Chocolate Pudding Poke Cake

Photo from Betty Crocker.com

It's that time of year when your kids come home from school and tell you that they need to bring a treat for a school party.  What a great opportunity to let your kids do the baking!  This poke cake recipe is very easy for them make.  They will enjoy poking the cake full of holes and drizzling lucious chocolate pudding inside.  Here is the recipe from Betty Crocker:

Ingredients

1 box Betty Crocker® SuperMoist® chocolate fudge cake mix
Water, vegetable oil and eggs called for on cake mix box
1 box (4-serving size) milk chocolate instant pudding and pie filling mix
2 cups cold milk

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan).
2. Make, bake and cool cake as directed on box for 13x9-inch pan.
3. Poke cake every 1/2 inch with handle of wooden spoon. In medium bowl, beat pudding mix and milk with whisk about 2 minutes. Pour pudding evenly over cake. Run knife around sides of pan to loosen cake. Refrigerate about 2 hours or until chilled. Store loosely covered in refrigerator.               

I hope you will take the time to bake with your kids.  It's a great way to spend your time and teach them family recipes that they will treasure the rest of their lives. 

Happy baking,
Pam

Cake Baking Tips from Duncan Hines

Photo from Duncan Hines

There is nothing worse than baking your favorite cake recipe and having it not turn out the way you wanted.  I gathered these baking tips from Duncan Hines to try and help you prevent any problems with your cake recipes.  Notice how similar the solutions are to each other.  By just following these tips, you can prevent nearly every disaster out there!

Cake Did Not Rise

~ Pan is too large

~ Oven temperature is too low – under- baked

~ Under-beating the batter

~ Added too much liquid

~ Batter sat too long before baking

Cake Fell or Dipped, Was Soggy, Compact or Heavy

~ Oven running too cool, under-baked

~ Cake removed from oven before completely baked

~ Too much liquid

~ Extra ingredients added to batter

~ Excessive over-beating

~ Used too much batter per pan

~ Didn’t use cool water, cold eggs

Batter Ran Over Sides of Pan

~ Oven temperature too low

~ Pans too small, too much batter per pan

~ Batter unevenly divided between pans.  Fill pans ½ full, not more than 1” deep

~ Too much liquid

~ Oven racks not level

~ Pans not placed in center of oven

Cake Sticks to Pan, Difficult to Remove

~ Pans not greased heavily enough

~ Cooled improper length of time.  If cake is too hot it will break easily.  If cooled too long in pan, the shortening begins to harden and can “glue” the cake to the pan.

~ Cake not loosened with knife or spatula before removal

Cake Wet, Moist, Weeps When Stored

~ Under-baked

~ Not completely cooled before frosted or stored

~ Frosting a frozen cake

~ Freezing a frosted cake

~ Stored in an area that was too warm or humid

Sheet Cakes Split, Cracked

~ Not enough batter in pan

~ Stored at too warm a temperature, store at 40F in warm, humid months

Cake Split, Humped or Peaked Too Much, Shrunk, Had Holes And Tunnels, Dry, Crumbly

~ All of these problems can indicate over-baking which results from too hot an oven or too long a bake time.

~ Holes and tunnels can also be caused by failure to scrape bottom and sides of bowl when mixing batter.  Excessively lumpy mix.

Custard-Like Streak Across Cake

~ Streak across bottom of cake, too much liquid

~ Streak under top crust of cake, under-baked

~ Extra ingredients added to batter

~ Excessive over-beating

~ Failure to scrape or improperly scraping bottom and sides of the bowl

Layers Uneven

~ Oven racks not level

~ Pans not centered in oven

~ Too much liquid

~ Under-mixing

~ Oven temperature too high

Uneven Browning

~ Oven not pre-heated

~ Used dark, dented or warped pans

~ Oven racks not level

Cake Difficult to Frost

~ Cake not removed from pan properly

~ Cake cooled in wrong position, cakes should cool right side up on a cooling rack

~ Cake not completely cool before frosting

~ Excessive crumbs not brushed away

~ Frosting not of a good spreading consistency

~ Try using a crumb coat before frosting

Cake Broke, Crumbled When Assembled

~ Cake stored in too warm or humid area

~ Cake not supported with rack when de-panning or turning over

~ Cakes not stacked with adequate supports

Also, for best results use the recommended amounts of water, eggs and oil.  In hot weather, use cold water and cold eggs.  Be sure that your oven is calibrated to the right temperture.   I hope this helps you to bake the perfect cake every time!

Happy baking,

Pam

Another "Taste of Home" Recipe to Share

Last week I attended the Taste of Home Cooking School in Omaha and was thrilled to have won a door prize.  It was a new edition of the Taste of Home Cookbook.  Inside the binder was a bonus book  with 125 best-of-the-best contest winning recipes.  As I flipped through it, I saw one of my recipes that I sent in to their "Cookbook Recipe Contest."  Taste of Home will occasionally publish recipes that did not win the top prize in a contest, but attracted their attention anyway.  I was surprised when I accidentally came across one of my recipes in the book!

I don't have a picture of the cookies, but wanted to share the recipe with you.  It looks like the Taste of Home economists doubled my recipe.  This amount will make plenty for a crowd.  You can even make the cookies a little smaller to get even more.  Here is how they published my recipe:

Caramel-Cashew Dark Chocolate Chippers

4 cups of salted cashews

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of packed brown sugar

1 cup of butter, softened

1 can (13.4oz.) dulce de leche

4 eggs

1/3 cup of buttermilk

2 teaspoons of vanilla

5 cups of biscuit baking mix

2 – 12oz. packages of dark chocolate chips

Additional sugar

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Place cashews and sugars in a food processor; cover and process until nuts are finely chopped.

In a large bowl, beat butter and dulce de leche until blended.  Beat in eggs, buttermilk and vanilla.  Combine baking mix and cashew mixture; gradually add to butter mixture and mix well.  Stir in chocolate chips (dough will be sticky).

Drop dough by ¼ cupfuls 4 inches apart onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets (or use a non-stick silicone mat).  Coat bottom of a glass with cooking spray, then dip in additional sugar.  Flatten cookies with prepared glass to 2 ½” circles, re-dipping in sugar as needed.

Bake at 325 degrees for 15-18 minutes or until edges begin to brown.  Cool for 3 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

Makes 3 dozen

That makes four recipes that I know of!  It's such a thrill and an honor to have my recipes recognized by a national cooking magazine.  It makes all of the time I spend creating new tastes well worth the effort.  I hope you will enjoy it, too!

Happy Baking,

Pam