This is a dark chocolate cake baked and glazed in a port wine reduction. Adding some seasonality to the rich flavors are some cranberries that also provide an acidic contrast to the deep flavors of the chocolate in this port wine cake.
As many of you know I rarely take more than two days off from posting, but the last few days I took a bit of a break to enjoy the holiday with my son who was over the top excited for Christmas. Continue reading Chocolate Cranberry Port Wine Cake
I’m getting down to basics today with a very detailed step-by-step picture to making homemade caramel sauce. For this baking basic, I will be going through the wet process vs. dry process for making caramel sauce. The wet process utilizes water to dissolve the sugar (stay tuned for the dry method tutorial). I’ve done this tutorial before in a previous post but not as detailed. Today, I’m breaking it out on its own with a color chart for the different stages of caramelizing since many of you have had a few questions regarding certain steps-specifically, “What is dark amber”.
For this caramel sauce tutorial, I will go through the different color stages including the dark amber that you so often see me directing you towards in my dessert recipes. You will often hear me refer to it as a ‘burnt caramel flavor’. I should mention it’s not truly burnt, since burnt caramel is disgusting and not usable. But it’s a term adopted because it’s the smoky point during the dark amber stage. I like my caramel taken just beyond that smoky point by about 30 seconds before I add my heavy cream and butter. This is when the sugar caramelizes to the point of actually imparting a deep flavor rather than just being sweet. Continue reading Baking Basics: How to Make Caramel Sauce
Here’s the deal when you blog the holidays come early, at least in terms of food-it’s like fashion being a season ahead. Thank goodness blogging doesn’t go that far ahead, but I’m pretty sure by now most of you are tired of baking cookies and your dessert menu is set. So what can I offer you at this point, a cocktail? Well I did yesterday. A Jello shot- covered you on this two days ago.
How about a boozy marshmallow? Yes, a boozy marshmallow to go with your coffee during or after dessert. In fact, let’s make it a Mudslide Marshmallow! Yeah, I sort of like mudslides; case and point: Mudslide cupcake, Mudslide ice cream, Mudslide Trifle, Mudslide cocktail popsicle, Mudslide brownie and soon to follow these recipes is a Mudslide Jell-O shot.
Continue reading Mudslide Marshmallows
