Category Archives: Desserts

November 13, 2016 · 8:27 am

Chocolate Raspberry Vanilla Mousse Cake

This is a fabulous, decadent cake made from layers of chocolate, raspberry and vanilla mousses on a brownie crust. It is not as sweet as a normal frosted cake, but the mousses are definitely rich and creamy. Serve this in small slices. A whole cake will go a long way, feeding at least 12-18 people.

I first made this cake with Little J about a month ago for my birthday, after seeing it on Sugar Hero. I made a few changes to it then, and then some more changes when I made it a second time for a church youth event. I still found the brownie layer to be much too rich in the first two versions of this recipe, so I tried yet again and am now happy with the results!

The length of the recipe looks intimidating, but basically you are just making a one-bowl brownie layer, then repeating the mousse layer in three different flavors and topping with a simple chocolate ganache. I won’t lie: it does take ALL DAY to make. But that is mostly because there are a number of cooling/chilling steps, since the mousse layers each need to firm up before spreading on the next layer. And if you make your own raspberry puree, that adds more time to the process. Straining raspberry seeds is not one of my favorite things, but the result is definitely worth it.

The only special equipment you need to make this cake are a springform pan (or cake pan with removable bottom) and an acetate cake collar at least 4” high.

The final cake is taller than a regular springform pan, and you want the sides to be smooth, so a cake collar is a real help putting this together.

You can make your own using parchment paper or foil, but it is hard to get it completely smooth. I used non-stick foil the first time I made this cake, and then bought some cake collars on Amazon for my next try at it. Here are the differences in final texture between the foil collar and real cake collar:

If you have an egg allergy, this is a perfect cake. The mousse layers contain no eggs at all. The brownie layer does contain an egg, but you could leave that layer off or use an egg substitute for that one egg. This dessert is also really pretty layered in parfait glasses. I made one parfait version for our chocolate-hating son, just layering the raspberry and vanilla mousses and fresh berries.

RECIPE:

Chocolate Raspberry Vanilla Mousse Cake

Servings: 12-18
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Brownie Layer:
¼ cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
4 Tbs unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/3 cup flour

Chocolate Mousse Layer:
1 ¾ cups heavy cream, divided
6 oz (1 cup) semisweet chocolate chips
1 pkt (2 tsp) unflavored gelatin
2 Tbs water
Pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla

Raspberry Mousse Layer:
1 ½ cups heavy cream, divided
6 oz (1 cup) white chocolate chips
1 pkt (2 tsp) unflavored gelatin
2 Tbs water
Pinch salt
t tsp vanilla
1 cup Sweetened Raspberry Puree or seedless raspberry jam

Vanilla Mousse Layer:
1 ¾ cups heavy cream, divided
6 oz (1 cup) white chocolate chips
1 pkt (2 tsp) unflavored gelatin
2 Tbs water
3 Tbs powdered sugar
Pinch salt
1 vanilla bean
t tsp vanilla

Chocolate Ganache & Topping:
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 Tbs corn syrup
3 oz (1/3 cup) bittersweet chocolate chips
1 pint fresh raspberries

Brownie Layer:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 9” springform pan lightly with baking spray. Line bottom of pan with a round of parchment paper and then spray again with baking spray.

Place chocolate chips and butter in a microwave safe bowl. Heat in 30 second increments, stirring after each heating until melted. Stir in sugar, salt and vanilla; mix well. Stir in egg and mix well. Stir in flour until just combined.

Spread into prepared pan and bake for 15-17 minutes. Cool completely.

Chocolate Mousse Layer:
Place ¾ cup of the cream in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat in microwave for 1 minute, or until hot. Add chocolate chips to hot cream. Let sit for 1 minute and then stir until smooth. Cool to room temperature. Place water in a small bowl and sprinkle gelatin over the surface of the water. Let sit while chocolate cools. Place remaining 1 cup cream, salt, and vanilla in a large bowl and whip until stiff peaks form. Microwave gelatin mixture for 15 seconds to melt gelatin; stir into chocolate. Pour chocolate mixture into whipped cream and beat briefly with a mixer to partially mix. Use a spatula to fold mousse until well mixed.

Place a 4” cake collar or a strip of non-stick foil around the inside of the springform pan. Spread chocolate mousse over the brownie layer, spreading to the edge of the pan. Refrigerate for 1 hour, or until mousse is firm.

Raspberry Mousse Layer:
Place ½ cup of the cream in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat in microwave for 1 minute, or until hot. Add white chocolate chips to hot cream. Let sit for 1 minute and then stir until smooth. Cool to room temperature. Place water in a small bowl and sprinkle gelatin over the surface of the water. Let sit while chocolate cools. Place remaining 1 cup cream, salt, and vanilla in a large bowl and whip until stiff peaks form. Microwave gelatin mixture for 15 seconds to melt gelatin; stir into chocolate. Pour white chocolate mixture and raspberry puree into whipped cream and beat briefly with a mixer to partially mix. Use a spatula to fold mousse until well mixed.

Spread raspberry mousse over the chocolate mousse layer, spreading to the edge of the pan. Refrigerate for 1 hour, or until mousse is firm.

Vanilla Mousse Layer:
Place ¾ cup of the cream in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat in microwave for 1 minute, or until hot. Add white chocolate chips to hot cream. Let sit for 1 minute and then stir until smooth. Cool to room temperature. Place water in a small bowl and sprinkle gelatin over the surface of the water. Let sit while chocolate cools. Place remaining 1 cup cream, powdered sugar, salt, seeds from vanilla bean, and vanilla in a large bowl and whip until stiff peaks form. Microwave gelatin mixture for 15 seconds to melt gelatin; stir into chocolate. Pour white chocolate mixture into whipped cream and beat briefly with a mixer to partially mix. Use a spatula to fold mousse until well mixed.

Spread vanilla mousse over the raspberry mousse layer, spreading to the edge of the pan. Refrigerate for 1 hour, or until mousse is firm.

Chocolate Ganache & Topping:
Place cream and corn syrup in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat in microwave for 1 minute, or until hot. Add chocolate chips to hot cream. Let sit for 1 minute and then stir until smooth. Cool until a thick pouring consistency.

Remove sides of the springform pan. Run a sharp knife along the top edge of the vanilla mousse layer to keep it from sticking to the cake collar. Carefully remove cake collar. Remove cake from bottom of the springform pan and place on serving dish.

Spread the ganache over the top of the cake and allow to drip down the sides of the cake. Place fresh raspberries in the center of the cake. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Sweetened Raspberry Puree
12 oz raspberries, fresh or frozen (about 2 ½ cups of not-crushed fresh berries)
½ cup water
½ cup sugar
½ Tbs lemon juice
2 Tbs cornstarch
¼ cup cold water

In a heavy saucepan, combine raspberries, ½ cup water, sugar, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, crushing berries slightly with the back of a spoon. Strain the berries through a fine sieve, pushing the pulp through the sieve with the back of a spoon or a pestle. Return seedless puree to the saucepan (rinse saucepan first if there are seeds clinging to the sides). Mix the cornstarch and water in a small bowl; stir into puree in the saucepan. Return mixture to a boil; lower heat and simmer for 1-2 minutes, or until slightly thickened and no longer cloudy. Cool before using.

Yield: about 1 ¾ cups seedless puree

(Inspired by Sugar Hero)

NoEmptyChairs.me

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Tagged as allergy free, brownie, cake, dessert, egg-free, ganache, layered cake, mousse cake, parfait, raspberry, recipe, springform

November 3, 2016 · 8:16 am

Caramel Pumpkin Cupcakes

Don’t these cupcakes just scream “Autumn!” If the temperature were to drop below 80° I might be able to believe that fall had actually arrived. So maybe they are just screaming “Eat Me Regardless of the Season!”

Little J made these Caramel Pumpkin Cupcakes for our neighborhood chili cook-off and kids’ bake-off. She made them completely on her own (except for some help making the salted caramel to drizzle on top). She did all of the baking and decorating herself, though. Her efforts paid off: she came home with the prize for best-tasting dessert! She was very excited.

This pumpkin cupcake batter is extremely versatile. We have used it to make Pumpkin Cupcakes, Pumpkin Bars, Pumpkin Sheet Cake, Pumpkin Bread. It adapts well to any size pan you choose to bake it in.

The frosting is a delicious caramel cream cheese icing. You start by making a simple caramel on the stovetop and then beating in cream cheese and a little extra powdered sugar. If you are going to pipe it onto cupcakes, it benefits from a good chill in the fridge to firm it up a little, followed by another beating with a mixer once it has chilled. So start your baking by making the frosting first and then move on to the cupcakes while the frosting chills.

The salted caramel drizzle is optional, but really makes a big difference. The recipe below makes much more salted caramel than you need to drizzle on the cupcakes, but it is also great for topping ice cream and chocolate cake. Or for dipping apples. Or for stirring into hot cocoa. Or for licking off of spoons. Or use your leftover caramel to drizzle over any of these other desserts:

Salted Caramel Banana Cream Pie

Caramel Apple Cheesecake Tart

Apple Pie

Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake

Vanilla Cheesecake

Double Chocolate Waffles

Cream Puffs

RECIPE:

Pumpkin Caramel Cupcakes

Servings: 24
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Pumpkin Cupcakes:

4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
1 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 16oz can of pumpkin (about 2 cups)
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line muffin pans with 24 paper liners.

Using a mixer, beat eggs, sugar, oil, vanilla and pumpkin until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Fold into pumpkin mixture.

Scoop batter into lined muffin pans. Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.Remove from pan and cool completely.

Use a pastry tip (I used Wilton 1M) to frost the cupcakes. Drizzle with salted caramel.

Store frosted cupcakes in the refrigerator if they are going to be left out for more than a few hours.

Makes 24 cupcakes.

Caramel Cream Cheese Icing:

½ cup unsalted butter
½ cup heavy cream
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 pkg (8 oz each) cream cheese
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup powdered sugar

Place butter, cream and brown sugar in a medium saucepan. Stir together over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 12 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and pour into a mixing bowl. While caramel is hot, beat in cream cheese, vanilla and salt until well mixed. Beat in powdered sugar. Cover and place frosting in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. When frosting has chilled, beat again until light and fluffy. Store leftovers in the refrigerator.

Salted Caramel Drizzle:
1 cup sugar
6 Tbs butter, softened and cut into tablespoon-sized chunks
½ cup heavy cream
½ – 1 tsp tsp flaky or coarse sea salt
1 tsp vanilla (and/or seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean)

Place sugar in a medium to large saucepan (mixture will bubble up and expand as cool ingredients are added to the hot pan). Cook over medium heat until sugar just begins to melt. Stir gently, trying to keep sugar crystals off of the sides of the pan. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until sugar melts completely and is a medium amber color (about 350°F if you use an instant-read thermometer). Reduce heat to low and quickly whisk in butter chunks, stirring constantly.

Stir in cream, stirring constantly until smooth. Stir in salt and vanilla. Pour caramel immediately into a glass jar or heat-safe bowl to cool. Do NOT scrape sides or bottom of the pan with a spatula. If you do, you are likely to get sugar crystals into your nice smooth caramel. If the caramel has formed crystals while cooking, you can pour it from the pan through a fine sieve into the jar to remove any crystals before cooling.

Caramel can be kept in a covered jar at room temperature for several weeks.

NoEmptyChairs.me

Salted Caramel Sauce

Servings: Makes about 1 cup
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1 cup sugar
6 Tbs butter, softened and cut into tablespoon-sized chunks
½ cup heavy cream
½ – 1 tsp tsp flaky or coarse sea salt
1 tsp vanilla (and/or seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean)

Caramel can be kept in a covered jar at room temperature for several weeks.

NoEmptyChairs.me

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Tagged as bake-off, cake, caramel, cream cheese icing, cupcakes, dessert, pumpkin, recipe, salted caramel, winner

October 20, 2016 · 3:49 pm

Chocolate Halloween Pretzels

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An alternate heading and photo I probably should have led with:

What Not To Do When You Move

In the spirit of putting away some extra food for a rainy day, I have a 5-gallon bucket full of chocolate chips (of various varieties). Shown above: what used to be a bag of Ghirardelli 60% Bittersweet Chips, Costco-sized bag. My favorite.

Don’t judge my food storage choices. When the zombie apocalypse hits, what do you really want to eat: cracked wheat porridge or chocolate?

Before moving last year, I did not think about the effects that a month of sitting in the back of a moving truck in June/July, would have on my precious bucket of chocolate chips. So instead of a bucket full of chocolate chips, I had a bucket full of chocolate bricks. I have finally made it through the last bag!

The struggle is real.

This is certainly a lemonade from lemons kind of first-world dilemma. We ended up with some fun chocolate dipped pretzels to share at a recent Fall Fest.

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Don’t want to bother remelting the chocolate block? It also makes a good paperweight.

A Birthday Experiment

Just wanted to give a little teaser of a recipe in progress. Next month I am making a couple of cakes for a church young women event. I wanted to try out a new recipe I hope to bring that night, and since Monday was my birthday, I figured that was as good of an excuse as any to try it out. Monday was also a holiday from school, so I enlisted Little J to help me. She was thrilled to help; she had been worried that with her two older sisters now gone at college, she would be on her own to come up with a birthday dessert for me.

This is not a traditional cake –in fact, there is no actual cake in it at all. It has a brownie base that is topped by chocolate, raspberry and vanilla mousses. It is not an especially hard cake to make, but is extremely time consuming, as there are long waiting periods throughout the assembly process.

We were pretty pleased with the result, although there are some additional changes I want to make to the recipe before I post it here. So you will have to wait until next month for the full revised recipe.

For anyone who lives close who would like to test it out for me, come on by! Since Little A won’t touch chocolate, there are only three of us left here to eat this enormous cake! (Don’t feel too sorry for him though- I am a sucker-mom and made him his own parfait out of the raspberry and vanilla mousses.)

It has been 4 days now, and we still haven’t made it halfway through. Help!!

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Tagged as birthday, brownie, chocolate, dessert, ganache, mousee cake, mousse, raspberry, vanilla

September 16, 2016 · 7:38 am

Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing

The best way to start a 6:00am day? Homemade cinnamon rolls, of course.

To keep your rolls light and airy, do not add too much flour to your dough, and knead only until the dough begins to pull away from the side of the bowl. Because the dough is sticky, it needs to sit for a while in the refrigerator before rolling out the dough. To keep the rolls soft, I also roll my dough out on a buttered silicon mat (instead of a floured mat). Greased hands will help in handling the slightly sticky dough.

An easy way to cut your dough logs into rolls without crushing the dough and having the knife stick to the dough is to use dental floss (not mint!) or a strong sewing thread. See THIS POST for more details.

This recipe makes a lot: 36 large rolls. You can scale the recipe back if you don’t want as many OR Rolls can be frozen either after or before cooking.

To freeze before cooking: Prepare dough. Fill and roll dough into log. Slice into rounds and place each round on a foil lined baking sheet, not touching. Freeze until solid and then place in Ziploc bags and return to freezer. Place frozen rolls in prepared pan and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled (about 2-3 hours). Bake and frost as directed.

RECIPE:

Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing

Servings: 36
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2 ½ cups buttermilk*
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
2 tsp salt
9 – 9 ½ cups flour, divided
1 ½ Tbs instant yeast

½ cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
2-3 Tbs cinnamon

Place buttermilk, butter, and sugar in a medium saucepan. Stir over medium heat until butter is melted. Pour into a large mixing bowl (stand mixer) and let cool for 15-20 minutes. Mix in eggs and salt. Add 4 cups of flour and the yeast and mix until smooth. Add additional 5 cups of flour and knead until smooth. Add additional flour, if necessary, to make a soft dough that barely pulls away from the edge of the bowl. Dough will be slightly sticky. Cover dough with plastic wrap touching the dough and refrigerate for at least 60 minutes, or until the dough is chilled and not sticky when touched.

Lightly butter rimmed baking sheets or 9”x13” pans. Mix brown sugar, white sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl.

Divide dough into two halves. On a lightly buttered surface, pat each dough half into a rectangle about 12”x18”. Spread ½ stick of butter (¼ cup) on each dough half and sprinkle with half of the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Starting from long edge, form a roll. Pinch long edge to seal. Use a knife to lightly score dough into 18 sections about 1” apart. Place a strand of dental floss under the dough and cross over the top of the dough at the scored marking. Pull dental floss to cut through dough log. Place in prepared pan. Cover with a thin towel and allow rolls to rise in a warm place for 45-60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake for 18-20 minutes. Cool for 5-10 minutes. Spread warm rolls with cream cheese glaze.

Makes 36 rolls

*Buttermilk substitute: Scald 2 cups milk (bring to boiling point) and stir in ½ cup plain yogurt

Cream Cheese Glaze
8 oz cream cheese
6 Tbs heavy cream
3-4 Tbs milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups (1 lb) powdered sugar

Use a hand mixer to mix all of the glaze ingredients. Add additional milk or cream if needed to make a smooth glaze.

To freeze rolls before cooking: Prepare dough. Fill and roll dough into log. Slice into rounds and place each round on a foil lined baking sheet, not touching. Freeze until solid and then place in Ziploc bags and return to freezer. Place frozen rolls in prepared pan and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled (about 2-3 hours). Bake and frost as directed.

NoEmptyChairs.me

7th Annual Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies Recap

Here is a quick recap of the twelve new cookie recipes for this year. Time to head to the store to restock on flour, sugar and butter.

Merry Christmas and Happy Baking!

DAY 1: Pecan Sandies

DAY 2: Oatmeal Pumpkin Spice Chip Cookies

DAY 3: Homemade Thin Mint Cookies

DAY 4: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

DAY 5: Caramel Christmas Chex Mix

DAY 6: Texas Sheet Cake Cookies

DAY 7: Cake Mix Snowball Cookies

DAY 8: Cranberry Orange Bread

DAY 9: Buckeye Brownie Cookies

DAY 10: Butterscotch Marshmallow Blondies

DAY 11: Candy Cane Snowball Cookies

DAY 12: Christmas M&M Cookies

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I hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas season, a season full of lasting memories made with family and friends as we celebrate the birth of the Savior of the world.