Daring Baker's Challenge: Sans Rival Cake

I made this delicious cake for Thanksgiving. I wasn't planning to bake it, but then my step-mom asked me to bring something chocolate to Thanksgiving, so that was that.

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog. The Bibingka cake was a little to crazy for my family, so the sans rival cake was a much better match.

This cake takes 10 eggs! The cake layers are meringue with ground cashews and cocoa folded in. The frosting is made from half of the left-over egg yolks and is an extremely rich French buttercream. It was my first time making butter cream in this way and it was difficult but ultimately worth the effort.

I don't know if I'll make this again, just because it was so labor intensive. But, it was a fun thing to bring for the holidays and everyone enjoyed it.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Almond Cookies

These cookies are delicious. I made a batch for my Grinnell secret santee. I hope she likes them. We made pretty short work of the leftovers here in my apartment. They were especially delectable right out of the oven. Recipe is here, at My Baking Addiction.

Avocado Cake

Not the most delicious looking photo ever - I forgot to take one when it finished baking and I didn't have any cooking spray so I had to use butter and flour to keep it from sticking. Still tasted good though!

I am living with my boyfriend this summer, and that boyfriend has an obsession with Costco. Due to this obsession, we seem to frequently end up with way too much of something that is perishable. One week, our excess was avocados. Now, I love guacamole as much as the next person, but I can only eat so much of it. A college friend had tried CakeSpy's Avocado Cake and said it was really good, so I decided to give it a try. Verdict: It's pretty good. It also go better the longer it sat out and bonus point - it's vegan if you make it with oil!

Engagement Party S'More Cupcakes

I am officially at the phase in my life where everyone I know it getting engaged. I have had at least 3 law school classmates get engaged over the summer break - I will surely find out about more when I go back to school in the fall!

I made these cupcakes for the engagement party of a dear high school friend's older sister. In all fairness, she didn't ask me to bring anything, I just had a baking urge and the engagement party seemed like an excellent opportunity to pawn off some of my baked goods!

I am a big fan of S'mores. But S'mores aren't a food I get much opportunity to eat these days, as I am what might be described as...indoorsy. No bonfires in my recent past or foreseeable future, that's for sure.

However, I think I came up with a delicious S'more Cupcake recipe after using an amalgamation of many other recipes.

INGREDIENTS

Cupcakes - Adapted from Our Best Bites and Bakerella
2 C Flour
1/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder
1.5 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 C granulated sugar
1 C firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 large eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1 C luke warm water
1/2 C buttermilk
1/4 C Graham Cracker Crumbs

Filling
Toasted Marshmallow Creme
(Regular will work just fine, but the toasted is a fun touch!)

Frosting
Our Best Bites' Chocolate Frosting
Follow their directions, as this was the first time I made it and it worked out perfectly!

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift flour, salt, and baking soda into a medium bowl.
2. Cream the butter and the sugars together with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy and well incorporated. Add in eggs, one at a time and mix until fully incorporated. Add in vanilla and continue to mix until smooth.
3. Mix together buttermilk and water. Add 1/2 of the buttermilk/water mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture and alternate with the flour mixture. This is going to look a little weird - don't worry. It will work itself out.
4. Divide the batter in half - there should be about 6 cups total. If you mess it up, you just won't end up with equally chocolately and graham crackery cupcakes. Not the end of the world.
5. To one of batters, add the cocoa. To the other batter, add the graham cracker crumbs. Mix both until well incorporated.
6. Add your cupcake liners to your muffin tin. I used foil to evoke camping, but part of what's really cool about these cupcakes is the two color thing - that's not visible if you use foil!
7. For each cupcake, add two tablespoons of the graham cracker batter and top with two tablespoons of the cocoa batter.
8. Bake cupcakes for 15-20 minutes. I wish I could be more definite, but my summer oven is a weird one and I pretty much have to watch everything and don't think it provides much indication of what others' ovens might do.
9. After cupcakes have cooled, fill the cupcakes with the marshmallow fluff. Don't go overboard, as it's really sweet.
10. Frost cupcakes with the chocolate frosting. Sprinkle graham cracker crumbs over the frosting and top it all off with a marshmallow!