Sunday, January 24, 2016

Love-Struck Chocolate Cake with White Chocolate Coconut Filling



Valentine’s Day is almost upon us and, as we know, one can never start planning too early for these Hallmark holidays! So I decided to mark this particular holiday’s impending arrival with one of my favorite cakes: Love-Struck Chocolate Cake with White Chocolate Coconut Filling. The recipe is from my latest book, Flavorful 


(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), and it’s the best Valentine’s Day dessert I can think of – two layers of moist, fudgy chocolate cake filled with a white chocolate coconut whipped ganache and covered in a dark chocolate glaze. (Make sure to prep the pan as directed, or you might just end up with a broken heart, which would be 


terribly sad.) If you’re not a coconut fan (as my own true love is not, though he did somehow manage to choke down a slice of this particular cake in record time), simply leave it out. You can substitute shaved chocolate or finely chopped nuts for the coconut as garnish on the outside of the cake. Finally, please do use a good 


quality white chocolate for the filling—nothing worse than a cheap white chocolate, I say. Green & Black’s, Lindt, Valrhona or Guittard are excellent brands, in my book. Happy Valentine’s Day!



Saturday, January 9, 2016

Brown Sugar Buttermilk Pound Cake with Salted Caramel Nut Topping



I haven’t posted in a while (holiday frenzy and all), so I thought I’d start the new year off with a simple recipe that’s one of my new favorites. I’m a sucker for anything caramel, particularly salted caramel, as long as it’s the real deal. Can’t stand 


fake-tasting caramel, and there’s no reason for it, as caramel is pretty darned easy to make, as long as you’re paying attention to it as it cooks. So here it is, my brown sugar pound cake, flavored with a splash of dark rum and baked in the Nordic Ware 


Heritage Bundt pan (which is perfect for capturing pools of the delicious caramel-nut topping). If you prefer, you can serve the caramel topping as a sauce on the side with some nuts on top and a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Possibly not in line with any of your New Year’s resolutions, but, hey, you’re likely to break them as some point anyway, right? Now’s as good a time as ever!