Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

Yes, this sounds funny, but it produces one of the most moist and rich chocolate cakes.

Ingredients

• 1-18 oz box Betty Crocker Super Moist Devil's food cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup of real mayonnaise (not Miracle Whip)

Follow directions on the box to bake, but use mayonnaise in place of oil.

Pumpkin Apple Bread

A yummy and easy recipe from a friend.

Great recipes are meant to passed around & this one is the best I've ever tasted - moist, etc. Will make your whole house smell like autumn!!!

I add about a cup of chopped walnuts to the batter cause I love walnuts w/ apples & pumpkin & also sprinkle chopped walnuts on top of "topping".

I double the topping. I pour 1/2 batter into the loaf pan -sprinkle one serving of topping & pour rest of batter & then put second serving of topping on top of that - killer!

For topping:
1 Tbs all-purpose flour
5 Tbs sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbs unsalted butter, softened (I use "salted" just cause I don't have "unsalted" in my house usually)

For bread:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsps baking soda
1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 (15-oz) can solid-pack pumpkin
3/4 cup vegetable oil (I use 3/4 cup butter instead - wonderful!!!)
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 Granny smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (2 cups)

MAKE THE TOPPING: Blend together flour, sugar, cinnamon. Melt the butter in the microwave and pour into the dry mixutre. Mix with a fork.

MAKE THE BREAD: Put a rack in the middle of oven and preheat oven to 350F. Butter two 9 X 5 inch loaf pans. (I just spray "PAM" into pans.)
Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice into a medium bowl. Then add oil(or butter), sugar, and eggs in a large bowl. Add the pumpkin. Add flour mixture, stirring until well combined. Fold in apples (and walnuts if using nuts).

Divide batter between buttered loaf pans. Sprinkle half of topping evenly over each loaf. *Remember, if you double the topping, do batter, topping, batter, topping. So yummy to have that topping the middle, too.

Bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of bread comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes.

Cool loaves in pans on a rack for 45 minutes, then turn out onto rack and cool completely, about 1 hour.

This bread is meant to be SHARED!!! Make for your neighbors, your coworkers, your family. The only downside to this is it will be requested every year!

You can bake and freeze, too. It freezes well. Just thaw in room temperature the day before.

Whipped Cream Cream Cheese Frosting

Been looking for a pipable cream cheese frosting forever and not only is this recipe pipable but it's beautifully silky and not too sweet! Adapted from Allrecipes.com


Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
  
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. In a small bowl beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form; set aside.
2. In a large bowl combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, sugar, salt and vanilla. Beat until smooth, then fold in whipped cream.

Moist Carrot Cake (from Scratch)

For mah-mah's birthday, Tina and I made her an awesome, super moist, not-too-sweet carrot cake from Allrecipes.com.
I topped it with a whipped cream cream cheese frosting I also found on Allrecipes. This will be my go-to carrot cake recipe now!

Yield 1 - 8x12 inch pan (I made a two layer 6-inch cake with 11 cupcakes)

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 cups shredded carrots (about 2 large carrots)
• 1 cup flaked coconut
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple with juice
• 1 cup golden raisins, soaked in boiling water for 5 minutes

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk, oil, sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour mixture and mix well.
4. In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, coconut, walnuts, pineapple and raisins.
5. Using a large wooden spoon or a very heavy whisk, add carrot mixture to batter and fold in well.
6. Pour into prepared 8x12 inch pan, and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour. Check with toothpick.
7. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Rolled Sugar Cookies

[Updated 2010-12-05]

This is just a recipe for the cookie. I will post the royal icing frosting in a separate blog entry. I wanted to make cookies for Christmas so I found this awesome recipe on Allrecipes.com. The original makes 60 so I cut it in half to make less since I was trying it out. It was a perfect soft and tender cookie. I highly recommend this recipe!

The picture is of the naked cookies...pre-frosting!

Yields approx. 24 cookies

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). Tip: Chilling dough is extremely important. If dough is not adequately, the cookies will not keep their shapes and will flatten.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven until cookies are slightly golden at the edges. Cool completely.

Haupia Cake

I made a cupcake version for Throwdown against Mike (and won) but for Mom & Dad's birthday, I decided to do it in a cake. They loved it! So did Ba Noi. We discovered that this cake is best eaten cold.

Cake:

• 1 box white cake mix
• 2/3 cup coconut milk
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 eggs

Haupia Filling:

• 2 cups coconut milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tablespoon corn starch
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla (I didn't have vanilla when I made this cake so I used one whole vanilla bean)
  

Frosting:

• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon unflavored gelatin
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• shredded coconut, to top

DIRECTIONS

Cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put cake mix, coconut milk, water and eggs into a large mixing bowl. Mix well and fill 2 cake pans. Bake for 40 minutes. Cool completely.

Haupia Filling:

1. In a sauce pan heat coconut milk (do not boil).
   
2. Mix sugar, salt, and cornstarch with water; stir into hot coconut milk.
   
3. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens (cook over low heat to avoid curdling). Stir in vanilla and cool.

Frosting

1. Soften gelatin in 1/3 cup coconut milk; dissolve over hot water.
   
2. Cool.
   
3. Whip cream; fold in gelatin mixture and sugar.
   

Assembly

1. Slice each layer in half.
   
2. Pipe a border of frosting to keep the filling in.
   
3. Spread filling on top.
   
4. Top with a cake layer.
   
5. Repeat until all layers are done.
   
6. Frost, pipe and put a layer of the filling on top! Chill & serve.
   

Chocolate Health trifle

I made this for a bbq with the OCEB. It was the best one yet since I didn't use any Cool Whip. Mike says next time to make more chocolate mousse so I modified the recipe below with this change:

1 prepared brownie cut in cubes
1 quart whipping cream
3.9 oz box chocolate pudding
1/2 cup hot water
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup health bits

Measure out 2 cup of whipping cream and whip to soft peaks.
Meanwhile mix pudding with hot water.
Stir 1/3 of whipped cream into pudding mixture. Fold this mixture into
the remaining whipped cream until no streaks of white remains. Set
aside.
Whip the other 2 cups of whipping cream and sugar to soft peaks.
Assemble trifle: chocolate mousse, brownie, whipped cream, 1/4 cup
Heath bits repeat 2 more times ending with the last 1/4 cup of health
bits as garnish. Chill overnight.