So in a comment on my last post, Lis, asked if I knew of a recipe for caramel cake. Not yellow cake with caramel frosting, but caramel cake. I happened to have one. I told her in the email that I had not made it but I got to sitting and thought, how dumb to give her a recipe I haven't tried, so I just went ahead and made it today. I have to say that this smelled so good that I had to break down and take a bite(just one) of this cake. It was SUPER yummy. There is definitely more caramel flavor in the frosting than the cake but the cake does have a distinct flavor of caramel and all the extra sugar gives it a nice crispy(yet soft...doens't make sense I know) top. It's also a nice moist cake, which I love. This cake does have quite a few steps. It is important for the cake that you make sure that your caramel for the cake cool or else the minute it hits the batter it will harden up. If this does happen, don't fret, put your mixer on high speed and blend for 3 minutes. You wont get all … [Read more...]
Working with the Unknown
People love to give me things that they have bought and have no idea what to do with. I almost always never have to buy saffron because someone almost always seems to buy it, not know what to do with it, and then gives it to me. So my friend bought some Mexican chocolate and she wasn't sure what to do with it, and well, neither was I. Ibarra Chocolate is primarily made for making hot chocolate I found out but that seemed a little too boring for me. It has a weird texture, almost like a Crunch bar and has a super strong cinnamon taste to it. I decided to experiment and try to come up with something to compliment it. I chose to make a quick bread/coffeecake type concoction. I also half way through decided that I should take one third of the batter and add 1/3 cup of pumpkin to it and drop the pumpkin randomly throughout. Oddly enough, most of the pumpkin coloring faded away in the cooking process. I think next time I will make it with an all pumpkin batter. On a side note, many of my … [Read more...]
