Pantry Chocolate Cake

I've always wanted to make this cake. The only thing stopping me was the dutch processed cocoa powder, which I didn't buy until recently. On Mother's Day I was supposed to make a cake, as per my dad's request, for Mother's Day dinner. I didn't know what I should make, but remembering how much my family enjoyed the Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake, I chose to make this easy peasy pantry chocolate cake. It is called pantry chocolate cake because supposedly all the ingredients used in this recipe should be available in your pantry.

This cake is super easy to make; it's for beginners. It only takes a few minutes to mix everything together and it's great if you ever want to bring it to a potluck or you're just craving some chocolate. I doubt anything could go wrong with this cake, unless you over mix or substitute the cocoa powder.

The cake was moist, but not as moist as Hershey's cake. Also, I reduced the sugar by a few tablespoons, so the cake wasn't too sweet. The frosting completes the cake and only takes a few minutes to make.

Pantry Chocolate Cake
Recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book
it can also be found here.

Croissants

Notice: Since blogger went down recently, I discovered that some of my comments have disappeared. I'll reply to your comments again when I feel like retyping what I said. Also, sorry if your comments disappeared from my previous post. I didn't delete them. :( I appreciate that you left comments though.

When I first started getting serious in baking, I shared some of the goods with my Uncle's family. One day, he came over to my house, saw some croissants on the table, and asked my mom if I made them. I didn't. The croissants were from Costco, but after hearing that, I always wanted to try making croissants. I wanted to learn how to make something new and complicated like croissants. However, I never felt compelled to do so because of all the time needed to make croissants.

After taking on my senior project, it was necessary for me to make croissants because it was one of my goals. The whole process took around a day. Soooo complicated! Pounding out the butter took me a while and rolling out the dough did too. I guess I need more muscle? I had to finish this late at night because I started making the dough and such in the afternoon, after Chinese school and work. I didn't even bake it until the next day because I had to leave it in the fridge as instructed.

I was pretty happy with the results, however for some reason lots of the butter leaked out. While that's a good thing calorie wise, it's also a bad thing because I don't think that's supposed to happen. I asked my brother to evaluate the taste and he said it tasted normal...which I guess is good. My friends on the other hand, really enjoyed it. One of them even thought that I bought the croissants and was only saying that I made them, haha. I think that's all I have to say about these croissants. I'll tell you if I think of anything else.

Croissants
Recipe from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book
It can also be found here.
(Recently, I have been making a lot of things from that book.)

Chocolate Chip Muffins

I wrote this long post about these muffins and then I found out blogger crashed. I don't feel like repeating everything I said, so I'll just give a basic review. The muffins were good, but they weren't what I was looking for. I really like this mini chocolate chip muffins that are super moist, with the chocolate chips just melting in your mouth. This type of muffin is the one found in Costco. So when I saw this recipe, I was really hoping that the muffins would turn out like Costco's mini cc muffins. However, these are still good muffins. They're very good for beginners, because all you have to do is gather the ingredients and mix.

Chocolate Chip Muffins
Recipe from Cooking During Stolen Moments

Boston Cream Cupcakes

When I first got my baking book America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book and flipped through the pages, I knew I wanted to try making these Boston cream cupcakes. I made it my goal to try out this recipe soon, but the amount of heavy cream made me too scared to make it. However, I bought some heavy cream one day because I wanted to make fettucine alfredo for my brother's lunch. I only made it once and was left over with a almost full bottle of heavy cream. I decided to make these after switching back and forth between making the real sized Boston cream cake, truffles, and these cupcakes. One of the reason is that these cupcakes are part of my senior project. :)

I haven't been writing any blog posts recently so I have to catch up!

These cupcakes were delicious! My brother rated them a pretty high score, but a whole week passed so I forgot what the score was. I think I might have cooked the pastry cream a bit longer than I should have, but I'm not sure. The cupcake's texture was really soft and a bit moist. Just right! I really liked it, so much that I felt like eating a few cupcakes. The glaze was just right too. I had leftover glaze and pastry cream. My dad really liked these too, he only got to eat two because I gave most of them away. After work he asked me if there was any more left, but sadly there wasn't.

Boston Cream Cupcakes
Recipe from the America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book