Happy Valentine's Day! The holiday of love! Ok, so I personally believe that you should show people you love them more than just one day a year. Love is a verb, afterall, but I digress.
On Tuesday nights, we host a Bible study at our house, and this year, Valentine's Day lands on a Tuesday. So what does this mean? Well, Sarah's gonna bake for everyone, of course! I found an amazing recipe at Gina's Skinny Taste (thanks Gina!) for heart shaped chocolate cake from scratch. Before I say anymore about this delicious recipe, lets get to it!
The Recipe: Homemade Skinny Chocolate Cake
The Procedure:
This recipe first looks pretty complicated. But its really just a basic chocolate cake recipe...with pudding, and applesauce, and yogurt...and no butter. Wait, what? No butter? How is this ever going to taste good? Butter makes the world go 'round! Well, pudding, yogurt, and applesauce are all tricks that you can use to cut back on oil and butter in cakes, cookies, brownies, muffins, etc. Gina combined all of them together and it really makes a difference.
I made this late Monday (around 9pm) and Travis helped me with it. It was fun baking with him :-) While I was combining the dry ingredients together, he was mixing the coffee and cocoa together. After I finished, and while he was still stirring, I poured in the milk and the vanilla. Then we fired up the Kitchenaid and put in the oil and sugar, followed by the applesauce and eggs. We started alternating the dry and wet goods until everything was incorporated and then we added the yogurt. After making sure everything was mixed together, it went into my glass 9x13" dish and into the oven. Gina says that hers took 40 minutes but cupcakes would be shorter. I didn't know if she was using glass or metal or ceramic so I started checking the cake at 30 minutes. It ended up taking right at 40 minutes. I let it cool, and then covered it to sit overnight. Yesterday, I used a heart shaped cookie cutter and cut out 9 hearts of cake and placed them on a plate in the refrigerator.
I melted down some Nestle Toll House Semi Sweet Chunks in the microwave (put in for 30 seconds twice, mixing in between, and then 10 second intervals after that until melted, mixing in between). I took a pastry bag and cut off the tip, and then put the chocolate in the pastry bag. You don't want the chocolate to be super runny. You want it to have the consistency of frosting, but you need to make sure its fully melted. I then proceeded to write the name of everyone in our home group in chocolate on wax paper. I underlined each name and then added a stem. Then I put them in the freezer to harden.
As home group was getting ready to start, I pulled the cakes and drizzled some Hershey's syrup over the top. I then pulled the names out of the freezer and carefully cut the wax paper around each name to separate them. Then I placed them in the cake and garnished with a few fresh raspberries.
The Verdict:
The cake was absolutely amazing. It was so moist and super chocolatley. It's WAY better than anything that comes in a box! The chocolate names came out beautifully, and were a huge hit with everyone! This is definitely my new go to recipe for chocolate cake!
The Low-Down:
Make the cake the day before you serve it so it has time to cool. It seemed to taste better cold.
Make the chocolate names (or shapes) the same day and keep in the freezer until ready to serve. Mine started to melt after being out of the freezer only 10 minutes. A friend recommended adding a little paraffin to the chocolate to help with that
This is seriously, the best chocolate cake I've ever had. If I could give it more than 5 stitches, I totally would!
2 comments:
I have been experimenting with yogurt and applesauce in baked goods lately with surprising results. It's a good thing, because otherwise the word "yogurt" in your post would have been a "no" for me! :) Now I know better. I can't wait to try this. (and I "pinned" it!)
You might find your chocolate names started to melt because of the sharp change in temp from freezer to open air. Do them the night before and leave to dry and when dry and hard, place in airtight container. Hope that helps
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