For our Sherlock Holmes dessert, I wanted to make something quintessentially British. I tossed around ideas for all kinds of recipes—jammie dodgers, trifle, Victoria sponge, and various tarts. Then I stumbled across brandy snaps!
Tag: Dessert
Kiki’s Chocolate Cake
I love Kiki’s Delivery Service so much! Granted, I can’t exactly relate to the part about being a witch, but I can definitely relate to being a young working girl out on her own for the first time. I remember my heart going out to Kiki as I watched her struggle to find a job and carve out a niche for herself in her new city home. It was great to see her grow and overcome bouts of self-doubt and failure to become a very happy little witch.
I think one of the best thing’s about Kiki’s Delivery Service is the emphasis it puts on developing relationships. At first, Kiki tries to do everything alone and struggles to make due, but as she makes new friends, their goodwill and helpfulness play a huge role in helping her on the way to success. A great example is the baker lady Osono, who is impressed by Kiki’s helpfulness to a stranger and offers her a place to stay and a job. And at the end of the movie, Kiki’s friend Madame bakes her a cake as a show of appreciation—and that’s the cake we’re making today!
This rich double chocolate cake is an exact replica of the one in the movie, and I had so much fun making it! The recipe was originally developed by Katerina at Diethood (and it was aptly named “Black Magic Cake”). The food in every Hayao Miyazaki movie looks delicious, and this cake is one of the Miyazaki dishes I’ve been dreaming about eating for years! Now I just need to find a plucky young witch to share it with! 🙂
Arrietty’s Mini Cherry Cakes: An AWR Original Recipe!
On Tuesday, I premiered our new Borrower tea (Arrietty’s Cherry Tree Tea) and waxed lyrical about the beautiful cherry tree from the book. Since I was determined to feature the cherry tree in a recipe too, I decided to give it the place of honor and save it for dessert! These dainty 3-tier mini cakes are filled with cherry preserves and my very own mock Devonshire cream (the recipe for that is included below too!). Topped with powdered sugar and fresh cherries, they’re the perfect bite-size finish to our Borrower menu!
Uncle Monty’s Coconut Cake
Of all our Series of Unfortunate Events recipes, I think this was the one I was most excited about. I knew for sure I would be making Uncle Monty’s famous coconut cake from The Reptile Room as our dessert—it’s the food I remember best from the whole series! All the cakes I’ve made on the blog so far have been chocolate (like Delicious Death and Dauntless Cake), so it was fun to try something different. And you can bet the Mister was excited: he loves coconut! This particular recipe starts with a mix, but I used a few baking tricks to make it more like homemade. The frosting is my own invention too, but I used this BHG recipe as my starting point. The final result is a moist, fluffy cake with just the right amount of coconut. So eat up! If your life is anything like the Baudelaires’, you may not know when you’ll encounter such a delicious dessert again. 😉
French Hot Chocolate: A Café Angelina Copycat Recipe
Since there’s an extra Thursday this month, I get to do a bonus recipe! At first, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make; I felt like the main menu had already covered what I considered to be the most important Three Musketeers dishes. Then I remembered the mysterious “breakfast of chocolate” d’Artagnan eats at a friend’s house midway through the book. I did a little research to figure out what it was, and the most likely candidate seems to be hot chocolate. As it turns out, people in France often have hot chocolate with their breakfast. D’Artagnan speaks about his chocolate breakfast as if it were a small, insubstantial meal, and having only a cup of hot chocolate would certainly fit that description. As such, I decided to make authentic French hot chocolate as my bonus recipe, and boy oh boy was that a good choice! The recipe I use here is a slight variation on one by Erin from Well Plated, which is a copycat version of Cafe Angelina’s famous hot chocolate. This thick, smooth hot chocolate has enough intense, rich flavor to satisfy even the most ardent chocoholic!
3 Musketeers Copycat Candy Bar (with only two ingredients!)
You knew it was coming. How could a Three Musketeers menu end without a 3 Musketeers bar? Luckily, this recipe (which I originally found here) is super easy to make. There’s a little bit of wait time involved while the filling chills, but the active preparation time is only 5-10 minutes…and there are only two ingredients! When I first tested the recipe, I was a little nervous that it was all too good to be true, but the finished candy bars DEFINITELY taste like the 3 Musketeers bars you buy in the store. 🙂
X-Files Alien Cookies
Of course, Mulder and Scully never actually eat alien cookies while on a case, but concluding an X-Files menu without an alien dish felt just plain wrong. These green and gray sugar cookies are a great dessert to celebrate the conclusion of the new season or a wonderful gift for the person in your life who wants to believe. You can use whatever sugar cookie recipe you want (I used the same base recipe as our Fairy Dust Star Cookies from Peter Pan). The royal icing recipe is one I found by Julia M. Usher.
Healthy Chobani Yogurt Pops
GUYS. Do you remember last year when Chobani asked a bunch of food bloggers (including myself) to make recipes for their #deliciousbowl Super Bowl project? Well, they emailed me again this year to say they liked my Healthy Dessert Pizza so much that they want me to make another healthy Super Bowl recipe! On the outside I was all “Ah yes, my good people. I would be elated to oblige,” but on the inside I was all:
Pendragon Cake
Full disclosure: this cake pan was the whole reason I got the idea to do a King Arthur menu to begin with. I saw it on ThinkGeek several months ago, and it immediately went on my Christmas list. I’m pretty sure it was designed to appeal to the Game of Thrones crowd, but I couldn’t help thinking it’d be just right for a King Arthur dessert. The cake recipe itself is a chocolate pound cake from BHG. It was perfect for getting the pan’s little details to stand out! I decorated mine with raspberries, mint, and whipped cream, but you can decorate yours however you want. You’re king (or queen) of your kitchen! 😉
Jo’s Christmas Gingerbread: Little Gingerbread Women
I mentioned in my first Little Women post that Jo celebrates Christmas while living away from home for the very first time. She loves New York but is a little homesick…until a box of homemade gifts arrives from home, delicious bits of crunchy gingerbread among them! This recipe from Taste of Home is jut the sort of sweet, fragrant, gently spicy cookie that would warm my heart and lift my spirits if I were Jo March. And to make them even more in keeping with our Little Women theme, I decided to decorate my cookies to look like the March sisters!