Andelin Adventures – Page 144 – A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family

Chocolate Cake

This is my most favorite homemade chocolate cake. I just eat it without frosting it’s so good!

2 cups boiling water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 3- 9 inch round cake pans or I have used a bundt pan or one large 10 in x 15 in pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the boiling water with the cocoa, and whisk until smooth. Don’t be tempted to taste it. 😉 It looks and smells a lot better than it tastes at this point. Let this mixture cool, while you prepare the rest.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside for now.

In a large bowl, (I use my kitchenaid) cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.

Alternately add the flour mixture and the cocoa mixture. So I pour a bit of the cocoa mixture in, let it mix a bit then a bit of the flour mixture and let it mix a bit, and repeat until I’ve added all of the cocoa and flour mixtures.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan(s).

Bake in preheated oven.

3-9inch rounds for 25-30 minutes

10 in x 15 in pan for 50-60 minutes

I don’t remember how long the bundt pan took, but I tend to set the timer for the lower number and then just keep checking it until it’s done.

Allow the cake to cool in the pan before pulling it out. And then just dig in and eat it because it’s so GOOD! 😉

Shhhh!!!

While Ethan and Tyra were at school, I heard Jeremy in the living room talking to Dinah, and he said ” Shhhh! I want to hear the Holy Ghost talk! Dinah don’t you want to hear the Holy Ghost talk???”

See when you think that kids aren’t listening in their primary classes, they really are hearing what you say. So cute!

900 Cake Balls

From her post over Easter weekend, Rebecca explained,

“I have been too busy to blog lately. And the main reason is that I have been making cake balls, for Debby’s wedding. I am glad to report that I have survived, and it’s all finally over! 😉

“Cake balls are something that I had never heard before. My dad sent me a text awhile back asking me to try making some, because he needed ‘a reliable cook’ to try them out. Uh ok! So after looking up some instructions on the internet I got busy. I started with 4 flavors, chocolate, strawberry, lemon and rainbow chip.

“Then I passed them all out after giving Debby a bunch to try.”

I decided to hijack this post and make it my own. -evil laugh number 14-

Cake balls are pretty simple in concept, but VERY time consuming. As the name implies, they start out as a cake. The beautiful thing about making these little morsels of wonderfulness is, you can use ugly cake to make them. The cake is then mixed with frosting until thoroughly mixed, then they are shaped and dipped in chocolate. As the pictures below show, white, milk, or dark chocolate all work for these.

She expanded her original four varieties into a total of 11 (yes, eleven!) different flavours!

Rainbow Chip.

In our taste tests, this one was referred to as “cupcake flavour” by children. And we don’t blame them! It was white chocolate coated Rainbow chip cake blended with rainbow chip frosting. the finishing touch was confetti chocolate drizzles. It certainly has a party appearance to it, although the taste is still sophisticated enough for adults.

Quadruple Chocolate.

This cake ball was chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, coated in milk chocolate, with dark chocolate drizzled on top. I really wasn’t sure what to call this (these names ARE working titles only, of course), but the thought of how much chocolate goes into this is rather overwhelming. Now, if only I could figure out a way to get chocolate chips and chocolate drizzles into these, and they’ll be a true “death by chocolate” experience!

Red Velvet

The “Southern tradition” of Red Velvet, from what I’ve read, is really classic and popular in the south. My first experience with it was at the buffet restaurant, Golden Corral. A deep red cake with a hint of chocolate flavour, blended with a mild cream cheese frosting, coated in white chocolate, with drizzles of red. This was one of the most popular flavours in our family and trials.

Ultimate Carrot.

What better name for it? This was a moist carrot cake, merged with crushed pineapple, raisins, coconut and chopped pecans. Adding cream cheese frosting for the perfect taste, and then dipped in white chocolate, drizzled in orange stripes. Not to be confused with Orange or Pumpkin (coming soon!)

Almost Fresh Strawberry

Rebecca insists that to be called “Fresh,” it needs to have fresh strawberries added, but that wouldn’t keep very well. A rich strawberry cake blended with strawberry frosting is almost overwhelming for haters of the berry, but if you enjoy strawberries, it’s quite the experience. Once dipped in dark chocolate and drizzled with pink, you won’t even miss the fresh fruit.

Vanilla Chocolate Chip

Aren’t they cute? This was actually a basic vanilla flavour, but we found adding chocolate to anything can really make it better. French vanilla cake and frosting, with mini chocolate chips, dipped in milk chocolate and decorated (by hand, of course!) with little dots. Quite the contrast to the rainbow chips in the aforementioned cupcake flavour up above.

Lemon

Lush, lush lemon. This was one of the four original flavours Rebecca made in her trials, and found the white chocolate coating really helped the tangy lemon flavour come out, while the initial tests of milk chocolate masked the taste. Simply lemon cake, mixed with lemon frosting, with yellow stripes on the white chocolate coating.

Pina Colada

I know, I know, it’s just Pineapple Coconut, but there’s something special about using the Spanish name for it. This was my personal favourite to design and decorate. A pineapple cake with extra pineapple mixed in for texture, plus flakes of coconut, dipped in white chocolate, then dipped in toasted coconut. Aren’t they just divine?

Butter Pecan

Okay, I’ll admit it. Discussing this flavour didn’t excite me. I always have high expectations for Butter Pecan ice cream, yet am always disappointed, so when we looked at Butter Pecan cake, I wasn’t thrilled at first. But when cream cheese frosting and chopped pecans were added to it, the result was so sweet and tasty! This was dipped in milk chocolate and drizzled with milk chocolate stripes (although I’m sure I can convince Rebecca to roll these in chopped pecans next time.)

Chocolate Rum

Wow. Simply wow. When I was on my mission in England, some bakeries carried items called “Rum balls” which were just large moist balls of some kind of cake, rolled in sprinkles. I don’t think there was real rum in them (never asked), but the flavour was something else. These are very close; chocolate cake mixed with chocolate frosting and rum flavoring, give quite an overwhelming rum taste (you either like it or don’t!), dipped in dark chocolate and topped with chocolate sprinkles. Not to be confused with a See’s Candy Bordeaux, since they are so much better!

German Chocolate

After making the Pina Colada flavours, we thought it would be pretty to decorate these in a reverse colour scheme. German Chocolate cake was blended with coconut pecan frosting, giving a subtle coconut flavour on the inside, then dipped in milk chocolate and topped with flaked white coconut. Similar to the regular chocolate in flavour, but you can certainly taste the coconut inside and out.

Happy Easter

We had our big family Easter dinner yesterday. Laurel & Roine came out with their kids. Sandy & Robert and Grandma Shirley came from the hotel to spend some time with us. Debby and Jeff and their friend Lindsay came, and my parents, Tom & Jenny and their kids, Patsy, Wendy, David, Jonathan and Tiffany were already here (since they were staying at our house). So our house was packed but it was SO nice to have everyone here. We had conference on, and we had a really early dinner, it was more like a giant Easter lunch. I don’t have any pictures from having everyone over, but the food was great. After getting home from the wedding Friday night, Kyle and I just threw the roasts in the crock pot and got them started and we woke up to the smell of yummy food. We had a pot roast, and a lamb roast, a medley of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and yellow carrots, fresh pineapple and strawberries, mashed potatoes and rolls (with lots of homemade jams of course). After dinner, Sandy, Robert, Grandma, Wendy, David, Jonathan, & Tiffany hit the road to head back home to California, since Robert was really adamant about leaving AT 3:00 that afternoon.

This morning we woke up pretty early due to excited kids who were anxious to search for Easter eggs. So we waited until everyone was awake and we gave them each a basket and said go find them. This year the Easter bunny changed things up and instead of hiding the hard boiled eggs, he hid plastic eggs with goodies in them.

Jeremy thought it was so funny that the Easter Bunny hid an egg in Daddy’s shoe. 🙂

Chloe was introduced to her first lolly pop, and she LOVED it! She had quite the sticky drool all over her front she was salivating so much over her lolly pop!

The girls received cute glasses in their Easter baskets:

I love this picture of Dinah and Annaleah playing with the whistles they found in the plastic eggs:

After the morning festivities, and breakfast (which consisted of turnovers and bacon mmmmm) our remaining visitors gathered up the rest of their stuff, and finished loading up their cars so they could head back home to California. But not without a little bit more fun. 😉 Our silly Californian visitors were so excited to see snow that they couldn’t leave without having snowball fights.

Mom and Dad went at it while they were brushing off their car. I LOVE that you can see the snowball Dad threw at Mom, mid-flight! And they were having such a good time.

Tommy and Tyra were having a great time throwing snowballs at Tom too.

We had a really nice Easter, and now our guests have gone, and it’s time to get the house back to normal! 😛

Coloring Eggs

Grandpa, Grandma, Tom & Jenny, Tommy and Annaleah were here to color eggs with us this year, and the kids (as always) had so much fun.

I boiled 5 dozen eggs, and two of them cracked while boiling. Then if I remember correctly we only had 2 dropped during the egg coloring, which is pretty good. 🙂

Last year Kyle had gotten out our raw eggs to color as well, since the kids colored all of the boiled eggs so fast. And going to the fridge to get eggs last year was not fun, because only Kyle and I knew which we boiled and which were raw. So this year Kyle colored 2 raw eggs, and just for a joke he used the wax crayon to write ‘raw’ on them before dipping them in the color.