Devils Food with a little less sin.

I never knew just how much I loved Chocolate cake until recently when I began experimenting with devil’s food cake.  I have been playing with different cake recipes and I have enjoyed every bite of it.  I have yet to be disappointed with these heavenly desserts.  What’s ever better is that I have been working on making them a little less sinful- swapping applesauce for oil, reduced fat sour cream for original, that sort of thing, with wondrous results. 

There are two recipes that are fairly similar, the biggest differences being the sour cream and oil ratios as well as the size of dry pudding mix used.  I have baked them both within the last few weeks and found that I couldn’t really see the difference.  This cake was perhaps the moister of the two however, so I am posting it first. 

The original recipes that I found using Devils Food cake mix called for either boiling water, strong brewed coffee or coffee liquor.  With this cake I went with Irish Cream Liquor.  Why?  Well mainly because I bought a bottle at Christmas for my friends and family to partake in Irish Cream Coffee and then never got around to actually making the hot dessert beverage.  Maybe next year.  But alas, a whole bottle of Irish Cream, I thought it couldn’t hurt.  It didn’t.

When making this cake I did use a lot of reduced fat or less fat options, however those were to suite my preferences.  I have also made this cake using the ingredients in parenthesis with just as amazing results only with a little more fat.

Heavenly Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

1 package Devils Food cake mix

1 (5.9 oz) package Instant Chocolate pudding mix

1 cup reduced fat sour cream

1 cup applesauce (or oil)

1 cup eggbeaters (or 4 large eggs)

1/2 cup Irish cream liquor

2 cups (1 package) mini chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350* degrees.  Spray a 10 inch Bundt pan with cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl (or using your electric stand mixer bowl) mix cake mix, pudding mix, sour cream, applesauce, eggs and liquor with an electric mixer for 30 seconds.  Mix on medium speed for two minutes.
3. Stir in chocolate chips and pour cake mix into prepared pan.  Bake for 60 minutes.
4. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes.  Remove cake from pan and cool completely on wire rack.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

I have been buying a lot of bananas lately. Being that we have toddlers in the house and that we are runners we go through bananas before they are ever ripe enough to be truly warranted for a good quick bread or other baked goods. Buying more bananas than I think we need has only increased the number of banana sundae’s the spouse eats or uses for smoothies. So I started buying even more. Finally, I had three black and mushy (read: beautiful) bananas to use for a recipe. At first I was going to make more Banana Bread Cookie’s, but then I decided I wanted to try out something new. Something with a bit of chocolate in it. Chocolate Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips seemed like just the thing.

I was a bit nervous about this bread to be honest. The last few things I have made with cocoa haven’t turned out so hot. They have actually been quite bad. So bad in fact, that I haven’t even posted about the recipes because they were so bad that there was little more that needed to be said. I was so skeptical of this bread and the changes I made in the original recipe, that I kept convincing myself it was a failure before it was cool enough to try.

I had a small bite the night I made it when I snapped this picture. It was fine, not bad. However, the next day when I was whipping up some appetizers for a book group I snuck another piece. It was quite good. So I snuck another. Before I knew it I had snuck four pieces with a sizable amount of the loaf gone, making it seem a lot less sneaky and a lot more noticeable. I couldn’t help it. It’s that good.

Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

3 ripe bananas, mashed

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons unsweetened baking cocoa

1/2 cup light sour cream

2/3 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350*. Lightly grease one 9x5 load pan.
2. In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, bananas, and vanilla; mix well. Sift in flour, baking soda and cocoa. Beat in sour cream. Stir in chocolate chips.
3. Pour into prepared pan and bake 60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack. remove from pan and cool completely.

Morning Maple Muffins

I love alliteration, don’t you?  I also love these muffins.  They are not healthy for you.  Sorry.  I thought about adding a little applesauce and taking away some butter but with 1/2 cup of pure maple syrup at stake I want these muffins to be moist and miserably bad for you.  But it’s worth it, I promise you. 

These muffins were too good, unfortunately I left eight of them out on the counter and went to fold clothes and came back to find a trail of nuts leading underneath the kitchen table and a Springer Spaniel with guilty written across his face.  He ate eight of them, eight. 

That’s just selfish.

He could have at least left me one…more.

Morning Maple Muffins

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

3/4 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup butter melted

1/2 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup sour cream

1 egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla

topping

3 tbsp. ground cinnamon

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tbsp white sugar

2 tbsp chopped nuts

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp butter

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400.  Line muffin pans or spray with cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl combine flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt.  In another bowl combine buttermilk, butter, syrup, sour cream, egg and vanilla.  Stir into the dry ingredients until just combined.
3. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full (using a cookie scoop perhaps). Mix topping ingredients together, cutting butter until a crumble forms.  Sprinkle over batter.  Bake at 400 for 18-20 min.  Cool for several minutes in pan and then move to wire racks to cool completely.  Eat before dog does.

The crumble on these incredibly moist muffins are worth all of the fat and calories in this muffin.  It’s Saturday, enjoy your weekend with a batch of these sinful muffins, you deserve it.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake Muffins

Sometimes I have an item I want to bake in my head but no recipe that meets that something. Does this ever happen to you? I decided that I would really like a coffee cake like muffin, heavy on the cinnamon and with a yummy streusel topping. So I glanced through cookbooks and searched the internet and just didn't find what I was truly after. Finally, I decided to use a sour cream coffee cake recipe as a base and work from there. The result was quite delicious. My two year old son put it quite simply after his first muffin, "More, more, more." That's exactly the way I was feeling.

I have frozen these and defrosted them overnight to wonderful results. I have also, because I am the Queen of Impatience, taken them straight from the freezer and just heated them wrapped in a paper towel with equally pleasing results. I have made another batch and just frozen them to have on hand when I am too lazy to make breakfast but want something more than cereal of a Fiber One bar.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake Muffins

Ingredients:

(muffins)

1 cup sugar

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup eggbeaters (or 2 large eggs)

1/2 cup light sour cream

1/2 cup fat free buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

(topping)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup pecans (fine pieces)

1/4 cup ground oatmeal

2 tablespoons butter

Directions:

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease muffin tins or line cups with baking liners.

2.) Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, sour cream, buttermilk and vanilla; mix well.

3.) Sift dry ingredients together in separate bowl; flours, baking powder and soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add to cream mixture.

4.) Combine streusel topping in separate bowl, using pastry blender to cut butter into other ingredients.

5.) Put small dollop into each muffin tin, top with some of the streusel topping. Finish filling muffin tins with muffin batter.

6.) Bake in oven 18-20 minutes. Cool and enjoy.

Sock It to Me Cake

You may have heard of a Sock It to Me Cake, until this week I had not. Turns out it's a pretty popular cake. I was looking for a pecan cake to make in my bundt pan and this is what I kept finding. So alas, I decided to use my only yellow cake mix in the pantry, make a few alterations to the recipe and give it a try.

The toasting and chopping of the pecans were the worst thing about this cake. I personally hate toasting nuts. All too often I burn my nuts and have to start over and nuts are not cheap. So if I'm not burning my nuts I am under-cooking my nuts where the whole process is probably pointless. And I hate chopping nuts. I buy my nuts in bulk at Sam's because I like to save money, but chopping nuts causes a little anxiety attack to begin because my OCD mind gets frustrated with the vast difference in my nut pieces. But I made this cake even with the toasting and the chopping. The cake was good but I think in the future I would chop my pecans even smaller and maybe skip the whole toasting process altogether.

Sock It To Me Cake

Ingredients

1 package yellow cake mix

1 cup light sour cream

1/2 cup applesauce

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup water

2 eggs

1/2 cup eggbeaters

1 cup toasted and chopped pecans

3 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 cup confectioners sugar

2 tablespoons milk

Directions

1.) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2.) Grease bundt pan. Toast pecans for 8 minutes at 350 degrees. Chop pecans.

3.) Blend cake mix, sour cream, applesauce, sugar, water, eggs, and eggbeaters. Beat on high 2 minutes. Pour 2/3 batter into greased bundt pan.

4.) Combine pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Sprinkle oven batter. Spread remaining batter evenly over sugar mixture.

5.) Bake 45-55 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire rack 25 minutes.

6.) Mix confectioners sugar and milk. Remove cake from bundt pan and drizzle with glaze.

Banana 'N Cream Cake

How good is this cake? Let me count the ways-I mean slices.
So first there was that slice at a little before midnight last night when it was fresh out of the oven and freshly dusted with Confectioner's sugar.

Then there were the three slices for breakfast this morning. I gave the kids leftover Nutty Pancakes but coulnd't pass up fresh banana baked goods for myself, greedy I know.

Then there were the three slice post-Olive Garden lunch where I didn't even splurge on Tirmisu because I knew there was moist cake at home on the counter.

Then there were the two slices the kids and I snacked on after nap.

Then there were the twelve slices I cut up, wrapped in threes and stuck in the freezer for a later date knowing that this cake would be the death of me if I didn't wisen up.

Not there are about five slices left, for breakfast in the morning. That is if I can resist it that long.

Doubtful.

Bananas 'N Cream Bundt Cake

Ingredients:
1/3 cup shortening
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups mashed ripe bananas (3)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
confectioners' sugar for dusting

Directions:
In a mixing bowl, cream the shortening and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Blend in vanilla. Add bananas and mix well. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to the creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, stirring just until combined. Stir in walnuts. Pour into a greased and floured 10-in. fluted tube pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool 10 minutes in pan before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.