I Love my Chocolate Cake!

This is my favorite and easiest chocolate cake recipe. Its indeed a genius cake...I mean, a great tasting chocolate cake without chocolate, or eggs, or butter...? Who wouldn't be sold on that?

I have blogged about a modified version of this cake in this post and I've made this cake too many times to count.

Here's a link to the recipe: Margaret Fox's Amazon Chocolate Cake

And here's last week's installment of the cake (I bake this almost every week...I know X_X so much cake)

I dusted with Castor Sugar.

And then decided to serve it a different way.
I drizzled some condensed milk over the cake...yummy goodness! The cake soaked up the milk and the sweetness of the milk balanced out the bittersweet chocolate taste.

DH loved the condensed milk version (of course). But next time I bake this cake, I'll use whipped cream and some fruits to switch things up a bit.

Give this a try, I guarantee you'll love it. :D

Until next time, God Bless You.

Love,
Preye.

What I Ate: Chocolate Popcorn Crumble Cake!

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

                                                                             - Harriet Van Horne 

And so it was, that one fine rainy day I walked into my kitchen and decided to experiment. With little or no recipes, no TNT (tried and trusted) meals, and a willingness to go with the flow; I was able to create some deliciousness out of a combination of some unusual ingredients.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet my "Chocolate Popcorn Crumble Cake with a Caramel/Granola topping"! I know...terrible name. lol. But trust me, it tasted so good I wouldn't mind naming it "That Crunchy Deliciousness" 

Here's how it happened. I have this TNT recipe for a chocolate cake via Food52 and I was badly in need of a cake fix. Unfortunately, I had no AP flour...Gasp! So I raided my pantry and found a pack of popcorn flour I had bought on a whim a couple of months ago and never used (I originally planned to make Banana-popcorn bread). I also had some corn flour on hand, and with a few tweaks to my favorite Chocolate cake recipe, my "Frankencake" was born.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Popcorn Flour (You can actually make yours from popcorn, see techniques here and here)

1/2 Cup Corn Flour

1 Cup Light Brown Sugar

1/2 Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

1  Teaspoon Baking Soda

1/2 Teaspoon Sea Salt

5 Tablespoons Canola Oil

1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar

1 Tablespoon Vanilla Essence

1 Cup Cold Water

For Caramel
Granulated Sugar, Honey and Butter cooked at medium heat until sugar melts completely and is golden brown. I added a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of Vanilla for added flavor

For Granola Topping
Here's a link to my Granola Recipe. I made some slight changes; dry toasted the oats and nuts in a pan (my cake was in the oven and I didn't want the temperature drops that would result from the constant opening) and then poured the hot caramel over them and mixed until fully coated. I also left the nuts whole.

Now for the main recipe: sift the flour, salt, cocoa powder and baking soda into a large bowl and mix in the sugar. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and combine wet and dry ingredients.

Line the bottom of your baking pan with parchment paper and grease the sides (I use an oil spray).

Pour in the batter and bake at medium heat for twenty-five minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Note: Popcorn Flour and Corn flour are both gluten free so the cake will not bind...if you would like a less crumbly texture and more moisture, you could add ground flax seeds or gelatin to serve as a binding agent. (or stick to the original recipe here)

Once your cake is ready, pour the hot caramel over the top of the cake and spread the granola over it. The caramel will bind the granola to the cake. Remember to handle with care as melted sugar is extremely hot. You can press in the granola with a soft spatula to help seal it in some more. Allow to cool.

This is what it looked like when I was done.

You can take the cake out of the baking pan before adding the toppings

Yum! :D

I was pleased with the way this turned out and I'll definitely be doing it again in the near future (with some additional modifications).

Until next time, God bless you.

Love,
Preye.

Late Night Snack: French Toast Crunch

After a long day at work and the usual Port Harcourt traffic, I really was in no mood to cook anything major when we arrived home...but a couple of hours down the line my stomach started making noises and DH admitted he was also hungry.

I had to figure out something quick and easy to make (that was also a stash buster...did I mention I love to shop? That love for shopping usually equals an abundance of ingredients waiting to be cooked up).

We had some bread left over from a couple of days back and I had gotten this recipe in my mail via Food52 some days prior but hadn't had time to execute it due to the morning rush on work days.

I paired it up with some left-over roasted chicken and the perfect late night snack was born.

This was perfect for the evening and got whipped up real quick. about half of the toast didn't make it on the serving dish as they got devoured straight out of the pan.

Here is a link to the recipe: French Toast Crunch

I of course made a few modifications, did mine in a pan over an open flame, used thinly sliced bread and skipped the milk altogether for less fuzz.

I'll recommend this any day and plan to do it again but as a breakfast meal.

Much Love, and God bless...

Preye