First off, sorry for the lack of posts, but foodgawker has been "eating" up all of our time. We hope to get back on a more frequent schedule soon. Second, we had our one year blogiversary at the beginning of the month, but sadly we didn't get chance to post about it. Hungry Bear did make this incredible chocolate blackout cake to celebrate the milestone.

She used a blackout cake recipe from Sweet Stuff: Karen Barker's American Desserts, but substituted bittersweet Valrhona chocolate for the semisweet. The cake is absolutely delicious, but it's time consuming to make because of the many steps... coffee brewing, pudding creating, cake baking, cookie crumbling and icing making. We loved the pudding and the cake part. There was an extra layer of unused cake and it was fantastic by itself.

The icing tasted good, but we didn't like the hardened texture and it was difficult to work with. If we had to make it again, we would use Gale Gand's fudgy chocolate frosting instead. Or we would skip the icing, double the pudding quantity, use all four cake layers and top it with pudding.

Still, it was one of the best chocolate cakes we've made and definitely worth the effort!

I usually don't get too personal in my posts and just stick to the basics (good food, good photos, good recipe). For the most part, I don't think you are interested in what Hungry Bear and I do outside of our adventures in the kitchen. But, I'm making an exception with this post to fully explain why we made these decadent cocoa brownies.

I've mentioned our NYC friends, Jeff and Aimee, in the past. They organized our first cupcake tasting tour. I met Jeff in 1990 when I was a sophomore at Penn State. Despite getting off on the wrong foot (Jeff initially disliked me, imagine that?), we become very close and eventually lived together for a year and half.

I never use nuts in my chocolate desserts. I wouldn't dare put them in our chewy chocolate chunk cookies or in our brownies. Call me nutty, but I like to keep our chocolate desserts pure and simple.

The one nut I'll make an exception for is the macadamia nut. I love the richness and creaminess of this nut. As I was flipping through some cookbooks, I stumbled upon Jamie Oliver's two-nuts chocolate torte recipe, which uses almonds and walnuts.

The recipe looked simple enough, so I used it with a few changes. The first modification was substituting macadamia nuts for the almonds and walnuts. When I walked to the local supermarket, the only macadamia nuts available were roasted and salted nuts. I figured it would be okay, since most cake recipes ask for around a teaspoon of salt. Since macadamia nuts are higher in fat content than almonds and walnuts, I cut the amount of butter. The final change was the addition of vanilla extract to enhance the chocolate flavor.

Chocolate bouchons are amazing cork shaped brownies found at Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery in Napa and NYC. The recipe is also used to make the warm chocolate brownie served at Ad Hoc, which is our favorite dessert at any restaurant in the Bay Area country. Every time we go to Napa, we have to get a fix of bouchons from the bakery or the brownie at Ad Hoc. They are extremely addicting!

Our friend, Brennan, is a total bouchon junkie. When we bring back bouchons from Napa, we have to give the brownies to Deb, Brennan's wife. Otherwise, Brennan will eat them all and neglect to tell Deb about their existence. We accidentally outed him once... oops! We thought he'd share at least one.

A few weeks ago, I made bouchons for the first time and I turned it into a battle between Valrhona and Scharffen Berger chocolate. The recipe calls for Valrhona chocolate, but I also wanted to try bouchons using Scharffen Berger. It's our favorite local chocolate maker and we've been baking almost exclusively with Scharffen Berger for the last 5 or 6 years.

As I mentioned in the last post, our friend Jane made chocolate devil's food cupcakes for dessert last Sunday. She has made these cupcakes for us in the past and we love them. Jane uses a devil's food cupcake recipe from the Food Network. The cocoa powder and chocolate brand used is Valrhona, so the cupcakes are pure chocolate delights.

In the process of making the ganache, Jane overheated her cream and broke it. The chocolate separated and became grainy, then I made it worse by overheating it more. None of us had broken a ganache before, so we were at a loss on how to fix it. Fortunately, we were able to find a remedy from The Secrets of Baking...

If your ganache looks broken or feels grainy, there is still hope for it. To repair a broken ganache, divide it in half. Warm one half over a double boiler to a temperature of 130 degrees F. The fat will melt and pool at this temperature, making the mixture thinner. Cool the remaining ganache to 60 degrees F by stirring it over a bowl of ice. The fat in this portion will begin to solidify, causing the ganache to thicken.

When both halves have reached the desired temperatures, slowly stream the hot ganache into the cold and stir to combine. You can use a food processor for this step by placing the cool ganache into the bowl of the food processor, turning on the machine, and streaming in the warm ganache. The mixture will not fall below 90 degrees F during this procedure, so there is no risk of creating a grainy texture. Combining the two portions of ganache in this way averages the temperature into the optimal working range, and the fat droplets will be suspended evenly in the water.

We followed the directions and were able to save the ganache. It would have been sad to discard the Valrhona chocolate but thankfully we fixed it and topped the devil's food cupcakes with the ganache. The cupcakes were fantastic!