4 posts tagged “chocolate”
INGREDIENTS
1 cup margarine
1 3/4 cups white sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups milk
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, mixing just until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool.
I used butter instead of margarine; 3/4 cup milk & 3/4 cup Kahlua instead of 1 1/2 cup milk; and added about a tablespoon of ground allspice and some dried fruit (mango, papaya and pineapple). mmmmm!
(jacked from AllRecipes)
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 pound butter, soft
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup milk
3 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Cream sugars and butter. Add melted chocolate. Beat yolks; add water and vanilla extract and blend. Gradually add yolk mixture to chocolate mixture; beat until light and fluffy. Sift together flour, salt and baking soda. Alternately add flour mixture and milk, blending well after each addition. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry, fold into batter.
Turn into two greased and floured 9-inch round cake pans or one greased and floured 13x9x2-inch cake pan. Bake layers or loaf in moderate oven 350 F about 30-35 minutes or until cake springs back when touched lightly.
Turn out on cooling rack. Yield: two 9-inch layers or one 13x9x2-inch loaf.
I substituted Kahlua for the water (although something like dark rum -- which I don't have -- may have been even better), and added allspice and whole fresh blackberries. But it's too late to eat chocolate cake right now. I need to go to bed some time tonight. I'll just have to wait until breakfast to taste it!
(jacked from cooks.com)
Everything has been squeezed in right before the holidays!
Saturday, David and I went to Musee Mechanique at Fisherman's Wharf. It has a bunch of penny arcade-type machines and video games and whatnot. I got to see photos of the 1915 World's Fair in SF, and play metal rock 'em sock 'em robots, and skee ball, and I tried to play Centipede, but the firing button was broken. It was terribly frustrating!
Then we used a photo booth and tried to be as silly as possible down the strip of pix. I think we did a pretty good job. There was a lot of laughter involved.
Then Brian and I went to Oakland for Gaskell's Christmas Ball. We got there a few hours early for lessons. My previous waltz lessons had been lost to the sands of time. It was not easy, but it was fun. I can't even remember all the dances we 'learned'. Some of them were quite silly!
The whole ball was entertaining. The people watching was the best -- hoop skirts and corsets and kilts and top hats and all other manner of garb. At the end we all sang the Hallelujah Chorus together. I'm glad they had cue cards because I hadn't sung that since high school.
Sunday, we had a TWoPcon at the Scharffen Berger factory in Berkeley. Cisco picked me up downtown so we could drive across the Bay together. When I sat down in his car I found myself facing a lil video screen cued up to a Battlestar Galactica episode! Cisco's been trying to convince me to watch BG for a while now, but it just isn't my type of show. I finished watching it on the way home. It's a high quality show, but I still don't want to watch it again. It's much too violent and dramatic for my taste.
We met Cathy at the SB cafe and Cameron got to the shop just before the tour started. We learned so much about chocolate! It was very interesting. The factory doesn't run on Sundays, though, so the machines weren't as fun to look at as I suspect they are when they're working away. The lecture our guide, Danny, gave before we saw the factory was the best part of the tour. Well, that and the free chocolate samples! Oh! and the whole vanilla beans we got to sniff. Yum!
We had a yummy lunch and then cruised through the gift shop again before departing. I bought myself a molinillo. It's a stick for frothing Mexican drinking chocolate. I'm eager to melt some more Ibarra and try it! Some of the rings on the stick actually move on their own. It's fun just to play with--if it makes a delicious drink I'll like it even more, if that's possible.
Sunday night, Rika and many of her friends and I went to the Grease sing-along at the Castro. I had a pretty good time at the Sound of Music sing-along earlier this month, but I'm not a fan of TSoM. I love Grease! Olivia Newton John used to be my very favorite singer ever. I even saw her in concert when I was a lil kid.
Unfortunately, it was too cold to dress up in a cute skirt, but the goodie bag they gave me had, among other things, a pom-pom! Shaking a pom-pom is much funner than clapping.
The sing along was such fun! Not only do I know all those songs, I also know quite a bit of the dialogue, too. So so fun! Woooo!!1!!!
Now I just have to get everything ready to fly south to visit my family on Thursday night. Oh, the pressure. At least I don't have to worry about mailing things on time or anything like that. I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody in SoCal and eating all the delish food down there.
eep!
Okay, so I usually make Christmas brownies this time of year. That's a box mix of brownies, substitute "Kahlua" for "water", add cinnamon to taste.
Now I'm focusing on cookies, thus the attempted choc/Kahlua/cinnamon cookies. And now that I'm into putting unusual things in cookies, I'd figured I'd finally make those choc/black bean cookies I've been imagining.
I bought some black beans and Baker's chocolate. Then Kevin took me to the local lil grocery and I found Ibarra Mexican chocolate. Mexican chocolate is sugar, cacao nibs (aka bits of roasted beans, fairly unprocessed; kind of like those products with actual bits of coffee beans in them), and cinnamon. It's gritty and super sweet and intensely chocolate and a little overwhelming.
Pooling a few different recipes and then going off in my own direction, this is what I made:
Melt together 1/2 cup butter with ~3.5 discs of Ibarra chocolate (once melted together, I had about 350 mL of rich, melty goodness). In medium bowl, mix with 15 oz. mushed black beans, 3 tsp baking soda, 3 1/4 cups flour.
In large bowl: 1 1/4 cup brown sugar, 2 eggs, 1/4 canola oil, 3/4 cup Kahlua, 2 tsp cinnamon.
Then mix the flour bowl of stuff into the wet bowl of stuff.
Bake on a parchment-lined cookie sheet at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.
The batter spreads like those corn/lemon/pecan cookies Mike likes so much. The batter and cookies have a slightly grey cast (most likely from the beans), but look really nice when 'browned' and a bit better when cooled. They taste good. Danielle likes them. Quite a bit. Right now, I'm mostly sick of chocolate.
ETA: Mike just got home. First, we tried walnuts. It's okay. What makes it sing is lime. Oh my, lime zest and juice. Fresh. wow. Yay for experimentation!
