Black Forest Cake Balls

A few months ago a friend was lamenting the lack of authentic Black Forest Cake options at our local pastry haunts.  Being in a heavily Italian pastry kind of place, it's not all that surprising.  So I promised to provide her with an as-close-to-authentic-as-this-little-Italian-could-make-it Black Forest Cake.

The perfect opportunity for making my friend the long promised cake finally arose but, it wasn't really the best situation for a three-layer cake.  I had to improvise, deciding to modify the recipe I had planned to use and make cake balls instead.

Cake balls are one of those things that I enjoy eating but, I never had much interest in making myself.  As far as I was concerned, they are one step too far over the line for me.  Making a multi-layered cake is just easier.  You don't have to frustrate yourself trying to keep the chocolate melted while you dip an endless number of balls.  I enjoy a challenge, but a girl has to draw the line somewhere. 

In the end I relented - my friend is worth the frustration and I did make a promise. So I provided a quite tasty, but less than authentic dessert for a pot luck dinner.

Black Forest Cake Balls

Ingredients:

Cake

1 2⁄3 c. all-purpose flour
2⁄3 c. cocoa powder
1 1⁄2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1⁄2 c. shortening
1 1⁄2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1⁄2 c. buttermilk

Filling

1/2 c. Kirschwasser

1 c. frozen cherries - pitted

Icing

2 c. heavy whipping cream
1⁄2 tsp. vanilla
1⁄8 c. Kirschwasser
2 Tbsp dry milk
2 Tbsp icing sugar

Dark chocolate melting wafer

Directions:

In a mason jar, combine the frozen cherries and 1/2 cup of Kirschwasser.  Place in the fridge overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350F and line the bottom of three 9 inch round cake pans with parchment paper.

Sift the dry cake ingredients together.

Cream the shortening and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients alternately with the buttermilk and mix well.

Pour evenly into the cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean.

Remove the cakes and set aside to cool completely. 

Whip the cream until it forms stiff peaks then gently fold in the dry milk and icing sugar.

Add the vanilla and pour in the Kirsch until it's a good consistency.

Now comes the messy bit.  Take 1 of the cakes and remove it from the tin.  Place it in a bowl and combine with a about 1/2 of icing.  Mix well and repeat with each layer of cake. Add as much icing as you feel is necessary and you get a good truffle-like consistency.

Not going to lie, I had a hard time not sitting down in the from the television and eating all of this myself.  If you are good, you will continue on with the instructions.

Take out the mason jar with the cherries and drain the excess liquid.  Cut the cherries in half (optional).

Take a good sized spoonful and create a cup to hold one of the cherries (or cherry halves).

Cover with more cake.

Repeat until you have no more cake left.  

Melt the chocolate wafers and dip each ball.

Repeat until finished!

I ended up with just over 2 dozen cake balls.  The kirschwasser added just a hint of flavor, the taste of alcohol was not defining taste at all.  I'm not a fan of overly alcoholic rum balls, so I was purposely going for a hint versus whoa alcohol.  These were well worth the effort.  They are not too sweet, not too chocolaty (if there is such a thing), they are just right! 

Torino Pudding

Where do I begin.  First, I should probably tell you what a Torino Pudding actually is: chestnuts and chocolate.  Sounds simple right?  Nope, not when it's prepared the Maria Luisa way.  If you are going to start your directions with "peel chestnuts," you might want to consider telling us how.  Maybe chestnuts of the 1950s were not the hard shelled, impossible to peel items they are in the 2010s?  My guess is that they were, but for some reason Maria Luisa didn't see chestnut peeling tips and tricks as an essential element to her directions.  Even though an essential ingredient is chestnuts, but whatever.  I'm a resourceful girl, I figured it out.  Thankfully, the chestnut is not a foreign object in my world.

My fondest memory of chestnuts is from my day spent walking around Cluj-Napoca, Romania.  I was there visiting my host brother and his roommate, a stop-over on my way to Budapest.  It was the beginning of November and the air had that perfect crisp fall feel.  The downtown area of Cluj is quite typical of a city center.  There are shops, restaurants, cultural attractions, and street vendors.  I experienced my very first roasted chestnut vendor that day and I will always remember walking around Cluj while snacking on chestnuts.  Sorry, but I will take Cluj and chestnuts over Times Square and a pretzel any day.

Okay, back to the recipe at hand.  By the time I was finished peeling the chestnuts and turning them into paste, my fingers looked like Freddy Kreuger had taken his best shot at them.  And I still had to grate the chocolate.  This recipe is a bit insane.  It is simple in the fact that it does not require many ingredients and the act of combining them is basic - mix and chill.  It's the prep work to get to that stage that is a complete ____ .  I actually brought the pudding to Thanksgiving dinner and, no lie, told everyone that if they did not like it I did not want to know.  After all the stress of making the thing I probably would have cried if even a single person had told me they were not a fan.  Thankfully, that did not come to pass and everyone said they really enjoyed it. So hopefully, if you are brave enough to attempt it as well, you and those you share it with will agree,

Torino Pudding

Budino Torinese

Ingredients:

1 lb chestnuts

6 Tbsp butter

1/2 c. sugar

1/4 tsp. vanilla

3 oz. sweet chocolate - grated

Directions:

Peel chestnuts and cook in salted water for 10 minutes.  Drain and remove second skin rapidly so that they do not become cold.  Place peeled chestnuts in boiling salted water and cook for 30 minutes or until they are very soft.  

I'm not kidding, she started with "peel chestnuts."  There are several steps that should happen before you even get to the first level peel stage.  Fresh chestnuts cannot just be peeled; the shell is literally stuck to the meat of the chestnut.  If you are able to peel off the outer shell then you need to throw it out because it is most likely starting to rot from the inside out.

So, with that in mind, I'm going to tell you what worked for me.  There are plenty of instructions online, with and without video accompaniment, to aide this effort.  You can pick whatever works for you.  I cut an X into the flattest part of the chestnut and then boiled them for 20 minutes.  I started peeling them, keeping the water on a simmer.  If I was having trouble peeling both the outer shell and second skin, I peeled what I could and then back into the water it went.  Now, this is not the easiest way to go.  The softer the chestnut gets, the more likely it is that the meat will break apart as you peel.  That's great when you consider that you will have to sieve them next, not so great when you are trying to peel off the second skin.  The last thing that skin wants is to be peeled.  It will fight you the entire time.  Good luck.

Eventually you will be left with the chestnut meat and that bad boy needs to be turned to paste.  Yay!  A fine mesh strainer and the back of a spoon will be tedious but effective.  On the plus side, you'll have forearms of steel.

Once you've survived phase one, my suggestion is to forge ahead with grating your chocolate. If you interrupt the tedious bits with the easier bits, you'll lose steam and risk giving up on the whole endeavor.  You've made it this far, do not give in!

I used Baker's German Sweet Chocolate.  It comes in a nice 4 ounce bar, you just need to break off the last 4 pieces and you will have exactly 3 ounces ready to be grated.  I used my cheese grater for this job and it works find.  I also froze the chocolate beforehand to try and prevent it from melting in my hand.  It was effective, but that meant it felt like I was trying to grate concrete.  But let me repeat - it worked.

Now, we get to the easy stuff.  Cream butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until completely blended.  Add the chestnut paste, grated chocolate, and vanilla.  Blend well.  

Line a mold (I used my bundt pan) with foil and fill with the chestnut mixture.

Even the top with the back of a spoon and cover.  Place in the refrigerator for at least four hours.  Full disclosure: I made this on the Monday evening before Thanksgiving.  It sat in the mold until Thursday morning.  This recipe will keep, if well covered, for up to a week.

When you are ready to serve, turn out onto your serving dish and remove foil.

Not the most appetizing looking food but it tastes like chocolate and chestnuts, which is really all that matters.  This is a actually a fairly rich dessert.  If it's been well blended it will be nice and smooth.  Using the German chocolate keeps it from being too sweet and overpowering the chestnut.  

Chocolate Nut Bark

I'm not really sure where the urge for nut bark came from but I found myself looking at a package of sunflower seeds wondering, do I keep munching on them or should I do something else with them?  Then it dawned on me...there is chocolate in the pantry!  Score!  I probably could have saved this for a few months from now when people are trying to decide how they can make a lot of Christmas presents for minimal cost and effort, but nah.  Maybe I'll do a fancier version or bust out a biscotti recipe for a "if you want to bake everyone's Christmas gift" post.  Have I ruined your August yet reminding you that holiday chaos and stressful gift shopping are just around the corner?  Sorry.

Back to my point...chocolate nut bark.  So easy, so tasty.  It is also great because really, you can make so many different combinations and they all taste fantastic.  Do a little dark chocolate with almonds and dried mango chunks.  How about milk chocolate with cashews and dried pineapple?  Maybe white chocolate with hazelnuts and dried cranberries is more your speed?  Either way, they are all made they same and it will take you 5 minutes of real effort and 30 minutes of waiting.  Howe great is that.

Today's offering is a very simple milk chocolate with almond slices and raw sunflower seeds...

Ingredients:

12 oz milk chocolate chips
1/4 c. almond slices
1/2 c. sunflower seeds

Directions:

In the microwave, using a large microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips. You can also melt the chocolate over the stove using a double boiler.  I took the microwave shortcut, heating the chips in 30 second intervals for a total of 2 minutes.  You do want to be check periodically because you do not want to burn the chocolate.

Place parchment paper onto a 9x13 inch baking sheet and spread out the melted chocolate.

Sprinkle the nuts on top and then mix into the chocolate.  Yes, it would be much easier to put the nuts into the bowl with the melted chocolate, mix it in the bowl, and then spread it onto the lined baking sheet.  I decided however, to not do this the easy way... go figure.

Place in the refrigerator to harden for 30 minutes.  Take it out and break it into chunks.

This might not be the prettiest thing ever created, but it is darn tasty.  I did mention before that these hunks of chocolaty goodness could be used as an easy gift.  Put a few pieces in a decorative cellophane bag with a cute bow and say "happy birthday" to your favorite chocolate lover.  Or, you can do what I do...greedily hide them in a corner of the kitchen so no one else but you gets to eat them. Whatever floats your boat as long as you enjoy!

Dark Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

I am a bit of a chocoholic... if it's chocolate, I will eat it... if it's chocolate, it will last about two seconds in my presence.  Recently, I rediscovered the greatness that is Terry's Dark Chocolate Orange Balls.  Honestly, how can you not enjoy a piece of chocolate that requires you to physically assault it before consumption?  I'm not lying... it's motto, written on the box, is "whack it and unwrap it".  For those of us feeling stressed out and only a piece of chocolate will do, it has my vote.

My brother happens to agree with me so, when he graduated college I decided I would bring dark chocolate orange cupcakes to his graduation party as my present.  I was worried though about how they might taste, so I turned everyone in my immediate area into taste testers for my various trials. 

I found a dark chocolate cupcake recipe I really liked from Sally's Baking Addiction and then went to the wonderful world of Google to see how other bakers have flavored their cupcakes.  Every recipe I came across used the juice of 1 orange but, I was curious to see if extract would give a bolder flavor.  Round 1 was split - half batch with the juice of an orange, half batch with orange extract.  They came out fine and were tasty but, you couldn't really taste the orange.  You could smell it but the flavor was not quite there.  Round 2 was a combination and that was the winner.  I got overwhelmingly positive reviews from friends when I brought them to dinner.  Therefore, the following recipe is from round 2.

Ingredients:

Cupcake:

1 stick unsalted butter

2 oz. special dark chocolate chips

1/2 c. unsweetened natural cocoa powder

3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 large eggs - room temperature

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/4 c. packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon orange extract

1/2 c. buttermilk

Frosting:

3 c. confectioners sugar

4 tbsp milk

1 stick margarine - softened

Zest of 1 orange

Orange food coloring (instructions should be on the box)

Directions:

Cupcake:

Preheat oven to 350F degrees and line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring each time. It took me 1 minute total to melt the butter and chocolate in my microwave. Set aside to cool down.

In a medium bowl, mix the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt until thoroughly combined.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, granulated sugar, brown sugar, juice, and orange extract together until smooth.

Add cooled butter/chocolate and whisk again until smooth.

Add half of the flour mixture, then half of the buttermilk. Repeat, then stir until combined. Be mindful not to over mix. The batter will be very thick and when scooped, will resemble a mousse.

Fill the liners 2/3 of the way full with batter. Bake for 18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

In a medium bowl, put sugar, milk butter, and zest.  Beat together using a handheld mixer on a low speed until thoroughly combined.  Add food coloring and then mix again.

Using the standard food coloring colors, you will get a nice sunset orange.

When I made this recipe, I ended up with 14 cupcakes.  They come out nice and soft.  These are a must try for any cupcake lover!