This cake has balls!

Since my last post was a long winded rant, I figure it's time for a lighter, happier post about one of my favorite topics:  sweets.  In my adventures throughout the blogosphere I have started seeing cake balls all over the place.  I've seen a million recipes, and even purchased a gift box of them from Etsy.com to send to a friend in FL, but I've never had one and I've never made one, until now.

Today is a friend of mine's birthday so I decided to bake a cake, but then I found out someone else is already baking him a cake, and not one to be outdone, I decided to make sure my cake had balls...cake balls.  On St. Patty's day this year I made Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes to bring to a friends house, and so I had the better part of a bottle of Jameson and some Emmet's Irish Cream Liqueur still hanging around my house (I managed to take care of all of the Guiness without a problem though...) so I decided to continue with that theme and make Irish Car Bomb Cake Balls, but because this friend is an avid beer fan (and home-brewer) I decided to use a local brew instead of Guiness, and went with Rock Art's Stumpjumper Stout, which has a nice bold flavor that would stand up well in the dark chocolate cake.  Here's whats fun about cake balls:  It's like making a whole cake, but then you get to smoosh it!

I took the recipe from here but basically, I cheated and bought a boxed cake mix this time...making the process much easier and cheaper, but using the Stout in place of the water.  Bake that up in any shape or size you see fit, let it cool, and them smoosh the heck out of it!  Beat up a basic buttercream frosting, using the Jameson and Emmet's for flavoring, in place of vanilla (add to taste, about 3 tbsp Emmet's and 1 tbsp Jameson).  Add the cake crumbs to the frosting bowl and mix as you go, until well combined.  Scoop out onto cookie sheets in ~2 tbsp size balls and pop them in the freezer for awhile to harden up a bit (I left them in there over night).  Next melt up some chocolate to dip the frosty cake balls in, the recipe called for white, I did about half and half - one bag of white chocolate and one bag of dark covered the whole lot.  What an interesting treat they turned out to be!  I'm bringing them to the birthday party tonight, hopefully no one else will like them and I can bring them all back home.....just kidding!  :-)

if you can dream it you can do it

This week's potluck theme was "if you can dream it you can do it!" and for it I decided to challenge myself a bit and make something I have never made before.  I opted for Baked Alaska and the results were pleasantly surprising!  So heres a recipe with some photos so that maybe you can enjoy this too sometime!

I got the recipe from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Cookbook that came out in 1982 (I ave the revised second edition) that I found at the thrift store in North Lake Tahoe this summer.  Ghirardelli is a San Francisco based company so all of the recipes have a California theme and this one was called "Mount Shasta Baked Alaska" which seemed pretty appropriate.  To start you bake a sour cream cake:

Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

2 oz Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate

1/4 c water

1/3 c butter

1/3 c white sugar

1/3 c brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg + 1 egg yolk, beaten

1/2 c sour cream

1 c cake flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

melt the chocolate and water together stirring constantly over low heat and set aside.  cream the butter and sugars together and then add the vanilla and eggs and beat until fluffy, mix in sour cream and set aside.  add all the dry ingredients together (sift them together if you can).  next alternate adding the chocolate and dry ingredients to the sugar/butter mix until all is incorporated, batter will be fluffy and stiff.  I used a 9 in spring form pan, buttered the bottom, then laid down wax paper and buttered that too.  pour the batter into the pan and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, let cool completely.  

butter and sugar; dry ingredients; chocolate

 adding chocolate mixture to the batter

adding dry ingredients

the finished batter

Now I baked this dish over the course of 2 days so i'm counting these photos as one day...

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Next its time for the Alaska portion...for this you need a pint of ice cream, flavor of your choice, and you need to let the cake cool completely because that is one of the steps that I botched.  I chose vanilla ice cream and softened it and stirred in some blackberries.  Then you heap it on the middle of the cake, leaving about an inch of cake bare around the edges.  Throw the whole thing in the freezer and let it harden.  This is where I went wrong, my cake felt cool, but still had some residual heat in the center which melted the ice cream into a puddle in the top of the spring form pan even in the freezer.  I recovered quickly though, scraping the ice cream and blackberries off the top while it was still mostly liquid and into a tupperware.  I left both in the freezer overnight and then tried again with much better results in the morning.  I left it in the freezer all day until potluck, then I brought the cake/ice cream combo, a bowl, electric mixer, spatula, measuring spoons, half a cup of egg whites, half a cup of sugar, some vanilla, salt, and cream of tartar with me over to Geoff and James' house for potluck.  Right before we were ready to dig into the desserts (of which there were mannnnyyyy) I whiped the egg whites up to soft peaks, added cream of tartar, salt, and vanilla, then while continuing to mix I added the half cup of sugar and continued until it formed stiff peaks.  This is scooped out and dalloped all over the top of the cake and ice cream to make it look like a snowy mountain top.  I pooped the whole thing into a preheated 450 degree oven for 5 minutes and serve.  Here are the results:

ice cream and cake pile...you can see the mess i made when i melted it...

The Final Product

Yummm.  Yay for potluck!

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guess what i did tonight!

if you guessed "baked" then you're right on.  I guess its time for a brief update, for those of you who are not my mom and haven't been following my more recent adventures and have just heard ominous phrases like "big decision" and "new home" dropped in here and there for the past month.  About a month and a half ago the company I am serving my AmeriCorps assignment at went through some major lay-offs.  Among the casualties was my direct supervisor and while efforts were made to keep me feeling happy and productive without her, I was still given, and ultimately accepted the offer to change sites.  I have selected a new site located in South Lake Tahoe and will be moving there this very weekend I believe. SO as I am leaving and one of my current coworkers has a birthday coming up, but it will be right after I leave, I decided now is as good a time as any to make him his birthday cake.  He selected a cookies and cream cheesecake and I opted for individual style, for easier distribution and consumption at work.  And ta-da! we're back to baking...I got the recipe here, it makes exactly 30, even with ample tasting of the batter (inevitably leading to the most delicious tummyache ever!) and they are pretty neat little buggers with oreo's as their bottom crust (i.e. no smashing cookies and melting butter and pressing crumbs into the bottom of muffin cups, just dropping a cookie in there) so here is a small photo montage of the making of the cheesecakes:

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this one goes out to Luis!

Luis my Friend, I know its a bit late, but this cake was made with you in mind.  I miss you sir!  Hope your birthday was happy and wish you were here to share some cake and share some of your infinite knowledge about why Portugal is the most awesome place ever...someday I'll get there!  and when I do...you can bet your ass there will be cake!

Happy Birthday to: Arthur (6th), Elly (11th), Luis (12th), Becca Moore (14th), Me (14th), Hsiao-Han (15th), Celia (16th), Becky Fogarty (29th), and Meaghan Gallagher (31st)!

And of course lots of love, smiles, and happy thoughts to everyone, no matter when your birthday is!

And now for the photo of the day:

(click to enlarge if you'd like a better look)

Taken on a hike this morning in Coloma, CA, this is a fence post with a few dozen acorns tucked into it.  I learned that the Acorn Woodpecker stores their winter snacks in just about any wooden surface they can find, such as a fence post, or perhaps a little more irritatingly, the wooden siding on houses round these parts. 

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sprinkles

today was busy, but not really.  just, you know, busier than i typically am these days.  now i'm tired, its my birthday on the east coast, but i'm not waiting for it to roll on over to this coastline, bed time

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