Allison Cafe

hmmmm....dark chocolate lava cake!

Happy Belated Valentines Day to everyone! We enjoyed our day in sunny SoCal yesterday and found ourselves so thankful for our beautiful life together. My husband made the most delicious dinner of grilled lack of lamb on a bed of swiss chard with pomme frites and a beet salad with feta cheese and argula. It was so good that I do not have any photos, we enjoyed it too much!

Dessert was my domain yesterday. And we did pause for a brief moment to snap a quick photo (above). I debated what sort of healthy chocolate decadence to create. I settled on a recipe I found in my Better Homes and Gardens New Bridal Edition cookbook. The results were similar to a chocolate souffle but the recipe was much faster to make. And the best part is that you can make it up to step 4 and then just keep it chilled until 30 minutes before you intend to bake it, meaning that it is a great dinner party dessert with unbelievably rich and delicious, souffle-like  results.

Here is the recipe: (more…)

Puppy's First Pupcake!

Miss Hayley had a very special treat today on her 2nd birthday, she had her first Pupcake.

Pupcakes From Cups La Jolla

A local cupcake lounge in La Jolla, Cups, offers peanut butter and bacon Pupcakes. Yum! It came in a small plastic bag and it appeared to have a cupcake liner, but it turns out the cupcake liner is edible! Judging by how quickly Hayley gobbled it up I would have to assume they are out of this world delicious!

Happy Birthday Miss Hayley! It seems like only yesterday we brought you home from Helen Woodward Animal Center.

Babycakes Vegan Chocolate Cupcake

By Allison Baloglu, for YourSmartKitchen

Something struck me as funny today. Chocolate is so often associated with sweet treats, but actually if you have ever sampled pure cocoa, it is actually bitter. And if you have ever read the ingredients on most chocolate bars, they have to add sugar to get the sweet flavor we enjoy. Sometimes the milk chocolate bars we have grown to love are less than 50% chocolate. Which means that for milk chocolate lovers, you may actually be more addicted to the sugar than the chocolate. And white chocolate does not even contain chocolate solids, it is simply cocoa butter, sugar and milk. But some good news for you dark chocolate lovers out there: dark chocolate is full of healthy antioxidants. Dark chocolate treats are usually over 65-70% chocolate solids, or cocoa, content.

So what’s so healthy about dark chocolate anyway? Chocolate contains flavonoids, which act as antioxidants. Antioxidants, which are found in a variety foods, protect the body from aging and promote good cardiovascular health. They do this by neutralizing “free radicals” in the body, which are molecules that cause cell damage. Dark chocolate contains a large number of antioxidants. And while there are several studies pending to determine exactly how many antioxidants there are in chocolate, there is significant evidence to suggest that a small serving of chocolate contains equal amounts to red wine, or other fruits and vegetables. Flavonoids can help lower blood pressure, lower LDL cholesterol, and balance certain hormones in the body.

Dr. Oz on Oprah, Antioxident Rich Foods

Still not sure I completely understood what an antioxidant really did, I watched an episode of Dr. Oz on Oprah’s television program. He conducted a visual representation that really clicked with me and helped me to understand how they perform. Common antioxidants are vitamins C, E and beta-carotene. So as an example Dr. Oz had a lemon, which contains vitamin C, and some apple slices on a table. He explained that the term antioxidant means just that, it combats oxidation. When you slice an apple it will turn brown when left out and exposed to oxygen. But, if you squeeze lemon juice on the apple it prevents, or at least delays, the oxidation process. Seeing that example made sense to me. So imagine those antioxidants, like vitamin C for example, are hard at work inside your body too. This is why consuming these vitamins has so many benefits, including keeping your skin looking young and firm. That must be why the Greeks say to make food your medicine!

Now, this does not mean that just because cocoa powder and dark chocolate contain all these health benefits that you can over indulge. Like with anything else in your diet, moderation is key. Chocolate when consumed as part of a balanced diet can be a heart healthy treat. In addition to tasting good and lowering blood pressure, it also stimulates endorphin production, which gives a feeling of pleasure; it contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant; and it contains theobromine, caffeine and other substances which are stimulants. Theobromine by the way is the ingredient that makes this substance so toxic for pets. Their systems are not able to unable to metabolize the chemical effectively. So keep it to yourself and enjoy!

P.S.

I am going to be whipping up some tasty Valentines Day creations this week, stay tuned for Flourless Chocolate Cake, or Chocolate Souffle, whichever sounds tastier later this week!!

What is your favorite chocolate recipe? And remember, chocolate can be savory or sweet, it isn’t just for dessert!

Introducing our newest Guest Writer, Genna! Genna is a talented graphic designer, marketer, artist and super-mom. She is also a fellow Flagler College alumni. Despite all of Genna’s amazing gifts, she is admittedly not an avid baker. As you would expect of an artist, she takes greater pleasure in decorating a cupcake than she does in baking one. Nothing wrong with that! I hope you enjoy Genna’s recent adventure in cupcake making, and maybe even take inspiration from her creative cupcake decor. Enjoy!

A Cupcake Quest

Last weekend I experienced my annual “Gotta make my husband’s homemade birthday cake” dilema. This request is bestowed upon me and usually includes which specific recipe I am supposed to make. Past years were carrot cake with avocado frosting, tres leches and some other anti-Betty Crocker ideas. This year my husband graciously asked for kid friendly cupcakes since we were going to celebrate at a bowling alley. Phew – it could be worse! I immediately looked to Allison Cafe to see what’s been tested in the kitchen by my friend.

Kid friendly requirements in MY book is: No nuts and lots of sprinkles. I don’t care about quantity of sugar or fat. If it looks cool, they love it. My kid is crazy anyway with or without sugar.

The recipe that seemed to fit the bill was Allison’s “Chocolate Cupcakes with Creamy White Frosting“. What I didn’t like about it was that it asked for things that I didn’t have in my pantry (buttermilk & coconut extract). Did I forget to mention I’m super lazy and dislike cooking in general? In retrospect, I should have just made this recipe because no matter what recipe I picked to make from scratch would seem to me annoyingly difficult and ask for items I’d have to go purchase.

So, I went off to see what Martha Stewart suggested. I love to decorate items, but not to cook them! So after looking at 30 beauty shots of decorated cupcakes – I knew I was going to make baseball cupcakes for my Red Sox fan of a husband. I came to the final conclusion of Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I noticed on the Food Network website that Paula Deen has the same recipe and did a side by side comparison. They were ALMOST identical with variations of some important chemical combinations such as: baking soda, vinegar and cocoa powder. I regularly watch Alton Brown’s Good Eats Show (a favorite show of my husband’s) and knew that these are very important components that shouldn’t be played with. But I didn’t care. I ended up taking the average of both recipes and figured if these are horrible – well I hate cooking anyway!! With some tips from other cookers in the comments pages, I also took their advice into account. My husband should know better than to make me do this without Betty!

As I was cooking, my first mistake was in making the buttermilk. They didn’t have any in the grocery store, so I was forced to make it myself. Buttermilk can be made at home by combining milk and vinegar (about 1 cup of milk to 1 tsp of vinegar; and don’t forget to set the milk and vinegar aside so they can mix for 5 minutes before adding to batter). I had some fancy Vermont apple vinegar in reaching distance. And I had a gallon of white vinegar upstairs in the laundry room by the bleach. You can only guess which I chose to use. My husband informed me that the white version has more acid which is needed to make the buttermilk. So I sprinkled some in after he went and got it. The mistake I learned, was to not pour liquid in a measuring cup over the item your going to add it to. Because when it spills over you have no idea how much went in! Let that be a lesson for you… By the way, I’m not convinced the apple vs white vinegar made a difference. 😉

In the end, I realized my cooking style is more like Paula Deen’s. She just gives you a list and says mix. She also uses items you can find in the grocery store, but more importantly in the quantities that you can buy it in. I don’t like left-overs of an item which Martha was trying to sell me. Martha was also too nitty gritty about what order to mix things in, and asked for a specific gel-paste food coloring not found easily. I didn’t know I had more of a Southern style of cooking rather than a New England style!

Here are the two links for the recipe’s I mixed:

Martha’s Red Velvet Cupcakes

Paula’s Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

So how did my concoction taste?

Everyone loved them and were impressed I made them from scratch. The Paula Deen frosting was superb. The cake was on the greasy side like reviewers had mentioned. I had even decreased the amount of oil and it didn’t make a big enough difference. But, I was glad I used foil lined paper cups because nobody else noticed the greasy papers!

Good luck to you fellow bakers and non-bakers out there! And don’t take advice from me – take it from Allison.

– Genna Drazen

The talented Genna Drazen

Genna Drazen is a talented graphic designer, marketer, artist and super-mom. She is also a fellow Flagler College alumni. Genna resides in Maryland with her beautiful family.