Week Six: Little Cakes are Still Cakes

Eureka! By George, I've found it! Huzzah!

What, you might ask, have I found? Why, nothing other than the core of this challenge! The recipe for a PERFECT cake!

When I started this adventure to make a cake per week until the New Year, I was hoping to pare down my ragged pile of recipes torn from magazines and my out-of-control "Recipes: To Try" Pinterest board. I wanted to find delicious recipes that aren't just good for that one time your wife wants a cake shaped like a cat on a surfboard (ask my husband) or for an unexpected Russian/Olympics themed dinner party. I wanted to find a cake so good, so delicious, and so reasonable (in price and time) that you could - and would - make it over and over again. 

So let me start over...

EURKEA! BY GEORGE, I'VE FOUND IT! HUZZAH!

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I've officially finished the majority of this end-of-year baking! I've completed sixty percent of my challenge - welcome to Week 6! 

To recap:

Week 1: Coconut Cream Poke Cake
Week 2: Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Week 3: Orange Chiffon Cake with Candied Zest
Week 4: Upside Down Banana Toffee Cake
Week 5: Maple Bundt Cake
Week 6: Little French Fudge Cakes from The Splendid Table*

First of all, if you aren't listening to, subscribing by email, or otherwise digesting content from The Splendid Table  you are officially missing out. TST is dedicated to "life's appetites" and their weekly show (check your area NPR station or listen online) includes famous chefs and restaurateurs and a variety of other foodies who discuss trends, techniques, recipes, cookbooks, science, and more! The diversity of topics and recipes is astounding. Looking through their recipe collection (you can sign up for weekly recipe emails, too. YES, PLEASE!), you'll find so many things you've never tried (to cook or eat) or even heard of. Sometimes the ingredients are weird, hard-to-find, or expensive; but in my experience, they recipes are always good. So when comparing this to their other great recipes, would it be in poor taste ( bad pun #1) to say that this recipe takes the cake (bad pun #2)? Because it does. 

Zoom in to see all that glorious gooey chocolateness! 

If you like lava cakes or brownies, you'll love this. It's both gooey and cakey. 

Made in cupcake tins, the batter cooks quickly to get a nice fluffy breading on the outside and top. But with the extra bite-sized pieces of chocolate and short baking time, the center is still soft. It doesn't flow like molten chocolate sauce, but it's still creamy and soft (especially if you eat it warm, and let's be real here...warm chocolate cake!). 

If you like chocolate, you'll love this. It's FULL of dark chocolate, and a surprise. 

Boasting over six ounces of dark and unsweetened chocolate (that's an ounce/cake!), these little cakes pack a chocolatey punch! It's a rich and deep flavor for a dessert meant to be savored. But you also add ground cinnamon and the way it blooms to come through the chocolate is such a surprising and delicious accompaniment. 

If you like short recipes and only two dirty bowls, you'll love this. It's beyond simple. 

I'll happily re-type this recipe because it's basically three steps: melt some chocolate, stir into other ingredients, bake. And it's all done by hand without even dirtying a mixer! 

And that's not all, here are some other reasons you're sure to love this recipe:

Gooey cake + ice cream/whipped cream = a dream 

You have your own individual dessert, sharing is optional. 

It's easily doubled with no extra trouble, which makes it great for date night or a dinner party crowd.  

You can add a bit of sugar to make it more kid-friendly.  

Allegedly, they're good cold and will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days (who are these monsters?) 

Long story short, this is THE RECIPE. Six weeks in and I've peaked. 

The Hubs would happily settle for four more weeks of Little French Fudge Cakes, but we press on! 

*As a fair disclosure, I have won a sweepstakes from TST (5 lb block of grana padana cheese, cheese knife, planner and cookbook!), but this is not a paid ad or sponsored blog; they just rock! 

Recipe Resources - books, magazines and more!

I've mentioned time and again that I'm not the best improvisational cook but I do love and excel at following recipes. I love to perusing periodicals to find good-looking recipes to test out.

This may be a genetic affliction because my mother is a first-class cookbook hoarder. She loves looking at all of the beautiful pictures, imagining the dishes and making a to-do list of recipes for my dad to make;  every year we have to sort through them to clear space on the bookcase.

Right now, I've only commandeered one shelf (of our 5+ bookcases) for cookbooks, but I also subscribe to two cooking/food magazines, listen to culinary podcasts and regularly review a foodie website. Here are a few recommendations of my favorite recipe resources that provide relevant, interesting and delicious information on cooking (and eating)!


- From Julia Child's Kitchen & Mastering the Art of French Cooking: I've read two books about Julia Child's life and adventures in becoming one of the forefront starts of cooking and one of the first famous female chefs and I've come to idolize her and her cookbooks. Her recipes are timeless and reading the biographies of her that I have, I know how much work - including tinkering, testing and reformulating - she puts into her cookbooks to make sure the recipes are precise and work perfectly. I do find her recipes hard to read sometimes because they are so detailed (partly because of the nature of French cooking itself) but the results are nothing short of remarkable. Her cookbooks inspired how I present recipes here, with a list of ingredients followed by a detailed "method" timeline.

- Taste of Home magazine: TOH is a great magazine for beginners or those who need to make quick, inexpensive, crowd-pleasing meals (don't we all?). The majority, if not all, of the featured recipes are submitted by readers (who can win competitions for cash!) and are tested by their staff and editors. I love the personal quality of the recipes - each reader-submitted one includes a 1-2 line intro from the home cook - that shows someone out there actually makes this recipe for people they care about! This mag relies heavily on Crock Pots, make ahead and easy-to-freeze meals. 

- The Hungry Girl series of cookbooks and website: I've found this product line to be the most accessible and successful series of healthy, diet recipes. Unlike other lines, such as the super witty but overdone Skinny Bitch In the Kitch books, Hungry Girl uses common, inexpensive ingredients to create figure-friendly recipes that taste as good, if not better than the full-fat, high calorie versions. For example, the recipe for rich, pumpkin chocolate muffins  is amazing and is so customizable. The website offers weekly updates about new grocery products and helpful suggestions so users can make informed, healthy choices at home, at the store or in restaurants. 

- Food Network Magazine: I didn't buy this subscription myself, but my mother got so tired of me stealing her back editions that she opted to make sure I had my own copies. I love this magazine. After working on a newspaper for my whole college career, I have an eye for good layout and engaging content - this magazine pulls you in. The food artistry is great, they have stories about current trends in kitchen supplies and menus, and great features like "He Made She Made" which pits two Food Network cooks against each other making a simple dish. Unlike Taste of Home, Food Network seems to assume its readers aren't novices, but are at least watching Food Network shows and know the basics. They include more complicated and exotic recipes with less common ingredients; but it's all do-able. This might be right between Taste of Home and Bon Appetit. 

- The Salt: This is the quirkiest of my recommendations. It doesn't offer a regular, standardized product but is merely the grouping of all food-related NPR material. That includes audio clips (and transcripts) of their stories from shows like All Things Considered, Fresh Air and Morning Edition, infographics and a "For Foodies" section that includes weekly features like "Sandwich Monday" where staff members of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me try random meals that could loosely be described as sandwiches and provide a satirical play-by-play. It often features recipes (usually in "Found Recipes"), but I appreciate the up-to-date news about food issues including issues of hunger, climate change affecting produce, diet trends etc. 

- Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2: I don't know how this happened but my family ended up with two copies of this cookbook and no one has the first. However, judging by the recipes in the sequel, I imagine TSRR 1 is pretty good too. This book if full of restaurant secrets - either ripped off by former employees or tested and tweaked to be mirrored meals of franchise favorites. I can attest that some of these recipes are just as good as you'd get in a brick-and-mortar location, including the Red Robin fry seasoning that we now use on a number of things. For me, it's also helpful for figuring out "what is that flavor?" in restaurant dishes and gives a good starting point for improving on your favorite dishes. My only complaint is the organization of the book. All recipes are grouped according to original restaurant (Chilis, PF Changs etc.) which is helpful if you know an exact dish you want to duplicate (like Chili's molten lava cake) however, if you just know you want to make chicken salad you have to do some searching. 

- Better Homes and Gardens' New Cookbook: According to the Amazon description, the New Cookbook (now on its 15th edition) has been a staple in American households since 1930. I know that the red-and-white plaid book has been a constant feature of our home since the early 80s (but our ragged copy looks even older than that). Like Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the recipes in New aren't actually new - they're classic dishes that teach you basic techniques and meals that are always enjoyable. We had a children's version that I used when I first learned to cook and I was so proud when I could graduate to the big three ring copy. This is a great cookbook to get started with - you're making fancy dishes but it talks you through it as a learner.

- The Splendid Table: A staple of public radio, TST is a wonderful hour-long show hosted by Lynne Rosetto Kasper who has a voice made for NPR - soft and quiet with a descriptive vocabulary that brings the food to your own home. They feature great stories from journalists around the world, interviews with chefs and an awesome segment where callers name a few items in their fridge and Lynne suggests a recipe. Lynne makes food accessible and callers are able to get a personable answer to their most pressing cooking queries. The show airs weekly but podcasts and recipes are available online.

- Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter : This book isn't a cookbook, doesn't include any recipes or many helpful cooking tips. However, it is a non-fiction book about the adventures of working in Thomas Keller's uber-fancy Per Se restaurant. I learned so much about working in kitchens, and how I should be acting as a diner from this book. I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in food.