Bon Appetit’s sour cream and scallion biscuits. The only time I strayed from the original recipe was to add 1 T. additional buttermilk to bring the dough together, and then chill them for 10 minutes before baking.
Today I used Daisy full fat sour cream. If I were to use that particular variety again, I might lower the butter content by 1 T. and see how it impacts the bake - they were pretty rich as made. Good stuff, however. The onion came through nicely, and I like the salty tops. Will make again.
I see View From Great Island has modified this recipe to incorporate Ranch dressing mix. Not my thing, but perhaps of interest to some.
And again with the toppled biscuits! Maybe I should just roll with it, and not let it bug me. They’ll all be eaten in the end.
A cake for my school’s cake raffle tomorrow. It’s the fudgy chocolate sheet cake and silky chocolate frosting from Midwest Made. I don’t like sour cream, but the frosting is delicious. I used 300g milk chocolate and 100g bittersweet as I was worried it wouldn’t be sweet enough for the kids. And then I threw a couple of packages of Skittles and some candy melts on because that’s really what the kids go for.
I made 2 mocha almond chocolate cakes (each about 400g/14oz) for the friend I’m staying with and her sister. The batter has both Greek yogurt and cream cheese in it and there’s melted couverture chocolate both in the cakes and on top. Each cake has approximately 50 freshly roasted, unsalted almonds in/on them.
I was going to surprise my friend with the cakes for Valentine’s Day but our schedules didn’t work out so that I could bake them while she was out. She LOVES sweets but doesn’t bake at all…so she was VERY happy that I baked these for her and her sister!
Can you share the recipe? I find most chocolate buttercreams to be way too stodgy/heavy/sweet. I’m planning to try an ermine frosting or German buttercream next time, but I’d love to test a sour cream version as well!
I’m not one for sticky buns usually (too sweet), but these look and sound delicious:
For all my indifference for chocolate, I find bread one of the better uses for it.
Though I continue to be annoyed by what nearly everyone keeps claiming is tangzhong, which is far thinner when cooked to 65° C and provides more moisture than when cooked so much that it gets to a thick gel.
Great minds think alike. A giant chocolate cake for Valentine’s Day.
I had originally planned to make Odette Williams’ version, which is a known and loved entity in our house. Instead, I opted to check one off my want-to-bake list, and made Ina Garten’s Beatty’s Chocolate Cake. The differences between the two cakes are not great –Ina’s version uses more sugar, more chocolate, and buttermilk instead of milk.
I made the full recipe and baked it in an 11-cup Nordic Ware heart pan. It did not fit! Later today I’ll be cleaning that extra half-cup of batter which burned on to the floor of my oven. If you make a whole cake out of this recipe, measure your pan capacity carefully.
The cake came out delicious - chocolately, moist, and bouncy with a pleasing crumb.
As a side, this recipe also is very similar to the Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake recipe which @biondanonima recently posted. Again, subtle differences, but if you have a grasp of all three recipes, it allows for a lot of leeway in substituting elements based on desired outcome and/or what you might have in your pantry.
I only tried a tiny corner before I frosted it and it was moist and deeply chocolatey. It was quite heavy, so hoping the kid who won it doesn’t find it too dense. I’ll hear all about it tomorrow!
The ratios are a bit different I think, but it’s the whipping that really lightens this up. I have tried a sour cream ganache before but prefer the Midwest Made one. I’m no expert though, as I don’t love either of the ingredients!
I have the book and will check it out, thank you. I’ve made RLB’s many times and no complaints from grandchildren! I imagine they would enjoy the one in MM.
Mini Burnt Cheesecake for two. This is made in a 4” cake pan and is just enough for two for Valentine’s Day or any other day! I last made this in December of 2021 in a large format. This smaller version is great as it cooks in 13 minutes.
For this version, I followed Catherine Zang mini burnt cheesecake with one substitution, 1/4 c sour cream for the heavy cream. I’ll be more inclined to make the mini version.
I got Bake Smart, Samantha Seneviratne, as an ebook loan from my library; the Coconut Cake looks good, easy, because it’s baked in a ½ sheet pan and then cut, similar to my favorite carrot cake from ATK.
If you made the Ina Garten cake, beyond something similar to the Perfectly Chocolate Cake, you made Hershey’s Black Magic Cake. IG’s calls for XL eggs and kosher salt because that is her way, but otherwise it is an exact dupe of the classic Black Magic Cake, which I have made many times, and it does indeed fill a 12-cup bundt pan. I also like to enrich the chocolate flavor a bit by adding a couple of ounces of dark chocolate (I melt it into the hot coffee).
