Chocolate University Online Blog
 Can’t get enough chocolate in a single cake?
Interested in impressing your dinner guests with a scrumptious chocolate dessert?
Your family is begging for a new recipe with lots of chocolaty goodness?
This one will do it! Dig in!
Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup pecans, chopped
• 1 chocolate cake mix, 18.25 oz box
• 4 eggs
• 1 instant chocolate pudding mix (4 serving size)
• 8 ounces sour cream
Toss the chocolate chips and pecans in a tablespoon of the dry cake mix. Beat the remaining ingredients together for 3 minutes then fold in the chips and pecans. Pour into greased and floured bundt or tube pan and bake 50 minutes at 350°, or until cake tests done.
Allow to cool. Cut out around the cake and invert onto plate. Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar (powdered sugar) or cover with chocolate frosting. |
Enjoy!
Categories: chocolate recipes
Tags: chocolate cake
Chocolate and celebrations go back as early as the ancient Maya, maybe even earlier. The Maya served a frothy chocolate beverage made from crushed cacao beans. Perhaps it was used for the first toast by the best man!
Today, the tradition of serving chocolate at weddings continues. Receptions serve guests chocolate wedding cake, the bride and groom thank their guests with chocolate wedding favors and, the pièce de résistance, a chocolate fountain for dipping!
Let’s talk about the creative ways you can present chocolate at your wedding celebration.
At the head table, where the bride and groom and attendants usually sit, place a vase of chocolate roses and present them as gifts to those special people in your lives.
Instead of napkins with the name of the happy couple, make personalized chocolate candy bar wrappers. Wouldn’t you rather have your guests eat a memento of your special day and not wipe their mouth with one?
Chocolate covered strawberries, one dressed in a tuxedo and one in a wedding dress, would “wow” any crowd.
 Sometimes I imagine going back in time and adding more chocolate to my wedding day. For starters, I would switch out the overly sweet, fluffy white frosting on the wedding cake (much to the groom’s dismay) and wrap it in a rich, dark chocolate fondant. Then I would arrange for sharply dressed wait-staff to walk around with platters of chocolate hors d’oeuvres that include hand-rolled truffles and assorted chocolates.
Good thing my children like chocolate. Maybe I could help them with their chocolate wedding fantasies!
Categories: fun chocolate facts
Tags: chocolate cake, chocolate celebrations, chocolate party
I wonder who thought the pairing of chocolate and zucchini in a cake would make a good idea?
It is a rather unusual combination. (My husband claims that foods commonly served as vegetables should not be added to cake!)
I did a little looking around to find out some history behind the invention of chocolate zucchini cake and noticed there are a lot of theories but no one really knows for sure. I like the most logical one; someone had to find a way to use up the most prolific invader of the garden!
Still, why use zucchini as the secret ingredient in a chocolate cake?
From a functional point of view, zucchini has a high water content so the cake is moist. From a nutritional standpoint, zucchini is low in calories, contains anti-oxidants and is a good source of vitamins A, C, and potassium.
From a flavor perspective, well, you can’t taste the zucchini in all that chocolate cake so I’m not sure about any flavor contribution!
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
1/2 cup butter
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour milk or add a teaspoon of vinegar fresh milk
1/2 cup oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups grated zucchini
Chocolate chips
Whipped cream
Preheat oven to 325°. Grease a 9×13-inch pan. Combine butter, sugar, flour, cocoa, soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, eggs, milk, oil, vanilla, and zucchini. Pour into pan. Top with chocolate chips.
Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan.
Serve with whipped cream. |
Categories: chocolate recipes
Tags: chocolate cake
A couple weeks ago I attended an event that included a lunch buffet. I love buffets, especially the all-you-can-eat-dessert part of a buffet.
 After eating my lunch, I elbowed my way through the crowd that had swarmed around the desserts. I stared at the table. <gasp> It had an abundance of cupcakes, the most diverse assortment of beautifully decorated cupcakes I had ever laid eyes on!
The first cupcake I enjoyed was a deep, rich, red velvet with cream cheese frosting. My second cupcake was a dark chocolate with an equally dark and creamy chocolate frosting.
I better stop now. I can’t tell you how many I had (and still respect myself)!
To my surprise, I learned the cupcakes were made by a friend of mine who turned her passion for making cupcakes into a booming Milwaukee business. The Milwaukee Cupcake Company makes, correction, crafts scratch-baked cupcakes.
There are a number of classic varieties available, but it’s the unique and exotic that I can’t stop thinking about…
Here are just a few of the sensational cupcakes to choose from:
The Botanical Gardens
Delicate lavender rosewater cupcake, with orange zest, topped with fluffy vanilla buttercream, and sprinkled with crystallized sugar and lavender.
The Hog
Dark chocolate cupcake with baked-in bacon bits, dipped in luxurious ganache, and topped with bacon bits.
The Lake Park
White chocolate cake with a raspberry reduction ribbon running through it, topped with white chocolate cream cheese butter cream, a fresh raspberry and a white chocolate drizzle.
The Rishi Matcha
Green tea cake made with Rishi’s Matcha Japanese Green Tea, which is antioxidant-rich and award-winning. The light, fluffy, buttercream is made with Rishi’s Sweet Matcha powder, which produces a beautiful color and delicate taste. Then it’s garnished with crystallized ginger.
You can order all you want from the Milwaukee Cupcake Company website, but if you need instant gratification, and happen to be in the Milwaukee area, visit their new retail counter (opening in May 2010) at 316 N. Milwaukee St. in the Third Ward… in the same building as the Coquette Café and Petaluna Floral.
I can’t wait to show off these beauties at my son’s upcoming confirmation party. All I have to do is resist eating the whole darn tray before the guests arrive!
Categories: fine foods & beverages
Tags: chocolate cake, chocolate dessert, cupcakes
 Back in 1909 Walter Baker & Co., Ltd. published a little book called Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes By Miss Parloa and Home Made Candy Recipes By Mrs. Janet McKenzie Hill.
The staff here at Chocolate University Online have created a special 100th anniversary edition of this book and released it in a PDF download format.
In addition to the original text and 138 recipes, the book contains an all new introduction by CUO staff. We also took each of the pictures and moved them to the same page as their corresponding recipes. It’s much more convenient to see the picture right there rather than looking at various photo pages to get an idea of the finished product.
Furthermore, we added a great new alphabetical index. Now if you know the name of the recipe you’ll be able to find it quickly. That makes the book much friendlier than the original which, quite uselessly, listed all recipes in page number order.
The new version is for sale and immediate download at our Chocolate Store page. Enjoy!
Categories: chocolate recipes, fun chocolate facts, shameless self promotion
Tags: chocolate cake, chocolate candy, chocolate dessert, chocolate history, hot chocolate, nostalgia
I recently took a cruise to the eastern Caribbean with Royal Caribbean International. Although I loved the sun, fun, and sea, what I really enjoyed were some of the most memorable desserts I have ever been eaten.
 One those desserts that will forever stand out for me was the Molten Chocolate Cake.
Wow…
Yum…
Sorry for the pause. I might have lost consciousness just now thinking about it.
Molten chocolate cake is a popular and luxurious dessert. It is a combination of flourless chocolate and soufflé.
Sometimes it is called Chocolate Lava Cake (or even Molten Chocolate Lava Cake).
There is some dispute as to the inventor of the molten chocolate cake. On the one hand, a U.S chef takes credit by exclaiming that he accidentally took a chocolate sponge cake out of the oven before it was done. On the other, a French chef argues that such a dessert already existed in France.
In my opinion, it does not matter who invented it. The most important thing is that it was invented!
Butter, eggs, sugar, and chocolate are the four main ingredients of a molten chocolate cake. Typically, the eggs are whisked together with sugar to form a dense, thick paste while the butter and chocolate are melted together. There is a lighter version that separates the egg whites so they can be whipped into a foam to create more lift when baked.
Have you ever heard the saying: “A little too much chocolate is just about right?” After eating a Molten Chocolate Cake, you’ll know what that means.
I should have purchased the recipe book from Royal Caribbean so that I could make their actual version. But, alas, I did not. Here’s another version that I hope you enjoy…
Molten Chocolate Lava Cake
6 oz. Semi Sweet Chocolate
6 oz. Butter, sliced (at room temperature)
3 Eggs
1/2 cup Sugar
1/3 cup Flour
Melt the chocolate over a double-boiler or slowly in a microwave oven. Stir in the butter until melted. Beat the eggs with the sugar until fully mixed and the color lightens. Stir the melted chocolate mix into the egg mix. Stir in the flour.
Preheat the over to 350°F. Pour the batter into 4 buttered ramekins. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove ramekins from ovre and tip upside down onto dessert plates. Serve while still warm. |
Enjoy!
Categories: chocolate recipes
Tags: chocolate cake, chocolate dessert
 As a child, my favorite cake was Devil’s Food. I asked my mom, many times, to make this cake for my birthday.
Why is the cake called Devil’s Food?
Folk lore says that a group of Pilgrims that lived next door to a Chocolate House in Amsterdam in the late 1600’s, witnessed chocolate house patrons cavorting and making merry while they consumed chocolate. The Pilgrims were convinced that chocolate was made from the devil. They named chocolate “Devil’s Food.” Later on, when dark chocolate cake gained in popularity, it was named Devil’s Food Cake for its sinfully delicious nature.
Devil’s food cake is moist, airy, and rich. It is multi-layered and covered in lots of thick chocolate frosting. Yum!
There are different variations of Devil’s Food cake such as Red Velvet, Red Devil, Waldorf Astoria Cake, and $100 Dollar Cake.
Red velvet cake has a more pronounced red color because the high concentration of baking soda caused a reddening of the cocoa powder when baked. Today, red food coloring is sometimes used.
Feeling a craving for Devil’s Food cake? Here is a good recipe:
Devil’s Food Cake
Cake Mixture
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 pound butter, softened
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup milk
3 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Cream sugars and butter. Add melted chocolate. Set aside. Beat egg yolks together, and then blend in water and vanilla extract. Gradually add yolk mixture to the chocolate mixture and beat until fluffy. Mix together flour, salt and baking soda. Add flour mixture and milk to the main batter. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into batter.
Pour into two greased and floured 9-inch round cake pans. Bake at 350°F about 30-35 minutes or until cakes spring back when touched lightly. Turn out onto cooling rack. When completely cooled, frost.
Frosting
10 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
½ cup water or cream
¾ cup butter
To frost the cake, spread a good-sized layer of the frosting over the top of one layer. Top with the second cake layer. Then spread the top and sides with the remaining frosting. |
By the way, there is a National Devil’s Food Cake Day! It is May 19.
If you enjoy baking cakes here’s a chocolate cake recipe book that might interest you. It is published by Frances Moore of Painless Cooking.
By the way, the Devil’s Food Cake recipe above is not from this book.
For access to Frances time-proven recipes visit the Chocolate Cakes Recipes page.
Categories: chocolate recipes, fun chocolate facts
Tags: chocolate cake, chocolate dessert, folk lore
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