I was born and raised in Indiana where there are still many old order Amish in the area. In fact my father hired the Amish to build our family home and my sister-in-law sells Amish furniture in her store. I came to love and respect them and especially their cooking. They sure can produce some good meals on those old fashion wood burning stoves! Here is a cake recipe that I got from the late Mrs. Coblentz who was an excellent Amish cook; so good, in fact, she wrote a syndicated column about her life sharing recipes from her kitchen. Chocolate Chip Cake is a sheet cake topped with chocolate chips and nuts.
CHOCOLATE CHIP CAKE
1 3/4 cups sifted flour
2 tbsps cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup shortening
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
6-oz chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped hickory nuts (or pecans)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 13 x2-inch baking pan; set aside.
Sift together flour, cocoa, salt and baking soda. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and sugar. Add the eggs and vanilla to the sugar mixture and beat thoroughly. Add the flour mixture and the water alternately mixing batter and beating smooth after each addition. Spoon into the prepared pan and spread batter evenly. Sprinkle the chocolate chips and the nuts over the top of the batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
NOTE: There is no need to frost this cake; it is delicious as it is. You can, however, use your favorite frosting if desired. It is also good with a dollop of whipped cream on top.
Enjoy!
For more of Linda's old fashion recipe collection, visit her blog at http://grandmasvintagerecipes.blogspot.com
For her diabetic recipes and information go to http://diabeticenjoyingfood.squarespace.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Carol_Wilson
Monday, July 20, 2009
Amish Cake Recipe - Chocolate Chip Sheet Cake
Chocolate Wedding Favors - Choosing the Right Kind For Your Guests
Candy wedding favors are always a popular choice, and as far as edible wedding favors go chocolate is a pretty safe bet! However, choosing the right kind to suit you can sometimes be hard, so use this as a guide.
Molded Chocolate Favors
The way your guests feel at your wedding is important, and the small touches can have a huge impact. Choosing the right shape for your chocolate favors is important, and there is a huge range available. Hearts are the obvious choice, but there's no reason why another shape wouldn't go perfectly with your style of wedding.
Wrapped Chocolate Wedding Favors
Wrapped coins and hearts are just two ideas when it comes to popular wrapped favors. You have almost complete control when it comes to the design and type of wrapping that you want to use.
Personalized Wedding Candy
What's becoming more and more popular nowadays is personalized wedding candy. This is an extra special version of classic edible wedding favors! You can customize the wrapping that you use, and a popular option is to include either the names of the bride and groom or of the guests. You could have the mold personalized. Just remember that this could cost you a little extra.
Finding Chocolate Favors to Suit Your Wedding
The cost of your wedding will influence, to some extent, the candy wedding favors you use as well as the containers you present them in - certain items costing more than others.
The number of guests you have will ultimately have an impact on the way you present your favors. Presentation is important, though choosing either a crystal glass or a plastic one can still look great - it all depends on the wedding style and budget!
To help you choose the perfect wedding candy for your big day you can make use of some of the numerous online catalogs. Many brands offer well-presented favors, including luxury chocolates at bargain prices. Just start looking around and you'll soon find a design that suits the style of your wedding.
Candy is a great way to thank your guests for coming, and also the perfect way to please the kids. Visit my site, Candy Wedding Favors, for unique wedding candy ideas. You will be able to see our selection of personalized chocolate bars : the perfect personal touch to any wedding day.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Charissa_Bear
How to Enjoy Chocolate? With Chocolate Chess Pie and Hoosier's German Chocolate Pie
Bring on the chocolate! And bring on the pies; Chocolate pies that is! The Hoosier's German Chocolate Pie combines three of my favorite ingredients; chocolate,coconut,sweetened condensed milk. The Chocolate Chess Pie is a rich wonderful chocolate pie, especially when topped with whipped cream.
HOOSIER'S GERMAN CHOCOLATE PIE
This is from an old Indiana Rural Electric Co-op Newsletter.
4-oz pkg German sweet chocolate
1/4 cup butter
14-oz can condensed milk
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 deep dish unbaked 9-inch pie shell
1 1/3 cups shredded coconut
1/2 cups pecans
Melt chocolate with butter over low heat; stir until blended. Remove from the heat and gradually blend in milk. Mix sugar, cornstarch, salt, eggs, and vanilla together. Gradually blend in chocolate mixture. Pour into pie shell. Mix coconut and pecans and sprinkle over filling. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or until top is puffed. Filling will be soft but will set while cooling. Cool at least 3 hours before cutting. If top starts to brown too quickly during cooking, cover loosely with foil for last 15 minutes of baking.
CHOCOLATE CHESS PIE
1 baked 9-inch pie shell
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 tsps vanilla
Whipped cream for garnish
Place oven rack in the lowest position then preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together sugar, cocoa, and flour until it is lump-free. Stir in the melted butter. Mix the eggs, one at a time, into the sugar mixture and mix until smooth. Stir in the milk and vanilla. Pour the mixture into the baked and cooled pie shell. Bake on lowest rack in the 350 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes. Cool on wire rack. Serve garnished with whipped cream.
Enjoy!
For more dessert recipes check out http://ladybugssweettreats.blogspot.com
For Linda's diabetic recipes and information go to http://diabeticenjoyingfood.squarespace.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Linda_Carol_Wilson
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The World's Best Chocolate Cake Recipe, Bake This and They Will Love You Forever
Ingredients
(This is to make a large birthday cake, you can scale down for an ordinary cake)
200 grams of stork or other baking margarine
200 grams of caster sugar
4 medium / large eggs
3 tbs of cocoa powder
Approx 75 grams of cornflour
100 grams of self raising flour
1 tbs baking powder
Vanilla essence
For the Icing
75 grams of margarine
Icing sugar to make a stiff mix
Water
Vanilla essence
Step 1
Using a mixer or food processor, cream together the sugar and margarine until it is light and fluffy. Add 1 tsp of vanilla essence and mix thoroughly.
Step 2
Add the 4 eggs, 1 at a time, mixing thoroughly until each egg is fully blended in. Leave mixer on for around 5 minutes.
Step 3
Into a weighing scale, put 3 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder. Add cornflour to make up to 100 grams, then add 100grams of self raising flour. Finally add 1 tablespoon of baking powder.
Step 4
Sieve the flour mix into your mix. Fold in, then mix with mixer until fully incorporated.
Step 5
Split mix between 2 lightly greased non stick 8 inch baking tins. Bake in over at 175 degrees centigrade for around 20 minutes. Test by lightly shaking the tin to see if it wobbles like a jelly. (if it does give it 5 more minutes.) If its firm, slide in a skewer to check the mix is cooked. It should not have any cake mix on, but will have steam from the mix. As long as there is no mix on the skewer, remove from oven to cool.
Step 6
While the cake is cooling, mix the margarine for the icing with 1 tsp of vanilla essence and enough icing sugar to make a stiff mix. Add 1 tsp of water at a time and mix in, the mix will let down and become creamy and smooth. Set aside until the cake is cold. DO NOT attempt to ice the cake when warm, the icing will go runny.
Tip - when icing, do not spread the icing, as this cake is so light it will break under the pressure. Just add spoonfuls of icing around the bottom layer, then put the top on and rotate slightly to spread the filling.
Step 7
Decorate the top of the cake with sieved icing sugar or cocoa powder. Get a cup of coffee, then eat a huge slice!
To make a celebration cake you can ice the outside of the cake and decorate it with chocolate curls, or ice and fill with whipped cream, or make a chocolate fudge icing mix, or use cream and cherries for a black forest gateaux. What ever floats your boat really.
Variations
You can also make this recipe into a victoria sponge, just take out the cocoa and substitute with more cornflour. Then ice with vanilla icing and jam. Or, use lemon essence and lemon icing for a tangy variation.
Magpie Jewellery is a great website with a huge range of beads findings and jewellery, and we like cake too! We import all our stock direct from the manufacturers to get you the best prices. Magpie Jewellery is a great resource site for jewellery designers, beaders, hobbyists and beginners, with free beading patterns, great beading articles and loads of great products.
Visit us now at http://www.magpiejewellery.net
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Caroline_Sykes
Healthy Chocolate - The Most Unlikely Nutritional Supplement
Hands up who's a chocoholic?
Come on, come on, don't be shy - it's not really your fault.
The chances are that you have been eating chocolate all of your life. Who hasn't got a photo in an old album somewhere, of themselves as a baby, with chocolate spread ALL over their face?
It is so deeply ingrained into the psyche and culture of the modern world that nine out of ten people admit to craving chocolate and five out of ten say that they can't live without it!
We have it on celebratory occasions when we are happy and with friends, but also when we are unhappy and by ourselves. That wouldn't be so bad if we didn't know that chocolate is really NOT that good for us. But it wasn't always that way.
From as far back as 1500BC, the cocoa bean has been known to the Aztec's, Mayan's and other ancient civilisations, for its nutritional and medicinal properties. It was taken for a wide variety of ailments and conditions and also as an energy enhancing drink.
It turns out that raw, unprocessed cocoa is one of the most highly potent natural supplements on the planet! The cocoa, or cacao plant as it is properly known, is a very complex plant with over 300 individually recognisable vitamin, mineral, nutrient and high value antioxidant properties.
It was only around 350 years ago, when seafaring explorers started to bring cocoa back from their travels, that the European's started to process it to make it more palatable for everyday consumption.
As the years went by, more "improvements" were made which cancelled out most of the remarkable nutritional value of this complex food source. Milk, sugar, waxes and other unappealing fillers were added to make a product far removed from its core ingredient.
But now this has been reversed by one manufacturer, who has produced a pure, unadulterated chocolate that maintains more of cacao's highly potent antioxidants and nutrient values, than ever before.
Yes, it is now possible to eat a chocolate that is not only not "BAD" for you as we understand regular chocolate to be, BUT can actually be very "GOOD" for you. It is an all natural, nutritious source of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, vitamins and minerals which can works wonders in your body.
Recent trials have shown that the potential benefits of eating pure cacao products include; healthier cardiovascular function, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, reduced insulin dependency, improved respiratory function, better joint flexibility, better dental health, suppression of cravings and promoting weight loss.
Healthy Chocolate is not like the confectionery or the candy that we have come to know and love (for all the wrong reasons) but a fully functional food. But better still, it tastes absolutely delicious.
Everyday, more and more people are coming to realise, that our bodies need some kind of nutritional supplement if we are to remain healthy and active. A plethora of recent studies have shown that 'a new twist on an old friend', is showing remarkable results. Healthy Chocolate has been rediscovered as one of the most naturally nutritional food sources on the planet.
Alan Rogers left the corporate world behind in 2007 with belief that everybody has the ability, and the right, to be responsible for their own destiny. Through http://www.freshstartmlm.com he is now helping and working with others, who also believe that having a Home Based Business is the only way that you can truly "start living the life that you want to live".
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alan_D_Rogers
