Playing sous chef to a nine year old

As much as I like to cook, baking has never grabbed me as much. I think I experienced a bit of overload in my childhood. Somehow we acquired this Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook that had a tasty apple pie recipe in it. As a kid I asked to make it, did so, and served it to audience that received it a little too well. From then on it became a staple of every holiday meal: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, King Kamehameha Day (I love that Blogger knows I spelled Kamehameha right), Groundhog Day, Grandparent's Day, Thursdays. I got a little tired of it.

Fortunately Doodle loves to bake. We had occasion to make a birthday cake recently. I rooted through the magazine exchange box at the library and found an issue of Bon Appetit that someone had donated. It had this really yummy looking chocolate cake. I bounced it off Doodle, he liked the idea, so we made it. Delicious, moist, chocolately. We skimped a little on the ingredient quality (Hershey and Nestle chocolate) but it didn't matter. It was good. We also used semi-sweet chocolate although the recipe calls for bittersweet. Doodle did everything except for the ring of chocolate that goes around the outside.

It is a convoluted cake. First there's the cake part:
4 oz chocolate
3 T cocoa
1/2 c coffee
1/2 c hot water
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 c oil
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c brown sugar
3 eggs
1/2 c sour cream

Pour the hot water and coffee over the chocolate and cocoa and stir until smooth. Mix the flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder in another bowl. Mix oil and sugars in another bowl and add eggs one at a time. Add sour cream. Mix all three bowls together and pour into spring form pans (we only had one pan so split the batter and baked each level (there are two) separately. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Pudding portion:
1/2 c water
5 tsp gelatin
8 oz chocolate
5 oz milk chocolate
2.5 c whipping cream
2.5 c milk
1/2 c sugar
1.5 tsp vanilla

Dissolve gelatin in water. Mix cream, sugar, milk and vanilla and boil. Add gelatin mixture. Pour over chocolate and dissolve. Let chill until pudding-like.

Take one level of cake and keep in pan. Pour pudding on top. Put next layer of cake on top. Pour rest of pudding on top of cake. Chill.

Chocolate band
Melt 5 oz of chocolate. Spread it on strips of wax paper. Let it cool and then wrap the strips around the cake and remove the wax paper.

That's it.

Different venue

I'm going with a change of pace with my next couple cooking posts as I tried some things from Bon Appetit magazine. I don't think I had ever even looked at it before but the library began carrying it this month and the recipe I am posting today looked right tasty. It also involved sweet taters, which I love, and which Robb Wolf from Crossfit has been touting as a great post-workout food for replenishing glycogen levels. My workout and eating levels are all over the map right now but I'm trying to get back into a routine and drop some weight (yes, yes, I know. Second verse, same as the first. I'm not about to give up trying, though. I have no desire to balloon into the 300s or be inactive ever again).

This is an interesting recipe in that it has some Asian flavors to go with the sweet taters.

As an aside, a friend commented on how unappetizing my leek gratin recipe photos looked. I have to agree. There are three reasons for this, maybe more. One, I don't have a fancy camera. Two, I'm not a photographer and do not pretend to be one. Three, I don't care how my food looks. I'm going to masticate and swallow it in the not too distant future. I'm not selling it. Presentation of my cooking is not high on the priority list. What matters to me is that it tastes good. Good nutrition is often up there as well.

That being said, this is a pretty dish. The purple of the red cabbage with the orange of the sweet taters and the brown of the hoisin sauce is sort of pretty to me. Not sure if it will come through on the picture. It tastes good. I've already fixed it a few times.



2 T sesame oil
1 lb sweet taters in strips
1 medium red onion sliced
1/2 lb chicken in strips
1 T fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 c sliced red cabbage
3 T hoisin
3/4 c cilantro

I forgot the onion and cilantro when I made this the most recent time. Oops. That's what I get for trying to memorize a magazine article. It's a real easy recipe. The chopping is the most time consuming part. Heat the sesame oil and stir fry the sweet taters in it. When they start to get tender, add the chicken, onion, ginger and garlic. Once the chicken cooks add the cabbage and hoisin. At the end add the cilantro. Serve.