Avocado-Lime Pound Cake

I've already made pound cake before that turned out well, so I wanted to challenge myself by taking a new spin on an old recipe. Scanning around my kitchen I saw an avocado and began thinking that maybe I could use an avocado to replace some of the butter in a cake. While this may seem crazy, both butter and avocado contain fats that would work similarly in a baking recipe.

So, I began to research. I made this recipe for Avocado Lime Pound Cake, loosely based off Joy the Baker's recipe for Avocado Pound Cake, and its good, and surprisingly doesn't even really taste like avocado.

I know the green may be off-putting, but trust me, it's good.

Recipe:

Our star ingredient of the day.

Ingredients:

1 ½  cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup yellow cornmeal

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/3 cup softened butter

1 cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

½ teaspoon lime juice

½ teaspoon lime zest

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup buttermilk

Flesh of 1 ripe avocado, mashed

Yeah, I know it kind of looks
like baby food here...

Directions:

If you don't achieve the green color
you want, you can even use a
drop of food coloring.

Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease a loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda together.  In a larger bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy. In a small bowl, mash the avocado, and spoon it into the butter and sugar mixture and beat this all together for another minute. Add in the eggs, one at a time, and then the buttermilk, vanilla, lime juice, and lime zest until combined. Slowly add in the dry ingredients, making sure not to over mix.

Once the batter is ready, pour it into your prepared loaf pan and place it in the oven for 45-50 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

Let the loaf cool for about 10 minutes before placing it on a cooling rack to cool completely. 

With the avocado, the cake came out really moist, and had some extra health benefits as well since avocado, while it does have fat, contains "healthy fats" instead of butter's only saturated fats.

Chocolate Bar Cake

Ultra dense and intense chocolate flavor.

Last night some friends and I celebrated our friends Callie and Kiki's birthday. This time I really had to make a cake (I wasn't just trying to find some reason to occupy my time.)
Both Kiki and Callie love chocolate so I thought I would make a family recipe of chocolate bar cake. It is dense, rich chocolate that requires no icing, and is simply delicious.


Recipe:
Ingredients: Directions:
2 sticks butter
2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk/sourmilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
8 oz milk chocolate bars
1 small can/ 5 1/2 oz chocolate syrup


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F and generously grease a 10" tube pan.

This was a mega-sized chocolate bar.

In a double broiler, pour in the chocolate syrup and break up the milk chocolate bars. Melt the chocolate bars into the syrup, using a spoon to stir to make sure the chocolates mix well together.
In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar and then add each egg one at a time. Mix the baking soda and buttermilk and alternate adding this buttermilk mixture and the sifted flour until both are mixed into the batter. Finally, blend in the chocolate mixture and vanilla completely.
Pour the batter into your already greased pan and place in the oven for 1 hour 15-20 minutes.

The perfect cake for anyone who loves chocolate. It can be easily decorated if you so chose, and its round shape makes it easy for slicing.

Pound Cake

Having a stress fracture and being a senior who's pretty much checked out of school, I now have more time on my hands...great!
So instead of memorizing everyone's address from the school phone book or stalking my facebook minifeed, I instead have found different excuses to bake.
So tonight is a track team dinner so obviously I need to bake!

How about a nice pound cake? A little change from the typical store-bought cookies and brownies that are usually served, but its still so simple to make.

Recipe:
Ingredients:
3 sticks of butter
8 oz package of cream cheese
3 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
6 eggs
3 cups flour


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Run your knife along the edge to
make it easier to remove the cake.

Cream together the butter and cream cheese well and then add the sugar. Once this is well mixed, add the salt and vanilla, and then add each of the 6 eggs one at a time. Once all these ingredients are mixed together, slowly add in the flour.
Bake for 1 1/2 hours, and do not over-bake.
(Set your clock timer for a little earlier to check to prevent over-baking from occurring. Insert a toothpick to check to see if comes out clean, and is ready.)

Once the batter is homogenous, pour it into a well-greased 10 tube pan.

Sift powdered sugar on top to add a finishing touch.

Mint Chocolate Cake Truffles

When I was doing the little studying I did do for my European history midterm I came accross Marie Antoinette's quote, "let them eat cake," and I thought, well, why not?

For this treat I decided to combine two things everyone loves; cake and truffles, and even though it took some work, I found it was definitely worth doing again (maybe even try it with new flavors).

Ingredients:

Cake-

1 cup flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup sugar

1/3ecup butter

1 egg

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup cold milk

Frosting-

2 cup powdered sugar; sifted

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

2 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Chocolate Coating-

2 cups semi-sweet/dark chocolate chips

12 crushed up chocolate wafer cookies

Directions:

Stir together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and baking soda into a bowl. Beat together the sugar and butter on high speed of mixer until fluffy, and then beat in the egg, vanilla, and peppermint extract. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture, alternating with milk and beating well after each addition.

I didn't crumble in the edges of the

cake since they were crispier.

Pour the batter into a greased and floured 9" round cake pan. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes and cool 10 minutes.

For the frosting, beat together the sugar, butter, extract and enough milk to make smooth consistency. Add the cocoa powder and mix well.

Using your hands, crumble bits of the cake into the frosting. Now, using a spoon or your hands, mix the frosting and cake until well mixed.

Mixing the frosting & cake together.

Take the frosting-cake mixture and form into small truffle-sized balls and place them onto a baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in the freezer for 45 minutes to an hour or the refrigerator for several hours.

Remove the cake drops from their cool place and place the semisweet/dark chocolate chips in a saucepan and heat them over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until melted.

Using a spoon, take each individual cake drop and roll it around in the chocolate. Tap off excess chocolate and place onto a baking sheet covered with wax paper. After a minute, roll each ball into the crushed up chocolate wafer cookies (if you wait too long the chocolate will harden and the cookies won’t stick). Place the cake truffles back on the sheet and let them cool and harden. You may place them back into the freezer or refrigerator for a couple minutes to harden them as well.

Pure chocolate goodness throughout-I keep mine in the

fridge so they stay cool, but you can do whatever you want.

The result was a soft mint chocolate center with a subtle crunch of the cookies on top, all held together by a layer of chocolate. So why just "eat cake" when you could eat a cake truffle?