at Tue, 05 Oct 2004 19:00:05 GMT in <VaC8d.336128$Fg5.132248@attbi_s53>,
(Karen) wrote :

>
>"Alex Rast" > wrote in message
...
>> Upcoming in about a month or so my young nephew is having a birthday,
>> and I'd like to bake him a cake. He'll be 4. Having observed his
>> current eating
>> preferences, I have some requirements.
>>
>> First, it must either be able to be cut up into small, bite-size
>> pieces (i.e. not slices but pieces - about the size of a pea) without
>> affecting the ability to get the total experience of the cake in one
>> such piece, or it must be able to be picked up with small hands and
>> eaten as is, such that
>> one entire dimension will fit into a small mouth (for example, a large
>> roll
>> doesn't work - you can't fit it in your mouth, but a large breadstick
>> does - it's easy to get the thin axis in your mouth and bite off a
>> piece). A cake that you could slice into parts of this shape would
>> also be fine, as long as the slice would not then crumble once picked
>> up or bitten into, nor
>> have to be held in a specific way (such as, for instance, carefully
>> horizontal and icing-side up). The general concept is that it should
>> not be
>> in some way unwieldy to eat with hands.
>>
>> Second, it shouldn't be excessively messy to eat. Believe it or not,
>> this is a desire of the nephew as much as the parents - he hates
>> getting messy or sticky.
>>
>> Third, it should be powerfully chocolatey - of the same level of
>> chocolatiness as desserts I typically make (see various recipes I've
>> posted
>> to get the idea). In other words, intense. And it mustn't be dry at
>> that intensity level.
>>
>> If it features blueberries, or goes great with blueberries on the
>> side, that'd be a huge plus as well.
>>
>> What suggestions do you have?
>> --
>> Alex Rast
>>
>> (remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)
>
>This isn't a fancy cake, but it goes over very well with little
>kids...and much bigger kids, too! :-)
>
>Triple Chocolate Cake
>
>1 18.5-ounce box devil's food cake mix (I use Pillsbury Plus)
>1 4-serving size box chocolate pudding (the kind you cook; instant
>pudding won't work at all with this recipe)
>1 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Thanks for the suggestion, but, sorry, if you know my inclinations from
previous postings, you'll know that I'm not keen on made-from-a-mix
recipes. Part of the problem is that you have no control over ingredient
proportions and the decisions the mix-maker made when deciding what the
flavour balance would be. Furthermore, very few mixes indeed use the best
quality ingredients all round, as I'm inclined to do. In the case of cake
mixes, virtually all of them are far, far too sweet IMHO. Because of the
high sugar proportion, inevitably they're not going to be chocolatey enough
(there just isn't enough proportion left over for chocolate) and you end up
with something bland and sugary. It's unlikely that they'll use good
chocolate in the mix: for a start, it's probable that they'll use cocoa,
and then probably one of the cheaper brands. A lot of cake mixes also use
Dutch cocoa, which further mutes the flavour. Whatever the case may be, you
have no control over the brand and type they used and can't usually find
out which one it was. Same basic rules tend to apply to chocolate pudding
mixes. However, the *concept* might work well, implemented as follows:

1) Make a chocolate custard-based pudding. I think the recipe for chocolate
ice cream I've posted in the past might work well. You just don't freeze
it. But I would allow it to cool.

2) Mix up the dry ingredients for a Devil's food cake. Then do the
necessary creaming of butter with sugar. Mix those components together.

3) Mix in the pudding.

4) Beat egg whites and fold in.

5) Add chocolate chips on top.

6) Bake.

> Note: I prefer
>Ghirardelli to Nestle or Hershey chips; Ghirardelli results in a much
>smoother taste without the acid bite that the other two have.

I've made several postings as to chocolate chip choice in the past. The
ones you want are the Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Chocolate Chips, which
are easily the best. They come in a bag with dark-brown sides, as opposed
to the yellow-gold sides of the "regular" Ghirardelli chips.

>Flash "Peggy" > reported:
>>chocolate cheesecake
>
>Sounds not chocolatey enough, if you ask me.

From my POV there are additional issues with cheesecake. None of the people
in this family (myself included) are that wild about cheesecake. Even more
importantly, cheesecake is very messy to eat with your hands, and difficult
even to pick up with your hands. So my young nephew, I'm sure, wouldn't be
thrilled.

>My friend always makes the devils food cake from the old Betty Crocker
>cookbook. Always comes out wonderful.

I sense a lot of people gravitating towards Devil's Food cake. It might
work, but I'm concerned about the crumbliness factor, and the ability to
cut into small, bite-size pieces. What are peoples' experiences and/or
suggestions in dealing with this?

at Tue, 05 Oct 2004 19:17:02 GMT in >,
(Peggy) wrote :

>Brownies

I could certainly make my brownie recipe and cut it up very small. It has
the cohesiveness to hold together no problem at all. It seems a little
pedestrian all on its own - I'm thinking of ways to make it a little more
flashy. Thoughts, anyone?

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

Coming out of lurkdom here with a suggestion.

Would petit fours work? You could make them individually, using a poured
chocolate ganache for the glaze/frosting. Push them all together into whatever
shape you'd like, then whip your leftover, cooled ganache and use it to
decorate. Kind of like the cupcake cakes that are so popular right now.

Does that make any sense?

at Tue, 05 Oct 2004 23:14:23 GMT in
>, (SheridR)
wrote :

>Coming out of lurkdom here with a suggestion.
>
>Would petit fours work? You could make them individually, using a
>poured chocolate ganache for the glaze/frosting. Push them all together
>into whatever shape you'd like, then whip your leftover, cooled ganache
>and use it to decorate. Kind of like the cupcake cakes that are so
>popular right now.
>
>Does that make any sense?

Yes, that sounds like a great idea. It's the right size and could have
visual interest. I have a good and intense recipe for chocolate genoise
that I could use to make the cakes. What do people think of this idea:

Make the chocolate genoise for the cake, sandwich with blueberry paste (I
make this by condensing down blueberries), cover with ganache, top with a
blueberry. If I make the cakes hexagonal in shape, this gives maximum
flexibility for interesting patterns when assembling. I could even get
elaborate by cutting the cakes very carefully out of the sheet, then using
the cake left in the sheet as a "frame" in which to mount the covered
petits fours, leaving the frame uncovered.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)

(Please NOTE: My correct e-mail address is in my Signature) On Tue, 05
Oct 2004 22:40:00 -0000, during the rec.food.baking Community News
Flash (Alex Rast) reported:

>Thanks for the suggestion, but, sorry, if you know my inclinations from
>previous postings, you'll know that I'm not keen on made-from-a-mix
>recipes.

Which is one of the reasons that I like you, Alex - because although
you can buy them here now, they are horribly expensive (imported).
The home-grown ones are horrid.

Its from scratch or go without in my house!

--
Davida Chazan (The Chocolate Lady)
<davidac AT jdc DOT org DOT il>
~*~*~*~*~*~
"What you see before you, my friend, is the result of a lifetime of
chocolate."
--Katharine Hepburn (May 12, 1907 - June 29, 2003)
~*~*~*~*~*~
Links to my published poetry - http://davidachazan.homestead.com/
~*~*~*~*~*~