Chocolate Pudding Cake

I really need to figure out how to get all my recipes in a list. Just spent half an hour going back through all my posts to see what I've already shared...'cause it just wouldn't do to repeat a recipe. Although some bear repeating twice, they're so good.

This is one of them, although I really haven't posted it before (that I could find anyway). When you need a serious chocolate fix, this is guaranteed to do the job ☺

CHOCOLATE PUDDING CAKE
1 cup flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup milk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the topping:
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee granules
1-1/2 cups very hot water
Whipped cream garnish:
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350. Lightly butter an 8-inch round or square baking dish or casserole.
Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Combine the milk, butter, egg and vanilla. Whisk together and stir into the dry ingredients, mixing just until combined. Spread the thick batter in the prepared pan.
To make the topping, in the same bowl combine the sugars, cocoa, and coffee powder. Sprinkle over cake batter.
Pour hot water over the topping and place pan on middle rack of oven. Bake until cake is firm, about 40 minutes. The pudding-like sauce will have sunk to the bottom and will be soft. Cool 15 minutes.
Whip the cream, adding sugar and vanilla, until soft peaks form. Serve the warm cake with chocolate sauce spooned over the top. Garnish with sweetened whipped cream*.

*Feel free to substitute ice cream for whipped cream ☺

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My Project 365 post will be mighty short this week. A bad head cold and uncontrollable fits of coughing mean I haven't been out of my house in five days except to hang clothes on the line in the back yard (and I had a shot of the laundry in a very recent Project 365 so don't want to do that again).

I suppose I could have taken photos of our neatly stacked Fine Homebuilding magazines since that's been my view most of the week, but didn't think you'd appreciate such a prosaic picture. I did take a photo of a potato though!

After a couple batches of the basic bread, today I'm trying my hand at a different one: Vermont Cheddar Bread. Which in my case has nothing to do with Vermont cheddar at all. I've mentioned the difficulty of finding cheddar before. We do have Lincoln cheese, however, which has a similar taste in our opinion. Of course, our cheese is from Buenos Aires, not Vermont.

I hope that isn't as confusing as it seems to be.

Anyway...with some of the dough in the last batch of basic bread, we made an AMAZING American-style pizza. It was SO GOOD! Thin and crispy crust, just the way I like it. Loaded with onions, mushrooms, red peppers and olives in addition to a liberal amount of ground beef and three cheeses. It made a pretty big pizza, of which we ate just over half last night. We're saving the rest for a quick and easy supper after church tomorrow night.

I'm thinking the Vermont Cheddar Buenos Aires Lincoln bread dough would make a nice pizza crust too. This batch makes 4 loaves of bread and can be used any time over the next 7 days, so maybe the last quarter of dough we'll make into another pizza.

I am LOVIN' this bread book!

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Just have to take a couple minutes and brag on my kids. They're grown and on their own, but they're still my kiddos ☺

Our son and his wife have two dogs, two cats and a crazy busy life. He's a partner in SabreTech, a computer business based out of Michigan. He lives in Indiana and does on-sites for business customers in Indiana and Ohio as well as Michigan. Recently he's also gotten into software design and programming. He blogs about this stuff which I cannot even begin to explain. You have no idea how glad we are to have our own personal I.T. guy "on call". And he even pays for the phone calls! Yep, he set us up with Vonage before we ever moved and he takes care of the bill every month.

You've already heard all about how the daughter was a grooms'person' in her friend's wedding recently. What you may not know is that she will graduate from Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, in December with a degree in communications. Her senior research paper was just accepted by the Religious Communication Association to be read at the Pre-Conference in Chicago this fall. Woot! She blogs but not very often because of her busy schedule. Which will ease up a bit when she finishes the promotional video for her local United Way.

There. Got that outta my system ☺ I don't want to be obnoxious but I'm awfully proud of my kids and a mom just has to brag every once in a while!