Heather's Warm Chocolate Pudding Cake

 I've been missing my friend Heather. Do you have a friend like this? We used to see each other almost every day when I lived a few blocks from her house and now I'm across town and see her very rarely. It makes me sad. I miss her face. I'm not going to lie. I miss her chocolate cake. Okay. I miss both. Heather made the most delicious and moist warm chocolate pudding cake that really kicked some serious patootie. When it has a scoop of ice-cream on top it's like a tender pillow for soaking up the creamy cool dripping. It's the perfect dessert for summer .  It's also the best for taking to picnics and pot-lucks.  Heather got requests for it all time {usually from me at midnight}. I say that with some glorious love because y'all know how much I adore a good chocolate right? Mmm. Evil Heather. Thank you for being my sister-in-chocolate sin love .  It doesn't use eggs. It has just a few ingredients in the cake itself so it's easy to keep everything on-hand.  I'm not sure that's a good thing.  It's dangerous stuff. Highly addictive.  That being said, I'm sharing with you her original recipe. That is how much I love you. Try not to cry. It's emotional for me too.  Now it's like I live a few blocks away from your house and I can just stop in any time for some cake and a friendly chat over a plate of happiness. Right? With drizzling melty gooey ice cream on top. New secret-best-friends-hand-shake on it. Giggle. Smooches. Xoxo. {Yikes...that's a little too much love right?}

 At the end I'll share the gluten free sugar free version...yeah. I know Auntie Em just gasped. That's how much I love her too. Xoxo.

Heather's Warm Chocolate Pudding Cake

1 c. cake flour

3/4 c sugar

2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

2 Tbsp cooking oil

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 c walnuts (optional)

3/4 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 c boiling water

Vanilla ice cream (optional)

 Get someone adorable to help mix. I found this little boy in my living room and he seemed to be very anxious to spend some time with me in the kitchen. Hello my darling boy. 

 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8X8X2 inc pan. In a bowl mix together the first 5 dry ingredients. Stir in the milk, oil and vanilla. 2. Pour batter into prepared pan.

  In a small bowl combine the 1/4 cocoa powder, brown sugar and boiling water. Slowly pour mixture over batter. This is the part that freaks me out every single time I make this pudding cake. You don't mix the cocoa mixture in with the cake. You pour it right into the pan and it sinks to the bottom...it is wild. 

 3. Bake for 40 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack let cool. Serve warm. Spoon cake into bowl, spoon pudding over cake. If desired top with vanilla ice cream. Seriously...look at that pudding layer and tell me it isn't the most amazing thing ever!

 Yup. Gooey chocolate pudding should be at the bottom of every pan of chocolate cake. 

 Heaven. 

Sugar Free End note. I double the cocoa. I also use natural sugar-free sweetener called erythritol in my baking instead so I don't pass out from all the sugar. You can use a 9 grain flour in place of the regular cake flour. I usually do that too. You can also just replace the flour and leavening with my 9 grain all purpose baking mix.

Gluten Free End Note:  Use my Whole Grain Gluten Free Flour Blend in place of the flour and use the recipe for whole grain all purpose flour replacement that incluces the xanthan gum. For the printable version of my gluten-free flour blend recipe alone go: Here.

I love Heather End Note: Go visit Heather's shop. She doesn't just bake. She's also very handy with yarn. Go figure.  She's amazing!! I don't have a baby but you can get them for babies who are on their way and who are just needing exta love from Heather. Seriously adorable. She does great aprons and crochets just about anything on her Etsy shop Brick Cabin Crafts.





There you go. Make chocolate pudding cake. You'll be glad you did. 


Always My Very Best,
Your Friend Chef Tess

An ETT on BFFF...Brownie Pudding

This is going to be a very special Best Food, Finds and Friends Friday...because last night I was blessed to be able to visit with my darling culinary school friend Evil Tara! Yes, that is a term of endearment. Those who have been friends and readers of the blog-o-glory will know, all too well how we call our cooking adventures the Evil Think Tank or ETT. The ETT started originally at the beginning of this blog the first time I ever held a digital camera almost 3 years ago. Tara invited me over to cook...and to let me use her camera so I'd have some pictures to put on my blog. Yes, things at my house were *that* tight. I started this little adventure on a shoestring budget and a dream.  

The ETT went on from there as a grand delightful time when Evil Tara and Evil Tess needed time out creating culinary delights from a combination of ingredients of our choice. Sometimes we'd end up at a special market or grocery store. Always there was some new thing to create.  As it has progressed, I've had a few ETT's without Tara. I've been to other dear friends' homes and enjoyed creating with them...but always the resulting event was to be the same. Random ingredients and creative minds. It's like a melting pot of all things amazing...and usually involves a block of chocolate. Ironically, last night was not an exception. To my joy, we had a few sweet visitors and got to play "dessert fairies" after our adventures and deliver some little bowls of happiness to a few of our dear friends in the area. 

It's not an ETT without the 

Evil clip boards and evil bobble-head giant pens-o-love-and-destruction. Oh, and I can't even work my magic without my lucky socks.

 Tara found my camera and took a shot. Bwhaaha! Can you see the smoke coming out of my ears? OH...and the foot pop with the magic socks is a nice touch. Does popping one's foot out like that help them think better? I think YES. I know the pen the size of a rolling pin helped!

 So, we decided to make a variation of Brownie Pudding from the Barefoot Contessa. We'll give her full credit for this one because it was a truly amazing recipe. I think it's one to keep forever in my Evil notes.   What came out was a cross between a hot chocolate pudding and a fudge brownie. It's a warm, gooey, rich almost brownie fudge "cobbler" effect if I can put it that way. I was stunned by the simplicity and the straight forward heavenly globs of goo that ensued. Ahhh. You really want to have this in your life. 
Barefoot Contessa's Brownie Pudding

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus extra for buttering the dish
• 4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup good cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla bean
• 1 tablespoon framboise liqueur, optional
• Vanilla ice cream, for serving

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly butter a 2-quart (9 by 12 by 2-inch) oval baking dish. Melt the 1/2 pound of butter and set aside to cool.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on medium-high speed for 5 to 10 minutes, until very thick and light yellow.

We did add the vanilla bean to the butter as it was melting. Small change but the vanilla will actually have a nice pronounced flavor if you do that. This is a vanilla bean collection. It appears I'm still, somehow, keeping up the bean week theme for this week by using these today...right?! Say yes. Please say yes. They may be the only healthy thing in this post.

Cut the bean in half with a sharp knife and add the contents of the bean to the butter...along with the bean.

Be sure to take the bean out of the butter before you put the butter in the batter. Ya know...because that would be just sad.

 Meanwhile, sift the cocoa powder and flour together and set aside.

When the egg and sugar mixture is ready, reduce the speed to low and add the framboise, if using and the cocoa powder and flour mixture. Mix only until combined.

Instead of the alcohol, we used 1/2 tsp of each of these. Amazing! I'm a big fan of the whole new Mix-a-meal line of these Powdered flavorings. I use them in a lot of my homemade cake, cookie and muffin mixes and today I just had to try them in this brownie pudding. I'm totally addicted. 

Pour the brownie mixture into the prepared dish and place it in a larger baking pan. We did a large pan and then a second batch using 4 smaller loaf pans.

Add enough of the hottest tap water to the pan to come halfway up the side of the dish and bake for exactly 1 hour. (That "halfway up the side" is a key phrase here. If you go too high you will have only chocolate pudding...not brownie pudding. half of the pan will be cooking at a higher temperature than the water, producing that brownie on top!).

Tara also thought it was quite humorous that I had chocolate all over my hands and still managed to take pictures of the pudding. Look...I never claimed I had clean hands while in the Evil Think Tank.  

 A cake tester inserted 2 inches from the side will come out 3/4 clean. The center will appear very under-baked; this dessert is between a brownie and a pudding

How evil is that?!

I also managed to put some caramel  and chopped chocolate on half of the brownie pudding while it was still warm and it could melt. You know, strictly for scientific reasons. There must be a control side and an evil variation side, right? Only so we could compare flavors. (Wink, wink...) 

Friends who came by made the ultimate sacrifice...and ate some of the evil thing. Xoxo to Kim.

Hugs to Amy...who didn't stay for the tasting but brought us peaches!

Plus two or three late night chocolate deliveries from the ETT to girls we adore who spoke up on Facebook during the ETT! Xoxo ladies! You soooo got chocolate because you are loved. Plus...it was fun reading comments on Facebook while we created! How fun! It was almost as good as having you all here!

There you go! I love the ETT! We'll be doing this again really soon and look forward to many, many more culinary adventures together. God bless. Big hugs...and keep moving onward and upward!
Your Friend,
Chef Tess

Cream Puffs 101 with Sugar Free Chocolate Stove Cook Pudding

They don't look diabetic do they? They look like a sugar coma. That's the beauty.

Dream Cream Puffs

yield 8 servings

1/2 cup water

2T butter
1/2 cup all purpose flour

2 eggs

pudding:

2 cups skim milk

1/4 cup baker's cocoa

12 packets Truvia natural sweetener

1tsp orange zest

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup corn starch

Directions:

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a small saucepan, combine the water and butter. Bring to a boil.

Add the flour all at once, and stir vigorously.

Cook and stir until mixture form a ball and flour lumps are gone.

Cool for ten minutes. It's important that dough be cooler than 165 degrees or the eggs will cook on contact. I use a thermometer, or my finger if I'm feeling brave.

Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with a a wooden spoon after each addition. You can either drop by rounded spoonful onto the baking pan lined with parchment, or put the dough in a large pastry bag, fitted with a large star or straight tip. I like using the bag. It makes really pretty cream puffs.

You can divide into 8 puffs, or smaller bite size puffs. I went with the one inch single bites, and got 24. This is how they should look. The mound of dough is about one inch high.

Leave about an inch between puffs.

Bake in a 400 degree oven 20-25 minutes for smaller puffs, and 30-35 minutes for larger puffs.

Do not open the oven often or under cook. These are not like cookies that will be okay if they are a little undercooked...they will fall and be gummy inside if not cooked all the way. I tend to go with a darker looking puff than an anemic one. They should be good and brown on the tops.

When you get to the cooking time check a puff by pulling it out of the oven, but leave the rest in there. Open up the puff. If it isn't gooey inside, it's ready.

Pull them all out of the oven and open them with a fork or knife.

To make the pudding, in a saucepan with a whisk, combine 1/2 a cup of milk with the cornstarch until smooth. Add the remaining ingredients. Stir over medium heat until thick, about 5-7 minutes. When it boils, remove from heat. Cover with a lid and allow to cool. It will continue to thicken as it cools. Chill until ready to serve.

Just before you want to serve the cream puffs,

put 1 tsp of sugar free strawberry jam at the bottom of each puff.

Spoon 1/4 cup of the filling into the bottom half of each cream puff if you made 8. For smaller puffs, use about a tablespoon. Sprinkle with sugar free sweetener. For the chocolate drizzle, I melted some sugar free chocolate over a double boiler and spooned it into a pastry bag.

There you go.

Nutritional Info for 8 puffs, serving size one puff:

112 calories
4 g fat

63 mg chol.

231 mg sodium

13 g carbo.,

0 fiber

5 g pro.

Always My Very Best,
Your Friend Chef Tess

Homemade Tapioca pudding with honey, lavender, orange and vanilla

I don't know if anyone else likes tapioca pudding. I'm a pushover for a good home made batch of the stuff. When I am still a walking sick person (okay now no more mental capacity jokes), I love tapioca. When I'm in bed, I want it most of all. Warm. With raisins. Apparently my fellow culinary school friend Tara , who I usually have totally culinary harmony with (indeed one I was sure was my twin on all things food) has found reason to doubt the valid use of raisins in anything ingested by man (or beast). Her exact phrase, that made giggle was, "Raisins are of the Devil".

So I made some without. I have yet to know if Tara even likes tapioca, but given my recent total disappointment on the raisin issue, I will leave the open question to the food blog...and not feel total rejection if for some insane reason, tapioca is "of the Devil". It does however go without saying that there is no accounting for taste. What I adore, others may abhor. I don't care. I'm posting a recipe for tapioca. Ronit will eat it. Lehavah oo-la-la ... It's gluten free.
It turns out I own an original Betty Crocker cookbook. Whoever guessed my mother in law would get me that for Christmas...and a recipe stand to put it on. It has a place of honor in my kitchen...next to all the ingredients for tapioca...including the raisins...TARA.

You will need...

6 cups milk

2 eggs

1/2 cup instant tapioca (or 2 more T depending on how thick you like it)

2/3 cup honey

2T cream cheese (if you are me...it's optional but I love it!)

a scratch or two of fresh grated nutmeg

dash of cinnamon (about 1/2 tsp)

1/2 tsp orange zest

3/4 tsp crushed culinary lavender (optional)

1 tsp double strength vanilla or almond extract

Combine the milk, tapioca, honey,

nutmeg...(fresh grated is amazing...you will never go back to the jar, but if you have the jar it works)....

cinnamon...(I use the good stuff from The Pampered Chef)...

Two eggs...

Out of the shells...and I crack them in a little bowl so I don't get any shells in the pudding. Yes, I know I am weird. Just so YOU know I'm weird for all the right reasons... like cool pictures of eggs in a green bowl. See. Not so crazy now am I? Don't answer that. Really. Don't.

Put the eggs in there with all the other stuff...

Whisk it up and let it sit for 5 minutes. This helps the tapioca absorb the liquid.
I'm going to frame this picture and put it over my stove.

Wait, maybe I'll frame this one:

While the tapioca is soaking up the love...add some culinary lavender. If you don't have it this is what it looks like. I promise the tapioca won't taste like soap. It just helps me relax and adds a nice subtle floral hint. Mmmm. Lavender.

You can crush it up with your hands. I also add some orange zest. Just a little. About 1/2 tsp.

Then I take a nifty picture so the folks at home can see.

Now after 5 minutes of soaking, whisk the pudding constantly over medium heat until it comes to a rolling boil. I do mean stand there and hold the whisk for 5 minutes or so and stir. I don't want anyone writing and telling me that they burned the pudding. If you stand there and stir, it won't burn. If you walk away...I am not responsible. Nope.

Once it boils, remove it from the heat. Really, take it off the stove. Don't just turn off the heat. Put it on a hot pad. Add the vanilla. Then the final perfect touch...

Plop in some cream cheese. Not much, just a nibblet. Yes, nibblet is a word.

See how pretty it is peeking out of the pudding? If only I could get it to wear one of those funky pink swimming caps and synchronize swim. Then my life would be complete.

Okay,now this is where I wax 1955. Seriously, you can just put the pudding in a bowl in the fridge, but I like to put it in these crisp clean mason jars delicately sprinkled with plump Devil-raisins. Evil little nuggets. Oh how I love them! If you don't want to use raisins, I left one without. So now Tara can come visit without feeling jilted. You could use dried blueberries, cherries, cranberries, pears, apricots...(get the idea, dried fruit right?). For Tara...yes, you could use chocolate chips.

I used a funnel so boiling hot tapioca didn't cascade all over my lovely jars and end up in sad pools of inedible pudding on my floor. That would be a great human tragedy. Right up there with not liking raisins.

Oh yes. If you can mathematically and physically get any closer to the edge of a jar without spilling pudding, I would like to see it.

Let them cool 20 minutes or so and then cover with a lid and put in the fridge. There you go.

I'm now going back to bed. Wake me when your pudding is ready. Except Tara. Unless she brings me raisins.