An Oldie But A Goodie

I was looking for something quick, easy and relatively inexpensive to bake as I hadn't tried anything new in a while. A recent email newsletter from Foodlovers featured a recipe I hadn't had for years and it fit the bill perfectly.

Chocolate Weetbix Slice
by Helen Jackson

Ingredients
180 g butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup coconut
3 weetbix, crushed
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa

Method
Preheat the oven to 180 C
Melt butter and add vanilla
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl and mix in the butter
Press firmly into a slice pan and bake for 20 minutes
Allow to cool and then ice with a thin chocolate icing
Sprinkle with coconut
Cut into pieces as desired - fingers are nice

But wait.... there's more.....

I did a bit of googling to see if there were any other variants out there and I came across one that had a marshmallow topping. That particular recipe had brown sugar instead of white and no cocoa. However Helen's slice was so scrumptious I decided to use it as my base. It was the first time I'd made marshmallow and I wasn't so sure what I was doing. For my personal taste I think there was a bit too much marshmallow to base but my co-workers pronounced it delicious.

Truffles and Treats

I like to give homemade treats and preserves as Christmas presents and this year was no exception. I made truffles (the cheat's kind with cookie crumbs rather than with chocolate and cream), rocky road and some date and rice bubble balls. I really think that making edible gifts like these should not be reserved for the holiday season. They are so easy, relatively inexpensive and make a great gift at any time of year.

Carla's Liquer Truffles

Ingredients
1 packet plain biscuits eg wine, Girl Guide - crushed
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
185 grams icing sugar
125 grams butter - melted
4 tablepoons (or more) liquer of your choice
Coconut

Method
Place biscuit crumbs, cocoa, and icing sugar in a bowl
Add melted butter and liquer
Form into balls and roll in coconut
Set in the fridge

For a nice variation you can roll the trufle mixture around a halved marshmallow.
I made Malibu rum truffles for my first batch and for my second batch I used Frangelico and added some hazlenut paste to the biscuit mix. I dusted the Frangelico truffles in cocoa powder rather than confusing the flavours and rolling them in coconut.

Rocky Road

Ingredients
Two king sized blocks of chocolate (400g- 500g) - I used Cadbury Dairy Milk
1 packet mini marshmallows
1/4 cup chopped salted peanuts
1/4 cup coconut
1/2 cup chopped dried fruit - I used dried strawberries

Method
Line and 8" x 8" cake tin with baking paper
Melt chocolate
Add other ingrediets and stir well to combine
Spread into prepared tin and chill
Cut into desired size pieces when set

Note: You can vary the combination and quantities of nuts and fruit to suit your taste. Try some chopped turkish delight with pistachio nuts for a festive looking rocky road. You could even use white chocolate if you wanted.

Odd Balls
From the Foodlover's website - no other source given

Ingredients
1/c cup sugar
75 grams butter
1 cup dates
2 cups rice bubbles
Coconut

Method
Slowly heat the sugar and butter in a saucepan
Add dates
Stir and mash with a potato masher until soft and pulpy
Remove from the heat and add the rice bubbles
Roll into balls and then dip in coconut
Chill until firm

One Bowl Chocolate Cake

When it comes to cake I'm not a huge fan of chocolate but I think I may have found my new go to recipe for the times someone says "make mine chocolate" ....

It's light and tender with a subtle chocolate flavour and yields a pretty decent sized cake. This recipe is so easy - just add all the ingredients to one big bowl and mix – no sifting, no creaming of the sugar and butter! And you can even use light yoghurt if you’re that way inclined…

One Bowl Chocolate Cake

Ingredients
115g butter, softened
1 ¾ cup self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup cocoa
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons instant coffee dissolved in ¾ cup hot water
¾ cup natural yoghurt – (or use your favourite flavour such as strawberry or use a low-fat yoghurt option)
2 tablespoons raspberry jam (I had none so used plum)

Method
Grease a rectangular cake dish (a 9" x 13" pan works well) and preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius/ 350 degrees fahrenheit
Add the following ingredients to a big bowl and mix (you can use your arm muscles or an electric mixer
Pour mixture into pre-greased dish and bake for 45 minutes or until cake tests done
Cool and turn out onto a cake rack
Once cool, ice with butter icing

Butter Icing
Cream 115g butter
Add the following and mix
¾ cup icing (powered) sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon water

International Chocolate Day

Did you know that 13 September is International Chocolate Day? I don't know who decreed it. Isn't every day Chocolate Day?

Recently, I offered to bake a co-worker something for her birthday and she requested brownies. I don't have a favourite brownie recipe so I consulted a few different recipes from some of the doyennes of New Zealand's cooking scene Ruth Pretty, Annabelle Langbein and Jo Seagar. Just to make sure that these kiwi women had the right idea about an American recipe I consulted Dorie Greenspan's Baking, from my home to yours.


The recipes were quite similar in that they all called for almost equal quantities of butter and sugar and all of my recipes needed 4 eggs. The major difference was in the quantity of flour. Brownies are not my favourite thing but when I have them I like them fudgy and intensely chocolately. None of those cakey textured, pale things that try to pass themselves off as brownies. No sirree Bob.

This picture belies the brownie's dark colour - I just took the photo to show the dry, shiny top. The hole in the middle is where I tested the brownies with a thin knife - just like they say you should. My knifeblade came out a bit gooey but I reckoned on them continuing to cook in the pan and crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.


The verdict - YUM


Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients
225g/8 ounces butter
200g/7 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups plain flour

Method
Preheat your oven to 180/350 degrees
Grease and line an 18 x 13 pan
Melt butter and chocolate over a low heat
Combine melted chocolate with sugar
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition
Stir in vanilla essence
Pour into baking tin
Bake for 35 minutes until set
Cool
Cut into squares

Here's a recipe from one of my co-workers. No photo I'm afraid but I can personally vouch for their deliciousness. Please note that the imperial measurement conversions are not precise but I'm sure that exact measurements aren't as critical for brownies as they might be for a cake.

Michelle's Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Brownies

Ingredients
150g/5 ounces good quality dark chocolate
150g/5 ounces butter
4 eggs
340g/12 ounces brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
140g/5 1/2 ounces self-raising flour
70g/2 1/2 ounces cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
100g/3 1/2 ounces chopped good quality dark chocolate
~1/2 cup frozen raspberries (can use walnuts or anything else)

Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F
Line a cake tin with baking paper
Melt the first amount of the chocolate and butter and mix
Leave to cool
Whisk the eggs and mix with the brown sugar
Add the vanilla
Sift the flour, cocoa and salt into the mixture
Add the melted butter and chocolate and the chopped chocolate and raspberries
(I sometimes mix them in or sometimes sit it on top of the brownie mix when in the pan but last time I had them on the bottom so when I turned it out you could see all the raspberries)
Pour into the cake tin and cook for 25 - 30 minutes
I normally have to leave for longer
I prefer a sticky brownie and even when I cook for longer still is lovely and moist
Remove from oven, leave to cool, lift out of the baking paper and cut into pieces then dust with icing sugar

Hay Hay it's Donna Day - #19 The Clafoutis Edition

Is it a batter? Is it a sponge? Is it a custard? No - it's clafoutis!

Bon Marshall is the happy hostess of this round of Hay Hay it's Donna Day and I was delighted to see that she chose something that I've wanted to make for ages - clafoutis. Originally from Limousin in France, clafoutis is traditionally made with unpitted cherries. Donna Hay's version, which Bron selected, is made with plums and chocolate or should that be prunes et chocolat?

My blog friend Tammy recently made her clafoutis and she altered the recipe slightly and used a combination of milk and lite cream instead of just cream. Since I'm always trying to make my recipes a little healthier I thought this was a great idea. I also thought that the cup of chocolate that the recipe called for was a little over the top, especially if you're going to the bother of using less cream! I probably only used about a 1/4 of a cup. In hindsight the amount was perfect for my taste but I should have left it in bigger chunks. Like Tammy, I used canned black doris plums.

You can find the original Donna Hay recipe on Bron's blog.


I loved this recipe, the rich chocolate and the tart plums were an outstanding favour combination and the recipe was quick and easy to do. I am keen to try other variations over my winter entertaining season.

Chocolate Cafe Cake

Why is it that chocolate products are so UNphotogenic? Or is it just my photographic skills? No - don't answer that one.

Much as I adore chocolate in its confectionary form (milk chocolate preferably) I'm not a big fan of chocolate cakes and would never order one at a cafe or restaurant because they are usually dry, spongey things lacking in flavour and texture. If I volunteer to bake for people I'm often asked for a chocolate cake and this is the recipe I use. It's dark and dense but not too rich and has a really good chocolate flavour. Best of all it is great with just a dusting of icing sugar and the method is pretty much melt and mix. If you are looking for a quick and easy chocolate cake this is it baby!

Anna's Chocolate Cafe Cake
Original source unknown but likely from a supermarket magazine

Ingredients
2 ¼ cups flour
¾ cup cocoa
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ cups white sugar
1 ½ cups (375ml) warm milk
3 tbsps vinegar
150 grams (a little over 5oz) butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
Icing sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
Line base of a deep 23 cm round tin with baking paper (I actually use a bundt tin because it looks prettier as an un-iced cake)
Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda and sugar into a bowl
Combine milk and vinegar then stir in melted butter and vanilla essence
Pour into dry ingredients and mix thoroughly
Turn mixture into tin
Bake for 45-55 mins or until the cake tests done
Leave in tin for 15 mins then turn onto a rack to cool
Dust with icing sugar

Note
Do not have your milk too warm or else the vinegar will coagulate with the milk and you will end up with a big lump of casein. Ask me how I know!

Happy Birthday To Me

Good grief - I knew I was hopeless at remembering people's birthdays but it's a bit sad when I can't even manage a post about my own!

26 September is also the birthday of a co-worker and we had a shared morning tea. Pictured above is the delicious flourless citrus cake made for me by my boss. It was moist and dense and would be a lovely dessert cake because it's not too sweet. I imagine it would be even better served with a dollop of creamy Greek yoghurt or some marscapone.

Orange, Lemon and Almond Cake
Source unknown but based on a Sephardic recipe from Claudia Roden

Ingredients
1 orange
1 lemon
400g ground almonds
150g sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
Butter and flour for preparing tin
Handful of flaked almonds for decoration

Method
Simmer the orange and lemon in water til soft (the lemonw ill probably soften first) – allow about 45 minutes
Leave to cool
Open the fruit and remove the pips
Blend with just enough of the cooking liquid to make a pulp or push through a sieve
Beat the eggs in a bowl and stir in the fruit pulp and dry ingredients
Put into a greased and floured tin (one with a loose base is best) and sprinkle the top with the flaked almonds
Bake at 190 degrees celcius for about 40-50 minutes or until browned and springy to touch
Allow to cool a little and then remove from the tin and put on a serving plate
Dust with icing sugar if desired

Also on the morning tea table was a lovely lemon syllabub sponge cake which was a Ruth Pretty recipe from the Saturday newspaper, a hummingbird cake, chocolate brownies (recipe to follow in another post), some cute little cupcakes (coffee and lemon - but not together), and a lemon curd cake. I was too busy eating a little slice of everything to take photos.

I had a wonderful day which even included flowers and a card from my husband. My birthday gifts from friends included the usual suspects of chocolates, quilting fabric and wine. I also received Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan and Simple Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey and I've already earmarked several recipes to try. My reading pleasure will continue with Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Daring Bakers Challenge #9 - Milk Chocolate Caramel Tart

Caramel is not a favourite flavour of mine but it is a great pairing with chocolate. Milk chocolate was specified for this recipe and I did use it but for my taste I think that dark chocolate would have worked better. It probably didn't help my tart that in the interests of frugality I used an elderly, hollow Easter bunny that was sitting in my pantry and some regular chocolate melts rather than buying excellent quality chocolate. No-one else noticed but I could tell.

This challenge was actually a breeze and although I had a few moments where I wondered if I was doing the right thing I didn’t have too many problems.

When I rolled out my tart pastry I placed it between two silicon baking sheets and that worked really well for me; I think every kitchen should have a pair. Flavourwise I felt the pastry was a little delicate but that’s not really a bad thing with the richness of the caramel and the chocolate mousse. The texture was very tender again a good thing because there’s nothing worse than a tough crust that flies across the room when you cut into it.

I had never made caramel using the dry technique before and had no idea what I was doing. It was one of those "feel the fear and do it anyway" experiences. Essentially you just heat up your pan of sugar over a low to medium heat until it melts. It’s like magic to watch. I stirred my first batch part way through and it crystalised a bit but soon incorporated into the melted stuff. The worst part was when I added the cream and ended up with a huge lump of like goo that looked like dinosaur snot! I decided that I wasn’t going to waste my ingredients and effort and wondered what would happen if I just continued to beat the bejeebers out of it over a low heat. Miraculously the cream incorporated with the sugar and caramel was born.

After such a success with the first batch of caramel I was keen to make more for the Caramel Fragments. I bashed them with a rolling pin between my wonderful silicon sheets and have yet to find the two pieces that bounced off the bench into the living room. No doubt I’ll find a sticky piece of something covered in cat fluff if I look hard enough.

Daring Bakers Challenge #9: August 2007 – Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart
Source: Eric Kayser's Sweet and Savory Tarts

Hosts: Veron of Veronica's Test Kitchen and Patricia of Technicolor Kitchen)

Chocolate Shortbread Pastry
Note: The Chocolate Shortbread pastry can make 3 tart shells.
Preparation time: 10 minutes + overnight refridgeration

Ingredients
1 cup (250g ) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (150 g) confectioners’ sugar
½ cup (50 g) ground hazelnuts
2 level teaspoons (5 g) ground cinnamon
2 eggs
4 ½ cups (400 g) cake flour
2 ½ teaspoons (10 g) baking powder
1 ½ tablespoons (10 g) cocoa powder

Method
A day ahead
1. In a mixing bowl of a food processor, cream the butter.
2. Add the confectioners’ sugar, the ground hazelnuts, and the cinnamon, and mix together
3. Add the eggs, one by one, mixing constantly
4. Sift in the flour, the baking powder, and the cocoa powder, and mix well.
5. Form a ball with the dough, cover in plastic wrap, and chill overnight.

Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart
Preparation time: 40 minutes
Baking Time: 30 minutes
Refrigeration time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
½ lb (250 g) chocolate shortbread pastry (see recipe above)
1 ½ cups (300 g) granulated sugar
1 cup (250 g) heavy cream (30-40 percent butterfat) or crème fraiche - I used regular cream
¼ cup (50 g) butter
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk
2 ½ tablespoons (15 g) flour
1 ¼ cups (300 g) whipping cream
½ lb (250 g) milk chocolate

Method
1. Preheat oven to 325 °F (160 °C).
2. Line the baking pan with the chocolate shortbread pastry and bake blind for 15 minutes.
3. In a saucepan, caramelize 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar using the dry method (just heat in a heavy bottom pot on a low-med heat until it melts) until it turns a golden caramel color (like golden or maple syrup). Incorporate the heavy cream or crème fraiche and then add butter. Mix thoroughly. Set aside to cool.
4. In a mixing bowl, beat the whole eggs with the extra egg yolk, then incorporate the flour (I used a whisk to reduce the risk of lumps but ended up running the egg/flour mixture through a sieve as suggested by some helpful Daring Bakers).
5. Pour this into the cream-caramel mixture and mix thoroughly
6. Spread it out in the tart shell and bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. I baked mine a little longer, about 10 mins more – the caramel should feel “jiggly” to touch.


7. Prepare the milk chocolate mousse: beat the whipping cream until stiff. Melt the milk chocolate in the microwave or in a bain-marie, and fold it gently into the whipped cream. Make sure the chocolate isn’t hot hot or the cream will melt - ask me how I know!
8. Pour the chocolate mousse over the cooled caramel mixture, smoothing it with a spatula. Chill for one hour in the refrigerator.

Caramel Fragments

Melt ½ cup (100g) granulated sugar in a saucepan until it reaches an amber color
Pour it onto waxed paper laid out on a flat surface
Leave to cool
Break it into small fragments and stick them lightly into the top of the tart. If there's a next time I'd try for long shards rather than chunks.
(in real life the caramel isn't as red as it looks in the photo - the colours are a wee bit off)


A big thank you to Veronica and Patricia for an interesting challenge. It was great fun to do and very well recieved by my co-workers who enjoyed my efforts.

Caramel Creations

A regular reader complained that I hadn't posted in a while so I've unearthed something from my drafts folder to make her happy.



When I’m at the gym with my personal trainer one of the frequent topics of conversation is food since diet and exercise go hand in hand. A while back I was talking about the HHDD Cheesecake Challenge (it was HHDD #10) and mentioned how proud I was that I didn’t yield to temptation. My trainer commented that one of his colleagues really loved cheesecake and because I like nothing more than to bake for other people I saw this as an opportunity to try out Lisa’s cheesecake with the longest name in the world aka Lisa's Decadent and Ohhh So Evil Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Caramel Ripple Cheesecake - or LDOSEPBDCCRC.

Lisa said her recipe made a huge cheesecake so I opted to cut the recipe in half - I mean really - two POUNDS of cream cheese. Did you read that? TWO POUNDS!! I used oreo cookies for the crust since the recipient of my cheesecake is American and I figured he might like a bit of a taste of home. Interestingly I noted that the oreo cookies we can buy in New Zealand are manufactured in China. I don’t really care for them and find their black colour offputting as a food item. The mixture seemed very buttery so I baked my crust for 10 minutes and then cooled it before adding the filling. When it came to dividing the filling I didn’t get my split 50/50 so the chocolate layer was much smaller than the peanut butter layer. The chocolate layer was a little runny while the peanut butter layer was very thick. I use an unsweetened chunky peanut butter which I think is more like what’s known in the USA as natural peanut butter. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out when I try the various recipes in Dorie Greenspan’s book that say "do not use natural peanut butter". Lisa used crushed candy in her cheesecake mix but I felt there was enough going on in the mix so didn't bother and you can't get that kind of candy in New Zealand anyway. Instead of using caramel sauce I thought I'd be clever and use pre-caramelised sweetened condensed milk which you can buy in the supermarket. It wasn't as great a success as I'd hoped and despite warming the caramel in the microwave and stirring it furiously it didn’t thin out or get very smooth. I ended up just blobbing it in a very unartistic manner on top of the cheesecake and then swirled it around with a skewer.

The recipient of the cheesecake pronounced it delicious and said that it reminded him of one from The Cheesecake Factory. That was Lisa's idea when she created her recipe so I guess she did good. Thank you Lisa for a great recipe.

I had a lot of leftover caramel from my cheesecake baking session and wondered what to do with it. I'm not one to waste things even if it means adding a whole lot of other ingredients to get there. A quick look at the Nestle website provided the perfect recipe – chocolate muffins with a caramel filling. Fortunately for my diet I’ve decided that caramel isn’t really my thing. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t like it but if I was offered free choice from a box of chocolates the caramel filled ones would be the last on my list. However, I really should quantify that because it’s flowing or soft caramels I don’t like. Hard caramels are completely different story - give me a nice turtle or a Russell Stover Pecan Delight and I’m very happy camper. Especially if they’ve been in the freezer and the caramel has chilled to an almost toothbreaking hardness.


Mmmmm - don't these look ooey gooey?

Martha Stewart's Deepest Chocolate Crepe Cake - a la Daring Bakers

The Daring Bakers were at it again in April and I missed the due date for posting because I was on vacation. I'd arranged for a blog buddy to post on my behalf but the poor gal didn't realise that paranoid lil me had given her my password in code and forgotten to mention how to crack the code. Never mind; better late than not at all.

Brilynn of Jumbo Empanadas selected Martha Stewart's Darkest Crepe Cake as the Daring Bakers' challenge for the month of April and may I say that it was indeed a challenge. Judging by the comments from the other gals I was not alone. It's OK Brilynn we still love ya! Honest.

Yet another baking effort where my photographic skills leave much to be desired and I have decided that chocolate isn't a very photogenic food. It comes up too dark and you don't get any definition of shape and form. Things are not helped by the fact I have white dishes, a white countertop and white splashback.

My parents came to stay for the weekend that I had designated for crepe cake construction and I thought that the crepe making exercise would be the perfect mother/daughter activity although mum tells me that when we baked together when I was a youngster I used to say to her "Mummy why don't you have a smile on your face when we're baking?". She never told me what I did to piss her off.

While some of the crepe cake making was shared it was mostly me doing the work with Mum offering advice and guidance in the background. Mum proclaimed that I wasn't part of a daring bakers group I was part of a "messed up in the head " baking group. Well that's the polite translation; you work it out for yourself. We both decided that Martha must have devised this recipe while sitting in her prison cell as a particularly evil revenge on an unsuspecting baking public.

Let me tell you that this is not a recipe you'd want to use when you need something quick and easy. Did I mention it was a challenge? I started on Saturday afternoon by making the crepe batter which needed to stand for 2 hours or overnight. Into the bowl went an entire family sized block of chocolate. I like to try and use local products so I went for Whittakers Dark Ghana 72%. Then there was some butter added to the mixture. A LOT of butter I swear that Martha was channelling Paula Deen at this point and I could feel the kilos piling onto my hips already.

Mum had brought her electric crepe maker with her to see if it would simplify the process a little. If you've not seen a crepe maker check out this one by Villaware - yours for a mere $29 bucks. It's kind of like a little non stick hotplate on a handle. You simply (well that's easier said that done) turn it upside down and dunk the contraption ever so briefly - like for ONE second - into your batter, flip the crepe maker over and if you are lucky you have a perfect crepe. If you are not so lucky as was the case about 3 times out of 10 for me, the crepe mixture just plops back into the batter meaning you have to try and fish the lumpy bits out. One of the tricks is to have the crepe maker level. I ended up with two distinct piles. Perfect crepes that were the size of the entire crepe maker and not so perfect crepes that were undersized. Amazingly, they were all perfectly round. If you do use an electric crepe maker you need to be prepared to have batter from here to Africa, all over the bench, on the floor, on your shirt and in your hair. Mum says that the batter didn't behave as nicely as the plain ones she's made and she reckons it's probably because of the chocolate.


In the middle of making the crepes I took a wee break to beat the cream required for the hazelnut filling because that had to be refrigerated for an hour. I have no idea why - guess it had to be chilled. Perhaps Martha just wanted people using her recipe to waste more of their free time.

After the crepes were completed I set about making the filling which meant whisking egg whites and sugar over a bowl of simmering water then adding another unimaginable amount of butter and some hazelnut cream. There was some discussion among the Daring Bakers over what we should use as hazelnut cream and the majority went for Nutella or similar. I used 50% Nutella and 50% hazelnut paste which is a Turkish product made of ground hazelnuts and sugar that I discovered quite by accident on a recent foodie shopping expedition.

In a perfect world this cake should be very tall - 32 layers plus filling tall in fact. By about layer 24 my cake started to resemble the leaning tower of Pisa. If the challenge was "recreate the leaning tower of Pisa by using baked goods" I would have received an A+ for lean and an F for tower. However the combination of tender, silky crepes; smooth, creamy filling; and sticky chocolate was delicious albeit incredibly rich. Everyone at work who tried a piece thought it was fabulous. One person even said that I should be a professional *blush* and I can only assume they were going by taste and not looks.


I thank Brilynn for the challenge, no really I do; and I can say without a word of a lie that I will not make this particular recipe again but I can see potential for doing some creative stuff with crepes. I have a recipe in a new book I bought called "Wicked" that calls for plain crepes filled with a lemon curd filling but I wonder how it might go with my lemon mousse? Hmmmm

In the extremely unlikely event that you wish to experience for yourself the horror that is Martha's Darkest Chocolate Crepe Cake you can find the recipe here. Good luck; you'll need it!

Do check out the other Daring Bakers' blogs to see how much fun they had with this challenge. Some of the pictures will just blow you away with their beauty and decorative creativity.