chocolate cheesecake with dark chocolate ganache drizzle

In addition to the mini pumpkin pies that I made for Thanksgiving last year, I also made this luscious chocolate cheesecake! I had just seen it on America's Test Kitchen (before they got rid of Christopher Kimball 😭) and I was dying to make it!

Instead of using traditional graham crackers for the crust, this recipe used smashed Oreo cookies (my mouth is watering already) which are ground in the food processor and then mixed with melted butter, pressed into a springform pan, and then baked until set.

For the filling, it's your basic cheesecake recipe, but amped up with cocoa powder and melted chocolate (YUM).

Once the filling is poured on top of the cooled crust, the method is to cover the cheesecake with foil and bake at a low temperature halfway, and then remove the foil and bake for the remaning half. And best of all, no water bath is required! Yippee!

Here it is right out of the oven, all puffy and creamy delicious looking.

But we're not done yet. The final touch is to drizzle chocolate ganache...  All. Over. The. Top.

Delicious!

I know it's way past Thanksgiving at this point, but hope you had a happy one!

dairy free chocolate cupcakes with whipped dark chocolate ganache frosting

Last fall we took a road trip to LA to visit with friends, and we stayed with one of my best friends, Reggie. Her daughter Rachel is allergic to dairy but loves baked goods, so I decided to make some dairy free cupcakes for her. I had recently come upon this recipe from Pastry Affair for vegan chocolate cupcakes, and while I was intrigued at how a cupcake with no eggs could rise to be soft and fluffy, I thought it would the perfect cupcake to try out for Rachel!

I ended up making two different chocolate cupcake recipes - the vegan one above, and my usual chocolate cupcake recipe with canola oil instead of butter, and coconut milk instead of regular milk. But I topped both cupcakes with the same vegan chocolate ganache frosting, which uses coconut milk instead of heavy cream.

 

To decorate the cupcakes, I filled a pastry bag with the whipped ganache frosting, and one by one I placed each cupcake on a revolving cake stand and used a a large petal tip #104 to pipe swirling rosettes on the top. (I've used this same ruffle technique to decorate cakes as well and I always love the way they turn out!)

After tasting them, most of us preferred the regular dairy free cupcake (with oil and coconut milk instead of dairy) when compared with the vegan cupcake (no oil or milk at all). The vegan cupcake was just missing a bit of richness that the other cupcake had. But for vegans I think this would be a great alternative, as the cupcake was still fluffy and moist, and full of chocolate flavor!

And now I'll leave you with some pictures from our fun weekend away. :)

coffee chiffon drip cake with espresso whipped cream and dark chocolate ganache

For my good friend Helen's birthday last September, we decided to meet up for Sunday brunch with our hubbies and kids in tow, and I decided to surprise her with this coffee chiffon cake! I knew she liked coffee chiffon because I made a Mickey Mouse version for her daughter Marni's birthday earlier this year, and she told me it was her favorite yet :D

I decided that it would be a small 6-inch cake, the perfect size for her and her family to enjoy, so I made four layers of coffee chiffon in 6-inch round cake pans. Then I filled each layer with espresso-tinged whipped cream.

Next I covered the top and sides of the cake with the same espresso whipped cream, smoothing it with an offset spatula.

I've been drooling at all the drip cakes out there on Instagram, so I decided to try it out again with Guittard dark chocolate (I first tried it with a Blogiversary cake a few years ago), although I still need to work on my drippy ganache technique because it still wasn't drippy enough!

I waited for my not-drippy-enough dark chocolate ganache to set before adding the final touch ...

... Little piped droplets of more of the espresso whipped cream. Don't they look like little meringue kisses?



Hope you had a fabulous birthday, Helen! So glad we got to spend that Sunday with you!

hello kitty macaron cake with neapolitan layers (and nut-free sesame seed macarons!)

I've been wanting to make a macaron cake for a long time now, ever since I saw this snowman macaron cake at Rasberri Cupcakes. (And even before that, when I saw her heart macaron cake! SO adorable!) Since Hello Kitty macarons are my thing, I decided to make a Hello Kitty macaron cake for my birthday this past April! And since I've been obsessed with neapolitan ever since making my daughter's neapolitan birthday cupcakes, I decided to make it a neapolitan cake! Wheee!

Since my daughter is severely allergic to all nuts, and macarons are normally made with almond flour, I set out to find a nut-free recipe to use since I wanted her to be able to enjoy a slice of my birthday cake. So I ended up trying out this recipe at Pizza Rossa, which uses ground-up sesame seeds instead of almond flour!

Since these macarons were going on top of a neapolitan cake, I decided to fill my macarons with a rich strawberry chocolate ganache (recipe here!)

The sesame in the macarons ended up tasting delicious, and with the strawberry chocolate ganache the combination reminded me of eating a peanut butter, strawberry jam, and chocolate sandwich! (Which is sorta scary to me because my daughter is severely allergic to peanuts!)

The only thing I didn't like was that I had used roasted sesame seeds, which caused lots of dark specks in my macaron shell, so next time I would use raw sesame seeds instead.

Once the macarons were done, I moved on to the cake! I wanted a light and fluffy neapolitan cake, so I found use this neapolitan sponge cake recipe at Not Quite Nigella (except I cut the recipe in half because I didn't want my layers so tall).

Once I had my vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate batters in my ungreased 8-inch pans, I baked them and let them cool.

To assemble, I started with the chocolate layer, which I topped with rich chocolate mousse.

Then came the vanilla cake layer ,which I topped with a vanilla whipped cream.

And finally the strawberry layer, which I topped with a strawberry whipped cream.

Then I proceeded to cover the sides and top of the cake with strawberry whipped cream. I'm telling you guys, this stuff tastes just like strawberry ice cream! So good!

And finally, I added my nut-free Hello Kitty macarons.

WHEEEEEE!

This is probably my most favorite Hello Kitty birthday cake. Well, besides this ombre Hello Kitty cake. And this Hello Kitty baked alaska.

Oh who am I kidding, I love all Hello Kitty cakes!!!

And the neapolitan inside! LOVE! :)

Happy Birthday to all you April babies out there!