Something Easy and Chocolate

What do you do when you suddenly crave for something sweet? For me, that happens more often than I'd like, and when I'm too lazy to make something fancy, I turn to this easy chocolate pudding. I'd like to think of it as the "little black dress" of desserts -- you can make this in a pinch when you're pressed for time or stuck for ideas, and you can also jazz it up with whatever flavours you desire, i.e. accessorize it.

I've made this enough times to finally have my favourite version of the recipe, which I'm sharing today. In the future I'll probably tweak it some more just because I like experimenting, and I'll share any successful renditions of this recipe then. :)

Easy Chocolate Pudding
adapted from All Recipes and Hungry Girl Por Vida

1/2 cup sugar
3 tbsp Dutch-processed cocoa powder
3 tbsp malt powder
1/4 cup cornstarch
2 1/2 cups milk
2 tbsp salted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. In a saucepan, sift the sugar, cocoa powder, malt powder, and cornstarch to remove any lumps. Whisk the mixture well, making sure everything is combined.

2. Place the pan over medium heat, and slowly add the milk while constantly whisking to combine everything.

3. Bring the mixture to a boil while stirring constantly. When the mixture is thick (enough to coat the back of a metal spoon), remove the pan from the heat.

4. Stir in the butter and vanilla extract.

5. Pour into preferred serving dishes, and let cool to room temperature. If you don't like pudding skin, press a piece of plastic wrap on top of the pudding (make sure the plastic touches the surface). Chill the pudding in the fridge until serving time.

Tuxedo Truffle Mousse Cake

I can't believe it's already September and summer is over! For the past few weeks I have been working and also enjoying my summer, so that means going out a lot and no baking. Now that the weather is starting to cool down and school is starting, I will be baking a lot more as a way to procrastinate from studying. ;)

First things first, recently fashion blogger Solo Lisa held a giveaway on her blog, and I won! Even though I have a baking blog, I follow mostly beauty/fashion blogs. If I had a better sense of style I probably would have one of those myself, but alas I'm better at baking so that's all you'll be seeing from me. =P Anyway, if fashion blogs is your thing, do check out Lisa's!

Now on to baking! Last year, for his birthday, my boyfriend asked me to make a "tuxedo cake". Having never heard of such a cake before, I turned to Google for help. Most of the results are of cakes shaped like a tuxedo, but I did come across this recipe for "tuxedo cake". Since I didn't know better, that was the cake I made.


Needless to say, it was the wrong kind of tuxedo cake. Last Christmas, I found out that the real tuxedo cake that my boyfriend wanted is the tuxedo truffle mousse cake sold at Save-on-Foods! Had I known this last year, I probably would've bought one to try first and then attempted to recreate it. So to redeem myself, this year I promised that I would make the real version. His birthday was in July so this post is terribly late, but it's better than never.


The cake turned out really good and tasted pretty much like the storebought version. My cake ended up being pretty messy, since I didn't have a rectangular mold to keep everything in the right shape, so I just had to make do with what I have. To be honest though, I would rather shell out the $20 or however much it costs to get one of these in store, because this cake is really time consuming to make. I had to bake the cake in advance (at least 1 day earlier), and it took another day to make the mousses and assemble the whole thing, while creating a lot of mess in between. However, it was a good experience to make something more complicated than usual, and at least now I know that I can recreate a storebought cake.

Matcha Tiramisu

I've probably said this before, but in the scorching August heat, it's safe to say that I want to stay as cool as possible and avoid using the oven. (I made an exception for my boyfriend's birthday cake, which will be talked about in the next post.) So when I had a housewarming party to attend a few weeks ago, I chose to make green tea tiramisu, the recipe for which I saw on House of Annie a while back. Before choosing to go with this particular recipe, I considered making either this chocolate bundt cake which has been on my to-bake list for some time, or this strawberry cheesecake tiramisu, which would take advantage of summer berries. But the former would mean having to use the oven, and the latter didn't win simply because I'm loving all sorts of green tea desserts these days. Plus, I simply love the pastel green colour that matcha powder imparts.

Since this recipe requires no baking, all I had to do was make the zabaglione component and assemble the dessert, which is the most time-consuming part of this recipe. I doubled the original recipe to fit an 8.5" round springform pan, and used 2 1/2 packs of ladyfingers. Here's a not-so-funny (for me) story: I decided on this recipe at the last minute and didn't have time to prep until the day of the party, so I spent hours in the morning running around town to search for ladyfingers, because my neighbourhood Safeway only had 1 pack left! That ought to teach me to plan better!


This dessert is definitely not something that's low in fat (just look at the ingredients!) but that means it's a suitable dessert to share at a party, and there was just enough for everybody, which means there was no opportunity to indulge in seconds!

Matcha (Green Tea) Tiramisu
adapted from House of Annie

Biscuit component:
Ladyfinger biscuits (I used 2.5 200-gr packs)
~1.5 cups brewed green tea, cooled

Zabaglione component:
6 egg yolks
scant 1 cup sugar
500 gr mascarpone cheese
3 tsp matcha powder
2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat the egg yolks and sugar in a double boiler until it is pale yellow and doubled in volume. Cool the mixture in a cold water bath.

Beat the mascarpone cheese until it is smooth and creamy. Add matcha powder gradually, and mix well after each addition.

Fold the mascarpone mixture into the egg yolk mixture.

Whip the heavy cream, and mix it into the mascarpone mixture.

Assembly:

Line the sides of an 8.5" (or similar) springform pan with ladyfingers.

Dip both sides of ladyfingers in green tea and line the bottom of the springform pan. Do not dip for too long or the ladyfingers will be soggy.

Spread some of the zabaglione mixture on top of the ladyfingers until they are completely covered.

Top with more soaked ladyfingers, and layer on more zabaglione. Do this step 2 more times with the final layer being the zabaglione mixture.

Chill in the fridge for at least 3-5 hours or overnight.

Before serving, dust with matcha powder or icing sugar, or both.

Lobsters and Chocolate Pudding

This is neither baking nor something made by me, but recently lobsters have been relatively inexpensive in Vancouver due to the Icelandic volcano resulting in delays in lobster shipment to Europe. So my boyfriend promised that this past weekend we would have lobsters for dinner, and I just wanted to share his creation. It was his first time preparing lobsters (and possibly the last...), and he followed Julia Child's recipe of pan-roasted lobster (video here) with a chervil butter sauce. We couldn't find chervil at the grocery store though, so parsley was used instead, which we don't think worked so well because it made the sauce bitter. But other than that, it was a very lovely meal. :)

For dessert, I made chocolate pudding. I have no pictures (it doesn't look particularly pretty), but the recipe I use has become my go-to recipe for chocolate pudding whenever I need to use up leftover milk. The original recipe is from here but I have tweaked it to my taste.

Easy Chocolate Pudding
adapted from AllRecipes.com

3 heaping tbsp cocoa powder (I use Dutch-processed)
2 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
a pinch of salt
2 3/4 cups milk
2 tbsp margarine or butter
a splash of vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, sift cocoa powder, cornstarch, sugar and salt. Mix well to prevent lumps from forming later. Add milk.

Stir mixture constantly on medium heat, making sure there are no lumps. The mixture will start to get thicker. When it is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon (around the time when the mixture starts to boil), turn off the heat. Add vanilla extract and margarine/butter, and stir to combine.

Optional step: strain the pudding to further remove any lumps.

Let the pudding cool, and chill in the refrigerator or enjoy as is.