Another belated post

Hello everyone. Are you read for a ton of recipes to be thrown at you today? I hope so, because in an effort to catch my blog up to my cooking, I am doubling up on recipes for this post (and probably the next few posts as well) :) I do have a few winners in this post, so keep reading to find out more.

The first, and in my opinion, the best, recipe for today is these Black Bottom Coconut Bars. Generally Martha Stewart recipes don't steer me wrong, and this was no exception. I thought these were fantastic. I didn't know how the slightly drier coconut top would go with the chocolatey bottom, but the answer is . . . amazing. I took these to a dinner party at a friend's house and everyone loved them. Plus, the color contrast makes them very visually interesting too. If you like coconut macaroons and brownies, give these a try.


I also wanted to make some potato chips to go with sandwiches I was trying to copy from a favorite lunch spot and this recipe did the trick. To prep the potatoes I rinsed the slices and then soaked them for about 30 minutes in cold water that I changed every ten minutes (based on some other suggestions that I had read). Once they were cooked, I sprinkled them with garlic salt, and . . . yum. They kept well for a few days in a plastic container, and were the perfect accompaniment to my tasty veggie paninis (sauteed portobello mushrooms with garlic, hummus, avocado, tomato, shredded carrots, and a little ranch dressing).

Not quite as good as the restaurant, but very tasty! 

I even made my own bread for the sandwiches. I figured ciabatta would be a good bread for paninis, and since I've been obsessed with "The Great British Bake-Off" lately, I tried Paul Hollywood's ciabatta recipe. I can't say I was perfectly successful. It was good, but got kind of funky shaped and not as ciabatta-like as I would have liked . . . there weren't as many holes in it. Oh well, it still tasted good and made a good sandwich.

Another "British Bake-Off" inspired recipe that I tried was this Hot Chocolate Cake Roll. They had made cake rolls on an episode and then I saw it on Pinterest and felt inspired to make it, especially since I had never made anything like it before. I think it turned out pretty well. It wasn't my favorite type of cake, but it was pretty impressive looking, and everyone that had it liked it :)

Okay, last recipe for today, I promise. I saw a picture of ice cream in hollowed out apples with caramel sauce  (like this) on Pinterest, but I figured that they would taste better if the apples were cooked, and I didn't want to wait to bake them in the oven, so I found this microwave method. I stopped at step two, because I definitely didn't want cheese in my baked apples, I wanted ice cream with caramel sauce. The skin got a little tough, so it was best to cut it up with a sharp knife before putting the ice cream and sauce on top. That way it was much easier to eat with a spoon, Not the fanciest dessert, but it was very tasty :) I didn't take a picture, because once cooked, they didn't look very pretty, but this blog post is long enough as it is, so you'll have to forgive the lack of a picture.

Whew, you made it though this ridiculously recipe-packed post. Stay tuned for another one soon :)

Long Overdue Post

So sorry this is long overdue. I usually write a post when I've finished a book, and to be honest, I haven't finished any of the 50 States of YA books in a long time. I was a bit bummed that I didn't finish them all last year, so I kind of ran out of steam, plus I've gotten sidetracked by other books, and just haven't had a lot of time to read lately.

It's been so long that my recipes are really starting to get backed up, so I think I'm just going to have to do a few posts of just recipes. I will include a book in this one though, seeing as I read it.

"Allegiant", the third and final book in the "Divergent" series, is that one that I finished for this post. I also read "Insurgent", the second book, but didn't have enough to say about it to warrant a blog post. It was a typical second book with not a lot of progress in the story, just a lot of shifting things around to set up for the third book. "Allegiant" on the other hand, was a pretty good book. I don't want to give any spoilers since I really enjoyed this series, but I was told by multiple people that I wouldn't like "Allegiant", so I guess I went into it with that expectation. Since so many people said that, I figured there had to be something that happens that does not give the typical happy ending. There is, but personally, I think it was a good choice for the story. I ended up liking this book more than most of my friends because I thought it ended just as it should and kept the characters true to themselves. I still liked the first book in the series, "Divergent", the best, because I love the thrill of getting introduced to a new society, but "Allegiant" was a decent way to end the series. I look forward to seeing the movies :) Anyone else read this? What did you think?

For my recipes this time, I have a doozy: the White, White Chocolate Cake Bake-off. Some of my friends are host parents for junior league hockey players (players between high school and college looking to get recruited by colleges). These boys have huge appetites and since I made that amazing "Death By Chocolate" cake for their first hockey player, I offered to make a cake for their next one. He requested a white cake with white chocolate . . . that sounded simple enough, or so I thought. Apparently, his dad is a baker or chef, so I secretly think that he knew how tough this would be and was trying to challenge me, but who knows. All I know is that I looked at this site for some research and ended up very conflicted about what to do, so guess what I did? Yep, I made two cakes. Of course I did ;) Take a look at the website and you'll see that they made EIGHT cakes, so I had a lot of recipes to choose from. I wanted something really, really white, but at the same time, I wanted it to taste really good. Behold, my process:


The first cake I chose was a white cake made with shortening. I added 3 tsp. extra flour, 2 tsp. butter extract, and 1 tsp. vanilla extract to try and improve the flavor based on the reviews, and I think it was pretty tasty.

This one was filled with white chocolate German buttercream (which was also the frosting for 2nd cake . . . read more about it below) and frosted with a crusting buttercream. The frosting worked great for what I was planning to do with it, but I guess I just don't like taste of shortening frosting. It was beautifully white though. The reason I needed a crusting buttercream was because I wanted to try a neat frosting method that I found on Pinterest for making buttercream look as smooth as fondant. Mine wasn't quite as perfect as the example, but it was a pretty slick method, and did look quite a bit like fondant. What do you think?

I attempted to make white chocolate curls to top the cake with, but this did not work at all. I ended up just prying white chocolate pieces off the sheet pan and making a piece of abstract art on the top of the cake. It didn't help that I ran out of time during the decorating phase . . . oh well.

The other cake was a White Butter cake. This recipe was much more exact and included the weights of ingredients, which is something that I appreciate. I couldn't fault this cake either, it was also tasty, but definitely not as white.

The filling for this cake was supposed to be a white chocolate mousse. If you recall from my cake month, I had a few issues with the chocolate clumping up in the milk chocolate layer of my Triple Chocolate Mousse cake. Unfortunately, this happened with this white chocolate mousse too :(
Such a frustration. Have I told you how much I dislike white chocolate? I cannot seem incorporate white chocolate without it seizing up into little chunks :( Therefore both the mousse and the German buttercream frosting became "white chocolate chip" flavored, despite my best efforts. It tasted pretty good, for white chocolate, but the chunks were a bit off-putting (and made for sloppy, desperate piping).

This German buttercream is one of my go-to frosting recipes . . . nice and creamy without an overpowering butter flavor. I couldn't find anything about making it white chocolate flavored though, so I followed the directions here for making a Swiss buttercream chocolate flavored. It probably would have worked better if I had used regular chocolate, but white chocolate is a bit more temperamental. The German buttercream has worked very well in the past, maybe if I had put the chocolate into the warm custard so it could fully melt instead of adding melted chocolate into cooled frosting it would have worked better? I don't know if that would work or not, but since I don't really like white chocolate, maybe I just never try to do this again? That would work ;) So, there you go, my white, white chocolate cake madness. Who knew such a simple request could become so complicated. I took a poll of those who ate the cakes and the votes were as follows:

Appearance:  Smooth frosting - 5             Piped frosting - 1
Cake:           Shortening cake - 4              Butter cake - 2
Filling:          German buttercream - 3      White chocolate mousse - 3
Frosting:       Crusting buttercream - 3      German buttercream - 3

So besides the lovely appearance of the "fondant" frosting method, the cakes were pretty much tied. I guess give them both a try and let me know which one you like better :) Have a great week.