Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake, you SOB!!

The story of another recipe I Pintested.

Last weekend we got to celebrate Christmas with my in-laws who live out of state, at my sister-in-law's house about an hour away.  We had dinner, opened presents, talked and hung out, and the next day set up a cookie factory in the kitchen, where we each busted out 4 dozen of our choice, to share with everyone.  A very nice, Christmas-y weekend spent with family we love, and it felt like a Christmas bonus because it was so early in the month.  

Since my sister-in-law (known from here on out as SIL.  Typing sister-in-law each time is just a lot of typing) and her husband hosted, they supplied the main dish (ham) and a couple side dishes, and my bro-in-law (BIL) and his wife brought a salad.  'Our family' was in charge of dessert.  Which means I was in charge of dessert. 

SIL and I had discussed cake options one night, while geeking out on Pinterest, of course.  Where else?  I naturally have a 'sweet treats' board - who doesn't? - so it was pretty easy to find a bunch of recipes that looked awesome.  I must have been feeling ambitious, or just crazy, or had a hankering for something with salted caramel...or all of the above...because I picked this recipe and decided I was all over this cake. 

Hey, I've made some pretty awesome cakes in my day.  I'm no rookie to the scratch cake business.  I'm not trying to claim that I am good at frosting them, but dang it I can bake!  I had never made candy nor ever used a candy thermometer, and I actually passed up Martha Stewarts Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake recipe because it involved the thermometer, the recipe I ended up with used one anyway.  Whatever.  So picking a scratch cake recipe wasn't daunting to me at all.  Sure, this one included making 2 separate batches of caramel, but what the heck?  How complicated can it be when it only involves 3 ingredients?

Yeah, let's just call my inexperience with caramel oversight #1.

Here's what I was looking at:

1. 1 batch of 'Salted Caramel' - caramel mixed with cream and some other stuff
2. 1 batch of  'Whipped Caramel Ganache' - dark chocolate ganache with another batch of caramel mixed together with a TON of butter.  So this was actually 2 parts - the caramel, and everything else.
3. 1 batch of 'Sour Cream Chocolate Cake' - yes, there was even actual cake batter involved.

I borrowed a candy thermometer from a friend...in fact, you should check out her page, she makes the cutest stuff...and proceeded with steps #'s 1-87.

**Let me interject here for a second and say that this cake was a 2-day process.  It had to be ready for dinner Saturday evening, and I started assembling ingredients and mixing things up Friday afternoon.  It wasn't until Friday night that I got the candy thermometer, and Saturday morning when I actually tried to make the caramel for the first time.**

Friday night I mixed the first half of the ganache, and the dry ingredients for the cake batter.  I got out my cake saver, cooling racks, tools, pots (the wrong pots), and lined up my cold ingredients that had to come out and be warmed up before I could use them.  SO PREPARED was I, and if you know me you know how uncharacteristic of me that is.

Have you ever made caramel before?  I mean the water, sugar, corn syrup boiled up together kind of caramel?  Let me tell you, it's a real sonofabitch.  Apparently, the higher the quality of your cookware, the less chance you have of this stuff turning out.  I've got really nice stainless steel cookware with the aluminum core blah blah, that is GREAT for doing everything in the world, except this apparently.  That aluminum core retained too much heat, and I burned batch after rotten batch, until I figured out what was going on and switched out my pot.

I know I've mentioned this many times before, but I am quite a bargain hunter.  Some time ago I picked up two copper Revereware pots at my local Goodwill - they couldn't have been more than $3 each.  I don't use them all the time because I end up burning the crap out of everything in them, because they are thin and conduct heat VERY well, and they aren't non-stick, so even macaroni and cheese becomes a problem.  Well, it's a damn good thing I had those pots, cause they surely saved the day.

At this point you may be wondering where's all the pictures, yo?  Yeah, I was pretty much ready to empty out all my cabinets and throw everything out the window, so taking pictures was the LAST thing on my mind.  So, sorry.

So here's the thing:  mix the 3 ingredients together (water, sugar, corn syrup), put over high heat with the thermometer, and wait till it gets to 350 degrees, remove from heat and stir in this, that, and that.  Ok, we wouldn't normally consider this rocket science, but believe me, IT IS.  Anyway, the third? fourth? batch, and the first in a copper pot ended up working  Not well, mind you, but it at least resembled what I thought of as 'caramel' closely enough that I let it go.  No one noticed that it wasn't evenly golden-tan, or that there were weird lumpy spots.  And I'm not telling them.  The last batch, which at this point was really going to be the last batch cause I was running out of ingredients, turned out pretty good.

I was already ready to throw the whole thing out, waste all the ingredients for the items I had already mixed together, and just go to the store and buy a cake.  I mean, by the time I burned that last batch of caramel I had already worked on the cake for at least 5 hours.  5 hours!!  Who makes a cake for 5 hours, let alone not even being close to done at that point?!  I hadn't even baked the actual cake part yet!

There was a lot of swearing involved. I mean, I bitched out this cake like it was messing with my life on purpose.  Which it might have been.

Well, all's well that ends well, I guess.  Once I got the caramel to do its thing, I was able to quickly do the rest, and even take a shower while the layers were in the oven.  Each layer got a coating of Caramel Batch #4, then a layer of Chocolate Ganache.  8 HOURS LATER... I ended up transporting it with the layers in place, but the cake overall was unfrosted, which I did when I got to SIL's house. 

The cake batter was a lovely thing, too.  Nice and foamy, light and chocolately without being overly sweet...in fact there wasn't any aspect of this cake that was super sweet.  (The taste was PERFECT).  The recipe called for 3 - 8" layers, but I ended up with 4.  Hey, 4 layers looks impressive, even if it does have a slight lean to it.

Here is a pic of what it ended up looking like after the first round was served:

See the salt on top?  Yep, there it is.

I was so pissed at this cake that it crossed my mind to boycott and not eat any.  Of course, I came to my senses.  I had to see for myself how it turned out, and I have to say that this is one of the richest desserts I have ever encountered in my life.  I'm sure it didn't help that I hadn't fully digested my dinner when I threw this down on top of it, but oh boy was I forcing the last couple of bites.  (If, in a moment of insanity, you decide to try this recipe, when it comes time to dishing it out I highly recommend SLIM pieces).  It's so rich, but I have to say I am glad I didn't toss it out the window of the car.  May Christmas miracles never cease.

I had another piece of the leftover cake once we got home, and I have to admit, it's pretty damn good.  I was sure to tell everyone to savor every bite because the possibility of them seeing this cake come out of my kitchen ever again is slim to none.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

This is a cake for eating, not making.  Suggest it for someone else to make and bring to a gathering you will be present at so you can enjoy the fruit of their labor.  If they don't throw it out the car window on the way to the party, that is.

If you're crazy enough to attempt this, here's the recipe for the cake.  Mine did NOT look like the one in the pic, FYI.  I should have gotten a pic of how lopsided it was, though truly, it didn't matter.  Anyway, GOOD LUCK.
And if you were wondering what cookies I made (from the first paragraph), here's that.  Now those I highly recommend!  Compared to the cake they were...a piece of cake!


 

A Very Harry (Potter) Party

Something completely insanely crazy possessed me, and at my urging we took it upon ourselves to transform our entire lives to be a lot like Harry Potter's.  The fact that our son was turning 11 has everything to do with it, though ultimately I am just going to blame Pinterest.

The boy has always loved the Harry Potter movies, and near the end of last school year his reading group chose the first book to read.  He's now about half way done with Deathly Hallows, and his level of obsession rivals only mine, which will become clear to you in the following post.  Or rather, my level of complete insanity will become abundantly clear, whereas his obsession with age-appropriate stories/movies/props/etc. is completely normal.

Turning 11 and having great love of Hogwarts is the perfect formula for an HP party, doncha think?  The boy's birthday is right near Thanksgiving...if not ON Thanksgiving some years, so parties for him always seem to be rushed and not well-attended.  It's a busy time of year, hey, we get it.  But with him getting older I figured this might be the last year to bust out a righteous theme and party it up like a bunch of kids would.  He's getting too old (read as cool) for themed parties...a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do, right?

So to Pinterest I went - I even made my own 'Harry Potter Party' board!.  I swear, the ideas for this whole party were collectively from Pinterest, Google Images, and a little bit of Etsy.  Thank you, creative people, for putting your ideas out there for big time copiers like me to use and abuse. It was really fun going through all the blogs and photos and picking and choosing what I wanted to do.  Plus, we recruited friends and family to help, and dress up and play the parts of professors! What good sports, especially Steve who played the bad guy - you know who.

I started out this whole process intending to photo-document a lot, but I didn't get nearly as many photos as I would have liked.  Where I don't have a photo of our actual stuff, I will use a photo that I based what we made off of.  Hopefully that makes sense.  So, let's just get to the pics why don't we.

Here is what the invites actually said.  I put together the letter and supply list from wording I found either in the book, or on Etsy - which no doubt the Etsy people got from the book too.  It's basically the Hogwarts acceptance letter, but includes an invitation to a 'birthday soiree'.

One sheet, two pages.  Before tea staining.

 

In tea staining process.

The invitations went out in grand style.  I printed them out on regular white copy paper, then tea stained them.  I had bought a couple packs of cream-colored stationary at a discount store, so I used those envelopes.  After a drip of red wax and a sealing stamp - our last name starts with H and coincidentally Hogwarts does too, so it made spending the money on the stamp a little easier ($10).

Cut, and drying.

These little guys are the train tickets included in each invitation.  You can buy a package of these sheets, and Avery.com lets you format them any way you like, including adding clip art.  This is one ticket, I made each side a little different. 

 

 

After tying each invitation with a length of twine, we made our way to the party store and purchased a dozen pearly white helium balloons.  It was the windiest day in history, so trying to get those babies into my minivan was quite a feat.  Awesome, I tell you.  The three four of us (me, the kids and the dog) then made an  assembly line to get the balloons attached to the invitations.  I drew an owl on each balloon with a black Sharpie and colored in the eyes with a yellow highlighter.  I then passed it to the birthday boy who was in charge of removing the store ribbon and retying the twine-tied invitation onto the balloon.  My daughter sat in back and wrestled with the bag of balloons, handing them up one by one, and taking them back once they were done.  The dog cowered in the backseat.  In her defense, there was really nowhere else she could go, since the entire van was filled with balloons - she couldn't even sit up!  I wish I could have gotten a group shot of the finished invitations with balloons attached, but there was no way I was going to get them into the house and  back out to the van safely for delivery with how windy it was.

Next, we move on to the party set up.  Just a little bit (ha!) of setting up was required...

Good thing this guy has super long arms.

Pretty cool, huh?

Lucky for us our living room and dining room ceilings are both that awful suspended-type ceiling...it's like tiles or something.  I'm not complaining anymore though, cause it sure made it easy to hang up both the candles and these cool lanterns I found on clearance right after Halloween.  I have to say...for decorations and stuff, a Harry Potter themed birthday after Halloween is really good timing.  The candles were about $15 total...2 packs of 3, and 1 pack of 2.  You might notice that as a recurring theme in this blog...I cheaped out on everything, everywhere I could.
This party was not nearly as expensive as it looks!

I prepped the chocolate frogs and cupcakes.  You can buy authentic chocolate frogs in their fancy little boxes, but they're like 3 bucks each!  Forget that.  I bought a candy mold on Amazon for like 83 cents, and two bags of Andes mint chips later, we had about 18 chocolate mint frogs.  Easy peasy.  


Here's another idea I nabbed off someone creative person's blog...Mandrake Cakes.  Once I saw this, I couldn't not do it.  It's just too dang cute.  Besides, what kind of cake do you make for an HP party?  I wanted something...authentic looking.  This was one of the most expensive items for the party...the 20 mini flower pots.  That ran me about $12 on Amazon.  The cupcakes themselves were baked in paper liners (I had HP ones I bought a looong time ago, coincidentally).  The babies were another $6 I think, and the one fake plant stem was only about $1.50.  I used two cake mixes at about $2 each and one pack of Oreos (the topping is the crushed cookie, made to look like dirt).  So really, not that costly when it comes down to it.  What would you pay for a decorated cake?  More than this, and it wouldn't have these awesome little babies sticking out.  The kids LOVED it.   

Cupcakes complete!

One item that I did not get a picture of was our 'brick wall'.  Basically, it was a bed sheet painted to look like brick.  Our favorite giant, Sergio, did this for us since he is so dang artsy.  It turned out GREAT.  Here is an idea of what it looked like, though we did not end up slitting it...the kids just pushed it aside and walked through.  I also made a Platform 9 3/4 sign just like this one.  The sign and 'brick wall' were on the back porch, where Hagrid took everyone's train tickets before they could 'step onto the platform'.  Yeah, we (I) got a little carried away.  

Here's a shot of Sergio as Hagrid.  

Nice!

So, the party went like this: 

Our friend Hagrid waited by the back door for the kids to arrive.  He greeted them (probably scared them with his giant self) took their train ticket, and guided them through Platform 9 3/4.  They came through the 'brick wall' into our laundry room, and were greeted by Voldemort (my husband) with the sorting hat.  He thought of renting a fog machine for this room, which was AWESOME.   

Props to the fearsome Voldemort.

Each kid picked a card out of the sorting hat that Voldemort held, then moved on to me.  I made the cards...they were two-sided and looked like this:

Gryffindor Front

 For the backs, I found these silly things on Google and just made a compilation for each house.

Whereas Gryffindor is about bravery, Hufflepuff house is all friendship and loyalty.

 

 

 Ravenclaw is for the smart ones...

And of course Slytherin...

I was in charge of distributing robes and hats, and telling the kids where to go. There were 3-4 kids per house, and each house started out somewhere different.  But first, the robes.  I found a brilliant idea!  Guess where.  Yep, Pinterest.  Most of the kids don't have black 'robes' handy, so the idea was to make them so everyone had one.  A dozen XXL black t-shirts from Jo-Ann fabrics, and 4 yards of gold cord, and we were in business.  Slit the t-shirts right up the front, sew a length of gold cord to the collar on each side, and each kid has a costume.  I got the shirts 4/$10, plus I had a 20% off coupon.  Yay me.  The hats were black felt, just cut into the shape of a pie piece, and sewed up the side.  The Hogwarts patches were just more felt.  Very cheap, maybe $3 for all the hats.  Here's a pic to get an idea of what the hats and robes were like:

The house (our house) was divided into 5 areas, and depending on which Hogwarts house you were put into, you went either to Potions with Professor Brendan (in the kitchen) to make green slime, Charms with Professor O'mayra (dining room) for Lumos (bottles with glow in the dark paint),

Our Charms teacher, Professor O'mayra.  She's so charming!

or Care of Magical Creatures with Professor Lori (family room), where everyone got to create their own magical creature.  My husband made the initial pattern, and he and the birthday boy traced and cut their bodies.  Then I sewed them, they turned them and we all stuffed them ahead of time.  Our friends cut out the face pieces, and the kids got to create the faces out of the shapes and glue them on.  They turned out GREAT!  Thank you internets, for another good idea.  Here's some pics of the finished products...

A gruesome lineup.

Last but not least was Defense Against the Dark Arts, for identification of the criminal sort!  I made the sign from a piece of foam board from the dollar store.  The rest is scrapbooking paper I nabbed from O'mayra, and some clear labels I had bought for something else.

 The birthday boy (who is photobombing this first pic as only a blond Harry Potter could) told me afterwards that he thought this station was the most fun.  Unfortunately not all of the pictures turned out, so we don't have one of each kid.  Not even close.




The costume pieces were more after-Halloween bargains.  I found a bunch of wigs at Menard's for $2-3 each! 

 Here's me.  I guess if I had to pick a character I would have been Narcissa Malfoy.  The front of my hair was sprayed black, which was a lot of fun later in the tub.

 

 Ravenclaw in da house.

 If a kid got done with whatever their 'class' did, they could go see Hagrid for Divination in the living room. 

Don't worry, the other side had a smiley face.

Divination was originally supposed to be the first stop for a treasure hunt, where the silver balloons would be blown up and have a clue inside them, like the prophecies.  The kids would have to figure out to pop the balloon to get the clue from inside.  My creative juices weren't exactly flowing in order to come up with the rest of the clues, so we didn't do the treasure hunt.  I'd say Divination worked out just fine!

After the classes were finished, the kids all went outside with a couple brave volunteers to play Quidditch relay!  We made 4 broomsticks, one for each house, out of a branch and a paper grocery bag.  The golden snitches were from a tube of dollar store ornaments with paper wings, cut to shape and glued to each side.  Not the sturdiest things in the world, but they served their purpose and didn't cost me $5 each.

Set up for feast

While the Quidditch races were going on, my husband and a friend went to pick up the food for our feast...what else could be made to look like a Hogwarts feast but KFC?!  We piled the food onto trays and into big silver dishes...fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, and macaroni and cheese.  These kids sure worked up an appetite. 





 

Feast

Of course we served Butterbeer, too.

 What a nice set up.  Too bad it didn't last long!












After all the kids ate, they went to the next room so the birthday boy could open his presents.  By the time he was done, we had RE-set up for dessert!

The Mandrake Cakes were a hit!  If you remember the part of the movie when all the Hogwarts students pull their mandrakes out of the pots, and the mandrakes scream...that is what the kids sounded like!  They pulled the little plant out and screamed when they saw the baby attached!

  

Professor Brendan sneaking in for some treats before the kids come back!

Voldemort Lurking

 There's the birthday boy at the head of the table...of course the only one without his HP garb! 

After cupcakes, the kids ran around like maniacs and jumped on the trampoline, and played with the boy's new video games and stuff.  I had told them all along to hold onto their black hats, cause that would be their treat bag at the end of the party.  Most of them listened!  Of course, they had seen the treat table - AKA Honeydukes! - I had set up.  I again rode the coattails of some creative blogger...

Treat Table, before anyone touched it.

Good old Kraft caramels

Chocolate Twizzlers.  The ONLY Twizzlers fit for consumption.

Pop Rocks! Two words:  Dollar Store

1. What kind of Honeyduke's doesn't have Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans?  I splurged on these, but I had to.  How could I not?  Easily, I guess, but seriously.  These have Harry Potter written all over them.  Seriously.  You can see it right there in the picture.

I had to order these from a health food website.  Standing in for Acid Pops are Yummy Earth Organic Lollipops in Chili Lime and Chili Mango flavors.  Or something like that.  Whatever, they are spicy.  And awesome!

These were more costly than I anticipated, but I also insisted on buying them BEFORE Halloween because I wanted to make sure I got them.  I bought 15, and I think they were 2 for $1.29?  My dog then proceeded to eat 6 of them, so I only had 9 for the table.

 An assortment of gumballs in all different colors.

Exploding Bonbons.  What else could take the place of Exploding Bonbons but cherry cordials?!  Perfect.  And cheap!  Menards (of all places) had these for like $2 a box.

And of course, my chocolate frogs.  

 Treat table shot of the Mandrake Cakes.  I found the cupcake stand on 70% off clearance the day after Halloween, at JoAnn Fabrics.  The 'plate' surfaces look like spiderwebs.  I also found this awesome table runner at JoAnn's...originally 50 BUCKS!  On mega-clearance for $15.  It's nice thick black fabric and has silver sequin spider webs all over it.  I think I'm in love with it.  Trying to fit it into my Christmas decor...

I also made Cockroach Clusters (melted chocolate & fiber cereal clusters) which didn't seem to get their picture taken, and these lovelies I found on Pinterest, Witches Hats!  Actually, I didn't even make these, my birthday boy did! 

All in all, a really fantastic party!  Everyone had a good time, and I got lots of feedback afterwards from the parents saying how much fun the kids said they had.  This party would not have been even remotely possible without all the help we got from friends...O'mayra & Sergio, Chrissy & George, the Basis kids, and Lori & Brendan.  Everyone played their parts, dressed up, and humored me with all my silly requests.  Thanks everyone!  This blog is dedicated to YOU.

A good time was had by all.