Behold the ultimate evolution of the chocolate cake:
Four layers of dark chocolate cake enveloped within dark chocolate mousse and finished with dark chocolate ganache.
Bon appetit!
by Adam L Silverman| 117 Comments
This post is in: Food
Comments are closed.
Emma
Death by chocolate!
Amir Khalid
Damn, I can taste the chocolate from here. In Kuala Lumpur.
redshirt
Chocolate is a trigger word.
Mary G
You are an evil, evil man. I want that. Bring it to my house RIGHT NOW.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
You appear to be unfamiliar with the First Rule of Chocolate, which is:
ALL CHOCOLATE BELONGS TO TARA!
redshirt
Also jealous of the greenery outside the window.
divF
I’m speechless with admiration / envy.
Bill E Pilgrim
You rarely see food that actually requires a safe word.
lamh36
Ugh… Ya wanna know torture…being single and watching one of them darn Hallmark movies…Ya want to hate them but you end up loving them…ugh
Damn you Hallmark Channel! Another good movie…followed by Golden Girls!!! Ugh…I wish I know how to quit you.
This post may have surpassed the Hallmark torture! Try being on a diet and then having to see this…decadence…lol
divF
@Bill E Pilgrim:
And the Folsom Street Fair is tomorrow.
Tommy
@Bill E Pilgrim: LOL. That cake looks amazing.
But I have a problem. I am this strange person, and I’ve mentioned this a lot in my life, so I know I am not alone, rare, but not alone, but I don’t like chocolate. It isn’t I don’t dislike it somewhat, I really don’t like it!
Normally with food this wouldn’t bother me that much, I mean many don’t like oysters and I would walk over hot coals to eat them. But I really don’t like chocolate. As much as others enjoy it makes me feel like I am missing out on something :)!
MomSense
I had yummy chocolate cake tonight, too. Calories don’t count if you eat it at someone else’s house, right?
Bill E Pilgrim
@divF:
@Tommy:
“When I say “calorum infarction indevitatus”, pull me off it!”
Adam L Silverman
Here’s the recipe:
Chocolate Layer Cake
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
3 cups light brown sugar, packed
4 eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups sifted cake flour
1 1/3 cups sour cream
1 1/2 cups hot coffee
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour 3 (9-inch) cake pans. Cut 3 circles of waxed paper or parchment paper to fit the bottoms of the pans, then press them in.
In a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (or using a hand mixer), cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar and eggs and mix until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the vanilla, cocoa, baking soda and salt and mix. Add 1/2 of the flour, then 1/2 of the sour cream and mix. Repeat with the remaining flour and sour cream. Drizzle in the hot coffee and mix until smooth. The batter will be thin. Pour into the prepared pans and bake until the tops are firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (a few crumbs are okay), about 35 minutes. Halfway through the baking, quickly rotate the pans in the oven to ensure even baking, but otherwise try not to open the oven. Let cool in the pan 10 minutes. Turn out onto wire racks and let cool completely before frosting.
Dark Chocolate Mousse:
8 oz of Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Chips
16 oz of Heavy Whipping Cream
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
Place 8 oz of the dark chocolate chips in a mixing bowl. Divide the cream in half. In a sauce pot place 8 oz of the heavy whipping cream and the vanilla extract and bring to a boil (watch while the cream heats – it doesn’t take long). As soon as the cream begins to boil take it off the heat and pour it over the dark chocolate chips. Let it sit for five minutes and then whisk the melted chocolate and cream until it is fully combined and smooth. Let it cool to room temperature. Congratulations – you’ve just made dark chocolate ganache.
Place the other 8 ounces of heavy whipping cream into a chilled mixing bowl. Whip the cream until you get stiff peaks in your whipped cream. Fold the whipped cream into the room temperature ganache – do not mix or beat it in. It is okay if there are some white streaks in the mousse. When the ganache and whipped cream are folded together you’ve got mousse – put it in the fridge to chill.
Mousse Frosting/Crumb Coating:
Basically this stage is going to be frosting between the layers with the mousse and then frosting the top and sides as a crumb coat. If it doesn’t look perfect it doesn’t matter as we’re going to ganache the whole thing.
Trim the tops of each cake until they are flat. Then slice each cake in half horizontally so that out of each cake you get two layers. In the center of a 10 inch cardboard cake round smear a small amount of the mousse as an anchor. Place the first layer of cake on the cake round and then frost the top with whip cream. Place the next layer on and repeat with the mousse. Repeat until the cake is assembled – layer of cake and layer of mousse – and then frost the top and the sides with mousse. Make sure to use the flattest layer for the top layer. Place the mousse frosted cake into the refrigerator to chill.
Ganache:
8 oz of Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Chips
8 oz of Heavy Whipping Cream
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
Place 8 oz of the dark chocolate chips in a mixing bowl. Divide the cream in half. In a sauce pot place 8 oz of the heavy whipping cream and the vanilla extract and bring to a boil (watch while the cream heats – it doesn’t take long). As soon as the cream begins to boil take it off the heat and pour it over the dark chocolate chips. Let it sit for five minutes and then whisk the melted chocolate and cream until it is fully combined and smooth. Let it cool to room temperature.
Ganacheing the Cake:
Remove the chilled, frosted/crumb coated cake from the fridge. Using an offset/frosting spatula begin to frost the cake with the ganache from the center of the cake out to the edges of the top layer and then over that layer and down the sides. Using the offset spatula smooth the ganache so that it looks like its been painted on the cake.
Alternatively only apply enough ganache to cover the top and part of the sides for a more poured on look. This is a nice variation if the mousse is evenly applied along the sides of the cake.
Slice and enjoy!
Amir Khalid
@Tommy:
Have you or haven’t you had chocolate? If you have, then you already know why you don’t like it. If you haven’t, why exactly do you dislike it?
Tommy
@efgoldman: Very true :)!
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: I have a white layer cake that gets a salted caramel frosting. I can try to find the pics and post the recipe later in the week for you.
I also have a lemon cake, lemon curd between layers, and lemon curd buttercream frosting layer cake if you’d prefer that one.
Bill E Pilgrim
That looks terrific but I have to say using a moose as an anchor just sounds cruel.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: This was made for a dinner party I was invited too about two weeks ago. I had another one this week. It got key lime pie. I’ll post that recipe in a future post. Its super easy: 15 minute prep, 15 minutes in the over, 2 hours in the fridge.
Adam L Silverman
@Bill E Pilgrim: you made me look to see if I typed it wrong or if the autocorrect had changed it…
ThresherK (GPad)
I am saving your recipe, Adam.
Mezmerizing play in UT v OR, where the sidewinder punt hit the camera wire over the field, so it took the officials 5 mins to decide to redo the whole play. (I can’t believe it doesn’t happen more.) Then in the lull, Utah calls a fake punt and their Aussie style punter goes for about 25 yards and they keep it.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Adam L Silverman: No just playing Emily Littela for cheap laughs, sorry.
BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve got cheesecake and strawberries in the fridge. Wonder how’d it be with some chocolate sauce on it?
Tommy
@Adam L Silverman: Don’t take a second of your time looking and/or posting anything. I am something of a foodie and I have the Internet. Chocolate is something I actively don’t like, but in general I don’t have much of a “sweet tooth” for lack of a better word.
I was at a high-end restaurant the other night with the parents in town. I ordered cheese cake for dessert. After everybody was stunned I ordered a dessert of any kind, and freaked out saying “no, no, no please I don’t need chocolate syrup” on it to the waiter it took me three times to get through it all.
It was darn good but so sweet ……
Adam L Silverman
@divF: Its very easy. Just follow the recipe. Lot of little steps, but the great thing about baking is if you’ve got a good recipe, and this one is, just follow it and nothing will go wrong. Honestly, I can’t remember where I borrowed this recipe from… May have been a Nigella Lawson or Barefoot Contessa cake, but I can’t remember. The only two tweaks I made was to switch it to dark cocoa powder from regular and to change the frosting from buttercream, which I also like, to the mousse/ganache combination.
It also makes for really good cupcakes. Same recipes, just use cupcake tins with liners. Then using a piping bag with a big, flat tip frost with the mousse. Let the cupcakes cool and then dip the frosted tops in ganache.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: I’ve got a great cheesecake recipe that you can jazz up however you like. Even pull the sugar out and make it a savory cheesecake.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Adam L Silverman:
This was made for a dinner party I was invited too about two weeks ago.
Note to self: Get to know Adam and invite him to your next dinner party. Oh that’s tomorrow night. Too soon?
Tommy
@Adam L Silverman: OK I will take that. There are a number of sweet things I do enjoy (I am a freaking human I think) and cheese cake is close to the top of the list.
Schlemazel
Thanks for posting the recipe, it looks wonderful.
One of my happier memories was making Bombe aux Trois Chocolats for my mom’s birthday one year. Recipe is too long to post so here is a link to a version:
http://www.josephphelps.com/userfiles/file/Bombe_aux_Trois_Chocolat.pdf
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
@Tommy: If it makes you feel any better, I’m the same way about strawberries. Pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who dislikes them.
ThresherK (GPad)
@efgoldman: Utah has scored 55 in 3 quarters. The kick hitting an overhead support isn’t the only thing in this game resembling Arena Football.
@Adam L Silverman: You can post those for the rest of us.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: That’s the cypress swamp I’m currently living in. The house is on a conservation lot in a wetland that was developed over thirty years ago. They’d never be able to get the approval to build here today.
We have deer that live in the scrub on the side of the house. This place is full of wild turkeys too. We also have either coyotes or the coy-wolfs (NE wolves) and I’ve seen sign/tracks for wild hogs. For birds we’ve got a bard owl that lives in one of the trees, as well as a family of ospreys and another of red shouldered hawks. And we’ve got eagles that make there nests around the corner on the power line towers. And we’ve either got a murder of some of the biggest crows I’ve seen or a parliament of rooks that likes to hang out at the park in the late afternoon. Also, turkey buzzards and a variety of herons and storks and other wading birds.
Someone got a Florida black bear on a trail cam about 15 miles or so north of here a couple of years ago, so those are in the area. And I’ve been told there are bobcats in the area too. And, of course, we’ve got gators! And then the usual stuff: tree frogs, regular frogs, a variety of turtles, and lizards too. The puppy is a lizard hunting diva!
Finally, this place is a huge colony of Seniorus Floridus Sapiens. Commonly known as the Florida senior citizen.
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman:
I make a savory cheesecake with blue cheese and walnuts that is really surprising. Can’t eat much of it because it is so rich but a small slice with a green salad is an impressive meal that is easy to make and can be done ahead so you can spend time with guests
Bill E Pilgrim
Oops.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: I used this as the base cake recipe for making a bombe for thanksgiving back in 2013. I had my Nepalese generals and their families, as well as the garrison chaplain for the holiday. And, of course, my Mom made her annual visit to PA for the holiday as well.
Adam L Silverman
@ThresherK (GPad): I’ll put them up in bits and bobs over the next week or so.
Schlemazel
@Adam L Silverman: Nepalese generals? That sounds like a good story by itself
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: You forgot to mention snakes and no doubt scary spiders.
Adam L Silverman
@Tommy: Its too easy. I’ll post it up in a day or so.
Tommy
@Tara the Antisocial Social Worker: See I LOVE strawberries, but just strawberries. People I know what to put sugar on them and/or cream. No thank you.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: Any Giant Fucking Snakes like Betty has?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Tommy: While I love chocolate, I find that any variety save dark is way too sweet.
redshirt
@BillinGlendaleCA:
We know there’s snakes. Given the jungle he described? There’s big ass pythons. Not to mention all manner of big and small, poisonous and not slitherer.
Watch yo toilet bowl for snake popping up.
Adam L Silverman
@Schlemazel: I had the honor of being both the academic advisor/front line supervisor and community sponsor for the Nepalese general in the class of 2012 and for both of them in the class of 2014 when they were International Fellows (what the foreign officer resident students are called) at the US Army War College. They are all wonderful people and very, very sharp officers.
Every seminar has three to four international fellows in it. They bring important, different perspectives to the American resident students – Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard officers and their civilian counterparts. The International Fellows range in rank from lieutenant colonel to major general. The resident American officers are lieutenant colonels and colonels (O5s and O6s – so commanders and captains for the Navy officers) and GS 14s and 15s for the civilian students from a variety of agencies. Each seminar has a mix of Army active component, reserve component, National Guard, an Air Force officer, a Sea Service officer – Sailor (Navy or Coast Guard) or Marine, at least one civilian and three to four International Fellows.
Adam L Silverman
@BillinGlendaleCA: probably. I saw a baby garter snake and a small adult one a couple of weeks ago. We also have wild hares.
divF
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Don’t think of it as an anchor, but as a primer coat.
@Adam L Silverman:
Thanks for the recipe and encouragement – it sounds like a keeper.
Suezboo
Adam L : I got baboons, leopards and ostriches – and that’s just the big stuff. Trying not to remember the snakes and spiders. The birds are wonderful – got a pair of sugarbirds in the garden.
This is known, I believe, as An Official African Brag which I am perpetrating in retaliation for that cake which I, depressingly, do not have.
Tommy
@Suezboo:
I bow down ……
jeffreyw
@Adam L Silverman:
Almost…
BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman: The only animals I see around here(besides the resident ones) are raccoon, opossum, skunks, and lizards. However I’ve been hiking lately and have run across lizards, a skunk, a squirrel, deer and a rattlesnake. The local hills have mountain lions and the San Gabriels have bears.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Schlemazel:
Recipe?
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: never seen that. We also have roaches and palmetto bugs that are big enough to put saddles on! And a bunch of psychotic squirrels.
Right after I got back down here from PA in AUG 2014 I was driving home around 10 PM and it had been raining. Along the side of the road, in the drainage culvert between the road and the sidewalk was a very large alligator that had decided to just hang out with its body in the culvert and its snout just touching the sidewalk. I called the duty desk at the local sheriff’s substation and then sent someone out to deal with it.
Haven’t seen any since, but I have heard a big bull gator in the scrub that has rewampified with all the rain that is right next to the sidewalk across the street from the subdivision I’m in.
I do remember the first time I saw the coyotes. I was also driving home at night and they were just running right down the middle of the street just west of the park, which is itself surrounded by scrub.
I did get to see an adult red shoulder hawk take off from a low hanging branch as I approached while walking my dogs about two weeks ago. I could’ve reached up and touched it. It was quite the sight.
redshirt
@Adam L Silverman: I’m assuming any environment that can support gators can also support large snakes, and a variety of other sized snakes.
There’s probably a snake in your house right now and you don’t even know.
NotMax
Nothing – nothing – beats (the sadly now defunct) Ebinger’s blackout cake. Nothing.
There are scores of sites online claiming to have or to replicate the recipe. Many come close but ultimately fall short.
Tommy
@BillinGlendaleCA: Pretty much the same here. Raccoon, squirrels, rabbits, possums, and skunks.* You could see all of them in one day from my back porch. We also got more deer then you can throw a stick at.
*I have a family of rabbits that have lived in a huge shrub in my front yard for years.
Gravenstone
@Adam L Silverman: So you’re trolling to join Tamara’s food blog, is that it?
NotMax
Repeating for the crowd in a diferent timeframe.
Those of you with Netflix, put the (originally made for and shown on PBS) short adaptation of a James Thurber tale, “The Greatest Man in the World,” in your queue.
Excellent production in its own right, but now one also gets to figure out which (or how many) of the current GOP derp bench Thurber might be credited with presciently mocking.
divF
@efgoldman:
When our family went in 1957, it was on the General Simon B. Buckner, NY – Bremerhaven. I have a vivid recollection of the smell of a sea voyage (I was 5).
By the time we came back in 1960, we flew – a prop plane IIRC.
redshirt
@Tommy:
I have a rabbit that comes at dusk to eat a specific spot in my dirt/gravel driveway. For months now. What she’s eating I have no idea.
NotMax
@Tommy
Saw this from you below:
Mentioned a few days back that one of the food booths at the Maui County Fair is serving balut. (Warning: don’t click that last link if easily prone to queasiness).
BillinGlendaleCA
@efgoldman: I like strawberries, however strawberry ice cream is the work of Satan(along with Miracle Whip).
Tommy
@redshirt: Interesting. Ever thought of putting out some food in the spot? My little wildlife porn is I have a pair of dove that mate each year on the window ledge off my home office (a few feet from where I type this). I’ve told myself for years I’d put a cam out there.
Well I have a pretty large deck and each year I see the little baby dove(s) get to the railing and try to fly. They always face plant it. My hippie liberal self-used to get worried and want to run out and help (I never did).
But gosh darn it they face plant it again and again but somehow live and I am not sure if in a single year for the last decade a dove or two didn’t learn to fly off my back deck.
Adam L Silverman
@Suezboo: Sounds lovely.
Tommy
@NotMax: I know people like that stuff, like the best of the best. Never had it. I think if offered I’d try it once, I will try any food once. But not sure I could get it down. In fact not sure I could keep it down and I have an iron stomach.
But I know for a fact I eat food that most Americans couldn’t stomach and I think it is the best thing in the world. So to each their own.
Adam L Silverman
@Gravenstone: Nope. We needed a new thread and I was busy off and on for the better part of the past ten days and haven’t had the time/motivation to do up a substantive, analytical post. So this seemed a good way to go.
Adam L Silverman
@redshirt: we’ve got all of those too.
redshirt
@Tommy: I don’t want to upset rabbit politics. There are 3 levels of rabbits, and as far as I can tell they are all about their territory and not dealing with rabbits from other territories.
CaseyL
@Adam L Silverman: Your place sounds like heaven, except for the fact that it’s in South Florida. (I lived in S FL for many years, many years ago: couldn’t stand the climate.)
We have urban critters here: coyotes, lots of raccoon, an occasional possum. I know there’s garter snakes in some of the greenbelts, because I’ve seen ’em (never caught one, though; they’re quick).
NO ROACHES. Certainly not the South Florida variety, big enough to tie one to each foot and go skittering off into the sunset.
@Suezboo: Whereabouts in Africa?
Hey! International BJers, like Amir and Suezboo! – I’m curious how you found Balloon Juice. Can you tell us what first brought you this way?
Pogonip
Don’t forget the lunar eclipse tomorrow night!
There are fleas in my CAR, I’ll have to have it fumigated. Fleas delenda est! (I am on the Intertubes at this late hour because, even with Benadryl, the itching is keeping me awake.)
Tommy
@redshirt: I feel pretty bad about doing away with their habitat, but I did. However I tend to pay attention to shit that happens in my yard, which isn’t huge by any means, and they only seem to birth and raise their young in my yard. Then gone until that happens again the next year.
Amir Khalid
@CaseyL:
I followed some commenters here from Swampland at TIME.
redshirt
@Tommy: My rabbits are here year round. They turn pure white in the winter.
Tommy
@redshirt: Mine are not. Where are you located if you don’t mind me asking. I am sure I have asked before but can’t recall.
Pogonip
@CaseyL: Don’t they call those giant flying roaches “palmetto bugs” down there?
Even roaches aren’t all bad. Notorious child murderer Albert Fish was captured when the cop searching his apartment noticed a roach on the wall, and when he swatted it he noticed something else–a stack of stationery on a shelf, that exactly matched a taunting letter Fish had sent the family of one of his victims. That roach gave its life to help capture Fish.
burnspbesq
Pure evil. Can’t even look at that without insulin.
redshirt
@Tommy: Western Maine
Elie
Sorry Adam
I am late to the thread but I have THE best chocolate cake recipe EVAH. Its my Chocolate Stout cake and it is three layers of moist, butter and sour cream saturated deep chocolate cake iced with a pound of semi sweet chocolate and heavy cream. Man — it is dense, rich without conceding its cakiness to pudding texture like chocolate lava or molten chocolate cakes do. It gets better with the passage of each day and its not horribly sweet. If you have this cake with milk, I promise you will see God. No shit. I will share recipe in your next post… am too tired to get it out tonight, but I have to share this with the world…
Keith P.
It needs one of those chocolate fountains coming out of the center, continuously coating it with more chocolate.
Tommy
@redshirt: Totally, totally different climate and part of this nation from me. Southern Illinois here. Makes sense about your rabbit comment now.
divF
@efgoldman:
LOL. But then again, I was a little kid, and wasn’t really sensitive to the amenities (or lack thereof). the whole experience was new and really exciting to me.
I mentioned the Buckner on the chance that you might have sailed in her as well. I can’t imagine there were more than a couple of ships moving military dependents across the Atlantic during that era.
ETA: Searching around Wikipedia, it looks like there were six such MSTS ships on that route.
redshirt
@Keith P.:
And micro-drones dropping little chocolate bombs.
redshirt
@Tommy: No doubt. These rabbits winterize and survive. Not sure how when it’s -10 for a week straight and then bam 33 inches of snow. Rabbits don’t store food, so I think all they eat is low lying pine needles.
Tenar Darell
@BillinGlendaleCA: Awesome ? for cake!
Tenar Darell
@Adam L Silverman: You are killing me. I just came off two weeks of family overeating!
Perhaps I shall call you Cake Man, danger to dieters and diabetics. Tempter of the virtuous. Encourager of late night snacking and hot chocolate consumption.
Mike J
Got my ass kicked in a race today, but it was still a huge blast.
We had more people show up for race day than had shown up for last week’s practice session. Last week we took a crew of n00bs and taught how to do spinnaker sets, gybes, and takedowns on one of our keel boats. We took two boats racing today, and nobody racing had ever even set the spinnaker on the second boat. We weren’t entirely sure we had sheets on board.
The guys who took the boat we practiced on took 2nd after handicap (~220[1] up against a buncha etchells @ ~120 and a 40′ ketch). Those of us on the other boat…we finished. Only because we were too stubborn to quit. Whatever. It was great fun, we learned a ton about racing a boat that we had mostly used as the committee boat for our dinghy races, and we were in no danger of having to buy the beer for the next race, which we will most assuredly be in, and in which we will start to kick ass.
I wish there had been somebody on shore to take pics of our two club boats returning to the south end of the lake with spinnakers up. Beautiful day of great sailing (even if most of our great sailing came after the race was over.)
[1] That boat would be 220 seconds per mile slower than a theoretical boat with a 0 handicap.
Tommy
@Tenar Darell:
LOL. My parents have been at my house since Wednesday and will leave tomorrow. I’ve eaten at least 2.75X (yeah I measure this shit) my normal cal intake per day. It isn’t something new to me (dealt with it for years), but they don’t seem to understand I don’t eat how they eat.
Adam L Silverman
@Elie: I have a similar recipe. As well as one for stout buttercream.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike J: Did you spend a day on the water? Be happy.
@Tommy: I had my Dad, brother, and niece at my place last weekend for a soccer tournament. I love all of them to death and Dad sprung for dinner at the dim-sum place, but but it is weird to have people in your home if you are used to living alone.
rikyrah
That is diabetes on a cake plate…..and worth every bit of the blood sugar level spike. Seriously, that cake looks DIVINE!!!
Tommy
@Omnes Omnibus: My parents are at my house 1-2 days a month or more in smaller doses. Now this was longer, closer to a week. I will admit that is rare and it got kind of hard for me. As you said, used to being on my own.
Little things started to get under my skin, like they didn’t seem to grasp the concept of if you are not in a room turn off the lights you turned on. But the big problem for me was food. They eat out every meal. The last time I ate at a fast food place was, well I don’t know.
Tomtofa
I’ve got one of the active posters on this thread under the pie filter; it makes for a gloriously bizarre thread, given the overall theme…
Morzer
Happy the man who, frugal in his habits and humble in his ways, can look upon such a display of chocolate decadence and remained unmoved.
Alas, I am not he.
redshirt
@Tomtofa:
You wuss.
Is there really anything so bad as you have to programmatically block it?
Omnes Omnibus
@Tomtofa: Weird. Scrolling up doesn’t show anyone who most people find pie-worthy.
FWIW I don’t pie anyone so I see it all.
mclaren
Women find chocolate thrilling; men, not so much.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: Stop trying to start fights.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Omnes Omnibus:
Sprang. I am disappoint.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Speak of the devil….
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Sexist.
sharl
Chocolate Møøse (h/t The Muppets)
And I’ll concur with everyone else who things that cake looks awesome. I love chocolate.
Pogonip
I know quite a few people who don’t care for sweets, including chocolate. But I have yet to find anyone who will pass up Velveeta-chili dip.
Morzer
@Pogonip:
Well, you’ve now found one person.
redshirt
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s a confusing sentence.
redshirt
@Pogonip: Flea-dip? No thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@redshirt: Oh, well.
Tommy
@Pogonip: I said here I don’t like chocolate. Velveeta. Well shitty cheese if you can call it cheese ……
Velveeta-chili dip I’d eat it. Enjoy it and go back for seconds and thirds if I had a few beers. But there is science behind this, won’t bore you with it.
redshirt
@mclaren:
It’s a Venusian thing. Martians wouldn’t understand.
Suzanne
@Morzer: Velveeta chili dip?! FOR THE LOVE OF PETE. Just use real fuckin’ cheese.
Velveeta is not for human consumption. Hurl.
Anne Laurie
@Pogonip:
Now that’s quality trolling!
(I’d probably enjoy your dip myself, but there are many people I take care not to use the word ‘Velveeta’ around… )
mclaren
@redshirt:
Start trying to stop fights.
Fight trying to stop starts.
Stop fighting to start trying.
Basically, any permutation of those 5 words works.
mclaren
@Suzanne:
Agreed about Velveeta (yeccch!) but using plain old cheese does not work for dips. The cheese separates into solids and oil when heated. To get a decent cheese dip, you must create a roux, and that’s actually pretty tough. I’m a much better than average cook, and I still have a lot of trouble creating good roux.
The deluxe way to make a good cheese dip is to start with a Béchamel sauce, but that’s Escoffier cooking right there and far beyond most folks.
SWMBO
@Tommy: Since you’re in the STL area, next time your parents want to eat out, try this place:
http://www.josephinestearoomsandgiftshops.com/menu/
ProTip: Order dessert first. They have a tray that they bring over and you can pick what you like. If you wait until after you eat to order, a lot of the desserts are gone. The lobster bisque is good. I’ve had the 1/2 salad 1/2 sandwich there. If you order a large salad, it comes out in a family sized bowl.
NotMax
@>mclaren
Hot + cold. Nuthin’ to it.
Suezboo
Since someone asked :
I live in a beautiful valley, in a country small town about 2 hours north of Cape Town. The wild critters are around about in the mountains mostly.
I have been an inhabitant of Sadly No for, lo, these many years and came over to see JC’ s Amazing Damascus moment. Been lurking ever since, nowadays daily and frequently as Sadly does not have much going on.
I can identify with many people here – old, cranky but kind.
bemused
I’m swooning and drooling over the sensual cake photos.
I recently reread two earlier Ruth Reichl books on my shelf, Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples and picked up Garlic and Sapphires. Her books are fun reads interspersed with a few recipes, chronicling her personal life and food journeys, no doubt embellished but very entertaining. Tender at the Bone began in her childhood with a mother who was such a terrible cook that no one felt good after eating at one of her parties, sending 26 to the hospital. Garlic and Sapphires relates her time as NYT food critic and the many inventive disguises she used to go incognito to restaurants.
Her latest book just coming out, My Kitchen Year has her Giant Chocolate Cake recipe. You could feed a crowd with this layer cake of two 9×13 layers and frosting made with whipped cream cheese.
A recent gift of a Kladdkaka pan with Chocolate Sticky Cake recipe I haven’t tried yet but sounds like it must be a brownie type texture.
J R in WV
@redshirt:
Those are snowshoe hares, then, if they turn white in winter. We have those here in W Va, but only up on the high mountain tops of the Ridges.
J R in WV
My favorite chocolate cake is the German/Swiss Black Forest cake, with sour cherries in the middle of all the chocolate. Getting good sour cherries is the hard thing about it. Greenbrier resort recipe.
Sadly the Greenbrier is no longer the elegant spa it once was.