The Art of Two Tarts » Cakes

Much Healthier Chocolate & Blackberry Cake

admin — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:17:37 +0000

So its obvious that we both have a HUGE sweet tooth. We can remember the days we used to wake up and eat candy… Yeah, we know, pretty crazy. Recently, we have been really trying to limit having sweets to 1 or 2 times a week. Then it dawned on us, why don’t we just make healthy desserts that are enjoyable and guiltless at the same time. Our next thought was well, is that really possible? Can you have your cake and eat it too? So we started searching around for some recipes. We wanted something with no white flour, no butter, and no artificial sugars. To make a long story short, our first attempt was horrific. We made vegan strawberry oat bars, and had to throw away the entire batch! We think it was the vegan butter we used…. just yuk! So that kind of discouraged us. On Monday, Maria got a notification from Green Kitchen Stories of a new dessert recipe they made, and as soon as she saw it, she knew it was a winner.

Now we know MANY of you will take one look at the ingredients and get turned off. The oddest part is the avocado in the frosting. It sounds weird, but we have seen it in so many recipes lately. If you think about it, avocados don’t have a strong taste, so they’re really just used here for their silky texture. The second thing we want to say is, if you don’t like dark chocolate you probably won’t be crazy about this cake. You could always add more agave to make it less bitter. Up until recently we never liked chocolate, but we have acquired a taste for dark chocolate now.

We had everyone in our family try it and told them about the avocado after they ate it. They were all stunned, but most of them liked it. Yes, its not your typical soft chocolate cake, it has more of a fudgy texture. But, it does its job at craving our sweet tooth. It’s so simple to make , and we think we will definitely make it again!

Cake Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup walnuts
15 fresh dates
5 tbsp cacao powder (unsweetened)
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp coconut oil or olive oil
4 tbsp apple sauce (unsweetened)
2 cups blackberries (use 1 cup in the cake and the rest on top of it)

Frosting Ingredients:

150 g dark chocolate (dairy free or regular)
1/2 avocado
1 tbsp agave syrup
a pinch of salt

Directions:

Place the walnuts in a food processor and mix them until they get the consistency of a crunchy flour, add the dates and pulse for a minute so that they get mixed with the walnuts. Add the rest of the ingredient besides the blackberries, pluse for a couple minutes, until well combined. Add the blackberries and mix them shortly (you want them in pieces but not completely dissolved). Pour the mixture into an 8-inch non-stick spring pan and bake it for 40 – 50 minutes at 325° F / 175° C.

Let the cake cool off after it is baked. Meanwhile you can prepare the chocolate frosting. Melt the chocolate, pour it in a blender and mix with avocado, agave and a pinch of salt. Spread the frosting on top of the cooled chocolate cake. Decorate with the blackberries before serving.

Buttery Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

admin — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 12:42:14 +0000

Mmmmmmmmm.

This coffee cake was delicious.

We could end the post right there.

There’s not much more to say about this cake but that it’s really good.

This cake makes you want to call in sick to work, and just spend the day on the couch with cake. We didn’t, but oh, oh the temptation! Maybe it’s the buttery cake and cream cheese combination or maybe it’s the fact that we like eating cake for breakfast, but it just makes us want to indulge in every other part of our lives.

This cake is moist, rich, tangy, and just plain good. It is pretty simple to put together. This is the cake you want to make if you are having company over for coffee.

Thank the Lord that Lisa had lots of company last weekend because they ate it all up for us!

We highly recommend this recipe and will be making it again and again.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

CAKE

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

FILLING

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 egg yolk
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

TOPPING

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter (semi-soft)

Directions:

Set oven to 350 degrees (oven rack set to second-lowest position). Grease an 11 x 7-inch baking pan. Cream butter with sugar (about 3-4 minutes), add in eggs and sour cream; beat well (about another 3 minutes). In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and salt.Add the flour mixture to the creamed mixture; beat well until combined (batter will be thick). Spread more than half of the batter in the prepared baking pan. (The layer is really thin. Wetting your fingertips to spread out the batter helps). In another bowl, cream together all filling ingredients, then carefully spread over the cake batter. Spoon the remaining cake batter over the top of the cheese mixture (it doesn’t have to cover the cake batter completely, I just dot tablespoonfuls over the batter). For the topping mix all ingredients in a food processor, and sprinkle over cake. Bake for about 50-55 minutes or until middle feels set and not jiggly.

Mrs. Giannelli’s Italian Sponge Cake

admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:00:31 +0000

We’re back!!!! After 2 months we’re finally back to blogging!

Were do we even begin? Perhaps with Lisa’s wedding? Well, we can start but telling you that it was simply amazing! The wedding was beautiful from start to finish. It was so great being there with our family. One of the most exciting parts was how Lisa got married in the same church that our parents, grandparents, and relatives did.

We know you would love to see pictures, so here’s a link to see just how breathtaking it was. It was a day our entire family will never forget. Even though we miss Italy, it’s great to be back home and blogging again.

After returning from Italy, we felt like we hadn’t baked in ages! Our Dad’s Birthday was in the beginning of September, so we knew we had to make him something special. This is where Mrs. Giannelli’s Italian Sponge Cake comes in.

Your probably wondering who Mrs. Giannelli is…. Growing up in Glenview, IL the Giannelli’s lived behind us and they became good friends with our family. I think the initial connection began due to the fact that both our families were Italian. Over the 15+ years we lived by each other our Mom and Mrs. Giannelli exchanged many recipes. This Italian Sponge cake was one of them, and it was our favorite one.

To make this along story short, both families moved to different towns. Over the moving process, our mom lost the recipe. It had been years since she’d made it. We kept telling her to call Mrs. Giannelli to get the recipe again, but it would always slip her mind. Well, the day came when we were digging through some boxes of photos, and low and behold, we accidentally found the recipe! We were ecstatic and could not wait to make it. This cake is so simple, yet tastes soo good! There’s simply nothing like it. We we told our sister Stephanie that we would be making this cake and she seriously said that she was going to cry because of how excited she was to reunite with this cake. We’d missed it that much. It also brings back great memories from Glenview. We all miss it so much! Even though we don’t get to see the Giannelli’s as often as before, this cake brings us back to all the great memories we had with them.

We wanted to dress the cake up so we sprinkled it with powdered sugar and top it with strawberries. Please note that this photo was taken with Maria’s iphone, not to bad though.

We hope many of you will enjoy this cake as much as our family does!

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

6 eggs

1 cup corn oil

Zest of 1 lemon

Juice of half a lemon

2 cups flour

1/2 cup milk

2 tsp baking powder

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease your pan well. Beat eggs and sugar for 15 minutes. Add oil, lemon zest and juice and beat for 5 more minutes. Next, fold in flour slowly. Combine warm milk and bp together and add to egg mixture. Bake for 55-60 minutes.

As Mrs. Giannelli says, do not open the oven door and don’t walk in front of the oven while the cake is baking because you will disturb the cake and it will not rise!

Our Favorite Apple Cake

admin — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:10:00 +0000

One summer when we were in Italy one of our neighbors had us over for lunch. For dessert, she had this REALLY good apple cake that was so moist and yummy.

Over the years, we’ve tried several different recipes. Some we’re good but they were just different. We came across this recipe on Deb’s blog Smitten Kitchen. We are so glad that we tried her recipe because this is exactly what we’ve been looking for! This cake has just enough apple flavor and is SOOO moist. We will keep the recipe for this cake and make it for years and years to come.

Try it yourself!!

6 apples, we used McIntosh apples

1 tablespoon cinnamon

5 tablespoons sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

1/4 cup orange juice

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

4 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan. Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean.

Black Magic Chocolate Cake with Nutella Frosting!

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:47:00 +0000

This recipe is our FAVORITE cake recipe! Whether you’re a chocolate lover or not, you’ll love this cake!

We came across this recipe when our cousin in Italy made something very similar to it. Over the years we’ve modified it to our liking and truly created something so good! It consists of a moist chocolate cake with a filling and frosting that is made of only whipping cream and nutella.

It’s so simple yet so amazing!

The cake recipe is from Ina Garten’s beatty’s chocolate cake. We discovered this recipe a couple years ago and have loved it ever since.

The cake recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

Butter, for greasing the pans
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
2 cups sugar
3/4 cups good cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter 2 (8-inch) round cake pans. Line with parchment paper, then butter and flour the pans.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In another bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on low, add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 30 minutes, then turn them out onto a cooling rack and cool completely.

Place 1 layer, flat side up, on a flat plate or cake pedestal. With a knife or offset spatula, spread the top with frosting. Place the second layer on top, rounded side up, and spread the frosting evenly on the top and sides of the cake.

The frosting is so simple!

The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

2 cups of heavy whipping cream

1/2 cup nutella

Directions

Whip the heavy cream until thick anf fluffy. Place the nutella in a large bowl and slowy add the whipped cream to it, folding it in. When you have incorporated all the whip cream into the nutella it should be a mocha color. If the cream is too pale or the nutella flavor isn’t strong enough, feel free to add more nutella by the tablespoon! I probably added up to 3/4 cup into my frosting!

Ciambella al cocco

admin — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:53:00 +0000

We’ve been wanting to post this recipe for a long time now. We have made this cake several times, but we never got around to taking pictures of it. This is one of our favorite cakes. Lisa found the recipe on an italian website. We both love coconut and searched long and hard for a cake that would satisfy us. We have changed things here and there every time we made this cake and now, we have a recipe down that we are happy with. This cake is very moist because it has yogurt in it. It asks for coconut yogurt but in America, it’s very hard to find plain coconut yogurt in the grocery stores. The coconut yogurt is AMAZING in Italy and that is really why we fell so in love with coconut in the first place. We used pina colada yogurt and found that it works well also. This cake is so simple to make and requires very little clean up too! You have to try it! The recipe is below.

Coconut bundt cake

1 container of coconut yogurt (or pina colada)

3 eggs

1 container of sugar

1 container of dehydrated coconut

1 container of corn oil

1 tsp coconut extract

3 containers of flour

1 Tbs Baking Powder

Pinch of salt

Zest of 1\2 a lemon

1 cup of mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix the eggs and yogurt in a large bowl. Then, one by one, mix in all the ingredients in the order they are listed. Once everything is mixed together, pour into a buttered bundt cake pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean!

Once the cake is cooled we usually just sift some powdered sugar over the cake and it’s done!

Birthday Cake: Sponge Cake with Custard and Strawberries

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:00:00 +0000

We made this cake a couple weeks ago. It was our godparents, our uncle and aunt, birthdays. We told them that we would make them a cake and that’s what we did! This is our go to birthday cake. It consists of an italian sponge cake filled with vanilla custard and fresh strawberries. The sponge cake is very simple. You need 6 eggs, 180 grams sugar, 180 grams of flour and a pinch of salt. All you do is blend the eggs, sugar and salt in a stand mixer for 15 minutes until the batter is very fluffy and pale yellow, then you slowly sift the flour in and voila! Place the cake in a 12″ round cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean!

After you fill the cake with some vanilla custard and fresh strawberries, you can frost the cake with some fresh whipped cream, sweetened with powdered sugar. We love the the look of slivered almonds on the sides of the cake!

If you would like our recipe for the vanilla custard just ask!

Strawberry Muffin Cake

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Our father asked us to make a cake to give to our aunt and uncle for their birthdays. We had some nice strawberries in the fridge so we decided to go ahead with a strawberry cake. The recipe was for a 13″x9″ pan but we decided to make one 9″ springform pan and a little loaf pan.

This pictured loaf cake was the first out of the oven. It took less time to cook since it was smaller. Lisa took pictures of the loaf cake first in the mean time. Then after 10 minutes she went to get the larger cake out of the oven…. and… while she was transferring it to the counter, the bottom of the springform pan fell and the cake followed it…. yah she destroyed the cake. My parents didn’t have a cake to bring to our aunt and uncle. We felt really bad…. but we had to work the next morning and there was no way we could have made it or something else again! Oh well! Next time we will be extra careful with those springform pans!!

This cake was good overall. The cake part was a little too bland though. Next time we would increase the sugar and butter! If you would like to give it a try here’s the recipe!

Crumble Topping
1 c. flour

1/2 c. sugar

1 stick of butter, cold

To make crumble topping, sift the sugar and flour together in a large bowl. Place the margarine in the center of the bowl and sprinkle a little of the sugar and flour mixture over it. Place all 10 fingers on the stick and start crumbling it by making cat-kneading gestures with your fingers so the margarine turns into little pea sized bits. If you need a visual, refer to this little fella. Keep crumbling until the stick is completely whittled down.Keep the bowl of crumbles in the fridge until you’re ready for it.

Strawberry Coffee Cake
2 c. flour

1 c. sugar

2 tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 c. milk

2 eggs

1/4 c. butter, melted

3 c. strawberries, sliced
-Sift the first four ingredients together in a bowl and set aside-Whisk the milk, eggs, vanilla, and melted margarine together in a bowl.-Add the mix of wet ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients.-Beat together with a handheld mixer until well incorporated.Pour into a pre-greased 13×9 pan. Arrange the sliced strawberries on top of the batter. Sprinkle the crumble toppings.Bake at 350F for 35-45 minutes.

Nutella Self-Frosted Cake

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:03:00 +0000

We’ve came across this recipe several times for a while now. We never got a chance to making it until now and we wished we wouldn’t have waited that long! We don’t know many people who don’t like nutella. Actually…. we know ONE person…

::cough:: ::sarah:: ::cough::

Nutella is amazing and this cake is just perfect! Its a good dessert to have after dinner and even better to have in the morning with coffee or tea.

You could either make this as a cake, like we did, or also as cupcakes.

Nutella Frosted Cupcakes

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup, 12 oz) butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups sifted all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup

Preheat oven to 325F.

Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners or grease the cups with some butter. Alternatively, butter an 8-inch round cake pan.
Cream together butter and sugar until light, 2 minutes. Add in eggs one at a time, until fully incorporated. Don’t worry if the batter doesn’t look smooth. Add vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking powder until batter is uniform and no flour remains.

Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full (or pour all the batter into the cake pan). The batter will be thick. Top each cake with a dollop (I used about 2 tsp per cupcake and about 1/3 cup dolloped in tablespoon measures for the cake round) of Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the nutella.

Bake cupcakes for about 20 minutes and the round cake for 25-30.

Remove to a wire rack to cool completely.Makes 12 cupcakes or 1 8-inch round cake.

We did a recipe and a half and used a 9inch cake pan. We think next time we’ll just stick to 1 recipe so the cake part will be a little thinner and you’ll get more nutella with each bite!

ENJOY! =)

TWD: Chocolate Amaretti Torte

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:52:00 +0000

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD) recipe was chosen by Holly of Phe.MOM.enon: 15 Minute Magic: Chocolate Amaretti Torte. Aside from ground almonds, one of the main ingredients in this torte are amaretti cookies. We LOVE amaretti cookies. We have a cake that we have made several times and everybpdy always loves it. Its a cake with almonds and amaretti. We tried to recreate the cake after we had it in Italy at our Aunt’s house. Took a few tries, but we got it down!

We were excited to try this recipe, but we are sad to say that we weren’t crazy about this cake. We weren’t crazy about the texture. It just wasn’t anything special and did not meet our expectations. Oh well! Better luck next time.

You can find the recipe here!