Chocoholic Anonymous

Welcome to the final TWD installment of 2008.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season; I know I am!  I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to participate this week since I am still out of town visiting family, but my mother graciously permitted me to take over her kitchen long enough to make Anne’s  (of AnneStrawberry) choice of Tall and Creamy Cheesecake (found on pages 235-237 of Dorie’s Baking: From My Home to Yours).

Since I’m sitting in my mother’s kitchen on a laptop essentially ignoring my family long enough to write this, I’m going to do my best to keep it short.

Cheesecake is definitely rated among my favorite desserts so I was excited to make this one.  For the most part I followed the recipe as it was written, but I couldn’t resist making a few changes…

Read more…

We have a winner!

After the disappointment of the Deep Dark Rich Chocolate Fudge cake, we had to scramble to try out new recipes.  Would you believe we got lucky with the very first one we tried?  This recipe is adapted from one that I found on Epicurious.  I was a little hesitant to try it because the user reviews were a mixed bag ranging from people claiming it was a dry crumbly disaster to people claiming it was the best chocolate cake they had ever made or tasted.

I decided it probably fell somewhere in the middle and hoped that it fell closer to the positve side of that bell curve. I chose to give it a whirl, after all, what is the worst that could happen?  But, I did take the Epicurious reader comments to heart and adjusted the recipe accordingly.

Read more…

If you remember, in my first post I said I would be sharing my trials and tribulations as well as my successes on this blog.  Despite the absolutely divine sounding name of this cake, it unfortunately does fall into the “trials and tribulations” category.

First, I’d like give you all a little bit of background on why I was attempting this cake.  In just under two weeks “Prince Charming” and I are getting married.  I’m sure you’re wondering now what that has to do with attempting a new cake recipe.  Well, back when “Prince Charming” proposed, I asked my mother if we could make my wedding cake as a  mother-daughter project and she agreed (Thank you mom!).  My mother is absolutely amazing in the kitchen and she has done some wedding and anniversary cakes in the past (including my little brother’s wedding cake) that have been just phenomenal.

Since my entire wedding is Fairy Tale themed, you can imagine that the cake I designed isn’t exactly simple or straight forward…

Read more…