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

Cheesecake Bites (assuming you take REALLY big bites)

Okay, not really bites. Cupcakes that don't puff up? Cookie-like cheesecakes? Something like that.

Also, I forgot to take pictures. :(

Here's the original recipe:

• FOR THE CRUST:
• 2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs
• 1 stick Butter, Melted
• 3 Tablespoons White Sugar
• _____
• FOR THE FILLING:
• 4 packages Full-fat Cream Cheese, Softened At Room Temperature (8 Ounce Packages)
• 3 Tablespoons All-purpose Flour
• 1-½ cup White Sugar
• 1 whole Lemon, Zested (optional)
• 4 whole Large Eggs
• ½ cups Milk
• 8 ounces, weight Full-fat Sour Cream
• ½ Tablespoons Vanilla Extract

This recipe claims to serve 18, but I made 18 cupcake-things AND a small cheesecake (broke in my *new* Springform pan HUZZAH) easy. So maybe it serves 18 fat people. Or maybe you should tweak the recipe yourself because I kind of messed it up beyond belief, anyway.

OKAY SO HERE'S HOW YOU DO IT:
(with notes on how I did it in orange.)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease the sides and bottom of a 9″ Springform pan well with shortening. Don't bother preheating until you're done with the crust, don't bother greasing a Springform pan but DO get out some cupcake trays and stick the holders in. Then, later, realize you have A HUGE AMOUNT OF CAKE OMG and hurriedly grease a 6" Springform pan because SURPRISE that's all ya got.

For the crust:
In a medium bowl, mix the graham cracker crumbs with the melted butter and sugar. Press the mixture into the bottom and up the sides of your prepared pan. Now put your pan, uncovered, into the freezer while you’re making the filling. Crush the graham crackers in a baggie with a rolling pan. Spill crumbs everywhere. Curse like a sailor. Repeat. Microwave a stick of butter. Accidentally spill boiling butter all over your potholders and the table. Curse like a sailor. Repeat.

For the filling:
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream the cheese until it’s nice and smooth. You don’t want to have any lumps. Completely ignore the instructions about "room-temperature" cream cheese. Curse at the mixer when the 32 oz of cream cheese all stick to the mixer at once. Turn the mixer off, scrape it down and shudder because EW cream cheese is GROSS.

It’s best to whisk your flour and sugar together first, to prevent any lumps when they’re added to the cream cheese. I totally didn't. Pour them into the cream cheese and mix. Make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl, add lemon zest, I didn't do this, either. and continue to mix. Make sure you don't mix up the measurements on the flour & sugar and accidentally put in 1 1/2 cups of flour and 3 tbsp of sugar because that would be BAD. Right, kids?? RIGHT. *ahem hem* Also, if there is so much flour that you have to hand-knead the dough to incorporate it, YOU MAY HAVE DONE SOMETHING WRONG FYI.

Mix in the eggs, one at a time, or all at once mixing on low just enough to incorporate. Do not over mix! It's a bomb. If you overmix we are all DOOMED. Also, realize that your filling is extremely lumpy and gross. And then The Mother takes a fingerful and goes "ew," and The Mother LOVES this shit. So re-look at the recipe and go OH FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU okay don't panic... add 6 tbsp & 1/2 cup of sugar. Blend.

Blend in milk, sour cream, and vanilla extract. Again, do not over mix. Just mix until you get a smooth consistency. Yep yep yep.

Pour filling into prepared crusts and bake.

Baking:
Stick your cupcake tins pan into the preheated oven, turn down the temperature to 250F, and bake for an hour and a half 45 min. The center should still wobble a little. It shouldn’t be pure liquid or completely set. It will be almost completely set. Once it’s done baking, turn the oven off and let it sit on top of the oven for about 30 min for at least an hour (more if you have the time). After about an hour or so, I open the oven door and let it sit for a few more hours. Then stick em in the fridge until you have to run out the door. Share! They are quite good and very rich.

(Recipe found at Tasty Kitchen.)

<3,
TWC

Custard... Ew. (Late because I hate custard.)

I had a mother/daughter bonding day and we made custard.

Mmmm. Custard.

And by "Mmmm," I mean "OH GOD WHY??"

No, honestly, it's a good custard recipe, except for two things: Uno, I kind of sort of maybe burned the caramel. A lot. Dos, it turns out that I really dislike custard. Live and learn? Meh.

Well, if YOU happen to like custard, here's the recipe:

Use custard cups OR a glass pan-bowl-thing (mine is still at Jess' & McK's house from the smores bars).

For Custard with Caramel:
1/2 cup sugar for the caramel
2 egg yolks
3 eggs
3 cups "very hot" milk
Another 1/2 cup sugar for the custard
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Nutmeg

STEP OOOOONE:
Make the caramel coating. Pour the 1/2 cup sugar into a heavy-bottomed skillet.


Turn the heat UUUUUUP (I had it on 5). Don't stir, but shake the skillet around so the sugar moves.


When it turns into caramel-looking goo...


...take it off (quick) and pour it into your custard-holding medium of choice. Swirl that shit around the bottom & sides quickly, or else it hardens.


DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE THAT I MADE AND COOK IT TOO LONG. ALSO NOTE THAT IT CONTINUES TO COOK IN THE SKILLET AFTER YOU REMOVE IT FROM THE BURNER SO MAKE HASTE. Unless, of course, you are partial to the taste of ass.


If it looks like this, START OVER.

STEP TWOOOOO:
Preheat the oven to 325. Or don't. See if I care. Then take the milk and make it hot. (We nuked it for 5 minutes, checking it every two minutes.)


STEP THREEEE:
While the milk is nuking, put all the eggs in a big bowl & beat them like they owe you money.




Add the other 1/2 cup sugar and mix that in too.


(Side note: THIS CONSISTENCY IS WEEEEEEIRD.)

STEP FOOOUR:
Slowly pour in the hot milk, stirring the whole time.

Pour too fast, BAM! Cooked eggs.

This part is good to have a helper for because srsly? Pouring hot milk from big bowl into other bowl + stirring = much spillage without help. Also, taking a picture of this was rough.

/end whining.



STEP FIIIIVE:
Add vanilla & mix.



STEP SIIIIIX:
Strain into your bowls/pan/whatever.


Sprinkle nutmeg on top.

STEP SEVENNN:
Fill up a pan with 1" hot water, put that in the oven.

Why?

Because I said so.

Now put your custard cups/pan/etc in the pan & close the oven.


Bake for 45 min & check if it's done. (It isn't.) Continue baking until it IS done. You know it's done when you insert a knife in the middle & it comes out clean.

STEP EIIIIGHT:
Refrigerate. Eat. Puke. Or give to someone who DOES like custard.


Ain't they cute?


Yyyyyyyyyyyyyeah, no.

<3,
TWC

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