Suggestions wanted for birthday cake

Upcoming in about a month or so my young nephew is having a birthday, and I'd like to bake him a cake. He'll be 4. Having observed his current eating preferences, I have some requirements.

First, it must either be able to be cut up into small, bite-size pieces (i.e. not slices but pieces - about the size of a pea) without affecting the ability to get the total experience of the cake in one such piece, or it must be able to be picked up with small hands and eaten as is, such that one entire dimension will fit into a small mouth (for example, a large roll doesn't work - you can't fit it in your mouth, but a large breadstick does

- it's easy to get the thin axis in your mouth and bite off a piece). A cake that you could slice into parts of this shape would also be fine, as long as the slice would not then crumble once picked up or bitten into, nor have to be held in a specific way (such as, for instance, carefully horizontal and icing-side up). The general concept is that it should not be in some way unwieldy to eat with hands.

Second, it shouldn't be excessively messy to eat. Believe it or not, this is a desire of the nephew as much as the parents - he hates getting messy or sticky.

Third, it should be powerfully chocolatey - of the same level of chocolatiness as desserts I typically make (see various recipes I've posted to get the idea). In other words, intense. And it mustn't be dry at that intensity level.

If it features blueberries, or goes great with blueberries on the side, that'd be a huge plus as well.

What suggestions do you have?

Reply to
Alex Rast
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chocolate cheesecake

Reply to
Peggy

(Please NOTE: My correct e-mail address is in my Signature) On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 06:16:20 -0800, during the rec.food.baking Community News Flash "Peggy" reported:

Sounds not chocolatey enough, if you ask me.

My friend always makes the devils food cake from the old Betty Crocker cookbook. Always comes out wonderful. She won't give me the recipe.

Reply to
Davida Chazan - The Chocolate Lady

I have all the Betty Crocker Cook Books. There are 2 Devils Food Cake recipes in the 1950 book -- Black or Dark. If you are interested I will try to get them type in soon and send them to you.

Reply to
The Cook

This isn't a fancy cake, but it goes over very well with little kids...and much bigger kids, too! :-)

Karen

Triple Chocolate Cake

1 18.5-ounce box devil's food cake mix (I use Pillsbury Plus) 1 4-serving size box chocolate pudding (the kind you cook; instant pudding won't work at all with this recipe) 1 12-ounce bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips Note: I prefer Ghirardelli to Nestle or Hershey chips; Ghirardelli results in a much smoother taste without the acid bite that the other two have.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare and cook pudding according to box directions. Pour dry cake mix into hot pudding; mix well. Spread batter in

13x9x2-inch pan that has been sprayed with non-stick spray. Sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over top of batter. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center of cake (avoid chocolate chips during testing) comes out clean. Cool several hours (overnight is good). Cut into squares to serve. May be topped with ice cream if desired.
Reply to
Karen

Brownies

Reply to
Peggy

Here's one form RecipeSource.com, that purports to be one of Betty Crocker's:

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'm sure there are many more there, but they're in server overload rightnow!

Dave

Reply to
Dave Bell

Thanks for the suggestion, but, sorry, if you know my inclinations from previous postings, you'll know that I'm not keen on made-from-a-mix recipes. Part of the problem is that you have no control over ingredient proportions and the decisions the mix-maker made when deciding what the flavour balance would be. Furthermore, very few mixes indeed use the best quality ingredients all round, as I'm inclined to do. In the case of cake mixes, virtually all of them are far, far too sweet IMHO. Because of the high sugar proportion, inevitably they're not going to be chocolatey enough (there just isn't enough proportion left over for chocolate) and you end up with something bland and sugary. It's unlikely that they'll use good chocolate in the mix: for a start, it's probable that they'll use cocoa, and then probably one of the cheaper brands. A lot of cake mixes also use Dutch cocoa, which further mutes the flavour. Whatever the case may be, you have no control over the brand and type they used and can't usually find out which one it was. Same basic rules tend to apply to chocolate pudding mixes. However, the *concept* might work well, implemented as follows:

1) Make a chocolate custard-based pudding. I think the recipe for chocolate ice cream I've posted in the past might work well. You just don't freeze it. But I would allow it to cool. 2) Mix up the dry ingredients for a Devil's food cake. Then do the necessary creaming of butter with sugar. Mix those components together. 3) Mix in the pudding.

4) Beat egg whites and fold in.

5) Add chocolate chips on top.

6) Bake.

I've made several postings as to chocolate chip choice in the past. The ones you want are the Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Chocolate Chips, which are easily the best. They come in a bag with dark-brown sides, as opposed to the yellow-gold sides of the "regular" Ghirardelli chips.

From my POV there are additional issues with cheesecake. None of the people in this family (myself included) are that wild about cheesecake. Even more importantly, cheesecake is very messy to eat with your hands, and difficult even to pick up with your hands. So my young nephew, I'm sure, wouldn't be thrilled.

I sense a lot of pe>Brownies

I could certainly make my brownie recipe and cut it up very small. It has the cohesiveness to hold together no problem at all. It seems a little pedestrian all on its own - I'm thinking of ways to make it a little more flashy. Thoughts, anyone?

Reply to
Alex Rast

Coming out of lurkdom here with a suggestion.

Would petit fours work? You could make them individually, using a poured chocolate ganache for the glaze/frosting. Push them all together into whatever shape you'd like, then whip your leftover, cooled ganache and use it to decorate. Kind of like the cupcake cakes that are so popular right now.

Does that make any sense?

Reply to
SheridR

(Please NOTE: My correct e-mail address is in my Signature) On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 13:25:15 -0700, during the rec.food.baking Community News Flash Dave Bell reported:

Only 2oz of chocolate! That's, what, just over 50grams. Hardly chocolatey, in my book. Plus, from what I understand, there's no milk in the recipe. She uses soda water (not club soda) instead so that we can eat it after Meat meals.

You could use a chocolate mouse cake and add some flour to it. Mine calls for 200 grams of dark chocolate, but only 100 grams of powdered sugar so its on the unsweet side. Let me know if you want that recipe.

Reply to
Davida Chazan - The Chocolate Lady

(Please NOTE: My correct e-mail address is in my Signature) On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 11:17:02 -0800, during the rec.food.baking Community News Flash "Peggy" reported:

Very good idea. I make mine with 2/3 cup of cocoa plus 100 grams of melted chocolate - which I melt with the margarine.

(But i also add about 2 tablespoons of instant coffee, plus Kaluah in addition to the vanilla, so its slightly less sweet and a bit on the mocha side.)

Reply to
Davida Chazan - The Chocolate Lady

(Please NOTE: My correct e-mail address is in my Signature) On Tue, 05 Oct 2004 22:40:00 -0000, during the rec.food.baking Community News Flash snipped-for-privacy@nwnotlink.NOSPAM.com (Alex Rast) reported:

Which is one of the reasons that I like you, Alex - because although you can buy them here now, they are horribly expensive (imported). The home-grown ones are horrid.

Its from scratch or go without in my house!

Reply to
Davida Chazan - The Chocolate Lady

Yes, that sounds like a great idea. It's the right size and could have visual interest. I have a good and intense recipe for chocolate genoise that I could use to make the cakes. What do people think of this idea:

Make the chocolate genoise for the cake, sandwich with blueberry paste (I make this by condensing down blueberries), cover with ganache, top with a blueberry. If I make the cakes hexagonal in shape, this gives maximum flexibility for interesting patterns when assembling. I could even get elaborate by cutting the cakes very carefully out of the sheet, then using the cake left in the sheet as a "frame" in which to mount the covered petits fours, leaving the frame uncovered.

Reply to
Alex Rast

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