ROUND FIVE REBUTTAL: Mini Cakes

OK, to finish a rather decadent round of Foodie Wars, I give you my Mini Cakes. Yes, they are the smaller, more albino cousin of the yummy cakes Susan and Beth baked up. The reason for the petite-ness is that my husband and I are trying very hard to watch what we eat and I wanted to make something small so I didn’t feel bad about eating it.

Mini Cakes
Yields ½ Dozen

1 ¼ c. flour
½ t. baking soda
½ t. salt
½ c. butter melted (1 stick)
½ c. brown sugar firmly packed
¼ c. white sugar
1 egg
1 T. vanilla extract
jumbo chocolate chips

Combine flour, baking soda and salt and set aside. In a mixer, mix butter and sugars until creamy. Add egg and vanilla and mix some more. Slowly add the flour mixture until you have a nice batter. In a lightly greased muffin pan, fill the muffin ‘holes’ or whatever they are called about ¼ the way up. Do one at a time. Place 6 or 7 jumbo chocolate chips in the center of the batter. Don’t press them down. Then cover the chocolate chips with a spoonful of batter and move onto the next ‘hole’. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

ROUND TWO REBUTTAL: Chocolate Mousse & Caramel Trifle

Okay, so I didn't get too crazy with this one. I have a dinner party tonight for which I'm supposed to provide dessert, so I didn't want to chance making a huge gamble, tossing the result in the azalea bush and bringing a Publix pie to the party.

I know first-hand that Susan's Brownie Trifle is a home run, so I only changed it slightly. Here goes:

Chocolate Mousse & Caramel Trifle

1 recipe brownies (homemade or from mix, whatever)
1 recipe chocolate pudding (the large box)
1 container whipped topping
1/2 bag of Heath Bits o' Brickle (b/c I'm too lazy to crush Heath bars)
1 recipe caramel sauce (recipe below or just use a jar of caramel topping)

Fold whipped topping into chocolate pudding to create chocolate mousse. Crumble brownies into a bowl and alternate layers of brownie, caramel, brickle, and mousse.

Caramel Sauce:

1/2 C sugar
1/2 packed brown sugar
3/4 C water
1/4 C yogurt, heavy cream, or sour cream (I used sour cream)
1 t vanilla extract

Place in heavy saucepan, bring to boil over medium heat. Boil, WITHOUT STIRRING, for about 10-12 minutes and remove from heat. Let cool and stir in yogurt/heavy cream/sour cream and vanilla.

I even took a bunch of pictures for this one, but I'm an idiot and can't figure out how to upload them so that they're not the size of a postage stamp and aligned to the right. Oh well.

ROUND TWO REBUTTAL: Toffee Blondies

Once I saw Susan's Heath Bar Trifle, I knew that I was going to have to put together something good. I immediately thought of brownies, but then I thought, why not make blondies with toffee and chocolate chips! So that is what I did. Trouble was that the toffee bits seemed to have melted while baking so there are no crunchy toffee pieces in the blondie, yet the whole blondie has a toffee flavor. Another problem I ran into was that chocolate chips seemed to have gone straight to the bottom while baking. But overall, it was a good experiment, and the blondies tasted good.

Toffee Blondies

1 c. flour
½ t. baking powder
½ t. salt
1/8 t. baking soda
1 c. brown sugar
1 stick butter melted
1 egg
½ t. vanilla extract
½ c. toffee bits
½ c. chocolate chips

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda together in a bowl. Set aside. In a mixing bowl, mix melted butter and brown sugar. Once mixed, add egg and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Once a nice batter is formed, add toffee bits and chocolate chips. Pour batter into a greased 8”x 8” baking pan and bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. These would be darn good with some vanilla ice cream.

ROUND TWO: Chocolate Heath Bar Trifle

I took this creation to my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting yesterday and I won best dish! There was some pretty stiff completion up on that buffet table too. I must admit that I took it two years ago and walked away with the same award. Let's see what my fellow Bloggin' Beauties can do to this one! It's a crowd pleaser...or at least it's a women who-are-sleep-and -chocolate-deprived pleaser!

Chocolate Trifle
Brownies- I use a box mix and follow the instructions and bake it in a 9x9 pan. After they cool, I cut the brownies into about 1 inch cubes.

Chocolate pudding- I use the big box of Jello Chocolate pudding and follow the directions for a pie filling. It's just less milk so the pudding is thicker.

1 tub of Cool Whip

Heath Candy Bar pieces- I haven't been able to find the large size Heath bars lately so I've been using the mini bars. I bought mine at Target and I've seen them at Publix too. I used about half of the bars in the bag. You can either put them in the food processor to crunch them up or put them in a heavy duty Ziploc and hit them with a rolling pin...good to get out frustration too!

Layer 1/2 of the brownies in a clear bowl (it looks neat when it's finished that way), followed by 1/2 the pudding mixture, 1/2 the Heath bar bits, and half of the Cool Whip. Then repeat the layers.

I didn't think to take a picture of it before I left yesterday morning but here is what I came back home with!

Get it...everyone liked it so much they licked the bowl clean!

ROUND ONE REBUTTAL: Rimocha

You are wondering what in the world I am talking about right...rimocha? I will tell you right now it is something I just made up. I am going out on a limb on this one, but I think it's pretty good. I felt pressured to post my recipe this evening because Susan and Beth were totally on the ball with theirs. So, I thought to myself, its 10:30 pm ET, all I have is regular coffee to tinker around with and with that being the case, I would be up to at least 3:00 am from the caffeine. I looked in my refrigerator and low and behold, I had half a container of ricotta cheese left from making Susan's Chicken Capri. So I had a thought.


Rimocha
(single serving)

½ c. part skim ricotta cheese
2 t. cocoa powder
½ t. instant coffee grounds
3 packets of splenda
mini chocolate chips for a topping

Mix all ingredients together. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top. That's it!