Melissa Clark’s Devil’s Food Cake with Black Pepper Buttercream

February 14, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Melissa Clark's Devil's Food Cake with Black Pepper Buttercream | Korena in the Kitchen I’ve been trying to write this post about this Devil’s Food Cake with Black Pepper Buttercream for three days now but seem to be experiencing writer’s block, so in an attempt to get something down on the page so that I can share it with you in time for Valentine’s Day (because nothing is more appropriate than chocolate cake on Valentine’s Day), I give you the following Reasons You Should Make This Cake:

1) It has not one but two kinds of frosting: Swiss meringue buttercream filling laced with vanilla and cracked black pepper (yes, pepper), and the most divine whipped chocolate fudge frosting on the outside. Black pepper might sound like an odd thing to pair with classic chocolate and vanilla, but it’s not odd – it’s very, very good.

Melissa Clark's Devil's Food Cake with Black Pepper Buttercream | Korena in the Kitchen

…

A New Year, A New Look {Alice Medrich’s Chocolate Truffles}

January 11, 2015 By Korena in the Kitchen 15 Comments

Alice Medrich's Chocolate Truffles | Korena in the Kitchen
My blog turns four years old this month, and instead of a cake, I decided on a complete overhaul. I moved from WordPress.com to a self-hosted platform (apologies to anyone who tried to access my blog last Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday – I was having some technical difficulties) and as you can see, I installed a new theme (which includes a functioning recipe index!!). I’m still figuring a few things out and making some tweaks here and there, so if you run into any issues, please let me know. Otherwise, I hope you like the new look as much as I do!

Now, on to more important matters: these chocolate truffles. I make truffles every year as part of my Christmas baking, but this year I decided to a try an unusual recipe. Instead of a classic ganache made with chocolate and cream, the base for these truffles contains chocolate, butter, and – here’s the weird part – tempered egg yolks and water! The recipe and technique come from chocolate legend Alice Medrich, so I was confident that the truffles would be good despite their unorthodox ingredients. I wasn’t quite prepared for just how good, though: so chocolatey, so silky smooth, so melt-in-your-mouth amazing.

Alice Medrich's Chocolate Truffles | Korena in the Kitchen

…

Cocoa-Cinnamon Palmiers {and what to get the foodie on your list}

December 12, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 2 Comments

Cocoa Cinnamon Palmiers | Korena in the Kitchen As the foodie in my family and circle of friends, over the years I have received a good amount of useful, useless, awesome and/or strange kitchen gadgets for Christmas. And while I always appreciate a gift and the fact that someone thought of me when they saw those silicon pot holders or these teeny tiny tongs or this decorative cheese knife or that Slap Chop (OK, so maybe the Slap Chop ended up at the thrift store…), there’s only so much room in my kitchen. In my case, the kitchen gadgetry gifts are combined with being “the one who likes cats”, which explains how I came to own not one but TWO cat-shaped ceramic creamers.

cat creamers | Korena in the Kitchen …

Daring Bakers: Sachertorte

October 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 16 Comments

The October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Korena of Korena in the Kitchen. She took us to Austria and introduced us to the wonders of the Sachertorte. This month I was thrilled to be hosting a Daring Bakers’ Challenge for the second time. My favorite challenges are the ones where I get to bake a cake and/or pretend to be a pastry chef, so for this month’s challenge I chose a recipe for a classic European-style chocolate cake: the Austrian Sachertorte.

Sachertorte | Korena in the Kitchen …

French Chocolate Cake

September 14, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 7 Comments

French Chocolate Cake | Korena in the Kitchen The building where I work has a really nice high performance gym, and I’m lucky to have a flexible-enough work schedule so that I can work out there three mornings a week. However, along with warm-up, cool-down, showering, and making myself look presentably professional for work, this only leaves about twenty to thirty minutes for actual exercise, so to get the most bang for my buck I usually end up doing some combination of lifting moderately heavy things at a high intensity (aka “lifting weights faster“). As a result, I guess I look like I’m working pretty hard, because I often get asked what I’m training for. My stock answer is, “I’m training for life”, but more accurately it should probably be something along the lines of, “I have a tendency to bake and eat a lot of cake and I need some way to balance it out if I’m going to fit into my jeans.” Because there is no way I’m *not* going to bake and eat a chocolate cake as delicious as this one:

French Chocolate Cake | Korena in the Kitchen …

Daring Bakers: Chocolate & Vanilla Checkerboard Cake

July 27, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 24 Comments

For the July Daring Baker’s Challenge, Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to bake a cake. But not just any cake; she asked us to add in a special surprise for our eyes as well as our taste buds!

It was my birthday at the beginning of July (thirty one! how the hell did that happen?!) so, as per my favorite birthday tradition, I made myself a cake. Coincidentally, the Daring Bakers challenge this month was to make a cake with a surprise on the inside, so I made this cake, which looks like nothing special at first…

Chocolate & Vanilla Checkerboard Cake | Korena in the Kitchen …

Kade’s Birthday Cake

May 7, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 4 Comments

Baseball Birthday Cake | Korena in the Kitchen At the end of April our friends’ son, Kade, turned three. He had a birthday party in the park after his baseball game (seriously, can you imagine anything cuter than a bunch of three-year olds trying to play baseball?!), with hotdogs on the camping stove, lots of cut up fresh fruit and veggies, and a cake made by yours truly – I offered/begged his mom, and thankfully she took me up on it! She suggested a baseball-themed cake, and because Kade is super proud and excited to be on “Team Purple” (his team wears purple t-shirts), I decided to put his jersey (or a version of it) right on the cake.

Baseball Birthday Cake | Korena in the Kitchen …

Sourdough Cider Hot Cross Buns with Chocolate Chunks

April 20, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 19 Comments

Sourdough Cider Hot Cross Buns with Chocolate Chunks | Korena in the Kitchen As I pointed out last month, Christmas cookies and hot cross buns are about the only seasonal things I manage to post about with any punctuality… and seeing as today is Easter Sunday, hot cross buns are most definitely on the menu. This month’s Sourdough Surprises project was sourdough hot cross buns, which I also tackled last year with a chocolate porter version. I decided to go a similar route this time around, adapting a recipe that used hard apple cider to make an overnight sourdough levain. And, because for me, Easter is all about chocolate, I added a generous amount of dark chocolate chunks to the dough.

Sourdough Cider Hot Cross Buns with Chocolate Chunks | Korena in the Kitchen …

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares

April 7, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 10 Comments

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares | Korena in the Kitchen

Two weekends ago I went on a canoeing/camping trip in the Gulf Islands, where I was specifically tasked with bringing dessert for one of the evenings. My plan was to make “campfire fondue”, which consists of melting a handful of chocolate chips in a little package of foil beside a campfire, and then dipping fruit (oranges and banana chips in this case), squares of pound cake, and toasted marshmallows in it. Alas, we ended up waiting out high winds for two nights on Portland Island where fires are not allowed, and then had to cut the trip short by a day because the wind was only supposed to get worse (it was a very exciting journey home!), so unfortunately my campfire dessert never happened. Which meant that I had a whole bunch of marshmallows and chocolate chips on my hands after the trip.

Salted Caramel & Chocolate Rice Crispy Squares | Korena in the Kitchen …

Fudgy Cocoa-Quinoa Brownies

February 25, 2014 By Korena in the Kitchen 20 Comments

If I told you that some of the best brownies I’ve ever made were gluten-free and didn’t actually contain any chocolate, would you believe me? (I wouldn’t lie about something like this, I promise.)

Let me explain. A few weeks ago, I came across Alice Medrich’s Cocoa Brownies on Food52, which are made with a hefty dose of cocoa powder rather than chocolate – helpful because if there is chocolate in the house, I usually eat it before I can bake with it, whereas cocoa powder is much less pleasant to eat straight. Then I saw Christina’s red wine cupcake version of that dynamite quinoa chocolate cake (seriously, if you haven’t made it yet, what are you waiting for?), and I started wondering if you could make brownies with quinoa, being that it makes such a rad chocolate cake. I turned to the Google machine and found that yes, it’s been done, but that all the recipes very closely resemble the quinoa chocolate cake rather than a true brownie, and while the quinoa chocolate cake is an awesome cake in its own right, it’s not a brownie. So I set off to experiment with Alice’s cocoa brownie recipe and some cooked quinoa to come up with my own formula.

…