Category Archives: cake & bread

Triple Chocolate Cake

We saw this on-line and couldn’t pass it up… it’s the winner of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Is Your Dessert Intense Enough? contest! Enough said! We also liked the simplicity of ingredients… literally chocolate, butter, eggs and heavy cream. While there are very few ingredients, it is fairly time intensive, so plan accordingly. We made the cake on a Wednesday and froze it until Friday when we pulled it out around noon. We whipped up the ganache frosting around 3:00, frosted the chilled cake and it was perfect when it was cut around 9:00 that night!

Active time: 30 minutes Baking time: 40 minutes Freezer time: overnight

Cake Ingredients:

3 cups Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
8 large eggs, chilled
1/4 teaspoon salt

Ganache Frosting Ingredients:

1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Chips
2 ounces Ghirardelli White Chocolate baking bar, chilled

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Chocolate Beet Muffins

Found the original recipe on this blog, but–big surprise–modified it slightly to its current form. We’re not totally convinced about the awesomeness of this recipe; and not sure we’d even make them again. It got very mixed reviews from our official samplers, but if you really like beets try it out! If you don’t like beets and are wondering what beets are doing in a dessert, then don’t waste your time!

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ cup cocoa powder
½ tsp salt
¼ cup coconut flour
½ cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
¼ cup olive oil
1-2 tsp pure vanilla extract
¾-1 cup whole milk
2 cups pureed (cooked) beets
some chocolate chips, if you want to add them to the tops of the muffins!

click “read more” for additional photos and the instructions!

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Black Forest Cake

Ok, we’ll admit…. this is a time consuming cake. We made this over two days. Day one we made the four chocolate cake layers and the filling. Day two we made the frosting and assembled it. Click “read more” to see the lengthy list of ingredients and instructions. While it’s time consuming, it did get rave reviews from those that ate it! One catch–you have to like maraschino cherries!

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Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares

Found on Epicurious, but we modified how the crust was prepped. These were a HUGE hit at the party we took them to!

Ingredients:

Crust:
1 cup flour (we used wheat pastry flour)
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, diced
1 cup pecan halves (about 4 ounces)
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats

Filling:
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger

Topping:
1 cup sour cream (we didn’t have enough sour cream, but it still came out great!)
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Pound Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature for 30 minutes
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature

Equipment:

9- by 5- by 3-inch loaf pan

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