Celebrating MLK Day (Chocolate Cake with Buttercream Frosting)

January is one of my favorite months.
It's marked by: 

*New calendars-functional ones & pretty ones

*Goal setting

*The winter days start their swing towards more daylight in our part of the world (These short days are brutal.)

*Sweaters, scarves, layers

*Warm beverages

*Starting a new year- a clean slate (I love marking things off a list, so to mark an entire year off feels pretty great! Especially tough ones like 2016.)

   & 

*MLK holiday

I always relish honoring Dr. King and all those who have boldly and sacrificially fought with truth and peace for equity* (see footnote for more on equity) for all people and continue to.

In our home we always seek to celebrate MLK Day with some type of reading/reflecting/commemoration/dreaming. We sometimes listen to/watch the "I Have a Dream" Speech, or watch a racial justice focused film.  If you haven't watched President Obama's Farewell Speech, it would be a good pick.  And we always make an “integrated” birthday dessert- usually some combination of chocolate and vanilla. Here are a couple of our past celebrations. 

Here's a favorite. 

It’s Ina Garten’s Beatty’s Chocolate Cake recipe that my friend Jennifer recommended to me. What a
lovely cake.  (It is one of the many chocolate cake recipes from Ina, the Barefoot Contessa). It's moist, with a nice body. [Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/beattys-chocolate-cake-recipe.html?oc=linkback]

Her recipe is topped with a whipped mocha frosting that is silky and delicious.  I decided for the MLK cake to top it with vanilla almond buttercream frosting instead so that it was white and black.
[I made it with butter and coconut oil.]  If you use Refined Coconut Oil (like the Crisco brand Coconut Oil) it doesn't taste coconut-y.

And the fun part was making these toppers. 

The inspiration for the chocolate flower toppers was from The Great British Baking Show.  They made these on an episode and my girls and I were enamored.  They look so impressive to be so simple to make! You really should try making them.  I haven't tried other shapes but you could really have some fun with this! 

Beatty's Chocolate Cake  by Ina Garten

Chocolate Cake: 

Butter or cooking spray for coating pans
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups good cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

 

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
makes more than enough, but better too much than not enough! 

2 sticks butter, softened (or 1 stick butter & 1/2 cup unrefined coconut oil or crisco for whiter, thicker frosting)

a couple of pinches of salt
1 (32-oz.) package powdered sugar
6 to 7 Tbsp. milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract- or I use 1 tsp. vanilla/1 tsp. almond extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Butter and flour (or use Baker’s Joy to coat) 2 or 3 round cake pans -depending on what you have and like

Add the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla.

With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on low, add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.
Place 1 layer, flat side up, on a flat plate or cake pedestal.

For the frosting:
Beat butter and salt at medium speed with an electric mixer 1 to 2 minutes or until creamy.

Gradually add powdered sugar alternately with spoons of milk, beating at low speed until blended and smooth after each addition. 

Stir in extract. Add milk or powdered sugar to arrive at desired thickness and texture. 

(You can make frosting while cake is in the oven.  Keep on counter until cake is cooled- if you refrigerate it will harden and you will need to thaw before frosting cake.)

With a knife or offset spatula, spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer on top, rounded side up, (if you made a third layer, repeat,) then spread the frosting evenly on the top and sides of the cake. 

For chocolate decorations:

Melt a small amount of dipping chocolate (I like Ghirardelli the best) following instructions on the package for melting.  Melt and stir to where it is smooth but not too runny.

using a spatula, spoon it into a plastic zip-top bag.

Lay a piece of waxed paper on the counter.
Use scissors to clip a very small bottom corner off of the bag.

Quickly and gently let it pour in a looping formation. You may have to try it a few times to get the hang of it.  I like to do a loop and then continue across from it and then start a new loop across from that, and so on, making 6 loops total, crossing in the middle to give it strength. 

You can also draw on a piece of paper the design you want and place that under the waxed paper as a guide. 

Once they solidify, transfer the wax paper to the refrigerator.

[Here's a little video Lucy and I made for you.]

Hoping you are having a great start to the new year and that you have a peaceful and meaningful (and delicious) MLK weekend. 

*footnote: Equity and equality are related but distinct terms.  One day in class, I was speaking about equity and a student asked, “Do you mean equality? Is that the same?” I said, "Well, equality is when people are given the equal amount of something or equal treatment, but equity goes beyond that and seeks to level the playing field- thus making people at a common level, or equal place.  This requires more for some than others!" This graphic is the one I think most simply communicates this. 

Gooey Fudge Pie

We had some excitement in the kitchen this past week. Monday was Pi Day. My son's terrific Geometry teacher put out a request for Pie donations.  I said yes, but wasn't sure what kind I would make.  It needed to be quick, simple, preferably non-in-need-of-refrigeration since that is limited at the school. The answer - Gooey Fudge Pie. This is one of my mom's signature pies.  She adapted the recipe from Entertaining with Friends Cookbook (written by and benefitting Vanderbilt Children's Hospital).

Of all of the baking I do, I don't end up making pies very often- I think the potential of crust burning and/or falling apart feels high risk to me and because I am often feeding a larger group than a pie can serve.  But I sure love to eat pie! This one is a winner (I especially love it when served with whipped cream or ice cream.)

Jennifer's pie photo she texted me

About the time my crusts were thawed on Sunday evening. (I used bought crust that I had in the freezer), I got a group text from my sister letting my mom and me know that she had just made 2 gooey fudge pies for Ben's math class for Pi Day, wondering how we would be celebrating Pi Day. It must run in the family!

a few hours later, my pair of pies 

They are so easy to make, with ingredients you most likely have on hand.  I didn't get to taste the pie this time (a downside to pies- no way to sneak a slice without it being obvious) but Asher gave a good report, and the plates came home empty.

Gooey Fudge Pie
(from Elaine Williams- Mom)
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, softened
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. flour
1 cup sugar
dash of salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 unbaked 9 inch pie crust

Toppings (optional)



Preheat oven to 350 ˚.  Melt the chocolate and butter in a glass bowl in microwave, stirring occasionally until blended.  Remove from oven and set aside.
Add whisked eggs, flour, sugar and salt. Stir. Stir in vanilla. Pour into the prepared pie shell (Mom suggests the Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie crust).  Bake for about 25 minutes or until the center is still slightly liquid.  Cool on a wire rack. Slice and eat.  Add toppings of your choice.
Toppings: ice cream, hot fudge, caramel sauce, toasted sliced almonds or whipped cream.  (Click HERE for whipped cream instructions).

If you want to make a homemade pie crust- I think Martha Stewart's Easy Pie Crust is a winner-here is the recipe and is a video with some great tips to making a perfect pie crust.  

I just heard from my sister that she ended up making 7 pies this week! 3 fudge, an apple, tomato pie, shepherd pie and a chocolate chip pie!  I love that!

In honor of St. Patrick's day, this week for our small group meal we decided to get crazy and have a "Green Meal". We have a google doc each week where everyone signs up for what they will contribute. So this week we just had a blank page where we all wrote what GREEN item we would bring (trying to make a balanced meal). It was an incredibly delicious meal. I don't know how I would describe it, but we are already thinking about the next color-themed meal we will share.  We agree that some colors would be less healthy than this one! 

I am hoping to get some of these recipes to share with you.  I keep thinking about this salad with warm bacon dressing. 

Next week is Easter Week! It has snuck up on me.  I need to do some Easter baking/cooking in the next few days.  There are so many clever and beautiful ideas on the internet, but if you need some easy tried-and-true ones, here are a few- an activity, a main dish, my favorite Coconut Cake,  Candies and treats. Enjoy!

Energy Bites: Healthy & Delicious (For Real!)

I don't know if you have made energy bites of some sort, but I have become a fan of these yummy and healthy snacks.   A while back, my friend Connie gave me a few of these she had made to sample.  After I had one, I immediately texted her, "YUM! I tried them and I need the recipe!"  Then, a few weeks ago it was my snack-bringing week for church and I felt the need to make something a little more substantially nutritious than the biscuits and coffee cake I had made the previous months.  I looked on my Pinterest breakfast board and found this recipe that was pretty much Connie's recipe but with peanut butter instead of almond butter. I had forgotten about the recipe! 

I made a double batch- which yielded 40 something balls.  They were all gone within a few minutes of serving them.  I don't know if people were desperately hungry or they really liked them.  We have lots of kids that congregate around our snack table at church, so I think we can call these delicious when kids and adults ate them, and we can call them healthy since they are chock full of flax seed, chia and oats! 

I made them again for my family this week and we have enjoyed having them for a quick snack or for a breakfast on the go.  I even had one for dessert the other night (though my son believes that despite that fact that they are laced with chocolate chips, they do not qualify for dessert) !

I'm trying to have things on hand that are protein-rich, as my kids tend to reach for crackers, chips, and starches for snacks.  Lately, I've made Hummus and Texas Caviar to have in the refrigerator and try to always keep yogurt and smoothie-making supplies on hand.  If I get my act together to have the good stuff within reach, and prep a couple of things for the week, they have good, tasty, healthy things within reach.  

 

Energy Bites

Makes about 20

1 cup (dry) old fashioned oatmeal

2/3 cup coconut flakes

½ cup peanut butter (or almond butter- take your pick)

½ cup ground flaxseed

½ cup mini chocolate chips

1/3 cup honey

1 Tbsp. chia seeds

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Stir all ingredients together in a bowl.  Let set in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.  

Form into small balls (about golf ball size).  

Put in an air tight container and keep in refrigerator. 

If this inspires you to get into healthy oatey bar/bite making, I have two granola bar recipes I love that I wrote about HERE and HERE and my favorite go-to granola recipe HERE, oh and the lovely chewy peanut butter granola HERE.  If you are short on time, these simple but nutritionally dense bites are super easy and quick to put together.  

Brownie Bottom Coconut Bars & Honoring MLK

For about 8 years my family has sought to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King on his birthday weekend.
We talk about the life and work of Dr. King, and we think about what we can do in our lives to carry on the work for equality and dignity for all people that he and his colleagues did. I posted HERE about this tradition. As my kids are getting older, I want to think of some even more significant things we can do for this holiday.

I always make a treat that somehow incorporates chocolate and vanilla to represent racial integration and togetherness.  I have made cookies and cakes of various sorts.  Like this one.

I was trying to decide what to make for this year- a new recipe, one we've done in the past, a variation on a standard.  But when I was looking for another recipe in a stack of my old Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazines I found this recipe for Brownie-Bottom Coconut Bars.  I have had the recipe in my torn out magazine pages for years but have never made them.  I knew they would have to be good since they are brownie on the bottom and coconut macaroon on the top!  I decided MLK weekend would be a good time to make them, with their black and white togetherness.  They are simple to make and they are really, really good!

They are pretty and feel special.  All of my coconut-loving people gobbled them up.

Brownie-Bottom Coconut Bars 
from martha stewart's Every Day Food magazine

Chocolate Brownie Base:
1 stick butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp coarse salt
1 large egg
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all purpose flour

Coconut Topping:
2 large eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 package (7 oz.) sweetened shredded coconut (1/2 cup reserved for sprinkling)

For the brownie:
Preheat oven to 375˚
Line a 9 inch square baking pan with aluminum foil, leaving a slight overhang; butter bottom and sides of foil (not overhang)
Place butter in a large microwave-safe bowl; melt in microwave.
Add sugar and salt; whisk to combine.
Whisk in egg, then cocoa and flour until smooth.
Spread batter into prepared pan.

Bake just until sides begin to pull away from edges of pan, 10 to 15 minutes (do not over bake). Let cool slightly while preparing coconut topping.  Keep oven on for topping.

For the coconut topping:
In a medium bowl, whisk eggs with sugar and vanilla.  Gently mix in flour and coconut (except 1/2 cup reserved for sprinkling).
Drop mounds of mixture over chocolate base; spread and pat in gently and evenly with moistened fingers.  Sprinkle with reserved 1/2 cup coconut.

Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted in center comes out with moist crumbs attached, 25 to 30 minutes.  Cool completely in pan.  Lift cake from pan,  peel off foil, and cut into 24 bars.

It makes 24 small bars- but they are rich- so being small is good.

In our city Regal Cinemas and Metro Public Schools teamed up to offer free admission to students to see SELMA in the theaters.  We went on Saturday and it was very impactful.  If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend that you do.

It was hard  to watch.  It was emotional  and painful  and honest  and hard.  Lainey and I held hands most of the time and cried a lot during the film.  It was really important though.

It is a very well done film and a raw look at the difficulty of a tumultuous and unjust time in our country and the bravery of some amazing people. I think we need to know and remember and in doing so deepen our compassion for the not-so-long-ago events that continue to have ripple effects today.

Thanking God for the courage, clarity and spiritual strength of Dr. King and his comrades this weekend and praying that we might be people of conviction and action like them.

Gratitude (and a Recipe Sharing Friend)

This time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, breeds thankfulness. Unfortunately, I am easily overwhelmed in my life, and it sometimes feels paralyzing, and this time of year is so full that it is especially overwhelming.  I am engulfed with the messes in my house, the responsibilities that I carry, the individual and enormous needs of each of my children, things I need to do and things I want to do.  During this season, even the fun things (like holiday gift buying, baking, card sending, and decorating) can feel overwhelming. 

I have to stop and breathe and focus on GRATITUDE.

Gratitude is a powerful force.  It is more than a fluffy idea.  There is science behind it!

The research that has emerged recently on gratitude is incredible. 

Here are a couple of interesting pieces on the power of gratitude.

This short piece, by my hero Brene Brown, is about the link between Gratitude and Joy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IjSHUc7TXM

And this fun experiment measuring the link between Gratitude and Happiness, from SoulPancake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHv6vTKD6lg

So, I am stopping for a moment and making a list of 10 things for which I am grateful TODAY. 

Some things I am grateful for are:

1.     The health of our family

2.     Wonderful schools with great faculty and administration that are impacting my kids everyday

3.     Good coffee

4.     Meaningful work with incredible students

5.     Laughter

6.     Neighbors with whom we can loan ingredients and tools, and lend a hand and feel so not alone in this life.

7.     God’s faithfulness- His mercies that are new every morning!

8.     The seasons

9.     A good night’s sleep under a fluffy comforter

10. Friends- old and new, near and far

#10- friends old and new, is the inspiration for this post.  I have a new friend, Sandi.  She is a very talented, wise and generous woman that I have gotten to know this fall.  She and her husband are in our small group at church and one of the unexpected blessings of this new friendship are the food and recipes that have come from her kitchen.  Because we share a meal together each week at group, we have the chance to eat each other’s food weekly!  (That is not a typical opportunity in many friendships).

She is a great cook and has so many recipes that are NEW to me.  It has been a boon for me and my kitchen! Through the years of my food blogging, one of the things that has kept me at it (when I wonder why in the world am I doing this in the vast number of food blogs on the internet) is knowing that some friend or some unknown friend, is finding inspiration and help with what to make for dinner.

Sandi’s gift of new, delicious, do-able recipes has been so great.  I couldn’t decide which recipe to share with you that I have tried of Sandi’s lately, so I decided to share both!  At the rate I am posting lately, I might should double-up when I do sneak the time to create a blog post!  

Recipe #1 is her Apple Cole Slaw.

I love it!

It is sweet and tangy and healthy!  It is good as a side with just about anything!

I have made it twice and I approached it differently each time, and it produced different results.  I liked them both.  I made it once in my food processor and it yielded a much finer, juicer slaw (think Chick fil a slaw texture) and the second time I chopped with a knife and it yielded more of a loose, crunchy salad.

Apple Cole Slaw

Salad

1 apple, chopped

4 slices pineapple, chopped

2 cups cabbage, chopped

Dressing

2 Tbsp. mayo

2 Tbsp. milk

1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 Tbsp. sugar

¼ tsp. salt

Mix together the dressing in a small bowl or measuring cup.

Toss together the apples, pineapple and cabbage.

Pour dressing over. Stir to completely coat.

Cover and refrigerate for about 30 minutes before eating.

Recipe #2 is Nani’s Cake

It's called Nani's cake because the lady who gave her the recipe got it from her Nani.   

My mom tasted it and said she thinks she has this recipe from somewhere in her past and called it Butter Pecan Cake.  I'd call it Sticky Coconut Bundt Cake.  It is a simple- throw it in a bowl, stir and bake cake.  It has a can of coconut pecan sticky frosting stirred into the batter- so it needs no frosting on top.  It gets even stickier and moister after a couple of days, so it is a great make-ahead dessert.  The coconut and nuts are not dominant, so even people who don’t love those ingredients would like it, I think.

Nani’s Cake

1 box yellow butter cake mix

4 eggs

1 cup vegetable or canola oil

1 cup milk

1 can (Pillsbury)- coconut pecan frosting*

1 tsp almond extract

Beat all together (including frosting).

Spray bundt pan generously.

Bake 350 for 40 minutes.

It gets better with each day so try not to eat it all the first day.

 * we used Betty Crocker frosting because they didn't have Pillsbury

Another gift from Sandi was the book, Not By Sight by John Bloom (President of Desiring God ministries). Click the link to read more about it.  It has been a refreshing morning read this fall.  I highly recommend it. 

So, thank you, Sandi, for sharing your kindness, and generous gifts.  What a blessing.

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I hope in the midst of these busy December days we can all purpose to spell our days with gratitude.

But be forewarned, it is sometimes vulnerable to do so!

PERSONAL CONFESSION: Surprisingly the act of writing the gratitude list in this post felt challenging- though in a good way.  I had to dig deep, and be still for a few moments to really think about the things for which I am grateful today. 

And the act of sharing the list feels/felt vulnerable and somehow risky, and I wonder if that may be part of what holds us back from practicing and expressing gratitude more!