As a child, my favourite comfort drink was the malted milk drink, Horlicks.  When I grew up, it became hot chocolate.  Now I am revisiting malted milk by baking with it, and everyone around me is falling in love with it all over again (or for the first time).  (See my malted chocolate chip cookies recipe here.)  I made this delicious, 3-layer, chocolate malt cake for my sister’s birthday.  My family really liked it even though they’re not normally fans of chocolate cake.  My mom kept picking the Maltesers off the cake and my sister kept stealing them from other peoples’ plates, so the next time I make this cake, I may cover the entire top of it with Maltesers. 

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Ed went through a phase where he thought that trifles were his favourite dessert.  I didn’t understand it and I was grateful when he finally realized how wrong he was, but I made them for him nonetheless.  I made large trifles (see the ugly strawberry one below; recipe here), individual sized trifles (see my wild blueberry trifle below) and miniature trifles using small dollar store stemmed cups (unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo of those). 

Tip:  I use one of the serving cups/glasses like a cookie cutter for the pound cake so my cake layers are even and the right shape.

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I was still craving cranberries after the holidays, so I did more baking while I could still get them fresh.  This cake looks beautiful and has a light flavour.  It is moist, dense, and subtly sweet with delicious bursts of juicy and tart cranberries.  I’ve made this two ways by making a tiny adjustment.  The first time I made this, I used amaretto like the original recipe suggested.  Personally, I don’t like artificial almond flavouring, so it was a bit overpowering for me.  But if you like an almond flavoured cake, then use the amaretto because it provides a nicer flavour than almond extract would.  If you’re like me, and prefer a simple pound cake base, use the milk instead.

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I tried pineapple and walnut cake for the first time recently and this experience turned out to be a neat example of food psychology.  I find that pineapple cake has a distinct flavour and texture that is noticeably different from that of a standard cake.  So when most people try it for the first time, they are thrown off when it doesn’t taste the way they were subconsciously expecting it to.  This mismatch results in a knee-jerk negative perception of the food at hand.  It took me two bites to decide whether or not I liked it, and only one more bite to fall in love with it    I made it for my mom’s birthday the next week.  My dad, Ed’s family, and my housemate really enjoyed the cake.  But it was funny to watch my mom, Ed, and Krystal as they took their first bites.  I could see from their faces that they had the same initial reaction that I had.  My sister didn’t take another bite because she decided that she didn’t like it.  However, it didn’t take long for my mom to decide that she liked it.  Then, after encouraging Ed to try more of it, he quickly became a big fan too    If you give it a chance, I think you are going to love the moistness and density of this simple and fresh cake.

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I’ve been testing chocolate cake recipes for a while now.  Although they were all good, none of them were food blog worthy.  I never thought that the first chocolate cake recipe deserving of a post would be the easiest chocolate cake recipe I’ve ever tried.

Let me count the ways I love this recipe:

The #1 reason:  I love the texture of this cake.  It’s moist and soft, with a great density and perfect crumb tightness (in my opinion).  And it doesn’t use buttermilk!  [I don't like buttermilk.]

2.  It’s a ridiculously simple and easy recipe.  You really don’t need to use a mixer for the cake batter (you’ll need a mixer if you’re making your frosting from scratch, though).  Also, this cake doesn’t require butter, so you don’t have to worry about pre-softening butter, which means you could make this at the drop of a hat.

3.  This is the perfect casual chocolate cake.  It’s a great weeknight dessert.  This recipe isn’t about making a pretty-looking cake (although you could if you wanted to).  So if you’re just making this for your family (or if you’re like me and you’re just making it for yourself), it’s perfect because it only makes an 8 in x 8 in square cake in a single layer.  It requires minimal effort because you don’t have to remove the cake from the pan before serving, you don’t have to make a layer cake, and you frost only the top of the cake, still in the pan.  [Fewer dishes to wash.]

4.  I like the story behind this recipe.  See Cookie Madness’s blog for the full story about how she found this recipe hand written on an index card in her mom’s binder of recipe clippings.

5.  For almost a decade now, I’ve known that one of the secrets to achieving a beautifully textured cake is to add mayonnaise.  The cake recipes [containing mayonnaise] that I’ve seen simply added it to a cake mix or a standard cake recipe.  This never seemed appealing to me, because I thought it would make the cake too oily.  So I never tried it.  But when I noticed that mayonnaise is a key ingredient in this recipe (substituting for your typical butter or vegetable oil), I was finally ready [and very excited] to test this mayonnaise-in-cake theory.  It really does work.  The cake was not oily at all and you would never know there was mayonnaise in it.

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Ed and his family love cheesecake so I made him one for his birthday in January 2010.  I like cheesecake too, but only in small amounts because I find it always sits heavily in my stomach.  So you can imagine how happy I was when I found a cheesecake recipe that’s light and rich without the heaviness.  I went through 3 other recipes before I fell in love with this one.   I especially like that you can get a smooth top on the cheesecake without using a waterbath.  If you prefer New York style cheesecake (ie. a dense cheesecake, like Ed does, simply omit the sour cream).  Also, note that this recipe uses a shortbread crust as opposed to the more commonly used graham cracker crust.  I prefer the shortbread where Ed prefers the graham.  I tried both and found that the graham cracker crust burnt more easily and was more likely to get soggy.

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