Baked Sunday Mornings: Quick Skillet Snack Cake

I have never baked anything in a skillet before. I have to admit that I have an irrational fear of cast iron skillets; I am a bit of a clean freak in the kitchen and the fact that skillets have a built up layer of grease seasoning that you can't wash off with soap kind of grosses me out. We have a Lodge cast iron skillet that my husband Tom uses all the time for cooking, and I never touch it. I even make Tom wash it himself (in our house, Tom cooks and I do dishes), because I'm afraid of ruining it. But I set my cast iron anxieties aside for this week's Baked Sunday Mornings assignment: the "Quick Skillet Snack Cake."

There were a lot of things about this recipe that surprised me.  I wasn't expecting that a "Skillet Snack Cake" would be chocolate cake with chocolate frosting; when I think of cake baked in a skillet, I think of cornbread. I was surprised that this cake required a mixer because I was thinking that a "quick" cake in a skillet would probably be rustic and mixed together with a wooden spoon. And I was most surprised that the recipe has you line the bottom of the skillet with parchment paper, because that would seem to negate many of the benefits of using a skillet in the first place.

Anyway, to make this cake, you cream together butter and shortening, and then add sugar, dark brown sugar, and vanilla, and beat until fluffy. After adding eggs, you add stream in a cooled mixture of cocoa powder, dark chocolate, and espresso powder that have been dissolved/melted in hot water. Finally, you add in dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt) alternately with buttermilk. You pour the batter into a skillet that has been lined with parchment paper, buttered, and floured, and bake.

The cake rose quite a bit in the oven, forming a nice even dome. After it had fully cooled, I topped it with a frosting made from butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and melted dark chocolate. Just for kicks, I added some chocolate sprinkles. Because the cake flared out at the sides and was domed on top, the frosted cake had the appearance of being a giant, squat, cupcake.

The cake cut remarkably clean, creating virtually no crumbs. It had a tight crumb and springy texture, and a smooth, light, chocolate flavor. I personally thought the frosting was a little sweet, but it did go well with the cake. Even though the recipe says that the cast iron will result in "more crispy" sides of the cake, the texture of the outer crust was unremarkable.

This is a very good chocolate cake. It does not have the deep chocolate flavor and delicate melt-in-your-mouth texture of the Baked "Classic Chocolate Cake" that is part of the chocolate coffee cake with dark chocolate ganache and grasshopper cake. It also does not have the supermoist and decadent character of the Los Angeles Times' "One-in-a-Hundred Fudge Cake. But I'm completely satisfied with the way this cake turned out. My giant chocolate cupcake was fun, moist, and tasty, and I can't complain about that!

Recipe: "Quick Skillet Snack Cake" from Baked Sunday Mornings: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.  Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Cake, Plain and Dry: Coconut Tea Cake

The other day I needed a quick and easy dessert and I decided to make Dorie Greenspan's "Coconut Tea Cake." The recipe's introductory text notes that Dorie has a friend who likes "dry" cakes like this one -- with "dry" not meaning overbaked or stale, but meaning a pound cake or plain coffee cake "without frosting or fuss."

Making the batter for this cake is straightforward. You beat room temperature eggs and sugar with a whisk attachment until pale and thick, add vanilla and dark rum, and then incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt). Finally, you add coconut (I used unsweetened coconut that was not toasted, but Dorie says your coconut can be sweetened or not, toasted or not) and a mixture of hot coconut milk and melted butter. You pour the batter into a buttered Bundt pan and bake.

The recipe instructs you to cool the cake for 10 minutes before unmolding it. I waited ten minutes, turned over the pan, and nothing happened. Even though I had buttered my pan well (I didn't flour it, but the recipe didn't instruct me to), my cake was completely stuck. After futzing with it for a few minutes -- banging the pan and running a plastic spatula between the edge of the cake and the pan -- I was able to get the cake out in one piece, but a layer of the dark brown crust stayed behind in the pan and the top of the cake was bumpy and unevenly colored as a result.

Despite its rather homely and plain appearance, this cake was surprisingly good. The coconut flavor was more subtle than I had expected, with the vanilla flavor being more prominent on the front end of each bite and the coconut coming through in the finish. I liked the texture of the shredded coconut in the cake, but it was invisible to the eye; next time I would consider toasting the coconut to enhance both the flavor and color. The cake was not as rich or buttery as a pound cake, but it was nicely moist. It was quite good alone, but I imagine that it would be particularly delicious topped with fruit and whipped cream.

While I definitely would not call the freshly baked cake "dry" in the pejorative sense, I could see how it would dry out over time. Dorie notes that stale cake makes a great "dunker" for coffee or tea, or it can be cut into fingers, toasted, and dipped "biscotti-style" in dessert wine. I suppose it doesn't matter whether this cake is "dry" in the sense of being plain, or "dry" in the sense of being stale -- it's all good!

Recipe: "Coconut Tea Cake" from Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

I'm Nuts About These Cookies!: Toasted Hazelnut-Almond Biscotti

Now that our Whole Foods has started stocking hazelnuts again, I can make hazelnut desserts whenever I feel like it! I recently had a bad experience with some chocolate hazelnut biscotti (at least I was able to repurpose the biscotti crumbs into the delicious crust of a Mississippi Mud Pie), and I wanted to give hazelnut biscotti another shot. I decided to try Gale Gand's recipe for "Toasted Hazelnut-Almond Biscotti" from Butter Sugar Flour Eggs.

This is a simple recipe that requires a food processor, but no mixer. You sift together dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar), and grind some of the sifted mixture with almonds in the food processor. Then you add the ground almonds back into the rest of the flour mixture, add chopped chocolate and whole toasted hazelnuts, and mix in the wet ingredients (eggs, vanilla, almond extract, and Amaretto).

I found this dough quite difficult to mix because there are so many mix-ins that there is barely enough dough to hold everything together (the recipe has two cups of flour and one cup of sugar, but also two cups of chocolate and one and a half cups of hazelnuts). The cookbook says, "The dough will seem dry, but it will come together as you work it." Interestingly enough, the version of the recipe on the Food Network website is identical to the cookbook version except that it says if the dough doesn't come together, you should add up to a quarter cup of water. Since I was baking from the cookbook version of the recipe, I just patiently worked the dough with my hands until I could finally get it to stay together and shape it into logs.

These biscotti are outstanding, some of the best I've ever made. They have a nice dry, crisp, texture, but they are still light, tender, and easy to eat (even if you're not dunking them in anything).  The one downside to the dry and light texture is that these cookies create a lot of crumbs. I love the big pieces of toasted hazelnut, although they pretty much drown out the almond flavor. I do think the ratio of mix-ins to dough is a little too high and I would probably cut down the amount of chocolate in the future. This would give the finished biscotti a less cluttered appearance, smoother edges, and make the dough easier to handle as well. But no matter what they look like, they are delicious!

Recipe: "Toasted Hazelnut-Almond Biscotti" from Butter Sugar Flour Eggs: Whimsical Irresistible Desserts,by Gale Gand, recipe available here.

Previous Posts:

• "Unfortunately, These Aren't Number One: Biscotti #2," October 13, 2011. 
• "Biscotti Revisited: Hazelnut Cinnamon Chip Biscotti," June 2, 2011.
• "Time to Raid the Pistachio Stash: Pistachio Cherry Biscotti," June 1, 2011. 
• "Munchy Crunchy My Dear Snackers: Savory Cheddar Biscotti," October 2, 2010.
• "The Problem with the Girl Scouts," March 2, 2009.

If It's Called "Granola," It Must Be Healthy, Right?: Granola Bars with Jammy Bits

A while ago, I purchased a few bags of "jammy bits" in various flavors from King Arthur Flour. Jammy bits are soft, chewy cubes of sweetened fruit juice and pectin that hold their shape during baking and I was planning to incorporate them into scones. But them I promptly forgot all about them. When I spotted them in the cabinet recently, I figured I had better find something to make with them and decided to try a King Arthur recipe for "Granola Bars with Raspberry Jammy Bits."

These bars are very easy to make. You stir together the dry ingredients (quick-cooking oats, oat flour, sticky bun sugar, salt, cinnamon, nuts, and jammy bits), mix in the wet ingredients (melted butter or oil, vanilla, honey or maple syrup or corn syrup, and water), press the mixture into a pan, and bake. I didn't have any sticky bun sugar, so I used the substitution suggested on the King Arthur blog of granulated sugar, melted butter, and corn syrup. I made two batches. The first used raspberry jammy bits, almonds, and pistachios, and the second used blueberry jammy bits, cashews, and almonds. 

There bars are much more dense than a supermarket granola bar and are almost solid. They are also incredibly chewy, especially the browned edges, which were my favorite part. I thought these were terrific -- better than a normal granola bar, but also definitely sweeter and more dessert like, especially because of the light cinnamon flavor. I loved the big chunks of nuts, and the jammy bits provided bright little bursts of fruity flavor. I can imagine these would be delicious with all sorts of different mix-ins, like chocolate chips, dried cherries, coconut, or sunflower or pumpkin seeds. I actually wanted to put toasted corn in the blueberry bars, but Tom talked me out of it (I still think toasted corn would add a wonderful salty crunch!).

The only thing that prevents me from making these regularly is the fact that jammy bits are quite expensive; I've always bought them when they've been on sale (then again, I could always make the bars without the jammy bits, but the bits are so tasty!). Plus, these granola bars could become a bad habit. It's always tempting to think of granola bars as being "healthy," but I'm not going to try to pretend that the oats and oat flour make these bars good for you!

Recipe: "Granola Bars with Raspberry Jammy Bits" from King Arthur Flour.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Simple Blueberry Parfaits

Earlier this week I asked my friend Dorothy if she might be able to bring her sons by to sample this week's Baked Sunday Mornings Assignment, Simple Blueberry Parfaits. When I described the dessert to her (vanilla wafer crumbs layered with blueberries and whipped cream), she was a bit perplexed. Is there any baking involved? Did I at least have to make my own vanilla wafers? She thought the parfaits seemed quite uncharacteristic of the recipes from Baked Explorations, many of which are quite elaborate. She's right; this is definitely one of the easiest recipes from the cookbook. But is is slightly more complicated that you might imagine looking at the end product; while it doesn't require turning on the oven, it does require using a food processor, stove, and electric mixer.

There parfaits are merely layers of crushed vanilla wafers, a blueberry sauce (blueberries cooked with Grand Marnier until the fruit breaks down, cooled and then mixed with more blueberries and a bit of orange juice), and very lightly sweetened whipped cream, garnished with more blueberries and orange zest.

The only glasses I had that were appropriate for serving these parfaits were fairly narrow highballs. It was difficult to keep the sides of the glasses clean as I was assembling them; if I was really trying to make these look nice, I would probably put the whipped cream in a piping bag to have more control over where it went.

And the verdict?  Dorothy's younger son eagerly ate his entire parfait, while older son Alexander -- not particularly a fan of dessert in general -- thought that there was too much whipped cream and gave up after a few bites. However, all of the adults thought that these were delicious. There are no surprises here, but it's really hard to go wrong with cookies, blueberries, and whipped cream. In particular, I like the fact that the whipped cream is just barely sweetened. I will mention that I used about five ounces of vanilla wafers and I ended up with way too many crumbs. I also used just a splash of Grand Marnier in the sauce instead of the quarter cup the recipe calls for, and the sauce turned out fine.

This is a WYSIWYG dessert (What You See Is What You Get), but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!

Recipe: "Simple Blueberry Parfaits" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented,  by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Are These Cookies the Real Deal?: Salty-Sweet Butter Pecan Cookies

A few months ago, I put King Arthur Flour's "Salty-Sweet Butter Pecan Cookie" on my to-bake list. I learned that it was one of the website's top rated cookie recipes (I was happy to see that Almond Clouds, one of my absolute favorites, also made the list), and since I am a big sweet + salty fan, it seemed to be right up my alley. I've rarely seen such raves about a cookie; King Arthur baker/blogger PJ Hamel (who bakes a lot of cookies) said they "might be the best cookies I've ever baked" and called them "DA BOMB." The only problem was that the recipe calls for both butterscotch chips and butterscotch flavoring, two ingredients I don't stock in my kitchen. Once I finally got all my butterscotch supplies, I was ready to give the recipe a try.

Making the cookie dough is straightforward. You beat together brown sugar, sugar, butter, shortening, salt, espresso powder, baking soda, vanilla, butterscotch flavoring, and vinegar until creamy, followed by an egg, flour, butterscotch chips and toasted pecans (I used pecan pieces instead of halves). The shape of the cookie will depend on whether and how long you refrigerate the dough before baking (read more about this on the King Arthur blog, here). I refrigerated the dough for five hours before scooping it out, rolling each ball of dough in a mixture of sugar and salt, and baking.

These turned out to be incredibly attractive cookies: the deep golden color, cracked surface, and nooks and crannies from the nuts and chips were all beautiful. They also had a wonderful moist, chewy texture. As for the taste, I was a little disappointed. First, even though I had rolled the cookies in a sugar-salt mixture with the amount of salt at the high end of the suggested range, they didn't have the assertive salty kick I was hoping for. Second, I have never been a fan of butterscotch chips because I find their artificial orange color and the artificial flavoring to be off-putting (I used Nestle chips, not the Guittard brand chips the King Arthur folks heartily recommend). Something about this cookie tasted slightly fake to me; I'm not sure if it was the chips or the butterscotch flavoring in the dough. 

That said, these cookies were quite popular with tasters. Even I found myself going back for seconds. Maybe there is something to enjoying fake flavors every once in a while; I learned to embrace imitation vanilla for Christina Tosi's confetti cookies. I wouldn't call this the best cookie I ever I've baked, not by a longshot -- but I can't deny the small guilty pleasure I derived from eating it.

Recipe: "Salty-Sweet Butter Pecan Cookies" from King Arthur Flour.

Previous Post: "Brown Sugary Sweetness: Clementine's Butterscotch Brownies," April 13, 2011.

Small Fruits Deliver Big Flavor: Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte

Last weekend my friend Patsy hosted the sixth annual Dinner for David and I was tasked with dessert. I wanted to make two desserts, both to make sure there were enough baked goods to go around (for fifteen dinner guests) and to be able to offer some variety. I decided on the Chocolate Coffee Cake with Dark Chocolate Ganache from Baked Explorations and Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte."

I chose the torte because I had a basket of beautiful small red plums from the farmer's market that I wanted to use. (They were the size of cherry tomatoes; when I saw them my first thought was that they were the perfect size for Little Jack Horner to stick in his thumb and pull out a plum from his Christmas pie!) Also, I needed a recipe that I could make in advance, and the recipe notes that baking the cake a day ahead provides the benefit of allowing the fruit juices to moisten the cake evenly.

The first step in making this cake is to make a caramel sauce by heating sugar and water to 370 degrees (I actually took it off the stove when it was only 350 degrees, but it was already a deep amber color and I was worried that it was starting to burn). You pour the caramel into a 10-inch cake pan coated with nonstick spray and then arrange pitted sliced plums (since my plums were so small, I merely cut them in half) and blueberries on top. Then you spread on a cake batter that is made from flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, eggs, and vanilla. Because you make the batter in the food processor, it literally takes just few seconds for it to come together.

You bake the cake, let it cool for five minutes, and invert it onto a serving plate. I wanted to be able to move the cake around if I needed to, so I inverted it onto a cake circle and a platter.

My cake came out of the pan cleanly with all of the fruit still in place. I was surprised that there were no drips of caramel or fruit juice and my serving platter remained spotless. Beranbaum says she loves using greengage plums for this cake, which would create a very different-looking cake than mine; my small red plums looked like sundried tomatoes.  

We ate this cake about 24 hours after it was baked and it was delightful. The cake itself tasted like coffeecake and was very tender and moist, even the portions that were not soaked with fruit juice. Of course, the upper layer that was moistened with juice was especially delicious! I usually don't eat the skin of raw plums because I find it to be quite bitter, and these small plums were no exception. But even though the skin of the baked plums was still markedly tart in the finished torte, it tasted fine in conjunction with the blueberries and the lightly sweet cake.

This cake is simple but delicious. What a wonderful way to enjoy the fruits of summer!

Recipe: "Plum and Blueberry Upside-Down Torte" from Rose's Heavenly Cakes by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Previous Posts

• "How Can Upside Down Be So Right?: Plum Upside-Down Cake," October 3, 2012.
• "Putting the 'Cake' Back into 'Coffeecake': Plum Streusel Coffeecake," September 30, 2011.

This Cake Has True Grit: Honey-Poached Apricot Cornmeal Crunch Cake

Last weekend I picked up a quart of gorgeous apricots at the farmer's market and I looked for a recipe to put them to use. I've already made an apricot tart, so I wanted to try something different. I decided to go with Regan Daley's recipe for "Honey-Poached Apricot Cornmeal Crunch Cake" from In the Sweet Kitchen because it seemed a bit unusual; a layer of poached apricots sandwiched inside a cornmeal cake, served with a honey-vanilla syrup. Daley says: "Heady with the flavours of honeyed ripe fruit and vanilla perfume, the cake itself is both crunchy and tender; and the syrup is to die for."

The first step is to poach the apricots. You cut them in half, remove the pits, and place in them in saucepan with water, sugar, honey, a vanilla bean, a cinnamon stick, and lemon juice. You bring the apricots to a simmer and poach them until they "are very soft, to the point of extreme softness, but not quite to the point of complete collapse." You remove the fruit and drain it, and then return the poaching liquid to the pot and reduce it to a medium-thick syrup.

The cake batter is very quick to put together. You simply stir together cornmeal, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, and cut in cold butter. Then you work in a couple of eggs with your fingers until you get a moist and crumbly mixture. You press half of the cornmeal mixture in a greased springform pan and press it down firmly. Then you spoon on the apricots, crumble the remaining cornmeal mixture over the fruit, drizzle a little syrup on top, and bake.

The cake was nicely browned on top after baking, and the spots where I had drizzled on syrup were shiny and extra dark. You serve the cake with syrup on the side; I kept my syrup in the fridge (even though the cookbook says you can keep it at room temperature) and it thickened to the consistency of fruit preserves. I wish I had included some syrup in the photo above; it was a beautiful deep amber like maple syrup, flecked with vanilla beans. The syrup is sweet and almost floral, with the wonderful warm flavor of honey and vanilla. Daley suggests serving any leftover syrup with pancakes, oatmeal, or over ice cream or fresh apricots. 

This cake alone was very tasty, and with the syrup, it was pretty amazing. I usually don't like the gritty texture of cornmeal in desserts because it gives me the sensation of eating small pebbles. But in this cake, the texture totally works. The top layer of cake batter is very crunchy, so the grit magnifies its wonderful texture. If anything, I wish I had drizzled on more syrup before baking, because the spots that had syrup on them baked into the crunchiest parts of the cake. While the flavor of the poached apricots is wonderful, I wouldn't say they were the star of the cake; that honor would have to go to either the cornmeal or the syrup.

I definitely plan to make this again when I have ripe apricots on hand. As Daley says, "Make this during the precious apricot season (June into July); the other eleven months of the year you can just fantasize about it!"

Recipe: "Honey-Poached Apricot Cornmeal Crunch Cake" from In the Sweet Kitchen: the Definitive Baker's Companion by Regan Daley.

Previous Posts:

• "Telly Monster Would Approve: Hamantaschen," March 7, 2012.
• "Post-Thanksgiving Baking: Rosemary Apricot Squares," November 29, 2010.
• "Jumping the Gun on Summer: Apricot-Marzipan Tart," May 23, 2010.

Dessert in Stripes: Vietnamese Ice Coffee Panna Cotta

Even though I am not a regular coffee drinker, I love coffee-flavored desserts. My husband Tom, on the other hand, is a full blown coffee addict. While he gets his daily fix from our Nespresso machine, he also enjoys an iced Vietnamese coffee when we go out for pho. I even bought a couple of metal drip filters so that Tom could enjoy the drink at home. Last week when I saw a recipe from Zoe Francois for "Vietnamese Ice Coffee Panna Cotta," I just couldn't resist.

While a Vietnamese iced coffee is coffee mixed with sweetened condensed milk and served over ice, this dessert is alternating layers of vanilla panna cotta and espresso panna cotta, topped with a layer of espresso gelatin. You make the vanilla panna cotta from heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, a vanilla bean, sugar, salt, and gelatin. The espresso panna cotta is simply the vanilla version with cocoa and espresso powder added.

Once you've added the gelatin to the panna cotta and chill it, it begins to thicken. You pour a layer of one flavor into a cup, freeze it for five minutes until set, add the next layer, and so on. I found that there was a small window of time when the panna cotta was thick enough that the layers would set quickly in the freezer, but before it became too thick to pour into a smooth layer. I put my panna cotta in five ounce plastic cups; each layer contained the same amount of panna cotta, but because the cups were flared and wider at the top, each layer was shorter than the one beneath it. The top layer was a espresso gelee made from mixing gelatin with brewed espresso and sugar.

This dessert was wonderfully rich and creamy. The condensed milk flavor really comes through (especially in the vanilla layer), and the flecks of vanilla throughout are very pretty. The espresso gelatin layer was a bit bitter (well, maybe only to someone who cannot stomach black coffee), but it went well with sweet panna cotta. Overall, the panna cotta was very tasty. It was not quite as refreshing as an actual Vietnamese iced coffee; something about a very cold drink on ice is hard to beat, and the panna cotta was a bit heavy. Also, I think this might be a little better if the ratio of vanilla panna cotta to espresso panna cotta was maybe 1:2 instead of 1:1. But I would happily enjoy this cold, creamy, and beautiful treat any day!

Recipe: "Vietnamese Ice Coffee Panna Cotta," by Zoe Francois.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Mississippi Mud Pie (B), aka Mississippi Muddy Cake

I have really been looking forward to trying this week's assignment for Baked Sunday Mornings, the Mississippi Mud Pie (B), aka Mississippi Muddy Cake. The cookbook has a mouth-watering photo of this decadent cake/pie/tart/whatever you want to call it (the same photo that appears here on marthastewart.com, along with the recipe and a video of Matt Lewis showing you how to make it), and it's been on my to-bake list for quite a while.

This dessert has a chocolate cookie crust filled with layers of flourless chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and whipped cream. Although each component is easy to make, I took my time with the recipe and, as the cookbook suggested, put it together over the course of two days.

On day one, I made the crust and flourless cake. The crust is supposed to be made of crushed Oreos and melted butter. When a recipe calls for an Oreo or chocolate wafer crust, I usually bake my own chocolate cookies instead of using store-bought ones (as I did with the Mississippi Mud Pie (A) recipe from Baked Explorations). But I happened to have a large supply of frozen chocolate hazelnut biscotti on hand that I had been saving for precisely this purpose.

I baked the biscotti (a recipe from the SoNo Bakery Company Cookbook) a few weeks ago; the cookies had a wonderful flavor but were not as crisp as they should have been. Since I was stuck with a double batch of biscotti with an off texture, I stashed them in the freezer for future use as chocolate crumbs. I ground 16 ounces of biscotti and added five tablespoons of melted butter, but the mixture was too dry to hold together -- I'm assuming because I didn't have the creme filling of Oreos to help bind the mixture. I added another two tablespoons of butter and was able to press the crust into a springform pan. My crust was speckled, with light spots of hazelnut bits throughout.

Once you have baked and cooled the crust, you fill it with a flourless chocolate cake batter (butter, chocolate, espresso powder, brewed coffee, salt, vanilla, eggs, sugar) and bake the cake. From the picture in the cookbook, I thought that the cake would be a relatively short, flat layer. There was a lot of cake batter, and it rose quite a bit in the oven, doming above the rim of the pan. The edges of the cake batter rose up even with the top edge of the crust. Upon cooling, the center of the cake sank to form a depression, but the edges were still even with the top of the crust. I stuck the cooled cake in the fridge until I could finish it the following day.

On day two, I made the chocolate pudding on the stove from sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, salt, egg yolks, milk, butter, vanilla, and chocolate. I ran the pudding through a sieve before putting it in the fridge to chill (the recipe doesn't include this step, but I always put pudding and custards through a sieve). Although the recipe instructs you to chill the pudding for at least three hours before pouring it on top of the cake, the pudding was thick and pretty cold after about 90 minutes, and I didn't really see the point of getting it super-cold before spreading it on top of the cake, since it would just go right back in the fridge again anyway. So I went ahead and added the pudding, and put the cake back in the fridge for a bit. The final step was to add some lightly sweetened whipped cream.

When I unmolded the cake, it wasn't terribly attractive -- just a brown speckled crust topped with a mass of whipped cream. It looked far more interesting once I cut into it. The cake held up relatively well to cutting, although it looked nothing like the cake in the photo from the cookbook (but it looked a lot like the cake that Matt Lewis made on the Martha Stewart show, so I think making a cake like the one pictured in the cookbook is not achievable by mere mortals).

This cake was incredibly delicious. While it was very chocolate-y, it was not as heavy as I would have expected. My favorite part turned out to be the chocolate hazelnut crust, which was perfectly crunchy and tasted fabulous. The flourless cake and deeply chocolate pudding (I used 70% chocolate in both) were both intense, and the pudding was wonderfully creamy. The whipped cream was nice, but the flavor was barely discernible among the other components. Any part of this cake would be delicious on its own, but when you put them all together, they form a dessert that is truly over the top. 

Recipe: "Mississippi Mud Pie (B), aka Mississippi Muddy Cake," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.  Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings, or here at marthastewart.com.

Previous Post: "Baked Sunday Mornings: Coffee Ice Cream (and Tart!)," August 28, 2011.