Inventation
You all know how I loooove baking. Even when I can’t bake, I spend a good part of every morning reading blogs about baking, bookmarking mouthwatering recipes, and leafing through the forests of post-it notes I’ve stuck in my desserts cookbooks. But since I’ve been on Weight Watchers (7 months and counting!) I haven’t been able to indulge as often as I’d like.
But I’m durned if I’m going to let that stop me. Heck, there’s a whole network of family and friends out there that I can stuff with deliciousness! And it turns out, sometimes the friends will even ask to be stuffed – and pay for it, too. The concept!
So I got to spend all weekend up to my elbows in chocolate and butter! I rolled out several dozen cupcakes (actually several more than she’d asked for; hey, it was a chance to make all my favorite chocolate cake recipes and compare them all in a direct taste-test) with milk chocolate frosting, with dinosaur sugar cookies as toppers, for one friend. Boy was I glad I’d bought that Cupcake Courier when I found it – I love the thing!
Results of the taste-test in hand, I walked right back into the kitchen to tweak the winning recipe a bit. I added more buttermilk for added moisture (moisture is key in chocolate because it’s what transfers the chocolate taste to your tongue; a dry cake will taste less chocolate-y), added chocolate extract, upped the vanilla and added espresso powder, and baked this beauty for another family.
Layers of dark-chocolate cake with vanilla cream-cheese frosting. Since I had heavy cream on hand, I decided to get fancy and make a recipe of bittersweet ganache for the filling and decoration, too. Originally I was just going to drizzle it over the top… but who can resist a lake of buttery dark chocolate that melts with the touch of your tongue?
I’m thinking of calling this combo “True Love”… but perhaps I should wait to hear back about how it actually was first. (Do I tend to get ahead of myself? No, never!) -laugh-
June 16th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
Oh Diana, I think I’ll let you loose in MY kitchen and just show up for taste testing.
looks soo good. Ingredients read so good…
Where did you find dinosaur cookie cutters?
I am soo impressed. Wish we lived closer. (But then I’d weigh 250 lbs)
June 16th, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Hi mama, I didn’t find dino cookie cutters, I made them up. I actually ended up using a gingerbread man – turned upside down & cut in half made the round feet into heads on long necks. Then the little half-circles that were his head were curved up into tails, and I opened a little mouth and added arms … they looked pretty good!
June 20th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
that beautiful cake was GONE in 2 1/2 days 😀 and it was specTACular!
My daughter’s birthday is next month- I get to get another cake- bwahahaha!
June 21st, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Aw shucks, thank you so much! I love the baking itself a whole lot, but it’s when people tell me how much they loved the stuff that I get the real thrill!