Flourless Chocolate Truffle Cake

I mentioned this dessert in yesterday's post, saying that it was our finale to quite the slap-up Easter dinner. Here is a shot of said Easter dinner! The T-bones were courtesy my roommate, T.


Now, onto dessert. The April issue of Canadian Living was just chock full of recipes I bookmarked. The beef bulgogi was one of them, in fact. This chocolate cake was part of the Passover menu in that issue, and I knew upon seeing it that this was destined to be a product of my kitchen sooner than later.

The recipe is HERE.

The results were stupendous. So stupendous, in fact, there just aren't words. This was rich, fudgey, decadent, and just plain fabulicious. It was so fabulicious it's ridiculously ridiculous.

It was easy to make, too, so there is a huge gratification factor for not a lot effort, too. The only minor issue I had was that the topping used water in it instead of cream. I suspect this has something to do with Jewish kosher rules, but if you're not worried about that, I'd make this with cream instead of water. This is because water does not mix with fat well, and there is butter and chocolate in this topping, and they didn't combine well. The butter kind of separated and left buttery streaks through the top. Flavour-wise, the topping was smashing (I upped the instant espresso powder a bit), but when - WHEN not IF - I make this again, I'll make the topping with cream.

T and I were over the moon with this, and since there were just two of us last night, there are plenty of leftovers. Yay!

Cream Egg Brownies

Here is another Pinterest find that I couldn't resist. I do loves me a Cadbury Cream Egg around Easter time, though I prefer the mini eggs because they're less sweet. I thought this brownie idea was pretty fracking brilliant. And I had all the ingredients on hand, so that was cool, too. Thanks to my roommate T for having a huge bag of milk chocolate chips on hand!

The original recipe is HERE.

Here is my product:
I had one issue with the recipe and that was the filling: 1/4 cup of corn syrup wasn't enough moisture to absorb all the icing sugar, so I had to add some whipping cream to it to loosen it up.

I don't have any yellow food colouring at the moment, so I didn't bother tinting part of the filling.

These were a huge hit with my roommate, who claimed they were better than a cream egg. This recipe has been kid-tested and approved, too, by my young roommate, R, and her friend who was over playing when I made these.

Definite keeper of a recipe!

Lemon Trifle

Happy Easter to all my readers who celebrate it!

We had our Easter dinner last night due to scheduling issues, and after my lemon pound cake disaster last Tuesday, I offered to bring a dessert so I could get rid of that ugly beast pronto to make room in my freezer for more successful endeavours. Lemon-flavoured desserts in the spring are just the best, I think. Well, they're the best at any time of year, but it seemed particularly appropriate yesterday because it was a beautiful sunny day for once and lemons remind me of sunny things. This is a super simple trifle that was an enormous hit.

So:

- one lemon pound cake, cut into cubes
- 1 jar lemon curd (I used Robertson's because it was the least expensive at LOGS)
- 500mL whipping cream, whipped to a decent firmness, just not butter
- 1 large package (the one that makes 6 servings) vanilla pudding, prepared

Layer in the cake with the lemon curd dabbed over the top of the cake cubes, then pour over the pudding, then some whipping cream, and repeat till everything is used up, topping the trifle with whipping cream. I topped mine with some almond flower decorations.

It took about 15 minutes to make and was absolutely heavenly and delicious!

Have a great day everyone, and for those of you who are Canucks, enjoy the long weekend!

Easter Dinner's Dessert: Clafouti

Clafouti is a dessert that has intrigued me for a while, especially after I cut a recipe for it out of Thrifty Foods' (man, how I miss that store!) magazine God knows how long ago. I actually have two recipes for this baked custardy dessert, the other being in my copy of Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cook. I have avoided making clafouti because it requires a lot of eggs, and I have previously been stingy with my eggs since they are not cheap. But, times change, and so has my budget; I decided to make clafouti for Easter dinner's dessert.

Though my budget has changed, I wasn't willing to part with 6 egg yolks, which is what the recipe in Le Cordon Bleu calls for. Instead, I opted for the recipe from Thrifty's since it requires 6 whole eggs. I hate having a whole whack of egg whites, or yolks for that matter, kicking around, so I tend to avoid recipes that call for only parts of eggs rather than the whole egg.

The write-up in Le Cordon Bleu book did tell me, however, that clafouti is a dessert from the Limousin region of France, and that it is traditionally made with seasonal cherries, or plums or pears (how "traditional" this dessert is I don't know; it certainly didn't make our curriculum at the French-focused culinary school I attended). The Thrifty's recipe is for a pear version, utilizing canned pears. How pedestrian! I have so many berries in my freezer that I thought this would be an excellent time to use some. I made a Blueberry Clafouti!

The original recipe is here.

I made two substitutions: the first was obviously the berries; the second was a few drops of orange oil instead of the orange liqueur. I also used a whole vanilla bean, one of many that came in Jodi's wonderful Christmas parcel (also, this parcel is where the orange oil came from). I baked the dessert in a 9" deep dish pie pan.

The result: iffy!

I added the berries halfway through the baking because I didn't want them to all sink to the bottom. Unfortunately, the berries were still cold when I added them to the half-baked clafouti, and this ended up changing the temperature of the centre of the dessert drastically, necessitating a longer baking time. As a result, the sides of the clafouti were very overbaked, and the centre wasn't very custardy at all.

Kinda looks like a large Yorkshire Pudding with berries in it. I was not overly impressed with it, though there were no leftovers and everyone else thought it was fine.

I would try this again, only using the learning I gained with this experience: room temperature fruit added at the beginning of the baking. Oh well. We live and learn.

Easter Dinner 2010

Last night we gathered next door at my brother & SIL's place, where we had a wonderful Easter feast, prepared by my awesome SIL herself. We had ham, roasted potatoes, Caesar salad, asparagus, green beans, buns, and dessert made my yours truly (post will be upcoming). Here are the highlights.

Easter Dinner 2009

We had our Easter celebration last night instead of on Sunday. As usual, we went to my SIL's parents' place and had a huge feast. Here are the highlights.

This is "Easter Pizza." Essentially, it's bread on top & bottom, and the middle is eggs, cheese and ham. It was kinda good. The olives are also home-made (grown elsewhere, cured here).

Platter of turkey.

My SIL cutting up the ham. The bone was spoken for by the time I got there!

Yams baked with apples.

Someone brought a cranberry, pineapple, and orange jellied salad that was pretty good.

There were the traditional mashed potatoes, but these were really good: potatoes cooked in the ham drippings - yum!

My plate.

My SIL made the dessert: vanilla cake with custard, strawberries, and whipped cream.

Well, that's a wrap for this particular holiday. Next feast isn't until Thanksgiving in October.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

Lemon & Dried Blueberry Hot Cross Buns

I couldn't be bothered making Easter cookies, even though I have to donate some baking to the SPCA bake sale on Saturday, but luckily I came across a new food blog, Living in the Kitchen with Puppies, that had the perfect solution: Hot Cross Buns.

I'm ho-hum on Hot Cross Buns. My mom loves them, but I'm not a fan of the dried fruit that goes into them. Natashya had a great recipe up for Magazine Mondays that caught my eye and really appealed to me, Lemon Currant Hot Cross Buns. Except I'm not huge on currants.

Enter the dried blueberry, which I happened upon by accident recently at my local overpriced grocery store. I thought this recipe would be the perfect opportunity to try them out. Man, 1 1/2 cups cost me nearly $6.00! I nearly choked at the cashier. But I decided to buy them anyways, and when I got them home and tasted them, I found I liked them better than fresh blueberries. I substituted them for the currants in the Hot Cross Bun recipe and it worked out brilliantly.

The dough, as it rose, smelled completely amazing, and as they baked, my roommate said she could smell them outside as she hacked away at our snowbank in the front yard. I did make the mistake of not decreasing my oven temperature for the glass pan, so my buns were a little overbaked, but the end result was marvelous. These are the best Hot Cross Buns ever!

I didn't pipe on the white icing, but rather drizzled it on in a cross-like pattern, letting the icing drip where it may. I took the pan for dinner at my dad's last night and these were a huge hit.

Thanks Natashya!

Magazine Monday #35: Ricotta Cookies

I got this huge, 2lb container of ricotta cheese in the States for just under $3 (a container half that size goes for $5.99 at my local overpriced grocery store). I made some ravioli with part of it, and then I decided to make this recipe for Ricotta Cookies that came in the April 2009 issue of Canadian Living. It was part of a section containing a menu for an Italian-inspired brunch, so these cookies might have an Italian root or two.

The recipe is here.

First let me say that the dough was very fluffy and nearly batter-like - and it was very difficult NOT to eat it right out of the bowl with a spoon. It was that good.

The recipe describes the cookies as "cakey" and they definitely were. They were totally awesome, and as you can see, I even went to the trouble of tinting the icing with bright colours. Don't you just love my garish purple cookies? The cream cheese icing is a must - it really finishes off the cookie well.

I loved these, and will probably make another batch this week because I'm donating baking to the SPCA for their bake sale a week from now.