Chocolate French Silk Pancakes

Sometimes there’s nothing better than chocolate for breakfast. Sweets for the sweet, and all that.

But sometimes, on special occasions (or just because, if you’re that awesome) there’s nothing better than chocolate pancakes for breakfast. Topped with sweet maple syrup. Sprinkled with mini chocolate chips. In the shape of hearts.

Oh yeah, life is sweet!

Chocolate French Silk Pancakes
Adapted from How Sweet It Is

serves 3-4 (about 12 pancakes)

Ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 heaping teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, well beaten
2 cups non-fat milk + more if needed to smooth out batter (use lite coconut milk here for the original recipe)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
Stir together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt and baking powder. Add eggs, milk and vanilla.

Stir until dry ingredients are combined and batter is smooth.

Preheat a skillet on medium heat. Drop 1/4 cup of batter on skillet and cook until bubbles form (about 2-3 minutes). Flip and cook until lightly browned (about 1 minute).

SMS – Fluffy Coconut Cake with Passion Fruit Filling

I’ve been wicked short on time as of late. I’m surprised that I even got at least SOME of this recipe under my belt before my proverbial plate filled up.

And as you guessed it, I’m short on time now… so I won’t keep you too long!

I was under the impression that this cake was a coconut cake. I was finished mixing the batter when I realized that there was not coconut, well, ANYTHING! Thinking I’d missed a step, I re-read the recipe and saw that it was the frosting that was coco-nutty.

Ehhhh no thanks.

So to save on time (and sanity) I quartered the recipe, made them cake into cupcakes, cut a hole on top to fill with apricot jam and topped with cream cheese frosting.

The cake was indeed fluffy and tasty (extra vanilla-ish because I used vanilla soy milk in place of the regular milk) but I’m not much of a frosting person so I ate them plain.

For the recipe for the cake, filling and frosting… head on over to Karen’s blog, Karen of Karen’s Cookies Cakes & More.

Up next week: Peanut Brittle.

TWD – Chewy, Chunky Blondies

AKA: “What’s a blondie?”
AKA: the holy grail of all things loaded!!

These have everything from nuts to shredded coconut to chocolate chips and even butterscotch chips in them. And a few glugs of bourbon may or may not have found its way into this blondie. I am not available for comment.

Ahem. BOY, were these good! I have 2 handfuls of people who enjoyed them rather thoroughly. And NOOOO it wasn’t because they were boozy. My friends have more class and dignity than that. Or so they lead me to believe.

But it didn’t seem like anyone really knew what a blondie WAS! I always thought that it was a vanilla version of a brownie. Blondie, brownie… it makes sense to me! But everyone was in agreement that it was more of a cross between a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie. Who am I to argue semantics with a handful of boozy friends that were praising my treats? I’m not above that.

As far as prep work goes, there’s a lot of chopping involved (unless you don’t mind hauling out the food processor) but once everything is chopped and ready to go, these are thrown together quite easily. I made these and my go-to brownies (I’ll get the recipe up… eventually) in the same afternoon. They did take a bit longer for them to bake up, probably because of the glugs of bourbon that may or may not have been in the dough, which gave them a more solid, crunchy-esque top rather than the crakled, brownie like tops I imagined seeing.

Overall, I think these were a hit. I enjoyed them as did everyone else. That deserves a repeat in my book 🙂

Please disregard my alien looking, freakishly orange butterscotch chips. I promise they didn’t look like that the night I made them!

A big thanks goes out to Nicole of Cookies on Friday for choosing this recipe. Head on over to her blog for the recipe, its a good’n!

TWD – My Best Chocolate Chip (etc!) Cookies

I think that I have a ‘chocolate chip cookie curse.’

No matter how many different recipes I make, how hard I try, underbake, overbake, mix like crazy, just incorporate, freeze, chill, don’t chill… it doesn’t matter WHAT I do, my cookies never come out the way I want them to. And it ONLY happens with chocolate chip cookies.

The are flat as discs. It seems like all the dough falls to the baking sheet and leaves the chips exposed. If anyone can remedy this problem for me, I’d love you forever. I’d even send you a package of the beautiful cookies, scout’s honor!!

Aside from my displeasure at the appearance of these, they tasted great. I made 4 different versions (posted above, respectively): regular ole chocolate chip cookies, CCC with walnuts, CCC with coconut and raisins, and Chocolate CCC. I also used bittersweet, semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips/chunks for variety.

The coconut raisin variation was dubbed “the best cookies I’ve ever had” by a coworker. None of the cookies lasted very long, which is a good sign. So I’ll be making these again, nipping and tucking until they look like they do in the book. I’m OCD like that. 😀

Thanks to Kait of Kait’s Plate for picking these. Head on over to her blog for the recipe and the the TWD blogroll to see the different variations of a classic.

MSC – Coconut Cupcakes… OMG yum.

Let’s start this post off by noting that I was never a fan of coconut. Unless of course it was in the shape of an Almond Joy. But coconut cookies, cakes, anything sprinkled with the waxy, oddly textured stuff was shunned by me. I quickly turned my nose up in disgust and pranced away to play with barbies.

I am reformed! Can I get a hallelujah? I’d like to think that my adult taste buds are finally coming in and I am starting to branch out into different tastes and textures.

These cupcakes have opened up my mind. I must admit that I was a bit hesitant to try one but I sighed in that beautiful aroma and ogled the light, springy cupcake and I could no longer resist. Coconut or not, I was eating one! (After all, I had to even out the batch. Odd numbers bother me. I’m quirky, alright?)

And it was indeed perfect. Soft and springy and fluffy. Warm and delicious. Hints of coconut flavor, but not over-powering. Oh the joy. And that was without the frosting.

Now, the frosting, I wasn’t too crazy about. It had a great texture, but even when I added vanilla extract, it tasted like it was still missing something. It’s a great simply-throw-together type recipe but it needs to be tweaked, flavor wise.

I halved the recipe and yielded 9 cupcakes and halved the frosting as well and had wayyy too much left over. I am no cupcake artist, but I am rather proud of the way these turned out! PRAISE ME!! *imitates Invader Zim*

Now when I am offered a coconut treat, I’ll politely take one with an open mind. And then prance off to play with my barbies 🙂

A great big thank you goes out to Jennifer of Cinema Cupcakes for opening my coco-nutty world 😀