Chocolate cake with brown sugar caramel pastry cream, whipped cream, and toffee

The main focus of this post is to capture my cake recipe, but I thought I would also share my menu.  This year I wanted to do a mainly “dark” menu.  It started with the Sinister Spread from Martha Stewart.  I’ve used this before at a Halloween party, but I like it so much - it’s just a perfect “halloween” cheese spread, plus it uses (mostly) in season fruits which makes me happy.  Most of the recipes were made straight from the original source (links below).  But I created the beet bruschetta, combined 2 recipes to make the pumpkin donuts and created the cake combination.

Appetizers

Sinister spread

Savory fall pies

Beet caprese bruschetta

For the beet bruschetta, I just roasted some beets and diced them. Then combined them with diced parmesan and purple basil and tossed them in some really good balsamic vinegar.  We toasted some yummy dark, Russian rye bread and topped it with the beet mixture and a good drizzle of olive oil.  It was good, but I made way too much!  I will be eating beets all week.  :)

Salad

Roasted balsamic radicchio

This was the the flop of the night.  The radicchio was just WAY too bitter.  It was nice and creepy looking though.  I didn’t take a stand alone photo of it, but you can see it in the overall shot below.

Mains

Wild rice and Mushroom pilaf

This came out super yummy!  I was nervous because wild rice can be tricky - too chewy or too nutty - but it thankfully cooked perfectly and all the flavor married well together.  Also, I replaced the chicken stock with mushroom to keep it vegetarian - I highly recommend doing that, I think the added mushroom flavor was part of why it tasted so good.  And the whole dish was a great base for the short ribs.

Red wine braised short ribs

This recipe is fantastic!  The ribs are cooked slowly and they get so tender.  And with all the veggies and the wine, the sauce it very flavorful.  Plus, it’s better if you cook it a day before so that saves some time on party day.

Dessert

Pumpkin spice baked donuts with maple glaze

Chocolate cake with brown sugar caramel pastry cream, whipped cream, and toffee

For the cake… I had something in my head that I wanted and I wasn’t finding it.  I thought about this recipe, but I was afraid the molasses would be too strong.  Then I saw this cake and this cake and I liked the look of them, but I still wanted a darker cake.  And I still wanted a little of the molasses flavor.  So, I used this chocolate cake recipe - which really is the best chocolate cake I’ve ever had.  It’s a pretty easy cake to make, despite it’s numerous ingredients.  It is SO moist and SO flavorful!  I then decided on a brown sugar. molasses caramel pastry cream for the center and a little on top.  And I wanted the “piled high” look, so I did just a basic, stabilized, vanilla whipped cream.  I also added toffee pieces and drizzled chocolate on top, which gave it a nice crunch.  I was really pleased with how it came out.  The flavors were exactly what I wanted.

Chocolate cake with brown sugar caramel pastry cream, whipped cream, and toffee

Serves: 8-12

Ingredients:

- The Best Chocolate Cake

- Brown Sugar Molasses Caramel Pastry Cream

-- 1 1/2 cups Half And Half

-- 1/2 cup Sugar

-- 1/4 cup Flour

-- 1/4 tsp Salt

-- 4 large Egg Yolks, room temp

-- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract, or vanilla paste or almond paste

-- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

-- 1/4 cup half-and-half

-- 2 tablespoons butter

-- Pinch salt
-- 1 1/2 tablespoons blackstrap molasses

-- 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

- Stabilized whipped cream

-- 16 oz heavy cream

-- ¼ cup powdered sugar

-- 2 teaspoons gelatin or vegetarian gelatin

--8 teaspoons water

-- 1 teaspoon vanilla

- Other Ingredients

-- Toffee pieces

-- ½ cup dark chocolate chips

Directions:

Make cake according to cake recipe

Make pastry cream:

- Make caramel by mixing the brown sugar, half-and-half, butter and salt in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Cook while whisking gently for 5 to 7 minutes, until it gets thicker. Add the molasses and vanilla and cook another couple of minutes to dissolve molasses and thicken further.  Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

- Warm the half and half in the saucepan until you start to see wisps of steam. It should not actually be boiling.

- Make the Egg-Sugar Base: In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, and salt. Add the egg yolks and whisk them into the dry ingredients.

- Once combined, pour a little of the hot half and half into the eggs and whisk to combine. Continue pouring the half and half  slowly into the eggs, whisking continuously.  NOTE: be sure not to let the egg/sugar mix sit too long before pouring in the half and half.

- When all the half and half has been added to the eggs, pour everything back into the saucepan.

- Set the pan back over medium heat. Whisk constantly. At first, the pastry cream will look very thin and frothy, but it will start to thicken after a few minutes. When it has thickened to a pudding-like consistency, pause whisking every few seconds to see if the cream has come to a boil. If you see large bubbles popping on the surface, whisk for a few more seconds and then remove the pan from heat.

- Stir the vanilla and caramel into the pastry cream.  Make sure the caramel is cooled first.

- Refrigerate until ready to use.  NOTE: cover with plastic wrap that is touching the top of the pastry cream to avoid a skin forming.

Make whipped cream:

- Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of plain gelatin into 8 teaspoons of cold water. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes to allow the gelatin to absorb the water.

- Microwave 5-10 seconds and allow to cool.

- Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature, but not get completely cold. The gelatin mixture should still be in liquid form.

- In a bowl, whip 2 cups heavy cream until it is barely stiff. Add the powdered sugar and whisk a little more to combine.  Add cooled gelatin to the cream in a steady stream, while continuously stirring.

- Whip the gelatin into the cream until soft peaks are formed

Assemble Cake:

- Take one cake layer and spread ¾ of the pastry cream on top

- Spread over cake layer but leave about an inch around outside because top layer will squish pastry cream out

- Sprinkle with toffee pieces

- Top with second cake layer

- Spread the remaining ¼ of pastry cream in a thin layer over top

- Pile on whipped cream and swirl to make a nice, peaked whipped cream mound

- Top with more toffee pieces

- Melt chocolate chips in microwave in 30 second intervals until melted.  Be careful not to heat too much - I did 30 seconds and then 15 and that was enough.  I had a few chunky pieces left and just stirring it melted them.

- Drizzle chocolate over whole cake and allow to run down side

Halloween Food Spread

Halloween Dinner

Chocolate Wasted Cake

Halloween is, hands down, my favorite holiday.  I had a few larger parties for a couple of years, but Michael and I (mostly Michael) are too uptight about cleanliness and there was just too much glitter left everywhere.  So I switched to a small dinner party.  We like this much better - I can create a more focused menu and we can really catch up with our friends.

I like to try to create “dark” menus, but not too kitchy - just a little kitchy.  This year the menu was:
Appetizers:
- blue cheese spread with rosemary crackers
- guacamole with black beans (and chips)
- grapes with cheddar cheese and garlic and olive oil crackers (all bought)
Starter:
- french onion soup with rye bread and humbolt fog blue cheese
Main dishes:
- caramelized brussels sprouts with croutons and bacon
- balsamic roasted chicken
Dessert:
- chocolate wasted cake
Drink:
- autumn sangria

I was pretty happy with most of it.  The appetizers especially - the rosemary and parm crackers were super yummy.  And I used my halloween cookie cutters to cut them into pumpkins and bats.  The blue cheese spread was good, but strong and would’ve been better for a larger party.

Rosemary and Parmesan Crackers in Halloween shapes

Blue Cheese Spread

The guacamole was incredibly good!  I think I may use this as my go to guacamole recipe.  It’s a bit soupy because it was supposed to be “swamp like”, but the extra lime and black beans added such a depth of flavor.  Plus, it never turned brown!

Guacamole with Black Beans

I liked the soup, but I didn’t find it all that special.  It was a basic french onion soup.  I did like it with the rye bread.  The cheese I got was a goat blue and I felt the flavors went really well together.

French Onion soup with rye bread and goat cheese

For the main dishes I made caramelized brussels sprouts (see my previous post regarding my love of fall veggies) and Balsamic Roasted Chicken.  The brussels sprouts dish had promise, but it just didn’t quite deliver what I wanted.  I think I should’ve roasted the sprouts longer as they just weren’t caramelized enough for me.  Or maybe added some maple syrup.  And I would definitely use less bread next time.  I was in love with the bread idea and added WAY more than the recipe called for.  Next time - just stick to the recipe.

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts

The chicken was pretty tasty.  I used drumsticks and wings so that people could choose white or dark meat.  It was just slightly too dry I think - I still don’t have the cooking chicken thing down yet.  I always overcook it.  But the sauce was yummy and served on the side, made for a great sauce - all dark, thick and oozy.  The best part was the next day I shredded all the chicken off the bones and we ate it on sandwiches with the sauce.  That was super yummy!

For a drink I made an autumn sangria and I have to say, this was one of my favorites of the night.  I wasn’t sure if I would like it cause I’ve never been a huge sangria fan, but this was tasty.  We used all the fruits listed in the recipe and Marc Cellars Pinot Noir and Central Market’s sparkling pear and apple juice.  It was sweet and refreshing and tasted very fall.

Autumn Sangria

And finally.. the cake.  This was the first recipe I decided on.  It was going to be my halloween party cake since I first pinned it in way back in like February.  And let me just say, it did not disappoint!  I wasn’t sure about the actual cake part since when I read the recipe there were no eggs - which I thought odd, but it was really, really good!  Almost like a brownie, but not overly sweet, which was good considering the rest of the stuff on the cake.  I forgot to drizzle it with liquor, which I can only imagine would have made it even better.  But like I said, it was fantastic and moist on it’s own.  And I added a layer of caramel to the middle since I knew I would be using Twix and I wanted to connect everything.  For the top I added Butterfingers, KitKat, Twix, Hershey’s miniatures, Reese’s Pieces, and Ghirardelli 60% dark chocolate chips.  And thanks to Patti at PattiCakes for the most delicious chocolate frosting ever.  Her frosting is so good, I thought ‘why try to make it myself, just get some of Patti’s!’  The cake is hard to cut, but it doesn’t really matter.  Everything tastes better all piled together anyway.  But it is a sugar rush!  I had SO much energy after my piece I made everyone play Just Dance for a few minutes.  :)  The energy was helpful though when I needed to clean up after everyone left.  If you’re a candy fan, I would highly recommend trying this cake, just once.  It’s just so decadent and fun!

Chocolate Wasted Cake

4th of July cake

Last weekend I decided to try this idea I had for a 4th of July cake.  A few months ago I found this recipe.  It looked so delicious.  And I instantly thought it would make a great 4th of July cake if I did one layer in red and another in blue.  After reading the recipe I could tell it was an angel food-like cake.  I’m not a huge fan of angel food.  I want to be, but it just doesn’t do anything for me.  I think it’s a texture thing.  But I chose to stick with the basic recipe.

Here’s the thing... my biggest issue with baking is that I’m super impatient.  And this was my downfall with this recipe.  I needed to split the recipe.  I was able to split the dry ingredients - no problem.  The next step was to whip 11 egg whites and add the food coloring to that.  So I had to split the egg whites in half in order to get the 2 colors.  In hindsight I should’ve just split them before whipping, but noooo.  I thought I would just whip them to soft peaks and then split them.  This did not work.  I should’ve at least weighed the halves, but I was too impatient.  So, the red half did not get enough egg whites.

I added blueberries to the blue half and chopped strawberries to the red half and I iced it with the whipped mascarpone frosting that I used on my strawberry birthday cake.  The blue half did taste pretty good - so if you like angel food cake, I would highly recommend the recipe.  But the red half was rubbery and yucky.  The best part about the cake was the look.  I did love the way it came out visually and I like the idea of doing this for other holidays, with other color combinations.  But I would have to use a more traditional cake method because angel food is not for me.