Getting ready for Christmas

I know it's just mid-November, but I tell you, Christmas will sneak up on you if you don't start preparing now! I've always wanted to make house-warming gifts made of cookies and chocolate made my me, and of course, in times like these, kind to the pocket-book. I normally love giving my friends a box of Godiva (honestly, who does not love GODIVA??), but you get so little for your precious dollars. Last year, my sisters and I attended a chocolate-making class. In this class (taught by a very inexperienced chocolate-making teacher), the chocoate truffle recipe NEVER worked - we tried it twice. We were also taught - and I use the term taught loosely in this case -how to temper chocolate to create that nice, shiny coating found on some chocolate truffles.

Thanks to Ina Garten's easy Chocolate Truffle recipe, I can finally start giving delectible home-made gifts. When I found this recipe, I called up my sisters, we got together on a Sunday afternoon and made them. Ina Garten suggests using chocolates such as Lindt, but I just used Baker's brand chocolate, and it worked very well. As you may notice from the picture of our truffles, we tried coating some truffles with cocoa powder and other truffles with tempered chocolate. I do not have a formal recipe for tempered chocolate. I just Googled it and watched some videos on Youtube to try to figure it out. If you have never tried making it, give it a go, but I warn you..you need patience. It may not even work out the first time. And if it does work out for you (it kinda worked out for us), then Congrats to you! Anyway, for Ina's recipe, it so easy and delish, and you do not need to temper chocolate to make it.

Almost 30

It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, and I was REALLY excited to try baking a new cake. So, I baked my own birthday cake. My friends asked in voices that sounded like pity "aww..you're baking your own cake?!" Yes, my friends, because its fun, and it gives me a tonne of joy. The recipe is from someone who is now my all-time favorite cook, Ina Garten. If there is a cookbook to buy, it's hers. She has a few cook books, and I am so impressed with all of them. I have two of them so far. As you can see, you can get some, if not all, of her recipes on line from the food network site, but I personally love having a glossy cookbook on hand, without having to run to the computer all the time for reference, or without having so many loose printouts everywhere in the kitchen.

So, now, I present to you Beatty's Chocolate Cake.

The picture you see on my blog is of my interpretation of the cake. It turned out beautifully. The one thing that I did not do that was part of the recipe, was put the disolved instant coffee in the icing. I think I should have. I found the icing to be slightly too sugary. I think that the sugar in the icing would have dissolved a bit - resulting in a smoother icing - had I added the coffee. Suffice to say, I will definitely be making this cake again, and will follow the icing recipe to a "T"! I hope you try it out too..you will not regret it!

Enjoy with Coffee, Tea, or a glass of cold Milk.