chocolate

Blood Orange Cake, Dark Chocolate Ganache and Candied Oranges

February 2, 2018 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Confession: so, until a few weeks ago I’d never eaten a blood orange. I’d seen them in magazines, and decided they were gorgeous but probably not very yummy since I’ve never really been a fan of oranges anyway. But after tasting them, I’m eating my words these days (AND ALL the blood oranges I can get my hands on). In fact, I celebrated turning 35 by testing out a flavor combination that I was pretty sure would be dynamite… blood oranges and dark chocolate. OH y’all. It’s a grown-up cake for feeling like a real grown up. It takes a few steps but not nearly as many as a Momofuku layer cake and it’s absolutely worth it for a special occasion.

NOTES about this cake: Make sure to make the candied oranges the day before as they take a while to harden

Also, the ganache takes a little while to harden, so plan to put the cake in the fridge after frosting, or wait a few hours.

Lastly, this type of cake dries out quickly.. so if you don’t eat it immediately, make sure to wrap it up tightly and put it in the fridge.

Blood Orange Cake, Dark Chocolate Ganache and Candied Oranges

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Prep time

2 hours

Cook time

2 hours

Total time

4 hours

Author: Biz Harris

Recipe type: Dessert

Serves: 1-3 Layer Cake

What You Need

CANDIED BLOOD ORANGES
2 blood oranges, scrubbed and sliced into ¼" rounds with the peel on
2 Cups Water
1 Cup sugar
2 Tablespoons Corn syrup
2 tsp Bourbon
BLOOD ORANGE CHIFFON CAKE
2 Cups cake flour (leveled)
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1½ Cups sugar
½ Cups coconut oil, melted
6 Large eggs, separated
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
Finely grated zest of 4 Blood Oranges
1 Cup fresh orange juice (from the blood oranges. About 4-6 oranges, depending on size)
CHOCOLATE GANACHE
¾ bag to 1 entire bag of dark chocolate chips (or 16 oz of other dark chocolate, rough chopped)
1 16 oz can coconut cream, OR 2 Cans of Full Fat coconut milk, unshaken and unemulsified with the cream skimmed off the top
1 Tablespoon blood orange zest

What to Do

FOR the CANDIED BLOOD ORANGES
Boil the water and add the sugar and corn syrup.
Wisk the sugars in the water until dissolved.
Add in the orange slices, not letting them touch one another.
Let them simmer for one hour, and then remove from the water onto a rack. You can either wait 24 hours for them to cool and dry OR put them in a crock pot on low for 4 hours, then in the refrigerator for 1 hour. I imagine 100 degrees in an oven would do the same thing.
FOR the BLOOD ORANGE CHIFFON CAKE
Preheat oven to 325 degrees and oi/flour 3 8" cakepans or 1 10" cake pan.
In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 cup sugar together.
Make a well in center of flour mixture.
Add oil, egg yolks, orange zest and juice, and ¼ cup cold water; whisk batter until smooth.
With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, whisk egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.
Gradually add the remaining ½ cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time; continue to beat until stiff peaks form.
Using a spatula, gently fold half of egg-white mixture into batter. Fold in remaining egg-white mixture just until combined.
Pour equal amounts into each cake pan, and bake at 325 degrees for 35 mins or until the top is brown, the sides slightly pull away from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean.
Let cool slightly.
FOR the CHOCOLATE GANACHE
Heat the coconut cream over medium-low heat until it steams.
Add in the chocolate and zest and stir continuously until it has melted entirely and the combination turns a dark, creamy brown.
Remove from heat.
PUT IT TOGETHER
Using a bread knife (or better yet, an electric knife) cut off the tops of each cake until they are entirely flat (it feels sad to loose this much of the cake, but it's how to make it look even).
Spread a thin layer of ganache over the top of each layer and stack each one on top of the other.
Spread a layer of ganache over the sides and top of the cake, let stand for 30 minutes to slightly harden. This will be your "crumb layer" which will serve to keep all the crumbs from mixing with the ganache.
Once the ganache has hardened on the cake slightly, spread another layer on the top and sides of the cake.
Garnish with the candied orange slices. You may serve warm, OR wait until the ganache hardens entirely.
If you wait to eat it, make sure to wrap the cake tightly and put it in the refrigerator since this type of cake dries out quickly. It can also be wrapped tightly in saran wrap and frozen for over a month.

You can see here how the warm ganache seeped into the warm cake… heaven!

Freeze State of Jones: Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Sandwiches

April 19, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 1 Comment

When I was a kid, the ice cream truck (called The Bootsy Wagon) would drive around our neighborhood maybe once a week in the summer, and I would FREAK OUT. I never had money–I mean, I was outside playing in the dirt. What seven year old has money in that situation?– and it would inevitably speed by my house too fast for me to get it to stop, but when I did catch it I’d get a mickey mouse bar or chocolate-vanilla ice cream sandwich and eat it as it dripped down my fingers and chin.

Pure summer kid joy.

Brett would giggle and didn’t believe that the Ice Cream truck company was called the Bootsy Wagon, (He thought my references to it were some folksy, Mississippi way of saying “Ice Cream Truck” like I say “buggy” instead of grocery cart.) Then he read in a corporate donor report that The Bootsy Wagon was a Mississippi Black Owned Business based in Ellisville, Mississippi. Vindicated.

Anyway, since I started making my homemade ice cream six years ago, I’ve been nursing this crazy unlikely dream that one day I’ll own a tiny ice cream truck and be able to bring joy and happiness to children in the summertime.

I don’t know about all that (yet.) but I DO know that I’m having some progress on the portable ice cream sandwich situation… This chocolate-mint ice cream sandwich is WHERE it’s AT. Make them knowing full well you’ll want to eat them all in one sitting.

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The Freeze State of Jones: Ice Cream Sandwich Perfection

March 24, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

I had this crazy idea that what I needed in my life were more ice cream sandwiches. Not like regular old ice cream sandwiches but like, creamy, sweet but maybe tangy buttermilk ice cream madness in between huge, chewy, slightly salty chocolate chip cookies. I’m not sure how this idea struck me, but once it had taken hold there was absolutely no turning back. I couldn’t stop thinking about it or talking about it… and if you make these I’m pretty sure you’ll feel EXACTLY the same way. These babies are like the ice cream sandwich version of heaven and every twist and turn on my journey to making them was worth it. Come with me!

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Midnight Snack Perfection: Fudgey Chocolate Pecan Brownies

March 3, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

The fellas in our house have a serious sweet tooth around, say, 10pm. They always want just a little taste of chocolate, and sometimes they squirrel away tootsie rolls, Oreos, or whatever little snack they can to munch on while everyone else is tucked in bed. We had a brand new carton of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream and a bag of pecans, so it just seemed right to make a batch of fudgey, gooey brownies that would be perfect for sundaes before I went away to the Southern Foodways Alliance Food & Media event last weekend…. as a little thank you for making sure my little guy didn’t miss me TOO much.

This was a super duper easy recipe, and if you’ve got a nut allergy or just aren’t into pecans, then you can leave them out and still make a killer brownie sundae. Also, I added a little coffee and bourbon since people swear that coffee HAS to be added to chocolate, and because I love bourbon, but I can’t totally swear that they made a huge difference. Since they were so good, though, I can’t say that they didn’t.

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Buttermilk Chocolate Chip Cake with Espresso-chocolate Frosting

February 11, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

So, this was my 33rd birthday cake.

I know. It kinda makes me want to turn 33 forever, right?

As we hosted a thank-you dinner party for some neighbors and friends on my actual birthday, my mama decided that I should have my very own birthday cake a week later (but really, now that I have a baby of my own, I know the real truth: birthdays are for mamas. Mamas are born the same moment their babies are, and will forever remember the entire day, or many, many hours that it took to get that little person–now a 33 year old woman who’s got a baby of her own– into the world. Celebrating a birthday is as special to the birthday girl or boy, if not more special, to her or his mama. At least that’s how my wonderful, selfless, perfect mama is.) This is my mama.Also, she’s an INCREDIBLE french bread baker, and artist, and the most precise person I know, but cake baking and cake-decorating isn’t so much her thing. She’s also still recovering from chemo, and surgery, and radiation several months ago, but she STILL made me this incredible chocolatey layer cake in the style of Momofuko milk bar (and based on her chocolate chip-passionfruit cake.) I don’t deserve my mama, y’all. If you want to show someone the love you have for them, and if food is your love language, then this cake is one sure-fire way to do it.

But about the cake……

The real deal…Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie

January 13, 2014 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

My mother in law, Shirley is an INCREDIBLE baker. A serious sweets maker. A sugar-craving away-taker.
So when she asked me to chip into the Thanksgiving preparations by making a pecan pie I felt more than a little nervous… thankfully, she was making an apple AND a pumpkin pie just in case.

She also made enough crust so I could just use the flaky pastry she’s perfected over the years…which meant that I was really just in charge of the filling. I wanted to jazz up the standard pecan pie recipe she had just a bit, so I combined a couple of recipes that looked good and ended up with a Chocolate. Bourbon. Pecan. Pie. that was the real deal for people who need a little something (or a lot of something) sweet after ALL the thanksgiving gorging.

I wanted to share the recipe here since it was really tasty AND I was able to get Shirley’s fantastic pie crust recipe with tips and notes straight from the horse’s mouth. Read on because it’s hard to find a foolproof pie crust recipe AND because I promise this pie isn’t only good in November.

Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie

Serves 8-ish

What you need:

For the Pie Crust…

1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 Cup plus 1 Tablespoon of Crisco or other shortening
2 Tablespoons of cool water

For the filling…

2 cups pecan halves or pieces
3 large eggs, beaten
1/4 Cup butter, melted
1/2 cup dark corn syrup
1 cup sugar
2-3 tablespoons good-quality bourbon

2 teaspoons vanilla

2/3 Cup semisweet chocolate chips

What you Do:

Preheat your oven to 325.

Once that’s done we’ll get started with the crust… Shirley’s favorite recipe comes from a super Classic Betty Crocker cookbook. It’s clear that this book has been used and loved and cooked from for decades, and her pies are always SO good there’s no need to fix something that isn’t broken.

To make the crust, mix your salt into the flour in a medium mixing bowl. Cut the shortening into the flour/salt mixture using a pastry cutter or a fork until the mixture is the size of peas. Shirley uses a fork, and works just right, so if you don’t have a pastry cutter, don’t fret or run out and buy one. (this is Shirley, hard at work.)

Add in the water, one Tablespoon at a time, sprinkling it around the flour/shortening mixture and stirring/working it into the flour with the fork until it’s moistened. At this point, you’ll need to get your hands in it (or WANT to… we’re making pie crust here!) Gather the dough together with your hands until it releases from the sides of the bowl.

Press it into a ball. Whatever you do, don’t overwork the dough… this means, just press the dough enough in your hands to make it a ball.. anything more than that, you’re overworking it.

Now, lightly flour your work surface and turn the ball of dough out onto it. Lightly flour the rolling pin and/or the top of the ball of dough so it won’t stick. No really… lightly flour this so you don’t work too much flour into the dough otherwise it’ll be too tough.

Flatten your dough ball just a little by hand, and then roll it out. If your dough cracks at the edges, you can work it back together with your hands.

Tip from Shirley: Roll the dough from the center of the ball OUTWARD so that your pie ends up a more uniform thickness.

You’ll need to roll the dough into a circle about 1/8″ thick. It’ll also need to be a 1″-2″ inches greater than the diameter of the pan. (so if your pan is 9″ in diameter, then you’ll want to have 10″ or 11″ circle of pie crust”

THIS IS TRICKY for the beginner, but you can do it! Make sure the top of the crust is lightly floured and fold the the dough circle in half to make a half-moon. Carefully (eeks!) lift the dough into your pie pan with the fold in the center and then unfold it to cover the entire pan. Lightly press the dough down onto the edges of the pan, and along the sides.
The dough will hang over the edge of the pan a little bit. It’s almost time to crimp the crust and make it pretty, but first you’ll want to roll the dough along the edges back under so that you have a little extra ridge of dough to work with. Then, you can take your thumbs and make an imprint with a little raised ridge between each. Continue around the pan using both thumbs. You can technically also use a fork for this if you want a different kind of edge, but Shirley crinkles her nose and shakes her head at this tactic.”Use your thumbs,” she says.

At this point you can set the pie crust aside and start on your filling. Pull all your ingredients together, since this is a dump and stir kind of deal.

Start by combining your eggs and sugar and mix well. Add in your corn syrup, vanilla, and bourbon and stir into the eggs, then add in your melted butter.

I added the pecans BEFORE the butter the first time, but I recommend adding the pecans and chocolate chips in last so that all of the liquid ingredients are able to mix and incorporate super well.

Pour the mixture into your pie crust and and bake at 325 degrees for about 45 minutes or until the filling sets. Let sit to firm up and cool for a about 10 minutes, then cut and serve (ideally with vanilla ice cream!)

Hope you like Shirley and my first cooking collaboration (the first of many!)

Bourbon Chocolate Cupcakes

February 10, 2012 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

with chocolate coconut milk ganache.

One of the first times i realized how completely and totally smitten i was with boone was a sunday in atlanta after church. afterwards we ended up at brunch at the flying biscuit, a quirky, crunchy brunch-lunch spot in decatur where everything is made from whole grains and is a little bit vegetarian and a little bit paula deen. i have absolutely no recollection of what we ate that day, but i remember sitting on the closed patio under an enormous heater when it was just a little too cold to be on any sort of patio and i remember laughing so hard. I remember lingering over my food so we could keep talking, and then slowly getting up from the table so some truly patient soul could finally eat.

all that is to say, the flying biscuit played a role in our courtship, and in several other friendships we built in the atl (right betty? craig? jen?) so i was glad to end up with boone’s mom’s copy of the flying biscuit cafe cookbook after a visit to north carolina.

i had an urge to bake last sunday after church and pulled out this cookbook to try the bourbon chocolate cake recipe i’d seen a few days before. bourbon has a special place in southern culture, so it seems fitting that a southern cake involve a little of the stuff. since it wasn’t anyone’s birthday, and since just the image of TWO people eating ONE cake gives me double chins, i went with cupcakes…much easier to share, to store, to eat without guilt.

a note about these little fellas: they are delicious and stay moist for days. also, if you eat one and go to a business meeting, people might just smell the alcohol on your breath and ask if you had a toddy. if you don’t want to share the cupcakes, don’t deny it.

What you need:

For the cake:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups hot (not boiled) bourbon

1/4 cup hot coffee

5 oz unsweetened baking chocolate

1.2 cup unsalted, softened butter

2 cups white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs at room temp.

For the ganache:

6 oz semisweet chocolate, cut into pieces

6 oz unsweetened coconut milk

you can also make the kind the flying biscuit tells you to make that involves 12 oz semisweet chocolate and 1 cup heavy cream, but this tasted AMAZING and involved significantly fewer calories.

What you do:

preheat that over to 275 and flour, line or spray your cake pan or muffin tins. (two 9″ cake pans or 24 cupcake tins) sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

after you cut up the chocolate and butter, combine it with the hot bourbon and coffee. Cover it and let is stand until the chocolate and butter are entirely melted.

this is what the bourbon looks like… can you smell it yet?

apparently my bourbon and my coffee weren’t hot enough (although they were steaming like crazy) so I had to pop it all in the microwave for a few seconds (don’t worry, i didn’t use the metal bowl.) once everything is melted, stir in the sugar and let it stand and cool. using a wire whisk, add the flour a little bit at a time , then add in the eggs and the vanilla. pour the batter into the cake pans, bake about 35-45 minutes, (or until a toothpick comes out clean and the cake bounces back after you push gently on it).

while you wait on the little fellas to bake (or cool, whatever) it’s time to make the ganache!this is so easy that you may think you’re doing it wrong…but no.
so, cut up your chocolate and heat up the coconut milk (or heavy cream) until it’s scalded but not boiling. pour it over your chocolate and stir until it’s completely melted. stir or whisk it to give it some body, and then let it cool. note: it WILL be runny at first, but as it cools it will become shiny and thick, and be completely spreadable. if you use heavy cream (but why bother?) you can use a mixer to beat the ganache until it’s fluffy, but seriously, why bother when people can’t even taste the coconut and think it’s the real thing? (true story).

spread the ganche over the cupcakes or cake, and voila’. a bourbon chocolate cupcake.

Murphy’s Tollhouse Pie

January 30, 2012 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

I turned twenty nine on Saturday (yikes!), and when my mama asked my what kind of birthday cake I wanted, I told her that I’d rather have a Tollhouse Pie like the one from one of my favorite Atlanta restaurants, Murphy’s. sure, there are “traditionally” southern establishments in ATL, but it IS in atlanta, and has been around for an unusually long time (I ate there with my debate team in high school, on my first Atlanta apartment hunting trip with my mom, and then again on an early date with boone), plus, it’s just delicious. Murphy’s is in my fave ATL neighborhood, the highlands, and is super close to the teeny basement apartment where boone proposed…and their tollhouse pie is. the. bomb. dot. com.

i know it was my own birthday dessert, but mama let me help with the baking since I love doing it but always feel like i need a really good reason to put so much labor and love into something so unhealthy. regardless, we had a great time baking–and then eating– that pie. read on for the recipe.

What you need:

For the Oreo Crust:

7/8 Cup (7 oz) fine Oreo crumbs

1/4 Cup chopped walnuts

1/4 Cup Salted (or unsalted, but salted works fine) Butter

For the Filling:
1 Cup Light brown sugar (had dark brown, and it works just fine)
6 tablespoons (3 oz) Granulated sugar
3/4 Cup (6 oz) Bread flour
4 eggs (the recipe doesn’t say, but I figure this is 4 med or 3 large)

5/8 Cup (5 oz) butter
5/8 Cup (5 oz)Chocolate chips
5/8 Cup (5 oz)White chips
5/8 Cup (5 oz) chopped Walnut pieces
we added 1/4 tsp of vanilla

What to do:
To make the crust, crush the oreo cookies without the cream into a fine powder using a food processor, (or better yet, use the pre-crushed oreo crumbs) Melt the butter and with the crumbs and nuts. Press into a 10” pie tin. Cool until hard.

Blend together with the paddle part of your mixer the brown and granulated sugar and the flour.

Add in the eggs, and then melt the butter for the filling and cool to room temperature and pour it into the mixture. (this keeps the butter from scrambling the eggs, I figure). Mix the chips and walnuts into the batter slowly until blended.

so, so, so delicious.

Pour the batter into the prepared crust; bake at 250 degrees for 90 – 110 minutes until the crust is light brown. Let it cool completely before serving if you want it to be firm and cut cleanly. I honestly couldn’t wait because i wanted warm pie so badly…I ended up with un-perfect slices. oh well. it didn’t taste un-perfect.

note on my photos: although my mama was 100% against my help on my own cake, my really good reason was the NEW camera boone gave me….it had to charge for most of the baking, but the last few photos were taken with it. i’m smitten with how sexy the photos turned out and with my wonderful honey who knew EXACTLY what I wanted. it’s A-mazing what the right tools can do.

chocolate

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