Chocolate, Orange, Chestnut Trifle, con't

   

Sorry, the color came out oddly faded when I uploaded the photo...I have no idea why...

Here's the photo of my chocolate, orange, chestnut trifle.  Doesn't it look wonderful?  I love the orange zest on top (not my idea, Giada suggested it in the recipe).  Yummmmmmm.

Chocolate, Orange, Chestnut Trifle

I saw this recipe on Giada de Laurentiis' cooking show and thought, "I have to make this for Thanksgiving."  So I did!

I used my pound cake instead of store bought, but other than that I followed her recipe (with the slight exception of not having enough orange liquor and having to use part liquor part simple syrup, rather than one or the other like she says).  I've only made one other dessert of hers and it didn't come out great, so I was slightly hesitant, but this was wonderful!  It came out perfectly.  And it was relatively straight forward, albeit a little tedious, to make.  Perhaps the best thing is, if you make the cake in advance or buy it, it doesn't use the oven so you don't have to worry about timing it around the turkey!

Basically, it is a layer of pound cake soaked with orange liquor or simple syrup (or, in my case, both), then a layer of chestnut whipped cream, a layer of imbibed pound cake, a layer of chocolate-orange whipped cream/mousse, cake, chestnut, cake, chocolate.  Yum.

As for the taste, my mom and pops loved it.  I really liked it but, as it turns out, I'm not a huge fan of chestnuts.  I'd only had them once before in a dish with green beans, brussel sprouts (which I hate) and chunks of pancetta, and I liked them, but I think they were rather disguised by wonderful flavor of the pancetta.  I digress.  Still the orange and chocolate and pound cake was incredible together.  And I didn't mind the chestnut layers, I just wasn't crazy about them.  I may have to make this again without the chestnuts.  Perhaps I'll substitute orange whipped cream.  Or better yet, just use more of the incredible chocolate-orange mousse.  I'll let you know if I do!

By the way, I'll post a photo soon, I promise.

Pound Cake

Ok, this is a belated Thanksgiving post...sorry it's sooo belated!

This is the same pound cake I made last year.  It's very, very good and not overly difficult.  So I figured, why mess with things on a holiday...I should just stick with what I know will work.  As anticipated, it worked and was as good as I remembered!

I did add a bit extra orange zest, because I made it to go in an orange, chocolate, chestnut trifle (which I'll post soon).  I'm going to spoil the surprise a little:  the pound cake worked perfectly in the trifle!  (Of course, last year it worked perfectly in the New Year's Eve Trifle, which, albeit, was very different.)

I'm not going to post a photo.  If you want to see what it looked like check out old "homemade pound cake" post.  They look exactly the same!

Brown Sugar Pound Cake, con't

    

This really was great!  It wasn't muffin-y at all, which, considering it's pound cake, is a good thing!  It was dense and moist and the taste was incredible.  It was sweet, obviously, but it had a really complex flavor because the only sugar was brown sugar.

I sliced one cake into thin slices to bring to my class tomorrow and kept the other.  We've been devouring it with raspberry jam (and I think I'm going to try it with apricot jam for dessert tonight.)  YUM!

Brown Sugar Pound Cake

This is from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook.  It is not a traditional pound cake, both in that it is made with brown sugar rather than white sugar and in that it is not made with a pound of each of the 4 ingredients.  Traditionally a pound cake (or quatre-quart) is made with a pound each of butter, sugar, eggs and flour, often with baking powder and vanilla extract added.  This was made with much less butter and fewer eggs and some buttermilk for extra fat and liquid.

Interestingly, the batter resembled muffin batter, I'll have to see if the taste and texture are muffin-like as well.  I'll see this later tonight or tomorrow, but the cakes (it makes two pound cakes) are still in the oven and I'm tired so I may wait till tomorrow.  Even if I do have a taste tonight, I will certainly not blog about it until tomorrow...sorry!

New Year's Eve Trifle

This is similar to my Thanksgiving trifle, but better.  Instead of store bought pound cake, I used my home made pound cake.  (And lucky me I had a whole extra pound cake left over!)  I know I said that store bought pound cake was fine for trifles, and it is, but wow homemade pound cake is really good!  I layered the cake with raspberry jam, sliced strawberries and homemade chocolate mousse (the type made with whipped cream and melted chocolate, rather than the egg based type).  The trifle dish fit three layers of cake/jam/berries/mousse.  I just piped some whipped cream dollops on top and topped the dollops with strawberries.

Leftovers, they aren't just for casseroles!

I had left over pound cake from New Year's that was getting a little stale, so I didn't want to eat it plain.  I also had left over ganache from the anniversary cake which I needed to use for something and I didn't want to make truffles.  So I melted the ganache in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water and added some warmed up skim milk until it was a very thin sauce.  But I decided it needed more, so I mixed in some cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg...sort of a spiced hot chocolate taste to it.  Then I cubed up the left over pound cake, put it on top of some vanilla frozen yogurt and poured a ton of the chocolate sauce over it. YUM!

P.S. I'll post a photo at some point, I promise.

Homemade Pound Cake

I have made pound cake before, but never just plain old traditional pound cake.  It was a little tedious (but mainly because the cook book I was using has all the quantities in grams/ounces, so I had to weigh all the ingredients).  It is flavored with a bit of orange and lemon zest, so it has a subtle, mild, citrus taste that was really excellent.  Interesting trick to make a good looking pound cake: about a third of the way through cooking, cut down the center almost end to end.  This will make the crack that forms along the top of the pound cake even and nice looking.  Also, if the cake browns too much before it is fully cooked, you can tent it with some tin foil.  I didn't end up having to do this, but my cook book says it will work (and experience with Thanksgiving turkeys tells me they are right!)

I made this to use in the trifle I made for my New Year's party, which I will write about later.

Orange Pound Cake

I made this for my cousin’s bridal shower.  The theme was purple, so everything (even the food) had to be purple.  Someone else was making a purple cake, so I was in charge of making something else.  I really didn't want to make things purple that weren't normally...large amounts of food coloring isn't appealing. So, I cubed my favorite homemade orange pound cake, the recipe is from one of Ina Garten’s books, and made a mixed berry dipping sauce for it. Even though the sauce was purple-ish I felt it needed more, so I made purple royal icing flowers (they look kind-of pink in the photo, but they were quite purple in person, I promise) to top the cakes. The flowers weren’t the tastiest things, but they looked really pretty, if I do say so my self!

Thanksgiving Trifle

While I get my blog up and running, I am going to post some old desserts I’ve made.  I made this last Thanksgiving.  It is a delicious variation on a traditional trifle.  It is marble pound cake (I admit, it is store bought pound cake...you can make your own, but there isn’t much point for a trifle) layered with seedless raspberry jam, fresh raspberries and blackberries, chocolate mousse, and fresh vanilla whipped cream. Each layer is repeated, to ensure that everyone gets a scoop with all the layers.

By the way, I really have no reason to call this a Thanksgiving Trifle other than that I made it at Thanksgiving.  Really it isn't Thanksgiving-y at all.  In fact, it would make a great summer dessert...you could substitute angel food cake for the pound cake to make it really light and summery.