Dark Chocolate Lava Cakes

Oh yes, you read that right. Dark. Chocolate. Lava cakes.

When I first stumbled across this recipe in February's Reader's Digest, I thought, no. This is too complicated. There's too many things I could mess up, and then that would be a terrible waste of chocolate.

But then I kept seeing the magazine sitting around the apartment, and once in a while I'd pick it up and it would somehow end up on that page, the lava cake sitting there in all its glory... taunting me.

And before I knew it I was bringing home bittersweet chocolate and chopping it up.

The first step is to make the centers which starts, as you have likely surmised, by chopping up the best bittersweet chocolate you can find. (The recipe is actually by Ghirardelli, so please, if your store has that brand of chocolate, use it! Mine didn't though, so Baker's it is!)

In any case, pop a pot on the stove with a bit of water in it, get it simmering a bit and set up a little double-boiler action with your favourite heatproof bowl. One day I will invest in a glass one so as not to sear everyone's retinas with the glare off this metal one.

Anyway! Throw your 2 ounces of chopped bittersweet chocolate in there and pour a quarter cup of cream on it.

Mix and heat it until it looks incredibly silky and smooth and delicious, as above. Then comes one of the toughest parts of this recipe: putting this luscious bowl ganache in the fridge and waiting at least an hour.

... An hour?! I was ready to dig a spoon into it already! But I somehow survived the hour. Once it's firmed up in the fridge, you want to form the centers into equally-sized balls.

Or, at least, equal-ish-sized ball-type lumps. They don't have to be perfect, they're going to be liquid in the end, anyway! For now, pop them back in the fridge while we get the next part ready.

Grease 6 of your favourite mini-pans or ramekins. I used a few of each since I didn't have quite enough of either. From my experience I must suggest going for a deeper dish like the ones on the right, the shallower glass ramekins did not produce a very good lava cake. Those ones actually fell apart when it was time to turn them out of the pan.

So guess how the next step starts? Yep, chop more chocolate! There's something I really enjoy about the k-k-krrrch-THUNK of chopping big chunks of chocolate with my biggest knife. I was a little sad when I ran out of chocolate to chop.

So take this batch of chopped chocolate and pop it in a clean double-boiler setup along with 1/2 cup of butter, and stir once in a while until it looks like this:

Then put it aside to cool a bit while you work on the rest of the batter.

That's 2 whole eggs, 2 egg yolks, 1/3 cup of sugar and a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Blitz 'em up with your hand mixer until the mixture becomes thick and light in colour, which takes around 5 minutes or so.

Once you have a thick, creamy mixture, you can start folding in the chocolate and butter mixture. I added a tiny bit of the chocolate at first, stirring quickly with a spatula, to try to temper the egg mixture and avoid scrambled eggs in my lava cakes. Because that would be eww.

Fold in your chocolate mixture, and then sift a 1/4 cup of pastry flour over the top and continue to fold.

Now, the recipe didn't actually say to sift the flour, but I am telling you to, because I did end up with a couple of little flour clumps in my finished cakes and I do not wish you to suffer the same. As always, take the chance to learn from my mistakes!

Once you've folded in all your flour and chocolate, you'll have something that looks like this. I didn't try to mix it to be perfectly homogeneous because the batter was already deflating, and I didn't want it to lose any more lift than it already had.

Pour a bit of batter into each of your molds/ramekins/mini-pans/whatever and pop one center in the (you'll never guess) center of each pan.

Cover with batter. This is part of why a deeper pan is better than a wider one, better center coverage.

While your cakes bake in the 350 degree oven for 15 minutes, you can clean some of your dishes and utensils, and take a moment to marvel at the utility and utter adorableness of that pink cupcake spatula that followed you home from Home Outfitters.

Or maybe that's just me. But seriously, look at this thing! I need another 20 of them.

After 15 minutes (and much cupcake-spatula ogling) your cakes should be firm to the touch. Let them sit in their pans for about 5 minutes.

As they sit, you'll notice they start to pull away from the edges of the pan a bit.

Once 5 minutes have elapsed, you can flip it out onto a plate, pile on your favourite whipped topping (or ice cream, ice cream would be amazing with this!) and get ready to dig in.

Oh, look at that luscious little bite! And you can see that chocolatey center starting to ooze forth... Let's see if I can get you a better shot of that...

Mmm, yes, with the whipped cream melting down over it and the gooey middle puddling onto the plate. You know, maybe I should clear a bit more of the cake so you can see the center better -

- oh, gee, now the whipped cream is really getting in the way. Just a sec while I tidy this up a bit to get a better shot for you -

Oh. Uh, I don't really know what happened there. One minute I was arranging the cake to take more photos and the next, the plate was empty! This has never happened before.

Well, I guess to get a good look, you'll have to make some yourself! Full instructions are available on the Reader's Digest website. What they don't mention is, you can save these cakes in the fridge for at least a day, and if you turn 'em out onto a plate and microwave for 15 seconds, they're almost as good as if you've just made them. Thought you might like to know that.

I loved these cakes so much, I'm dreaming of all kind of variations now... Just imagine a white chocolate lava cake with a drizzle of raspberry sauce! Mmm. Someday.

But just this moment I have some Mother's Day cookies to bake for a friend. I'll try and get a post together about them to share with you before the big day - which is this Sunday! Whoa! Where does the time go? I better figure out what I'm doing for my Mom...

Until next time!

TCAF: Of Comics and Cookies

Hello, friends. Have I ever mentioned what an absolute comics fanatic I am?

I am an absolute comics fanatic. And I don't just mean I read X-Men comics from the 90's (though I certainly do) but I mean I am mad about all kinds of comics, especially independent stuff that really breaks away from the traditional 'muscle-bound dudes in capes and skimpily-clad sexpots fight evil' stuff.

So, man, am I ever lucky to live in Toronto, where every year I can visit the Toronto Comics Art Festival and meet & chat up my favourite artists! This year, though, I was a little broke. Work had been scarce lately, so I couldn't go and purchase my usual metric tonne of new comic books and graphic novels.

Sigh.

I still wanted to go, though. But I needed to do something for my favourite artists. I would feel so bad just saying hello and not buying anything, and not doing anything for them. So at the last minute, the night before the event, I started decorating cookies.

Unfortunately, since I was so short on time, I didn't get to do cookies for all my favourite artists, but I promised I'd make it up to those I'd missed at the next festival/convention.

Anyone recognise what any of these are? Well, if not, don't feel bad. I didn't expect there to be huge overlap between my lovely, baking-lovin' readers and us comic fans. I'll break it down for you though, because if you have any love for comics at all, my friends, these are among the best!

First, the cookie cutter that inspired it all:

I've had a big 100-piece cookie cutter set for years, but only noticed the other day that this cutter bears an uncanny resemblance to a character in one of my favourite online comics: Dinosaur Comics! Written by the extremely witty Ryan North, this comic is basically the same 6 panels of clip art dinosaurs having ridiculous, philosophical, inspiring, and/or completely inane conversations. It is hilarious, and I cannot stop reading it.

Thus it began. If I was going to make a cookie for Ryan North, why, I needed to make one for everybody!

I had to get creative with the shapes for some of these. The T-Rex, cat and basic shapes I had, but the shamrock and heart-with-ribbon took some custom cutting.

It took 2 tries to get the icing on T-Rex right. This still isn't an exact likeness, but the previous one, well, just be thankful I didn't bother with a picture. I don't wish to be responsible for your nightmares.

Now, just what has caught T-Rex's eye?

Wuh-oh, Cricket! Might wanna get out of range there. The cute li'l black & white kitty cookie is based on Cricket, Yuko's cat, from Johnny Wander. This comic is an autobiographic comic by and about Ananth and Yuko, and sometimes they show previews and snippets from some of their other work. It is funny, cute, and always charming. And gosh, I love that cat!

It is totally worth checking out.

For this cheerful little cactus fellow, I needed reference since I was icing him onto a plain oval cookie. It's hard to see, but I used a toothpick to scratch out an outline to ice over. 

And voila! This my friends, is McPedro, the sassy talking cactus with a Scottish/Irish/Scirish accent from the brilliant comic Girls with Slingshots. The comic is about 2 girls, cynical Hazel and optimist sweetheart Jamie, and their groups of friends and adventures. It's meant for college-age or older readers, mostly, though, and is sometimes a bit adult, so if you're offended by frank talk about sex lives, ehhhh, maybe go read this next one instead.

This little pot is called, well, Pot. He's the living, silent, loyal cooking device of the intrepid explorer chef Rutabaga! This is a relatively new comic by writer and artist Eric Colossal, but I am head-over-heels-in-love with it already. It's a cute, cartoony comic about a chef who tires of the usual fare and goes exploring for new and exciting ingredients in a fun fantasy setting. A probable PG rating on this one guys.

If you love fantasy, cooking, and humor, Rutabaga is an absolute must.

This is... eh... uh... pardon me while I dissolve into nervous giggling for a moment.

Okay, I think I have it out of my system now. I'm not going to link directly to this one, because I really want to keep this blog PG. Really I do. So, uh, if you don't mind a rating a bit higher than PG, highlight the space below.

This is from the amazing comic Chester 5000 XYV by the fabulous Jess Fink. This comic centers around a lonely young Victorian-era bride whose husband is simply too busy for her, er, needs. So he builds her a robot to keep her company. And boy, does he EVER! 

(Keep scrolling, PG fans!)

So there are many naughty, naughty, explicit scenes of robot and non-robot love. Did I mention the entire story is told without dialogue? And done extremely well? And that the characters are relate-able, lovable, and that the story is compelling? And that the sexy scenes are really, really sexy?

Google it, my adult-entertainment-friendly friends. Chester 5000 XYV. Okay, back to cookies and behaving now.

And for those of you who did not highlight and are happy to skip whatever naughty info is hidden there, this is simply a fancy keyhole. Moving on.

This is the symbol of the Sincerists, a fictional group of folks in the alternate universe crafted in Templar, Arizona. This group of folks tells the truth, all the time, no matter how blunt or brutal. I both love and hate them.

This comic is for adults, too, lots of swears and adult situations. It often deals with unhealthy relationships and substance abuse. And it. Is. INCREDIBLE.

The story centres initially around a young man named Benjamin who is trying to start a new life as a writer, in a new town. Then we meet his neighbours, and learn about the crazy, and yet entirely believable, world that Spike Trotman has written, illustrated, and brought to sparkling life. I don't want to give too much away, but it is a wild, emotional, hilarious, touching, disturbing ride. You've got to check it out. You will be amazed.

The only downside was, well, I messed up. Spike didn't come to TCAF this year, and I missed the memo. Oh well, guess I'll just have to eat this delicious cookie myself. Life is too cruel.

Well, gee, these cookies look kind of boring, huh? Just random words on blank white cards. But maybe they'd be more interesting if I told you that they were actually 100% accurate death predictions? Then what? What would the world be like if you could actually know, ahead of time, how you would die? This morbid yet fascinating scenario is explored in a soon-to-be-2-volume collection of short stories called Machine of Death.

I can't even explain it to you fully. If the above premise sounds at all interesting, just click the link. I will add, though, that the idea sprung from the head of the aforementioned Ryan North (in a Dinosaur Comic strip, actually!) and that David Malki ! (the punctuation is part of his name. I don't know, either) was a co-editor for the books. I shared the cookies between the two of them, and saved one to go with the following:

Sorry for the poor quality, I missed getting good pics of some of these because I was just so exhausted!

Hope no-one's squeamish. That's a shamrock spattered with blood. What the heck, right? Well, if you're an Irish ninja on a cold, cold, day, and you're all out of shurikens, sometimes a frozen shamrock just has to do! What the heck am I talking about? Dr. McNinja! It... it is exactly what it sounds like. A crazy, ridiculous, action-humor comic about an Irish-American ninja, who is also a doctor. His is a conflicted life.

And Chris Hastings, the awesome author and pencil-wielding-dude behind it, was also one of the many artists involved with the Machine of Death books.

Despite the fact that I was trying to save money, I did bring home some sweet, sweet swag. A preview of the next Machine of Death book, a beautiful and sassy print by Jess Fink, fun sentence-building magnets based on Dinosaur Comics, a lovely quickie sketch of my favorite Girls with Slingshots character, and of course, volume one of Rutabaga! Which I have already devoured, and I hunger for more.

The magnets with the dress-up bear are from a comic called Sam and Fuzzy, which started as a comic about a cabbie and his talking bear friend, and evolved into something involving TV stardom, metal bands and their roadies, and a ninja mafia. That's the best I can do to summarize a comic that's been running 10 years! Also, I should mention it is fantastic. And that I suck and did not make a cookie for the creator, Sam Logan. But I will, next time he's in town, and it will be fantastic.

The little set of buttons is from a hilarious comic called Bear Nuts by Alison Acton. The best way I can describe it is... picture if the Carebears weren't about love, caring and sharing, and rather, were about self-medicating, or being lecherous, or crazed, or drunk all the time. Sound fun? I thought so. It is of course, not a comic for kids. I am SO looking forward to making the cookies for it though. Click over for a minute if only to look at how bright, cartoony, and wonderful her art is! It is going to make great cookies!

Okay, if you made it through all that, you are such a trooper! And you deserve to see something actually baking related.

I finally, finally got my hands on this book!

I have wanted this book since it was first mentioned on the Cupcakes Take the Cake blog oh so many years ago (at least, I'm pretty sure that's where I first heard of it, it's been a while!) and at last it is mine!

I "discovered" a little shop called The Cookbook Store, right across the street from the Toronto Reference Library, where TCAF is held. No-one ever told me there was such a thing as a store that sold only cookbooks! I would have spent hours perusing if my poor brother wasn't waiting impatiently outside the shop for me. 

If you're not in the Toronto area, you can of course find Hello, Cupcake! online. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some comics and a cupcake book to read. I cannot wait to make more comic cookies, and goodness knows what kind of cupcakes I'll make next!

Coming soon for sure, though, is a how-to on royal icing, and possibly a post about lava cakes? Can't decide, just now... must read about cupcakes!

Until next time!

Pecan Pie from Scratch

So, once upon a time I promised to bake something super awesome for my husband, and then I got caught up in life and work and such and never actually got around to doing so.

The more time passed, the more awesome I thought the baked good would have to be to make up for the wait. The problem there is, by the time 3 weeks had gone by, I was convinced that only a home-made pecan pie would be enough. And I have never made pecan pie. Heck, I've never successfully made a pie crust.

So I spent a few hours tracking down the most reliable, fool-proof recipe I could find, and I finally settled on this recipe from Food Network. Tested and approved by the Food Network kitchens! So, probably I can't screw it up.

Probably.

One of the things I liked about this recipe was that I had the option of using a food processor. In the past, I've tended to overwork my pastry, or get it too warm in my hands, melting all the butter and making it too tough, so I hoped the food processor would alleviate some of that. 

As per the instructions, I pulsed together the flour, sugar and salt, then added the butter and pulsed it together until I got this:

The pieces of butter are supposed to be 'bean-sized'. I'm sure there's some bean out there that's this size? I kind of wish it had been more specific...

Next, I added a lightly beaten egg to the mix, and pulsed again until it looked like this:

And since the instructions clearly state to not actually let it form a dough in the processor, I had to at this point pour it out onto the counter and form it together by hand.

With my hot, hot hands. I tried my best not to melt all the butter.

Once it formed a dough I shaped it down into a disc, wrapped it up in plastic wrap and chilled it for over an hour. Well over an hour, in fact, since I didn't have the energy to finish the pie that evening, so the dough chilled overnight.

The next day, when I had again worked up the courage to work on the pie, I took out my dough disc and attempted to roll it out in a large circle.

Again... 'attempted'. It kind of came out a big lumpy square. I tried to make the best of it. And you know, once I had it in the pan and did my best imitation of fluting the sides, it actually looked a lot like a pie shell!

Yaaaay! I had not yet realised my fatal error. Can you see it, kids at home?

(Sorry, too many cartoons again.)

So, I lined this decent-looking-to-me pie crust with foil and weighed it down with dried beans to do the first round of baking. The beans are so the pie crust won't shift around or bubble up too much during baking.

So, while that's doing that, it's time to make the filling.

That, my friends, it brown sugar, a ridiculous amount of butter, a bit of salt, and a stream of corn syrup gettin' together in a medium sauce pan. You have to stir this, constantly, over medium heat, for however long it takes to reach a boil, then boil it for about a minute.

Then you'll have something that looks a bit like this.  Then, you want to stir in your pecans, and a bit of each of these guys:

These two are going to be BFFFs, I can just tell (that's Best Flavor Friends Forever, by the way.) I'd never in my life bought or tasted bourbon before this, and I still haven't tasted it straight up but I gotta say, the scent of this Maker's Mark stuff is just amazing. And such a pretty bottle... I didn't even want to open it! But, alas, we must make sacrifices in this life.

Once that's cooled for 5 minutes or so, you can beat in your eggs, and then voila! You have pie filling. It was actually much easier than the crust part!

Speaking of crust...

So you see the fatal error yet? When it came out of its par-baking oven stay and I removed the foil and beans, it was obvious that I'd distributed the crust unevenly. On one side there was a big crusty overhang, on the other, the crust had shrunk back from the side and was lower than the edge of the pan!

Uh-oh.

Well, I had no choice but to forge ahead, so I poured as much of the filling in as my lopsided crust would hold, and baked according to the instructions.

I even pulled the pie out halfway through to add a protective layer of foil to the outer crust.

And... this is the finished product. That lopsided crust is really, painfully obvious now. Urgh. Also, my oven is not as fancy as the sophisticated Food Network kitchens' must be, so maybe I should have taken the pie out a little earlier than instructed. The top of the filling got a bit too crunchy, and the crust came out a little dry.

Well, it was my first attempt at this variety of pie, and really, it wasn't a total loss. The best solution to a dry crust is, of course, a healthy scoop of vanilla ice cream!

Heck, even if your crust comes out perfect, put some ice cream on that. It really helps to balance the incredible richness of the pie filling. By the way, you don't really taste the bourbon in this, but you can detect a certain aromatic sharpness to the pie that really brings out the flavors of the pecans.

Would I attempt to make this pie again?

Totally. Would I steel myself up and make the crust from scratch again?

...

Maybe. Maybe if I sample some of the bourbon first.

I don't know what my next baking adventure will be, but I'll post whatever it is next Thursday, so stay tuned!

Until then!