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Secret Recipe Club: Warm Chocolate Pudding Cake

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Posted on 26-11-2012 | By: Shannon

Category : Cake, Desserts

Tags: ,

Thanksgiving is over. Christmas madness is ready to begin. This week has been a little extra crazy in my household, because unfortunately, we had some flooding in our house last Monday. We aren’t in Hurricane zone or anything, Seattle just got more rain than we’re used to, and we discovered that the neighborhood we moved into this summer apparently has a drainage problem. Anyway, the flooring is ruined, some of the walls had to be torn out, and our insurance will cover none of it, so obviously this week calls for chocolate.

Good ol’ at-least-we-have-good-credit, I-didn’t-like-that-wallpaper-anyway chocolate.

So, this month, our Secret Recipe Club assignment was Cyndi’s Recipes. The recipe I went with is one that goes by many names, chocolate cobbler, chocolate pudding cake, or “that one recipe with the cakey part on top any gooey goodness on the bottom”. Cyndi’s version has Splenda and lower fat options, but considering my week, I’m going with the real-deal, carbs-be-damned version. Also, please excuse the photography, our camera is somewhere in the middle of Noah’s ark, to be taken out of the way of the flood waters.

Mmmm...Warm Chocolate Pudding Cake

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Secret Recipe Club: Judy’s Chocolate Earthquake Cookies

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Posted on 25-06-2012 | By: Lucy

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Desserts

Tags: , ,

This month in the Secret Recipe Club, we were assigned My Judy the Foodie. This is a really fun blog run by Shari and named after her Mom Judy who was an excellent cook and hostess. There a huge amount of recipes, some are Judy’s originals and others are ones that Shari has come up with by herself. Each recipe has a little insight into Shari’s life or a memory of Judy which I really enjoyed. Shari speaks really touchingly of her mother and I defy anyone to read about her without tearing up a little.

I wanted to make one of Judy’s recipes and I wanted to make something really sweet and indulgent. Luckily there were lots to choose from! I chose earthquake cookies, partly because I loved the name (who doesn’t!) and also because the ingredients list reads like a dream… I also love the make-ahead approach, to have cookie dough sitting in my fridge or freezer and then just decide I want a batch of cookies? Yes please!

This makes plenty of cookies! So far I have made 20 large cookies and still have about half the cookie dough left. I tend to make cookies one small batch at a time because otherwise I would eat them all at once!

Ingredients for Judy’s Earthquake Cookies:

  • 8 tablespoons or 115g butter
  • 4 squares chocolate (I wasn’t sure how big the squares Judy used were so I used 8 small squares I had)
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • a lot of icing/confectioners sugar
Melt the chocolate and the butter together in a saucepan. Make sure you stir this often so it doesn’t stick or start bubbling away! In a large mixing bowl beat the eggs and then add the sugar, vanilla essence and the chocolate and butter mix. Stir together and then add flour, baking powder and salt and beat together until this is all smooth. Cover the mix with cling film and put into the fridge. Leave it there and don’t touch it for 24 hours. Shari has tried cutting down on this step and it didn’t work so do as she says!

When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat your oven to 180 degrees C or 350 degrees F. Butter or line a baking tray and put the icing sugar into a large bowl. Take the cookie dough out of the fridge. Mine looked like a thick fudge after it’s time in the fridge! Take a teaspoon and spoon out this amount, roll into a little ball and then roll around in the icing sugar until it is completely covered. Place these onto the sheet and then cook for around 10 minutes. Leave for a few minutes and then remove from the tray. Leave to cool on a wire rack and try to resist eating a cookie warm from the tray….

 



Secret Recipe Club: Peanut Butter Blondies

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Posted on 28-05-2012 | By: Shannon

Category : Desserts

Earlier this year, the hubby and I decided to buy a house. After a lot of trial & tribulation, we put an offer on a short sale in March. If you aren’t big into real estate, let me tell you: short sales are kind of a pain. Mostly in that it takes roughly foreeeeeeever to seal the deal. Anyway, since we put an offer on the house, we’ve been under threat of moving. Not terribly imminently, just enough to make us realize just how much crap there is in the house right now. So we’ve slowly been going through our stuff to try to lighten the load, rediscovering all the crap we have & don’t need, things like that. But my hoarder tendencies aren’t just for camping gear and supplies for craft projects I never even start, it extends to the kitchen as well. I don’t need an intervention, you’re not going to see me on TV any time soon, but we’ll just say my cupboards are never bare. Nor is my freezer. And condiments? I got plenty. So I’ve been trying to cook/bake my way through the backlog of good we have, to make things a liiiiittle bit easier when we finally close on the house and get to move. And then I can fill it with a bunch of FRESH stuff-I-don’t-need.

So, along comes the Secret Recipe Club. This month, I was assigned the lovely Cooking Whims, and while at first I was very tempted to do one of her many lovely, healthy-or-healthyish foods she has (the sweet potato mac & cheese looks wonderful), I took another look at the pantry, and saw how very, very many different baking chips I have in a corner, and decided to do a take on her Peanut Butter Blondies: Pantry-Clearing Peanut Butter Blondies.

 

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Gift Week: Parmesan and Black Pepper Biscotti

Posted on 13-12-2011 | By: Lucy

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Bits & Bobs

Tags: , , , , , , ,

This week we’re focusing on homemade gifts, something to give for Christmas or Hanukkah (or any other holiday of your choice!) This is pretty good timing for me as this coming weekend I will be in the kitchen making tons of homemade gifts so they are at their freshest for giving!

Whenever I’m deciding what gifts to make I automatically think of sweet things: there are so many different types of biscuits, cookies, muffins, brownies, blondies etc to bake and these all make wonderful gifts. My young cousins would be furious if I didn’t include plenty of sweet things for them. But not everyone loves sweet things all the time. In my experience thinking of savoury things to include can be a bit of a challenge so I’ve tried to focus on the just as delicious savory angle this week.

Parmesan and Black Pepper Biscotti (from the ever wonderful Smitten Kitchen)

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The Great Food Blogger’s Cookie Swap

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Posted on 13-12-2011 | By: Shannon

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Bits & Bobs, Desserts

Tags: , , , , , ,

Earlier today I posted the recipe I used for the Food Blogger Cookie Swap, Millionaire’s Shortbread. But I thought I’d give some link love to the people who sent me their cookies!

Fashioned by Grace sent some wonderful Cowboy Cookies:

Vaikai ir Vanile sent some delicious (and appropriately named) Crack Cookies:

And Chirky made Norwegian Delicacies, which I’d never had before but fell in love with:

 

They were all so delicious, I highly encourage you to pop over to each site and bake a batch yourself! Maybe not all in one day, but, you know, eventually!

If you want to play along next year, sign up for the swap.

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011

All images in this post are from the bloggers who baked them.

 

 

 

 

 

Blogger’s Cookie Swap AND Gift Week: Millionaire’s Shortbread

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Posted on 12-12-2011 | By: Shannon

Category : Biscuits & Cookies, Desserts

Tags: , , , , ,

The Scots love their sweets. I mean, not as much as I do, but I’ll give them credit for trying. One of the most popularly Scottish sweets is shortbread. Everyone’s seen the tins or boxes with the red tartan on it. Shockingly, I actually don’t really like plain shortbread. I don’t know what it is, too buttery for me maybe. However, I LOVE Millionaire’s Shortbread, which is shortbread bars with caramel and chocolate. Can’t be missed. And if you add a little fleur de sel on there? Heaven in bar cookie form.

So, when I signed up for the Blogger Cookie Swap, I figured this recipe was the way to go. It says a little about our blog, and it’s delicious, and while it takes a little while, it’s pretty easy. And pretty. And packs pretty well. So Christina at Stracciatella, Esme at Chocolate and Croissants, and Carrie at Clever Mommas all received some Millionaire’s Shortbread and get to discover how deliciously disastrous it can be to your waistline. But that’s what Christmas is for! And the cookies I received were completely delicious too, I’ll post links to the recipes later!

ALSO this kicks off Gift Week on Double the Sugar! This year we’re looking at homemade gifts, because we’re skint! But we’ll also give you other gift ideas in each post, so stay tuned!

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Cheesecake topped chocolate brownies

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Posted on 23-10-2011 | By: Lucy

Category : Desserts

Tags: , , ,

We spent last weekend with Doug’s sister and her husband who brought their beautiful four month old daughter to visit. They also brought us a a 1kg bag of dark chocolate buttons. Have you ever seen a kilo of chocolate buttons? It looks a little something like this:

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Double the Sugar Con 11 – Raspberry Tart

Posted on 10-09-2011 | By: Lucy

Category : Desserts, Pie

Tags: , , , ,

Things have been a little quiet around the blog lately, but for very good reason. For the first time EVER, Shannon and Lucy cooked together. While we met in Edinburgh, and bonded over food at Cadbury World, we hadn’t really started cooking until after Shannon moved back to the States. And with life getting in the way, there hadn’t been a visit until this August. So, naturally, Double the Sugar Con 2011 was quite a feast! Things are back to normal now, so we’ll get back to our regular posting schedule, and share some of the delicacies with you!

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Bourbon-Cherry Brownies

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Posted on 06-07-2011 | By: Shannon

Category : Desserts

Tags: , , ,

Like many things, baked goods are better with booze. Either to accompany them or as part of the recipe, you really can’t go wrong. I particularly like using booze in frostings, they can add a lot of flavor, and has the double benefit of not being able to boil off, so you still feel a little naughty when you’re eating cupcakes with booze frosting (doubly so if you’re having that cupcake for breakfast, don’t worry, I won’t tell). But a close runner up to using booze in frosting is soaking fruit in alcohol. Typically you see wine being used for this purpose, and for this recipe, a nice red or a port would be delicious. But I made these brownies on Independence Day, so to add a dose of Americana, I went with bourbon. Specifically I went with Woodford Reserve, as that’s the bourbon we tend to keep in stock, but really, it’s up to you and your preferences. And of course, you can make this recipe just as easily by omitting the booze.

One small note: when I use fruit to infuse booze, I use fresh fruit, but when I’m infusing the fruit with booze, I use dried fruit. Either way works, really, but starting with a dried fruit means it’s absorbing the alcohol instead of replacing natural juices with alcohol, so I find you tend to keep more of the flavor in the fruit and just add booziness to it. But fresh cherries work just fine too, and if you’re omitting the alcohol, fresh is the better choice. Soaking overnight seems like the best plan.

Also, it bears mentioning that combining bourbon and chocolate in this way might make people fall in love with you. Bake at your own risk.

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Secret Ingredient Chocolate Mousse

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Posted on 20-06-2011 | By: Shannon

Category : Desserts

Tags: ,

I don’t normally go for vegan recipes. I can skip the meat, but a lot of times the ingredients used in place of the animal by-products aren’t as healthy as people make them out to be. This recipe, however, is vegan as well as all-natural. There aren’t any chemicals or substitutes or artificial flavors. The obvious ingredients are cocoa and sweetener of your choice. The secret ingredient, however, is after the jump.

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