Holiday Potluck at Work: Desserts
Sheesh! When we tell the kids we’re having an end of the semester holiday potluck, they don’t mess around. Some of the goodies were store bought and some were homemade, but everything was goooooooooood :-D
My Favorites: The Mexican Hot Chocolate and the Chocolate Chunk Cookies: Both homemade and both highly addicting……
Triple Chocolate Caramel Cookies by Food Snots on Flickr.
Whole Wheat Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
STRAWBERRY SUMMER CAKE
Slightly adjusted from Smitten KitchenIn the United States, berries are the kind of thing I’m too afraid to bake with since they’re always expensive and I worry I’ll mess up the recipe and the fruit will be wasted. But here in Ecuador, blackberries and strawberries are $1 a pound. Even on my barely existent teaching salary, I can afford that. So I’m trying out every recipe I can get my hands on that includes berries, and tonight, it’s strawberry summer cake. I adapted this recipe very slightly from Smitten Kitchen, not because of some brilliant cooking instinct, but because I didn’t have the milk or barley that her recipe calls for. But it didn’t matter, because this cake was delicious. I might have just eaten half of the cake in one sitting. By myself.
Ingredients:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for pie plate
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup granulated sugar (if you like things extra sweet, add a little more)
1 large egg
1/2 cup yogurt (original recipe calls for milk, but I didn’t have any around, so yogurt it was, and quite delicious)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pound strawberries, hulled and halvedDirections:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
2. Butter a 10-inch pie pan or 9-inch deep-dish pie pan. Smitten Kitchen says: “This cake does not work in a standard 9-inch pie pan; it will overflow. This cake would work, however, in a 9- or 10-inch springform or cake pan. The 10-inch would make a thinner cake than pictured.”
3. Whisk flour or flours, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl.
4. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1 cup sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes.
5. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add dry mixture gradually, mixing until just smooth.
6. Pour into prepared pie plate. Arrange strawberries, cut side down, on top of batter, as closely as possible in a single layer (I had extra so I overlapped some).
7. Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over berries (this helps the berries turn into jam).
8. Bake cake for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 325°F and bake cake until golden brown and a tester comes out free of wet batter, about 50 minutes to 60 minutes. (Gooey strawberries on the tester are a given.) Let cool in pan on a rack. Cut into wedges. Serve with lightly whipped cream.
Caramel Chocolitas: Crunchy pecans are the perfect topper for these rich bars.
Layered Chocolate Mousse Cups (by raspberri cupcakes)
Dark Chocolate Dipped Apples: Try a new spin on traditional caramel apples with these ones dipped in cinnamon-spiked dark chocolate.
Chocolate Cake & Hershey’s Sauce Crepe by faji_tama on Flickr.