S’Mores Cake for a Birthday Girl

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birthday cakes, chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, s'mores, s'mores cake

This past weekend, my eldest daughter turned 14 years old. 14! Oh, how time flies. I can still remember the first time she was handed to me, a tiny little bundle in my arms. And the tears of joy that flowed down my face. And as she turned 14, I still had tears running down my cheeks. A different set of tears with a different meaning. Proud tears. Proud at what a lovely young lady she is turning into. And a feeling of overwhelming happiness at how much joy she has brought into my life. Happy Birthday my sweet Charlotte!

We were at the cottage celebrating her birthday. Instead of a birthday cake, she just wanted to make S’mores over a campfire down by the beach. Because of high winds and high water levels, our beach was pretty much non-existent. A campfire wasn’t going to happen. I needed a quick fix and this S’mores cake couldn’t be any easier. You could bake your favourite chocolate cake from scratch, make your own marshmallow fluff, even your own graham crackers. But if you can get it all from a box, ready in no time, why not?

S’Mores Cake

1 2-layer chocolate cake

Marshmallow Fluff

Graham crackers, crushed into bits with your hands

Dark chocolate ganache (recipe follows)

Dark Chocolate Ganache

4 oz. of dark chocolate

½ cup of 35% cream

1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

Add all of the ganache ingredients into a heat-proof bowl. Using a bain-marie style to melt the chocolate, place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Melt, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate is melted. Allow the bowl to sit on the counter and cool for about an hour.

Cut each cake layer in two so you end up with 4 chocolate cake layers. Beginning with a bottom cake layer, spread some marshmallow fluff over it and sprinkle with graham cracker bits. Add a second layer and repeat the process. Do the same with the third layer. Add the last layer and pour the dark chocolate ganache over the top, sprinkling with graham cracker bits. And voila! A gorgeous and oh-so-yummy S’Mores Birthday Cake!

 

Spooky Pancakes

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breakfast, Halloween, pancakes, spiders, spiderwebs

I don’t know what Halloween morning is like in your house but in ours, it’s chaotic!  You’d think it would be crazy in the evening, but no.  For us, it’s Halloween morning.  Not only is there breakfast to be made for both girls, who wake up at different times and    order different foods – yes, I did say ORDER! – but there are lunches and snacks to be made, schoolbags to be packed, clean socks to be found… I could go on, but I think you get the picture.  On top of everything else, we had to do the whole costume thing, hair, make-up… I just can’t understand why I LOVE Halloween!

So, all this to say breakfast was the usual dull morning.  I did have something special planned but couldn’t work it into our schedule.  So while the kiddies were carving out their pumpkins after school, I treated them to these.  Spider and spiderweb pancakes!.  Cute, no?

I used my own buttermilk pancake recipe and transferred the batter to a squirt bottle.   The idea was adapted from Martha Stewart.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Apple of my eye

Tags

candy, caramel apples, Halloween, kids

We were invited to dinner last night and I offered to make dessert.  Seeing as Halloween is just around the corner and we love, love, love Halloween, I thought I’d make a special treat for the kiddies.  Caramel apples! Who wouldn’t love that?

I started by inserting sticks into 8 apples and placing them in the fridge.  The Granny Smith apple is for Charlotte.  They’re her fave.

Next came the caramel.  In a saucepan, I added 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cups (175 ml) unsalted butter, 300 ml sweetened condensed milk, 2/3 cup corn syrup and 1/4 tsp salt.  Over medium-high heat, bring to a boil. Stir often or the caramel will scorch on the bottom of the pan.  Once it reaches a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook for 18-20 minutes, stirring often.

Don’t be daunted by making caramel. Just keep an eye on it and stir often. It will turn out perfect. This is a “soft-ball” caramel. Soft-ball is a term used when making candy. You need to cook the sugar syrup to a temperature of 235-240 degrees. To test if it’s ready, drop a spoonful of the caramel into a bowl of very cold water. With your fingers, gather the cooled caramel and if you can form a ball in the water, it’s done. Or do what I did and use a candy thermometer.  Soft-ball is even written right on it, next to the temperatures. Basically, it becomes a chewy caramel.

After 18 minutes, this is the colour of the caramel. Gorgeous, no?

I had this bottle of black & orange sugar crystals and thought it looked very Halloween’ish.

After dipping an apple in the caramel, I rolled the bottom half of the apples in the sugar and placed them on a sheet of tin foil which was slathered in butter. In the fridge they went for 15 minutes.

I melted some white chocolate and proceeded to make the spider webs with a piping bag.   I took a short-cut and used the micro.  You need to do it very carefully or you will burn your chocolate.  I placed my chopped chocolate, about 1 cup , in a glass bowl.  Working on medium power and for only 1 minute at a time, I melted the chocolate, stirring after every minute, for a total of about 5 minutes.  You really need to allow the chocolate to cool somewhat or it can become rather messy. And then, the final touch… spiders!

Note: The recipe calls for placing the finished apples back in the fridge, which I did. I took them over to our friend’s place and they were again placed in the fridge. When the time came for the kiddies to delve into those creepy-crawler-apples, they were hard. Rock hard! We suggested they wait a half hour to see if it would help, but how could they once they’d sunk their teeth into them? They continued their struggle until they’d had enough and that was the end of that. I had saved a couple of apples for the next day and this time I removed them from the fridge 1 hour before dinner. When the time came, I just had to have a bite.  Oh, gooey goodness!!! They were perfect! Except for that black sugar which tainted all our hands and mouths black!  Oh well.   Keeping in the spirit of Halloween, I guess!

You can see full recipe details, courtesy of CBC’s Best Recipes Ever, here.

Pretty Cool

Tags

desserts, kids, Sweets

I came across these refreshing treats for kids on Martha Stewart.  With the gloriously sunny days we’ve been having, why not surprise the little kiddies with them.  They’re pretty and they’re cool!