Happy Obligatory Cake Day! Yes, here we are again at that one day out of the year that I really feel that I should bake a cake. This year, we have a Salted Caramel Chocolate Torte. Though I haven’t tried it all put together (clearly it hasn’t been cut yet), all the components separately were delicious, though not surprisingly, a little on the sweet side. And if I were to spend my days critiquing myself, I would say that I am still not great at frosting / decorating, but meh, it’s ok.
chocolate
Aaaand here is another stocking stuffer idea: Buckeyes! Yes, just another excuse to make sweets really. And these are sweets with a kick. If you’ve never heard of Eliot’s Adult Nut Butters, you should definitely seek them out. Peanut butter, Almond butter and Sunflower seed butter with a kick — they make honey sriacha, garam marsala and the type I used here, chocolate chili. Very yummy. I added a little bit of additional chili powder and sprinkled on some sea salt to round out the sweet and salty combo. Very yummy!
Every year, right around the holidays, I try my hand at making another variety of chocolate truffles or fudge. Fudge is my old standby though, as I have a great base recipe that I have been using since high school and it is very easy to adapt with some new flavors. This year, I made Winter Spice Fudge, which has a lot of gingerbread and cinnamon flavors and Irish Cream Coffee Fudge, which isn’t very boozy but ended up very yummy. Very easy to make and very foolproof with just a few ingredients.
I know, I know, I *just* mentioned the other day that Halloween isn’t really my thing, and here I am posting the second skull-themed baked good in as many days. Mainly, this is because I wanted to use my skull pan that was given to me, and sure, why not, let’s make something red-velvet-y … I don’t do that nearly enough. The cakes turned out almost too fluffy and very airy, but they did taste good. And there is something satisfying about biting into a skull. Yeah, ok, that last part is a little weird to write. I promise I’m not a vampire.