Chocolate Syrup Swirl Cake

Yup, I’m still testing recipes from Hershey’s Incredibly Easy Recipes cook book xD They got tonnes of delicious recipes inside, I just can’t help myself haha

Last week, we went back to Kampung to celebrate uncles and aunties  who just came back from their pilgrimage. My mum was bugging me to bake something and there’s this recipe that kept bugging me so I was like “Why not?” xD

Ingredients
1 cup (250mL) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extracts (I use powdered vanilla)
3 eggs
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda; divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1 cup Hershey’s Syrup
Almond’s bits or Coconut flakes (optional)

Firstly, heat the oven to 350F. Grease and flour 12-cup fluted tube pan or 10 inch tube pan.
Sieve together flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda and salt. You can skip this if you want but I really recommended that you sieved because you could never knew what foreign material there is in your flour (I learned this the hard way orz).  Plus, by sieving the flour, the flour would get aerated and become a bit lighter n_n

Then, beat butter, sugar and vanilla in large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Stir together the flour that you have sieved together with the baking soda and salt; add alternately with butter mixture, beating until well blended.

Do not worry if you don’t have buttermilk in stock. You can just add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to your 1 cup of milk to make sour milk. You can use sour milk instead of buttermilk in this recipe. To tell you the truth, I didn’t have enough buttermilk myself when baking this because I overused them for the muffin so I add some milk to make 1 cup ;P

The batter should look like this after mixing:



After that, measure 2 cup batter in small bowl; stir in chocolate syrup and remaining 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. I know, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup can be so expensive but I think using melted chocolate is good too >o</



If you want some crunchiness when biting into the cake, you can add coconut flakes or almond bits to the remaining vanilla batter. It is optional so if you don’t want them in your cake or don't have them in stock, just leave it. 

Then, pour the vanilla batter into the pan. DO NOT pour the chocolate batter first because the chocolate batter is thinner than the vanilla batter.



Pour chocolate batter over vanilla batter in pan; DO NOT mix.



I am a very messy person, so you can see those cake mix coating the side of the pan. Very messy isn’t? You can just wipe them before putting the pan into the oven.



*wipe wipe* Then bake them for 60 – 70 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center come out clean. Mine baked only for 60 minutes xD Cool for 15 minutes before removing them from pan to wire rack. Cool completely.



This is how mine look like coming out from oven. They are overflowing LOL. But you can never panic because usually when the cake cooled down, the kinda shrink a bit xP My oven is just a conventional microwave-oven so yeah xP



It look even uglier after being cool LOL. At this time you can just tuck the overflowing inside back onto the pan. Then overturn the pan to get the cake out from the pan xD I’m using a springform pan so it is much easier.



This is how it looks like after you turn them haha xD The ugly one is at the bottom one so no one will notice ;P So, never get panicked or disheartened easily by your cake >_< They can turns out wonderful, sometime.
 


I didn’t get the swirl effect that I want but nevermind. You can never get consistent swirl when baking this kind of cake, that what makes it so fun to bake haha xD

Here, HAVE A SLICE >O</

Petit Mocha Cheesecakes

When I first saw the recipe, I was like “Why Not?” I always want to try something with coffee and I still have those crumbs of cookies left from baking a blueberry cheesecake before. To make it better, it is a petit cake. It means that I can use my leftover muffins cups too (I’ve got tonnes of them u___u;).

So here is the original recipe:

Ingredient

(Crumb Crust)

1. Stir together 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs, 2 tablespoons powdered sugar and 2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine in a small bowl or until well combined.

(Cheesecake)

1 package (18 oz) cream cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup Hershey’s cocoa

2 tbs all purpose flour

1 tbs powdered instant coffee

1 tsp hot water

1. Heat oven to 375F. Line small muffin cup (1 3/4 inches in diameter) with paper baking cups.
2. Place 1 slightly heaping teaspoon crumb mixture into each cup; press lightly. Beat cream cheese in large bowl until fluffy. Add sugar, eggs, and vanilla; beat well. Add cocoa and flour;  beat well. Dissolve coffee in water, add to chocolate mixture. Place about 1 tablespoon chocolate mixture into each cup.
3. Bake until 15 to 18 minutes or until just set. Cool completely in pan or wire rack. Drizzle with chocolate glaze if desired. Refrigerate until cold about two hours. Cover, refrigerate left over cheesecake.

(Chocolate Glaze)

1. Combine 1/4 cup Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate Chips or Hershey’s Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and 2 tablespoons whipping cream in small saucepan.
2. Cook over very low heat, stirring constantly, until smooth. Use immediately.

Source: Hershey’s Incredible Easy Recipes

So, as usual, my final product does not look as good as the picture above xD

I know, it looks freaking ugly but I think it’s taste just fine. My mum and my lil sis loves it, though I think it was a bit bitter u_u;; My sis even ask if she can bring it to school lol.

So, first thing first. I DO NOT used Graham Cookies for my base. The biscuit crumbs that I had leftover is Oreo so I used those instead. Oreo base for a Mocha Cheesecake was not too bad huh? Since I was using Oreo Cookie crumbs as the base, I omitted the powdered sugar because Oreo is sweet by itself. But that of course resulted in a too chocolate-y dessert. You can only eat it once before you get a bit too ‘muak’ haha xD I think maybe I should try a crunchier base next time, a tart base perhaps or maybe something  that would add a bit of freshness to the cake so that it doesn’t taste to~ ermm full?  

The Oreos Cookie Crumbs

The recipe should makes about 42 cheesecakes in total but since I used a large muffin cups, I only got about 12 cheesecakes. They should really be covered when you kept it in the fridge because it will get hard if you did not. I’ve learn that lesson with the modified version of this recipe that I’ve done recently.

What interesting with this recipe is the flavor of the cake is really different when you use different kinds of instant coffee. For this one, I was using a Mix Instant Coffee Cap Tupai. For the one that I’ve just made recently, I used a Nescafe brand Instant Coffee and the flavor is really stronger compared to the Tupai brand. So, you guys should have fun with the different brand of coffee xD See which one suit to your taste better.

I did not made the glaze. Okay, I lied. I did made one but with my own recipe. Milk with chocolate. I made a mistake of putting it in the refrigerator and it got freaking hard u_u I want to put it in the refrigerator only for a minute or two but forgot all bout it for about 15 min (or is it 30 min?) haha xD  I know, stupid mistake

As usual, I did not use Hershey’s cocoa at all. I substitute it with normal cocoa and instead of vanilla extract, I used vanilla powder. I guess that is all I had to say for today. Have fun trying something new!

Chocolate Streusel Coffeecake

Sadly this is not how my cake looks like LOL XD

I have made this cake to be brought back to my family gathering for Eidul Adha. This is my first attempt of this cake and I have to say that the results turns out so-so. The original recipe needs to be modified a little to suit my pallete and I don’t really like sweet so much haha (this make one wonder how I could love baking so much LOL). So, I’ll be making this cake again, definitely with modification.

So, here is the recipe:

Ingredient

(Batter)
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
8 oz dairy sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1. Heat oven to 350F. Grease and flour 12 cup fluted ube pan.
2. Prepare CHOCOLATE STREUSEL; set aside.
3. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs; blend well on low speed of mixer. Stir in sour cream and vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in separate bowl; add to batter, blend well.
4. Sprinkle 1 cup of CHOCOLATE STREUSEL into prepared pan. Spread 1/3 of the batter (about 1 1/3 cups) in pan; sprinkle with half the remaining streusel (about 1 cup). Repeat layers, ending with batter on top.
5. Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until wooden pick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes, invert onto serving plate. Cool completely.

(Chocolate Streusel)
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup chopped nut
3/4 cup Hershey’s Mini Chips Semi Sweet Chocolate

1. Combine brown sugar, flour and butter in medium bowl until crumbly. Stir in nuts and small chocolate chip.

Source:Heshey’s Incredibly Easy Recipes

So, this is the original recipe on the book. You guys had to buy the book. It totally worth it ♥ Having that said, I want to let the cat out of the bag first. I don’t really follow the exact recipe, hah xD.
And this is what my cake looked like:

The chocolate streusel is very sweet. If I were to bake this cake again, I would definitely reduce the brown sugar. There’s already chocolate chip inside and that already added to the sweetness of the cake. Maybe I would just reduce it to 2/4 cup brown sugar and see what would happen.  Oh yeah, taking the recipe from Hershey’s recipe book, of course the recipe calls for Hershey’s product. Since I’m short on money, I substituted it with mini dark chocolate chip 8D

So, following the recipe, I put exactly 1 cup of the streusel on the bottom layer but I think that was a mistake. When I inverted the cake, I found the cake was hard to cut because the streusel layer hardened. What do you expect, it is after all a layer of sugar, chips and nuts haha xD I guess to sprinkle 1 cup of streusel on the first layer was not a good idea.

The batter (white layer) is absolutely delicious. The sweetness is just right. My cousins said that it was creamy and I agree. I think that is due to the sour cream. It gave the cake a soft and creamy texture; it felt really heavenly as you sank your teeth onto it. I think we could play with the flavor a bit. I was thinking orange xD Let see if I dare to play with its flavor xD

I don’t use vanilla extracts and vanilla essence in my cake. I usually use vanilla powder which easily substitute vanilla extracts. I had my doubts about vanilla extracts and when I have my doubt, the ingredient became a mashbooh ingredient. I would later explained it in my other post but for now I had to say that using the powder instead of extracts does not affect my cake that much. Though since I live in Malaysia, I’m sure the powder I got is not pure so the vanilla powder might contain sugar in it LOL.

My conclusion is, the cake still needs a few adjustment and maybe if I’m daring enough I would be playing with different flavor for this cake. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t xD. That’s the beauty of it xD