, too. I am looking forward to trying this new application.

Panettone Bread Pudding

Ingredients:
1 Italian panettone, about 1.2 pounds
Unsalted butter, for greasing the dish
3 extra-large whole eggs
8 extra-large egg yolks
5 cups half-and-half
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoons pure almond extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup sliced almonds


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Trim the dark brown outer crust from the panettone. Cut the rest of the loaf in 1-inch cubes and place on a sheet pan in a single layer. Toast the panettone for 10 minutes, until lightly browned.
Grease a 9 by 12 by 2-inch baking dish with the butter. Place the panettone cubes in the baking dish.
In a large bowl, whisk together the whole eggs, egg yolks, half-and-half, vanilla and almond extracts and sugar. Pour this custard mixture over the panettone. Set aside for 10 minutes so the bread soaks up the custard. Scatter the sliced almonds over the top of the pudding.
Place the baking dish into a larger pan and add very hot tap water to the larger pan until it's halfway up the side of the baking dish. Cover the larger pan with aluminum foil, tenting the foil so it doesn't touch the pudding. Cut a few holes in the foil to allow steam to escape. Bake the pudding for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake for 40 to 45 more minutes, until the custard is set and the top of the pudding is light golden brown. Allow to cool for 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

(Claire's Friend, Benah's) Pumpkin Crumb Cake

The nice thing about having a friend with a cooking blog, is that you can steal...I mean get inspiration from...recipes that she has collected from her other friends. This cake is a recipe from Claire's friend Benah, which Claire posted on her blog a couple weeks ago. It is really, really good. I had a chance to sample a piece of this cake at a playgroup that Claire hosted, and let me tell you, it is definitely worth recreating. I found some frozen pumpkin puree from about the time of the Mesozoic Era in my freezer (carbon dating analysis will confirm exactly how long it was in my freezer...ugh), so I thought that this cake would be perfect for using that up. My house is going to smell so yummy!

Pumpkin Crumb Cake

Crust:
1 pkg (18 oz) yellow cake mix (take out one cup for topping)
1 egg
1 stick butter, melted

Filling:
1 lb can pumpkin
3 eggs
½ c granulated sugar
¼ c brown sugar
1 ½ tsp cinnamon (or 1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger)

Topping:
1 cup cake mix
½ c granulated sugar
½ c chopped nuts (optional)
3 tbsp butter

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Mix crust ingredients; pat into greased 9x13 pan.

Beat filling ingredients; pour over crust.

Combine topping and crumble over filling.

Bake for 45-55 minutes.





The Result:

Dear Claire and Benah,
Thank you for bringing this cake into my life. It is so amazingly delicious and easy. I love it! I would sing you a song about how much I L-O-V-E this cake, but I am tone deaf. It is better if I just write you this love letter. XOXO.

Warm Regards,
Best Wishes,
Hopelessly Devoted,
Forever Yours,

Jen B.

Pioneer Woman's Cake Balls

Baking is the bane of my existence. I hate it. I suck at it. It is very frustrating for me to bake anything, even something as seemingly easy as Cake Balls. I found this recipe on the Pioneer Woman website, and I was seduced by the promise of fun while baking. Also, I sometimes have Martha Stewart baking fantasies. I dream that my baked goods will always turn out delicious and be picture perfect. In reality they usually only pass as edible, and they look like an old Michelin tire. Cake Balls were no exception.

Once again, I had baking delusions of grandeur. I felt that I could just whip these little beauties up in an hour or two, and then take them to my MOMS Club Halloween party. Oh man, did things not go according to plan. First of all, they were not as easy as you would imagine. I was in the kitchen all day. They took a really, really, really, long time. Not so much the cake balls themselves, but the decorating. The decorating was nightmarish. For the dipping, I could not find the fancy colored chocolate. I had to improvise with some white chocolate chips and some regular semi-sweet chocolate chips. I had an issue with the white chocolate melting in the double-boiler, and I almost scraped the whole concoction into the trash. The white chocolate was just gooey and gloppy, and did not coat the cake balls very well. But I pushed forward. I did have better luck melting the regular chocolate. I cut a couple wooden skewers to make lollipop sticks, but the balls just broke and fell apart when I tried to put them on the sticks. Needless to say, my dreams of having cute,little cake ball lollipops deteriorated before my eyes. I wanted to delight all the children at the party with my cake ball pops, but I soon realized that my vision was unrealistic. So, the cake balls stayed in 'ball' format. Sigh.

At this point, I was ready to decorate with icing. I had purchased a ton of cake decorating supplies about two years ago, when I had similar delusions about Christmas sugar cookies. That little episode ended with me in tears and cursing Santa. One of my cookies did look like the proverbial Christmas tire (okay, maybe there is no such thing as a 'proverbial Christmas tire', but it makes me feel better to think my cookies looked like something holiday-related and festive).
Anyway, I took out all my cake decorating supplies and put them on the counter to admire. Once again, I was caught up in the fantasy of cake ball decorating. I started with the orange icing. I was trying to make the white chocolate balls look like little pumpkins. Yeah, that didn't work. I ended up just putting ugly orange stripes on three cake balls, before giving up. I got the black icing out to make cute little pumpkin faces...again, it just looked like globs of black icing on my cake balls. Not pretty. Not decorative. Not Martha Stewart-ish. From that point, I just gave up and used orange and chocolate sprinkles. I didn't even try to put icing on the regular chocolate cake balls. I just coated them with multi-colored party sprinkles. Ugh. Okay, I was not hyperventilating at this point...but close. I started to freak out when I tried to move my cake balls off of the wax paper into containers. They stuck. They tore. They made a mess, and I had ruined at least 6 cake balls.

This was the point where I freaked out and vowed never to bake again.

I was able to salvage most of them, and bring them to the party. They were okay, for the most part...but they did not live up to my expectations at all. Sigh.

If you are interested in years of therapy and a drinking problem, here is the link for the Cake Balls recipe.

Pioneer Woman's Cake Balls

Godspeed, my friends.