When liquours are included in baked goods, the flavor doesn’t always make it through to the finished product. This definitely isn’t the case for these boozy Irish Cream Brownies. There is quite a bit of Irish Cream mixed right into the brownie batter, infusing it with flavor. There is also some in the glaze that finishes these off, adding yet another little kick to these grown up brownies.

The brownies themselves have a nice chocolate flavor to them, as well. They are moist and tender, with a texture that falls somewhere between cakey and chewy on the brownie spectrum. There is only a small amount of leavening in the recipe to keep the brownies on the dense side and make sure that they taste more like brownies than cake (which they definitely do!). This recipe was inspired by one I saw that used some artificial Irish Cream flavoring. The real thing is a much better option, taste-wise. It also made more sense for me to use the real thing because, as much as I like Irish Cream, it is so rich that it takes a very long time to finish off a bottle and so I don’t mind using a very generous portion in baking from time to time.

These brownies keep well when they are stored in an airtight container. The glaze is a little on the softer side, so while it does set up, it may soften when the brownies are stored. Cut these into small pieces and serve them with coffee. Coffee will really enhance both the chocolate and the Irish Cream flavors.

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I definitely like my muffins with a cup of coffee in the morning, and this muffin has a nice infusion of coffee on its own. Mocha Chocolate Chip Muffins have a nice combination of coffee and cocoa, thanks to the inclusion of some instant espresso powder to the recipe. They also get a little extra hit of chocolate from the generous amount of chocolate chips stirred into them!

These are big muffins that, thanks to a thick batter, rise up well over the top of the muffin pan. They’re very satisfying as breakfast or as a snack. The muffins are also very soft, tender and moist inside, though the have a good firm feel to their muffin tops (not too soft, like a cupcake). Most muffins can be served warm or at room temperature, but I would definitely recommend serving these just warm enough that the chocolate is slightly melty when you take a bite.

Because of the chocolate chips, these are a little bit more chocolate than coffee on the mocha scale. The muffins aren’t too sweet, largely because of the coffee and cocoa powder in the batter, but I used milk chocolate chips to add some extra sweetness back into them. Dark chocolate will work, too, if you’re more a fan of that, though I definitely thought that milk chocolate worked very well for these. If you want to increase the coffee flavor in these, just double the amount of instant espresso powder (or Starbucks Via, which is what I used) in the recipe.
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A few years ago, the idea of adding salt as an accent flavor to a dessert - in addition to just having a pinch in with the ingredients - was new and exciting. Now, it’s a lot more common to find salt in slightly unexpected places, such as sprinkled on top of cookies and caramels in a much more obvious way than ever before. I’ve also seen salt blended into a bars of chocolate. I saw a handful of bars like these a year or so ago - very gourmet items with a premium price - but have seen the combination much more frequently. A coffee shop I like (the Los Angeles based Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf) is now selling their own brand of salted dark chocolate that you can pick up with your morning latte.

I did pick up a couple of these bars recently, but not just to eat. No, I picked them up to bake with them. The dark chocolate is creamy and smooth, with a rich cocoa flavor and berry notes. It also has noticeable specks of sea salt sprinkled throughout that infuse the bar with a hit of salt when they melt on your tongue. I figured that the chocolate bars would be delicious in cookies, where that saltiness would serve to set off the sugars in the cookie dough as well as the sugar in the chocolate.

The cookies turned out beautifully. They’re crisp on the edges and chewy in the center. I added some ground oats to the cookies to help keep them moist and preserve that chewiness even after keeping them for a couple of days. The salt in the chocolate adds a nice savory - and definitely unexpected - twist to these cookies, too.

If you can’t find a bar of salted chocolate, dark or milk, you can still make these cookies. Pick up your favorite dark chocolate and chop it into chunks. Stir them into the cookies along with 1/4 tsp sea salt (fairly coarse, but not like rock salt). Add the salt with the chocolate so that the grains don’t dissolve into the dough when you mix them in. This way, you’ll get that same small hit of salt as you much your way through the cookie.
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When I saw Wilton’s Tasty Fill Heart Cake Set, I knew that I wanted to try making one of the lovely heart-centered cakes myself. A cake with a heart-shaped center is perfect Valentine’s Day. After I picked up the cake pan set, all I needed to do was decide what flavor cake I wanted to make. I decided to work backwards and, knowing that I wanted a pink heart at the center of the cake, I ended up opting for a very dark-colored chocolate cake for the cake itself.

The cake pans come in a pair and you get the heart center when the two cakes are stacked on top of each other. This cake recipe fits the pans perfectly, and it rose up just to the top of them, easily filling the cavities built-in to the pans which produce the heart shape. This is a recipe that I would ordinarily use to make two thick 8-inch cake layers. There is a whole cup of cocoa powder in the cake, so it has a really delicious chocolate flavor to it. It is very moist and tender, but is not too dense and is very easy to handle the cake (it isn’t too delicate or likely to crumble as you move the pieces around). There is coffee in the cake to emphasize some of the cocoa notes, but there is no coffee flavor to the finished cake - just a lot of chocolate.

While I knew from the start that I wanted a pink filling, the hardest part of making this cake was figuring out what that filling should be. Ice cream is a good option, but not great in the wintertime, and many of the suggestions that came with the pan included Cool Whip - which I didn’t want to use. I ended up making a very light raspberry mousse, held together with a little bit of plain gelatin to give it stability. It has a great raspberry flavor, a beautiful color (black raspberries will give you a more purple color, regular will be lighter pink; I used a mixture of both) and a very light, fluffy texture to it. I used a pasteurized egg white, beaten to soft peaks, to give this mousse a lot of volume. You can actually use meringue powder as a good substitution in this case if you can’t get pasteurized eggs, so I’ve made notes about the substitution below.

The finishing touch for this cake is the cream cheese frosting on top. The creamy frosting has a nice sweetness to it that goes well with the chocolate cake. It also blends nicely with the bright raspberry flavor of the mousse. You can use other berries for the filling - strawberries, blackberries, etc.  - and you can use either fresh berries or frozen, defrosted berries.

This cake should be stored in the fridge to keep the mousse filling firm. That said, the cake must be stored in an airtight container to prevent the cake from becoming dry in the fridge.

This cake didn’t disappoint me in any way. It was delicious, with a great cake, a great combination of flavors and a finished product that looked just like the cake does on the box! This is definitely a great treat for Valentine’s Day, and I like the pan enough that I’m going to have to look for other excuses to have a cake with a heart-shaped center around, too.

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While there is nothing like a full-sized cake or pie, there is something very appealing about little desserts. They’re cute - a shrunken down version of their full-sized cousins - and can pack in a lot of flavor. Best of all, you can usually eat more than one without feeling guilty. So I’m easily tempted by miniature versions of desserts, and when I saw a picture of some miniature chocolate cream pies in a recent issue of Sunset magazine, I wanted to give them a try. A few tweaks to the original recipe and I had a whole batch of tasty, mini cream pies to enjoy!

These little pies have a great chocolate flavor to them, and a consistency that is very similar to chocolate pudding. They’re easy to handle because the filling is quite firm. In fact, it may start to firm up as you spoon it out into the mini crusts after preparing it. Don’t worry if the tops of the mini pies look a little irregular as they set. The whipped cream used to top the pies not only lightens up the chocolate, but it disguises any little imperfections in the filling. I used dark chocolate and the filling had a nice chocolate flavor that wasn’t too sweet. Use sweetened whipped cream to finish these if you like them a little sweeter, or simply substitute a semisweet or milk chocolate instead.

The crusts for these little pies are very easy to make. You’ll notice right away that, unlike many other graham cracker-type crusts, there is no butter in the recipe. Instead, the crumbs are held together with egg white. This makes for a crisper, firmer crust that is easy to take out of the mini muffin cups after baking, as well as for a crust that will hold up well to the chocolate cream filling without becoming soggy. Don’t worry if the crusts seem a bit hard after baking; just fill them up and chill them and they’ll be just right when you’re ready to eat! I added a little instant coffee powder (Starbucks Via, actually, since I really like that for baking) to my crusts to give them a hint of mocha flavor.

These mini pies can easily be made a day in advance and stored in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Add the whipped cream just before serving and give them a dusting of cocoa powder to finish them off. These are great for a crowd, and perhaps even better as a bite-sized treat to share with a loved one on a special occasion - with leftovers, of course!

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I like that fact that bread pudding is a cross between a custard and a cake. I also like that it tends to be a family-style dessert, baked in a big casserole dish or a loaf pan and and portioned out into both big and small servings. It can be made in advance and can also serve a crowd. But as nice as it is as a family-style, comfort food dish, it can be just as nice when it is put in a smaller package made into something a little more elegant. With single serving bread puddings, you get the flavor of all that comfort food in a dressed up package.

These Individual Nutella Bread Puddings are very rich tasting and not too sweet. There is quite a lot of Nutella - a creamy chocolate hazelnut spread - in the bread pudding mixture, so these have a nice hazelnut flavor to the, as well as a good chocolate flavor. Adding in some chocolate chips really ups the amount of chocolate you taste in each bite - especially when this bread pudding is served hot and the chips are still melty. These are also tasty when chilled, though leftovers will heat up well in the microwave.

These puddings are easy enough to make for everyday occasions, but they make a fantastic and easy-to-make special occasion dessert as well. Valentine’s Day and anniversaries in particular are perfect for a chocolaty dessert like this, where you can give your loved one his or her own serving, or the two of you can split one. I like these plain, but a little dollop of whipped cream or even a bit of vanilla ice cream melting on top of a hot bread pudding would really finish things off well. (more…)