Flourless Chocolate Cake

This cake is amazing, you guys. It's super simple to make and it tastes like GOD and ALL THE LITTLE ANGELS. Except not literally, that would be weird.

Additionally, I don't have a camera anymore, unless ya'll want me to use my cell phone camera, which is like THIS CLOSE to giving up the ghost anyway. So, you know, use your imaginations.

THE CAKE

You will need:

4 oz bittersweet chocolate (I like using Ghiradelli)

1/2 cup unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder + some extra for sprinkling (because really, who doesn't like sprinkling?) (also, who just happens to have ONLY 1/2 cup of cocoa powder lying around? Totally worth saving some to sprinkle.)

It is worth noting that you will also need parchment paper, some sort of non-stick buttery type item, an 8-inch cake pan, a working oven etc etc etc. I'm going to assume that you do in fact have all these things and skip to the recipe.

1. Oven: 375 degrees.

2. Pan: Buttered/sprayed/nonsticked and lined with a round of parchment paper (or wax paper).

3. Chocolate: Chopped into bits, then melted with the butter and stirred til smooth. The recipe says use a double boiler but we ain't so hoity toity round these parts so I just use the microwave in 30-second increments.

4. Sugar: Whisked into choco-butter-melty-goodness. (Alternately, you can transfer the melty yum into a larger bowl that DIDN'T fit in the microwave and whisk the sugar into it then.)

5. Eggs: Added, whisked, quickly forgotten, never mourned.

6. Cocoa powder: Sifted into batter and mixed until just combined.

7. Batter: Sampled delicately. Sampled again. Wrestled away from cook, then poured into pan and baked in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes.

8. Cake: Cooled for 5 min, then inverted onto a serving plate and dusted with additional cocoa.

9. Hungry people: Devour cake with the enthusiasm of a zombie horde.

Hope you enjoy! Relatively stress-free recipe and also PHENOMENALLY DELICIOUS. Plus, you remember those Got Milk? commercials where the dude eats a big ol hunk of cake and then goes for the milk and there's none and he's like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! ? Yeah, like that. So you probably want to make sure there's milk handy to go with this puppy.

Love,

TWC

Blueberry Muffin Madness!

Hallo intar-wubs!

I feel better. My last post was written in a cranky, sleep-deprived delirium. Yes, I realize I posted it at like 3:30, stfu.

Since that time, I have had some lunch (and some cheesecake and some muffins) and I feel better now. Also, I went shopping for baking paraphernalia YAY.

Okay, so as you know last week I was called out by McK and he ordered me to bake him some blueberry muffins. I, being the enter-pe-noor that I am, charged him $10. For 20 muffins. I am such a sucker.

BLUEBERRY MUFFIN MADNESS:
(recipe from allrecipes.com)

You will need:
4 cupps flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup softened butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups frozen blueberries, unthawed

(OPTIONAL) FOR LE MUFFIN TOPPING:
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

HOW TO MAKE MUFFINS OF WONDER AND DELIGHT*:

0. Preheat oven to 375 F.

1. Take flour, baking powder & salt, dump in bowl.


2. In a separate bowl, cream butter & sugar.

(My butter was frozen, so I cut it up into strips for easy creaming.)

Er... we may be having some technical difficulties here. See, I'm at Felder's folks' house today and there is a suspicious lack of butter/sugar creaming implement. Whatever it's called. Maybe a fork will work?

No.
How about a knife?

Nuh-uh.
Meat tenderizer?

Nyet.
Okay, time for drastic measures. Take off the rings, re-wash the hands... and knead.

Yep. Of course it worked.

3. Add eggs, milk & vanilla, mix well.




(Humor me and pretend that this is well mixed, okay? Thanks.)

4. Stir into dry ingredients until you have batter. Recipe says "until just moistened" but I kept thinking "oh good, I'm done" and then flipping over the dough and discovering a rich vein of pure flour right in the middle of my nice dough. So just use your judgment on this, I guess.)



Please try not to throw stones at me, the lighting is really awful in these.

5. Fold in frozen blueberries. Whatever that means. FYI - in case you haven't picked up on it by now, I don't know what I'm doing. If it looks right, then you probably did it right.


Perfect.

6. Put the batter in the paper cups (or I suppose directly in the baking pans if you like) (thought - it would be interesting to make muffins on a cookie tray. Like muffin bites. Mmm.)


7. Mix the topping together in a bowl and sprinkle over the muffins. Stick the muffins in the oven & cook for 20-25 min. Why? Cause I said. What? You wanna make something of it? PUNK?


Okay, you really can't see the topping on the muffinlets, but I swear it's there.



8. Devour, because OMG THESE ARE AMAZING MUFFINS. I gave a muffin to my FMFIL** & FFIL*** and they both had mouth-gasms. ^_____^


I made 23 muffins. OMG.

Side note: My FMFIL has a spectacularly clean and well-stocked kitchen and also these bowls. Are these not the most adorable mixing bowls you have ever seen???


It's a cow bowl. And the little stabilizing feet make it look like an udder. OMG. SO. CUTE.

Side side note: I took me way too long to write this because of YouTube. And music videos. And this song.

Side side side note: Maybe cheesecake next week? Y/N?

Side side side side note: The best part of baking is giving the product to someone else and seeing their reaction. This is sometimes the worst part of baking, too.

Side side side side side note: The Brother got a haircut. It's extreme and also intense. Not baking-related, but I'll post a pic soon.

*Also of blueberries. And possibly the devil because I cannot stop eating them.
**Future Felder In Law
***Future MomFelder In Law


<3,
TWC

Blueberry Ernties* And Please Let Me Go Back To Sleep

*An erntie (pronounced URN-tee) is a pancake. It's the shortened form of Panacake Ernstern, which is obvs the technical pro chef term for pancakes. You philistine.

*Ahem*

Hi. I have a Taylor Swift song stuck in my head. Also, I was rudely awakened and dragged out of bed, kicking and screaming**, by Felder. Why? So I could be chained to the stove and forced to slave and slave*** and cook breakfast for him before he goes to work.

I made blueberry ernties & bacon.

HOW TO MAKE A GOOD ERNTIE (BLUEBERRY OR OTHERWISE):

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup yogurt (plain) (duh) (I guess flavored yogurt would be interesting.) (But interesting in the way where someone made you something and they're all proud and they watch you eat it and you immediately want to puke but you swallow and OH MY GOD IT'S TRYING TO COME BACK UP and they go "how did you like it?" all hopefully and you grin the grin of a corpse and go "It's... interesting." And then you run.) (Okay, back to ingredients.)
1 egg
3 tbsp butter
1 cup milk

Okay, so... what am I doing again?

Panacakes. Right. (Attention span is shot. Too much awake, not enough asleep.)

STEP ONE: Take the flour, salt, sugar, baking soda and yogurt and sift them together in a big bowl. Except, don't sift the yogurt because ew. That would turn out pretty gross.


I did not sift because I am a lazy barsted. (If you do not know what a barsted is, say it out loud a few times.)


(Please excuse my lighting inconsistencies. I kept having to reset the flash.)

STEP TWO: Take the egg and beat it slightly. Please do not ask me the difference between a slightly beaten egg and a severely beaten egg, I am not your egg abuse hotline. Melt the butter and combine it with the egg and the milk.


STEP THREE: Mix the wet stuff with the (relatively) dry stuff. It will be lumpy lumpy lumpy. This is okay.

Yes those are chocolate chips and no you may not have them.




STEP FOUR: Cook in pan until not raw anymore, duh. If you want blueberries, add them now. Also works with chocolate chips and theoretically any other item.

Ka-flip!

Ka-flip!


STEP FIVE: Add bacon and devour.



I think Felder likes it.

STEP SIX: Profit****.

**This is a lie. I woke up of my own accord at (shudder) 7 a.m.
***Also a lie.
****Probably a lie.

<3,
TWC
P.S. Muffins coming up next!

Sugar Cookies/Nutella Experiment (Part Deux)

So I had like no time to bake this weekend, like at all. Like seriously. Like like like.

Buuuut, as I was freaking out because I had to be at the dress rehearsal/sound check for a song that I wrote AS A JOKE that my boss was all like "oh yeah, you're gonna be singing this in front of 200 people in two days so start practicing" on THURSDAY NIGHT and I was totes freaking out because I had like 2 hours to do my laundry, eat, practice the song AND bake something for ya'll, The Mother was like,

"Why not make sugar cookies? And then you can put Nutella in between them like a reverse Oreo!"

Aw man, the woman's a genius. She is definitely my mom.

Recipe from The Joy of Cooking, makes approx 48 cookies (I only made 24 because I was in a rush).
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon (or 3/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg. Or maybe 1/4 tsp. Who even has freshly grated nutmeg anyway?)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
More sugar for dipping (you'll see)
Nutella (optional)

WARNING WARNING WARNING: I wrote the recipe out from memory because I don't have the book here at Felder's house. I think think think it's right.

1. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together in a medium-ish bowl. (If you only have one big bowl and a couple medium bowls - like me - use a medium bowl for this part. You're gonna mix a bunch of other ingredients in the big bowl unless you want some hella spillage.)

Isn't that pretty?

2. Flour EVERYWHERE. (Also, preheat oven to 375 degrees F.)

3. Mix the 1 cup sugar & vegetable oil in the big bowl.


It will look like those lemon ice drinks you get at Six Flags that cost approximately $10/oz.

Only kind of grosser.

4. Throw in the eggs & vanilla. Do it one ingredient at a time and mix well after each. Note: My cookies were, like, uncomfortably vanilla-y. SO maybe only use, like, 1/2 tsp of vanilla. Or something.


5. Ewww. It's all orange and goopy.


6. Dump the flour mixture into the goop. (Note: Since I put the flour in the big bowl, I did it the other way around. End note.)

Man, look at the consistency of that shite.

7. Mix it together real good. You can use an electric mixer or do it the old fashioned way and use a spoon-thing. I was lazy and didn't want to get the beater out, so I used the spoon-thing.

Now it looks like real cookie dough. OMG.

8. Form into 1/2" balls.

Hurr hurr hurr balls. [I am so mature.]

Please excuse the awful coloring of the above picture and also ignore the fact that my hand looks like an alien-monkey's paw. Thank you.

9. Roll your cookie-balls in sugar and put them on the cookie sheet.

And to our left, you'll notice this lovely view of my thumb.

You can a) grease the cookie sheet or b) cover it in tinfoil for easy cleanup. (Guess which one I went with.)


10. Here's where the experimentation occurs: If you want adorable little cookie-balls, stop here. Bake your cookies in the oven for 12 min and let em cool and voila! Hella crunchy cookies you can dip in Nutella (or not). Also, they are so cute.


11. If you want to do the reverse-Oreo thing, like The Mother suggested, smoosh your cookiedough-balls flat.

These things are super weird, they don't really change shape in Mr. Oven. Cook for 11 min or so - they cook faster when they are flattened.

12. Wait for them to cool, then take 2 and spread Nutella on the bottoms of them and stick them together. (This isn't rocket science, people.)


13. If you want to be REALLY crazy, try this: Take a cookie dough ball and make a hole in it with a toothpick.


14. Fill the hole with Nutella.


15. Pinch the hole closed and roll the cookie in sugar. Bake normally (make sure the closed hole is facing down).

(One has sugar and the other does not, because that is how experiments are done.)

16. Nutella-surprise cookie balls yum!

(Kitteh agrees.)

(Kitteh is adorable.)

ALSO - McK has issued a baking challenge as follows: "YOU HAVE TO MAKE BLUEBERRY MUFFINS. I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE MAKE ONE BEFORE YOU HAVE TO MAKE ONE DO EET DO EET NAOW!

CHOPPA"

Obvs, I have no choice. It is on.

See you next week!

<3,

TWC