LUCY BURDETTE: Yesterday we had a very serious but important topic--I hope you won't get whiplash as we pivot today toward holiday food mode!
I suspect many of you are either running around like Key West chickens today getting everything ready for your celebrations. Or maybe curled up in a ball with a book wishing the whole thing was over? Today's cake is capital P Perfect for the holiday season—here’s why: Putting the cake together is a snap. Plus it’s light and delicious and chocolate-y. And the frosting uses up a few of your extra candy canes—and it goes perfectly with chocolate! Last minute company or dessert conundrum? No problem! So here goes...
I suspect many of you are either running around like Key West chickens today getting everything ready for your celebrations. Or maybe curled up in a ball with a book wishing the whole thing was over? Today's cake is capital P Perfect for the holiday season—here’s why: Putting the cake together is a snap. Plus it’s light and delicious and chocolate-y. And the frosting uses up a few of your extra candy canes—and it goes perfectly with chocolate! Last minute company or dessert conundrum? No problem! So here goes...
1/2 cup butter, aka one stick
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup good-quality powdered cocoa
1 egg
1/2 cup milk with 1 tablespoon cider vinegar stirred in
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup boiling water
Vanilla Candy Cane Frosting
3 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp milk
2-3 candy canes
2-3 candy canes
When the cake is cool, slather on the icing and decorate any other way you choose! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!
What are you up to today?
Yum! Thanks, Lucy, this sounds delicious . . . and it’s perfect for the holidays.
ReplyDeleteToday we are traveling home from Virginia where we celebrated an early Christmas with our daughter and grandchildren. Holiday time is always filled with specialness . . . .
safe travels Joan! I never mind celebrating early--it makes the season less hectic.
DeleteYesterday I got my granddaughter to the airport to fly home for Christmas break. Several hours later my husband flew in from his out of town consulting job. This morning we’re having a breakfast meeting with our new financial advisor. Then we’re hitting the road to look at some land for sale a few counties over. We’re invited to some friends’ this evening for what I suspect is a solstice party. Not sure I’ll be up for it by then. I’m thinking about baking cookies but that will be a Sunday or Monday project. Thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteThat's a busy day Pat! Hope you make it to the solstice party...or else have a relaxing evening.
DeleteLucy, yum! Your cake looks so good! It's funny how I found myself reading recipes Before I read your post with the bundt cake recipe. I found a great recipe for pumpkin bread. I had been wanting to bake pumpkin bread. I had a can of plain pumpkin so I doubled the measurements of the spices (cinnamon, clover, ginger, nutmeg) and it was yummy. I used gluten free all purpose flour since I cannot have wheat nor dairy. The pumpkin bread was delicious! The recipe was from a cookbook written by Mayim Blakik (sp?)
ReplyDeleteIt's so fun modifying recipes and trying them out. I am going to modify your recipe and see what happens. I love chocolate. I was thinking that I would love to find a great recipe for gingerbread cookies. I found a possibility in the Harry Potter cookbook for chewy ginger biscuits, which is the British equivalent of American cookies.
As far as I know, I think it's ok for me to eat chocolate.
The holiday season is when you sample lots of delicious treats.
Diana
Diana, you are such a good sport about your dietary limitations. Let me know how the chocolate cake works out. And I love that you found the right cookie recipe in a Harry Potter cookbook!
DeleteSounds delicious to me!
ReplyDeleteYUM! If I wasn't frantically trying to meet two deadlines, I'd attempt it!
ReplyDeleteYou can save the recipe for deadline reward Annette!
DeleteGood morning! I have one son in the house and we'll be baking cookies most of the day. That cake sounds perfect.
ReplyDeleteHave a great day Edith!
DeleteWow, I have to tell you, I actually considered baking that! It looks amazing Today, yes, I am shopping :-) But my step daughter is in town, hooray, and we are so thrilled with that. Plus, weather report, it’s about a million below zero.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your family Hank! And stay warm
DeleteLast night I made Forgotten Cookies aka meringues. I am not making a Clementine Cake (made with almond meal and hence gluten free) this year as there will only be four of us. I am buying a gluten free pecan pie ( found a bakery here that is gluten free!) Today I make the sweet potato soufflé and the spinach madeleine. On Monday I rest and on Tuesday we take it all to Knoxville to my husband's sister and brother-in-law. I love family!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a wonderful celebration! I am very intrigued by the spinach Madeline
DeleteIt's a Mississippi Delta and LA thing. It's a version of creamed spinach with the addition of pepper jack cheese melted in. My mother -in-law was from Greenville, MS. You can Google the recipe. It's really good.
DeleteThis looks tasty and festive... cake from scratch isn’t something I’ve done in ages. My Children and grands arrive tonight.... will bake with the little ones! Hanukkah and Christmas cookies
ReplyDeleteI know you will have a blast! We were so busy in California that we never baked a thing. Will do that when they come in February
DeleteI used to make a similar "Road Oil" cake in a sheet pan, which also included boiling water as an ingredient. Three kids arrive today and two more tomorrow. I baked yesterday--three dozen chocolate chunk Nutella cookies and two dozen muffins. Bon Appetit!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see your recipe for the chocolate chunk Nutella cookies. I make one but I'm always thinking there might be a better one out there!
DeleteIt's from the Washington Post but the WaPo search system isn't working. Like a Toll House cookie with 1/4 cup Nutella added, 60% cacao bittersweet choc chips roughly chopped, 1/2 cup chopped pecans.
DeleteThank you, Margaret!
DeleteLucy, that cakes looks so good and it is so easy there's no excuse not to make it!
ReplyDeleteWe have landed after a frenetic week which included a 6 hour drive through a snow storm. Living in snow country is not for the weak. The drivers award to my husband, (Mr 93 years old), who drove the whole journey with cool and care. Oh, yes, it's only 140 miles when the Nav doesn't misbehave. Yesterday was a short drive to our family as I was the designated chef for our younger grandsons 15th birthday. His request? Chocolate chip cookies and black bean chicken, duly delivered. He is such a delight to be with. So if there is more baking it will need to be of the GF sort but Lucy/Roberta, the cake looks amazing, perhaps I'll borrow a Bundt pan and try it. I'm not a great baker, as having baked the CC cookies without burning them, I went to the next task; delicious lemon loaves. How is it possible to read a recipe several times carefully. Follow said recipe carefully, Fill the pans, into the oven, and forget to add the final ingredient? Well Julia got one of the loaves so we can all await her comments!
ReplyDeleteOh there is nothing worse than putting something in the oven and realizing you forgot the sugar or the vanilla or some other critical ingredient. Thank goodness your hub doesn’t mind driving in the snow – I would have gone mad! I’m a terrible passenger and a timid snow driver
DeleteCelia, isn't it fun when your grandkid enjoys your cooking? My grandson will also be 15 soon, and it's such a fun age.
DeleteRoberta, I usually forget to dot the butter in fruit pies.
I always forget to dot the butter. Wonder what it adds? We’ll never know!
DeleteYesterday and tomorrow: baking. Shortbread and mandelbrot and bûches de Noël.
ReplyDeleteToday: Singalong Messiah.
That sounds like a wonderful couple of days! Enjoy the Messiah
DeleteTomorrow must be baking day for all of us! Interesting that so many people have Celiac disease. My sister-in-law was diagnosed about ten years ago after becoming acutely ill, took several biopsies to figure out what was so wrong with her. And the options were limited for gluten free goods then. Imagine and Italian who can't eat pasta. But its so much better now. There are whole sections in our grocery stores for gluten free food.
ReplyDeleteLucy Roberta, I make a chocolate cake very much like your recipe. It's the boiling water that does the trick, some chemical reaction with the cocoa that gives such a great chocolate flavor. And I use Hershey's! I'll try that candy cane icing next time for sure.
We are out today but tomorrow I shall bake. Mince pies, sausage rolls, and maybe that chocolate cake? And there's date nut breads in the freezer to be brought out. TCare packages will mostly get sent to our neighbors on both sides and across the street. I seem to be the only living producer of sausage rolls on the Eastern seaboard, never mind mince pies. Rhys, I could use your help in the assembly line here!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blest Solstice and whatever else you may celebrate. Winter is here. Let's all sing one chorus of "In the Bleak Midwinter".
I will skip the mince pie – the only one who liked it in our family was my father, and he did not pass that trait along. However one day I am going to make the sausage rolls!
ReplyDeleteLucy, that cake looks fab. And I could even do it. I think... I have a bundt pan. Putting fresh cocoa powder and candy canes on my shopping list!
ReplyDeleteGreat use for candy canes! They're so festive and pretty, but who actually eats them?
ReplyDeleteI usually save them for homemade peppermint ice cream in the summer, which has become a family favorite over the years. We were given an electric ice cream maker as a wedding gift, and so I make ice cream at least once every summer.
We are traveling to Christmas, and my daughter requested a pie. So last night I assembled a blackberry pie from berries picked at the farm. It's in the freezer, ready to go with us and get baked fresh on Christmas Eve.
Today I'm running last-minute errands and doing the last big of shopping for the babies in the family: two sets of siblings--one girls and one boys--each with a four-year old and a six- or seven-month old. I'm thinking books. And I have to get a big platter of my daughter's favorite bakery cookies, too.
Happy Hannukah/weekend before Christmas to all!
I actually do eat a candy cane during the season, Karen. I found some nice large individually purchased ones and break off a chunk.
DeleteThe cake sounds delicious, Lucy! If Deb discovers that she doesn't have a bundt pan, she can borrow mine.
ReplyDeleteFor me, today is the first day of a long, much-needed break. I had the Christmas concert on Monday. (If you're sorry you missed that, check out the Dallas Winds' "Horns for the Holidays" CD. The music is lovely and the liner notes are outstanding.) You would think I'd get to relax once the concert was over, but no. I had two major deadlines looming. They actually fall in January but I wanted to get them taken care of before Christmas because . . . I have a two-week break!
The Dallas Winds usually closes the office the week between Christmas and New Years but this year, because both holidays fall in the middle of the week, my boss decided to give us both weeks! Hooray! I may be baking, and cleaning, and celebrating with friends, but I have made a promise to myself that I will spend those precious days writing. Wish me luck! And happy Winter Solstice. The light WILL come back!
We do wish you luck writing! Hope it goes well with the two week chunk
DeleteThat cake has me DROOLING. I'm going to try it after Christmas, when all the canday canes go on sale for $.50 a box.
ReplyDeleteToday: cleaning, decorating, shopping. I was up with the sun on this shortest day, which makes me feel terribly accomplished already.
As long as you don’t have to go down with the sun as well! That would be an early night in Maine
DeleteToday is brass and silver polishing, putting bows on wreaths and putting those drippy candles in holders prepping for Christmas Eve at Church. If I bake it will be James Beard's chocolate brownies with crushed candy canes sprinkled on top as they come out of the oven and that wouldn't be until Sunday. Today I need to retrieve a box I stored at the office and try to make the apartment look a bit more festive. Okay, I'm late, off to dry out my hands with brass polish.
ReplyDeleteI bet your church will be beautiful! And the brownies with candy canes on top sound delicious
DeleteYum! That cake looks delicious, Lucy! I'm planning on trying a new cake for Christmas dinner this year. It's Cherry Cheesecake Chocolate Bundt Cake. Here's the recipe: https://tiphero.com/cherry-cheesecake-chocolate-bundt-cake
ReplyDeleteToday, I'm getting ready to put some chicken breasts in the crockpot to use in a chicken casserole later. I don't know why I'm in a cooking mood before I have to fix the Christmas dishes. Thursday I fixed meatloaf and mashed potatoes that lasted two nights. Well, last night we had meatloaf sandwiches (yum). I hope to get some packages wrapped today, too.
How funny Kathy, we had meatloaf sandwiches last night too!
ReplyDeleteAren't they great, Lucy!
DeleteGIMME GIMME GIMME!
ReplyDeleteWhat a pretty cake! I'm in charge of music at my church and I'm feeling very run down right now prepping for the Christmas service. I usually make a variety of all my favorite candies and cookies at Christmas but I gave myself a break this year and just made some very easy fudge. It's so nice to allow myself to simplify.
ReplyDelete