Decadent Chocolate Cake

This is the cake I made for my and my mother-in-law's birthdays for the big BBQ we had this weekend. It was so good I just have to share where I got the recipe and what I did to make it so yummy! It was received well by everyone.

Also, this is my last day of NaBloPoMo and I did it!! I did 31 blog posts in 31 days for the whole month of May, I did it!! I will do it again, just not the rest of the summer because we have many many plans this summer for fun things outside. But I can say that I did it! Ok, back to the cake.

The cake recipe I used was one I found from a fellow food blogger at Food and Passion and it was wonderful! So moist and chocolaty, it was just what the doctor ordered for a great chocolate fix. I made it even more decadent because I put in Philly Cheesecake filling in between the layers. The cheesecake just gave it that something that put it over the edge of rich and yummy! Other than that I followed her directions to the letter to make this cake and the chocolate ganache that frosted the outside of this cake.

Check it out! It was fantastic! Try it yourself, very easy recipe. Here is the link to that recipe one more time: Food and Passion Dark and Moist One Bowl Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Ganache and now here are some more pictures to convince you to go visit Food and Passion and make this cake!

Here is the cake before frosting with the chocolate ganache. I took the 2 thick layers the recipe made and cut them in half to make a 4 layer cake to have more cheesecake filling. It was so good!

This is the cake after frosting with the chocolate ganache.

And here is the slice, before I gobbled it up! It was so yummy and rich, one slice was enough... for now! Having some more later!


Now, if that isn't enough to convince you to go make this cake... I don't know what else to do. It is that good, and so easy to make. The instructions for this cake were so simple, that makes it even better! Go make some! You will be glad you did!

A Trip to the Beach and Cioppino

Today I was not working so me and the family decided to go to Westport WA right on the Pacific Ocean. Our goal was to play at the beach and just enjoy the day; however, Mother Nature had other plans. It was so cold and windy and we did not bring coats or wear long pants. It was about 85 degrees when we left home and about 60 when we got to the beach with high winds. Needless to say we did not stay long, which brought me to my second and third goals.

Second on my list of things to do was to go to my favorite candy shop and buy saltwater taffy. This is the only place I buy it because it is the real deal and it is so yummy and fresh. They have so many flavors it makes a person's head double take at all the cool flavors. They also have a great fudge counter, but saltwater taffy takes the center stage with me when I go here. It is called Gifts Ahoy Sea Shanty and anyone who visits Westport must go here to get taffy, fudge, and really cool gifts. It is right across the street from all the piers and floats right there in the heart of this wonderful fishing town of Westport WA.
Check out all the taffy flavors. And, I didn't even get all of them in the pictures, there was also taffy above and below the middle racks of which is pictured here. They have so many flavors, it is a taffy lover's dream.



Then my third goal of this visit was to go to the floating seafood shop called Seafood Connection right on the water at Float 8 on the Westport fishing piers. This is one of the best places in Westport to buy seafood. It is fresh off the boats and when it is sold out, there is nothing frozen or anything. Once it is gone, it is gone; you wait until tomorrow if you want seafood from here. It is so fresh. The cool thing is that it floats, you can actually feel the waves beneath your feet as you shop and they wrap up your seafood and ice it right there. You can buy live crabs, live prawns, halibut, and many other types of seafood. This is where I bought my seafood for my Cioppino that we had for dinner. Nothing like a fresh seafood meal with some yummy sourdough to round out a great day.

Another unexpected treat we got was a sea lion popped up out of the water while we were walking down the pier to go back to the car, he was so close and I had put my camera away. I was pretty disappointed that he did not rear his head again as he was maybe 4 feet away from us and that picture would have been great! But we saw him again from afar and so this is the picture I got.

Yes the little dot in the water is the sea lion. They know when the fishing boats come in and hang out while they throw out any fish parts they do not need, or bait they did not use, so they can get a feast when the charter boats come in.

Here is the wonderful seafood I purchased. We got a dungeness crab, mussels, clams, and part of a halibut fillet.


Ok if you have made it this far in this great day story, then here is the recipe for the Cioppino. It is an adaptation of a recipe I found online at Mama Chios Shellfish Cioppino and I changed it up a little bit to make it a little less spicy and to use what I had on hand and what seafood was in season. Just click the link to get the original recipe and here is the changes included.



Cioppino

1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup butter
1 onion, chopped
3 Tbsp fresh chopped parsley leaves
4 cloves garlic, chopped
3/4 cup merlot wine (we used Fat Bastard Merlot, it was also so good to drink; it is also a great priced bottle at $10 a bottle that tastes like we paid more, it was really good)
2 cups chopped roma tomatoes
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp red pepper
1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves
2 cups water

1 dungeness crab, shelled
3/4 lb halibut fillet, cut into bite sized chunks
1 lb clams
1 lb mussels

Heat oil and butter in large pot. Add onion, parsley, and garlic. Cook until onion is transparent. Add wine and cook an additional 5 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, and spices. Stir frequently while cooking 15-20 minutes. Add water, cover, simmer for 30 minutes. Add all seafood except halibut to sauce. Add more water if necessary to make sure all shellfish is covered. Cook for 5 minutes; add halibut, and cook additional 10 minutes. When clams have opened, cioppino is ready to serve.

Notes:
- if any clams or mussels have not opened, discard them.
- We ate this with some sourdough bread to soak up broth.

What a Great Birthday!

Yes, today is my birthday. I am 29 and holding... or as one of my friends says, "I am 29 plus shipping and handling and I am getting quite expensive to go anywhere" That makes me laugh whenever I hear that. I am getting older, but as the old saying goes; Aging like fine wine is what I am. I just cannot remember who said that but it is someone I am related to, just can't remember who. Oh My Gosh.. they say the first thing to go is the mind and with me forgetting things, who knows. Oh well on with my day. I will stop being philosophical because I am no good at it.

My day started out like most any day, I got the kids on the bus and sat down with coffee. But I had plans; plans to shop and buy some things that I wanted and things I did not need. I succeeded. My first stop was of course Starbucks for an Espresso Truffle. I have come to love this concoction of a drink, it is so flavorful to the point of almost being addicting. I savored my coffee as I drove to downtown Olympia for my first real stop on my day of fun (I should say my morning of fun since I was with no kids and able to go shop for myself, that is until 12:30 when the bus comes to bring home my preschooler). Anyway, my first stop was at a very cool little shop downtown right near Farmer's Market called Einmaleins and if you are visiting Olympia WA or you live here in Olympia or near here, you have to go into this store at 121 State Ave downtown. Mathias is such a nice person and we had a great chat in the store while I was purchasing my newest cookbook, Flavors by Donna Hay. He also had some chocolate on the counter that was coffee infused chocolate and it was so good, I should have bought some. I could have eaten that as my morning treat with my Espresso Truffle, but I had to resist since I was having other treats during my day. You can find him at the site (just click the Einmaleins name above, or he is @einmaleins on Twitter. Look him up, he is a neat person and I look forward to going back to his store soon (after all I have to buy up the rest of the Donna Hay cookbooks, I really like that the recipes are simple and don't take 15 million ingredients to get something yummy on the table). See you another time Mathias!

Onward was next to Farmer's Market where I bought herb plants and a couple of pepper plants. I attempted to grow my own herb garden from seeds and failed... miserably. I do not think I am cut out to grow things from seeds, I have failed now a few times so now I give up and will always buy plants instead. I got some really nice herbs (chocolate mint, greek oregano, sweet basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, and lavender; I have always wanted to experiment with lavender, I hear people rave about it). Then I bought a green bell pepper and red bell pepper plant. I look forward to planting those this evening after the hot sun goes down with my little planting helper (who happens to be 4 years old and has an aversion to dirt and hates to get dirty so this is my chance to expose her to dirt... again). Oh, and I also bought her a sunflower plant because her little seedlings died also. She wanted to grow her own sunflower, so now she can.

Then again it was on to Jay's Produce Stand because I wanted to get some more things for the house and it is really fun shopping there because the prices are so good, I can buy a lot and not worry about cost. This time I spent $14.90 and got basically heavy things such as:
Cantaloupe 3 lbs/$1
On the vine tomatoes 84 cents/lb
baby lemons 10/$1
baby limes 5/$1
cauliflower 69 cents/lb
navel oranges 59 cents/lb
bananas 49 cents/lb
pink lady apples 69 cents/lb
asparagus 79 cents/lb (I have never seen asparagus that inexpensive and so I also ordered my 40 lbs of asparagus for canning next week, I will pay for that when I go pick it up)

Again, Jay's did not let me down. I still think this place is hands down the best produce stand in Thurston County, anyone who lives here should visit. They are on Mud Bay Road on the west side of Olympia WA.

Then I did some other things today; took Nicole to Taekwondo, went and picked up pizza, had dinner, went to Walmart, etc etc yadda yadda. Then Nessa (my 4 yr old little helper) helped me to plant my plants I bought at Farmer's Market and planted her sunflower. It was a lot of fun watching her try to avoid getting her hands dirty or her clothes dirty, she sure took a long time to plant her one little plant because of that. You will notice all my plants are in pots; well, that is because we live in an apartment and have no actual ground to plant directly into. So we have to use pots, but it still enables me to have my fresh herbs and homegrown tomatoes which is what I want because they are better that way.



One more birthday on the books is now almost past. This year it is 39, next year is 40 but I am confident that I am going to age gracefully like fine wine! So this is also day 29 on the books of NaBloPoMo and looks like I am going to make it to 31 days this month of blogging. YAY me! I usually never back down from a challenge.. ok well a challenge like this anyway.

BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza

This is what I call a masterpiece! BBQ Pulled Pork in a pizza; especially since pizza is my favorite food of all time. You can do anything with a pizza with any kind of toppings. Here we used leftover pulled pork and homemade BBQ sauce to make this pizza. It was so good. It was my first attempt at grilling a pizza and it failed. Only because the BBQ ran out of propane and smoked a lot while it was cooking for the short time that it did. It was finished in the oven on the pizza stone. But, it was still yummy!

First, I made a basic pizza dough (any favorite dough will do, my recipe is as follows after the picture). Nothing fancy as I did not want it to overpower everything on the pizza.

Basic Pizza Dough:
3 1/4 cups flour
1 packet of active dry yeast
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup warm water (about 120-130 degrees)
2 Tbsp olive oil

In a bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and oil. Beat with electric mixer on low until all incorporated. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time and beat with dough hooks until as much of the flour is incorporated and a dough is formed. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead in any extra flour remaining until you get an elastic consistency, keeping surface floured while kneading so it doesn't stick. Put into a greased bowl and let rise with a kitchen towel over the top until double. Punch down and divide in half. Let rest 10 minutes. Form your pizza crust. Bake for about 5 minutes at 400 degrees so it does not rise anymore. At this point, the other crust can be packaged to be frozen for use later if needed. It is always good to have pizza crust on hand.

The toppings I used for this BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza is:
- fresh pineapple
- black olives
- fresh chopped spinach
- 3 cheeses (mozzarella, cheddar, and parmesan)

First, put on some BBQ sauce on the crust, as thick or thin as you want. It just depends on how saucy you want your sauce. Click here for my favorite BBQ sauce recipe

Then, you spread on the leftover BBQ pulled pork over the sauce. You can make this as thick or as thin as you want. It also depends on how much leftover you have, in this case, we had a lot of leftover because it was a large pork shoulder roast.

Next, I put on the fresh pineapple and black olives...

Then, it was a thin layer of mozzarella cheese and the chopped spinach...

And then, the rest of the cheese with the parmesan on the very top.

So now that the pizza is built, it is time for the grill (or so I thought) I preheated the grill outside. I put the pizza on the pizza stone (since I was told that it was good to use the pizza stone if I did not want the whole bottom charred, which I didn't since I am not that fond of charred bread products) and took it outside and put it on the grill.

However, just about 5 minutes into the cooking... all the flames went out and it was smoking so badly, I thought I was just going to turn it off anyway and bring it into the house. But it helped that the grill also ran out of propane. Just my luck! I cleaned the grill really good too before putting on the pizza which led me to believe that it was below the grill that needed the cleaning. So, to make a long story short... I finished the pizza in the oven in the house. I baked it at 400 degrees for another 10 minutes and it was done and so yummy! Although the crust was a little crispier than I would have liked, but it was still good! Check this out...

And this...

And finally this one...

It was so good! We ate the whole thing! Just me and the kids... dang, we must have been hungry.. I will have to make this again when Cooking Dad is home, he was out on the road, I almost felt guilty of eating all of it. Almost. But, not quite. Now it is your turn, go and make the best grilled pizza you can but remember this: Make sure your grill is clean inside and out, and that it has propane!