Food Network Chefs' Top Chocolate Recipe Videos

This is super yummy. Jeff, I'm going to have you help me. So if you can just take the stem off those strawberries and then slice them in half lengthwise, that'd be great. That's going to be for our garnish. So I'm making the filling right now. I've got a few cups of cream and a little bit of milk in here that I'm just heating up. And then to make this strawberry, I'm going to add to it, you know those freeze-dried strawberries that are so popular now, freeze-dried fruit? So this is a great way to infuse flavor. So they're just freeze-dried. You put them right in there and just kind of let them steep. It takes about five minutes. I never seem to find the freeze-dried fruit. They're in the snack aisle, like where all the trail mix and everything is. I stay away from the snack aisle. Take it off the heat because these burn so quickly. It's little white chocolate chips. So I actually use the mini chips because these melt so much faster, so it takes less time and you have less risk of burning them then. So I just put in a whole bag. And I put in some vanilla extract for a little extra flavor. And then just stir this up, let it start to melt. That milk's hot enough that it's going to melt it. So we've got cream, milk, freeze-dried strawberries, white chocolate chips, and vanilla. OK, so now it goes into the blender. So it's going to have all that good strawberry flavor in there. And then just turn it up. All right, so the filling's going to go into the tart shell. I just made this out of chocolate wafers, sugar, and butter, ground it up, put it into a tart pan, and baked it for about 10 minutes. So now you just pour this filling in. How easy is this? It's so easy. And since there aren't any eggs in this custard filling, you don't need to bake it. So this just goes into the fridge because I like to let it completely cool. Jeff, will you open the fridge for me? Yes, I will. Did you know that strawberries are the only fruit with their seeds on the outside? I never realized it. I need both sides. Sorry. I was totally distracted by Sonny's tidbit there. I was amazed. I was like, I heard Sonny, then I looked at the strawberries, and my world came crashing. What about blackberries? All right, so after it goes into the fridge and cools completely, you put it into the freezer for just 30 minutes. And I'll tell you why. It's because of the sauce we're going to put on top. So you want it to get extra cold. So it needs that little extra 30 minutes in there. It's because I'm using this chocolate sauce that's the shell that hardens up. Yeah. The magic. The magic chocolate. It needs that. You're going to use pretty much a whole bottle of this. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with it at all. All right, so you just want to let that set up. It's really starting to harden. So beautiful. So you just let this harden up. And while it hardens, because it just takes a minute or two, we're going to do the finishing touch of our garnish. So I made some chocolate-covered strawberries here. You can do the chocolate covering on the strawberries with either those little chocolate melts, or you can use just regular chocolate chips. And let them harden completely. And then I melted some white chocolate. And I'm going to use this as a garnish. They actually sell the chocolate in a little tub you can microwave to dip your strawberries into. Oh, really? I'm not in the snack aisle, but I'm in that chocolate aisle. OK, so you just pipe this on. All right, so let's decorate now. Let's do it. Jeff, you're going to help me with this. Yes, I will. So we're going to take those strawberries that you so beautifully cut, and we're just going to put them all the way around. Rotate around like that. All right, let's put our final strawberries on. And now we're going to take these fancy strawberries and just put them around the center. This is awesome. Make this tonight. Making a flourless, dense chocolate cake. It's a dish I call cracked chocolate earth. We're going to melt some chocolate down. Now, I've got a pot of water, and we've got a nice bowl. You want to make sure the bowl is big enough to fit on top of the rim, so it doesn't sink all the way down the bottom. And also, most important, make sure the amount of water that you have in the bottom of this pot doesn't touch the bottom of this bowl, because it'll actually scorch the chocolate, and it'll cause it to seize. It'll get really crumbly, and it's not what we're looking for. All right, so we take the bowl, put it right there. Now, we're going to add some bittersweet chocolate to this. We've got 60% chocolate. All right, this is like Willy Wonka trying to get the golden ticket. When you see something that says 60%, that means it has 60% cocoa fat, which means it's pretty rich. It's pretty dark. All right, so to the chocolate, I'm going to add two sticks of butter. The whole thing starts to melt down. Then we're going to add some eggs to this. Now, this is a flourless chocolate cake, which means the only thing that's going to hold it together are eggs, for the most part. So we're going to take nine eggs, and we're going to crack them. All right, check this out. It's kind of cool. One-handed. All right, two-handed. All right, so we're going to get rid of the egg carton. I'm just going to wash my hands really fast. All right, and now what we're going to do is we're going to add some sugar to the yolks themselves. We're going to do a very technical term called creaming the yolks together. We're going to add some sugar to that. So I've got a little spoon here. We've got our sugar. And for the most part, it's a very simple process. It's about 3 4ths of a cup of sugar for the nine yolks. I'm just going to eyeball it. And I think that's about enough. OK, then we're going to take a whisk, and we're just going to whisk the yolks and cream the whole thing together. And it's going to put some elbow grease into it. You can do this in a tabletop mixer if you want to, but I'm kind of a lazy cook. I don't like to clean too much. So we've got the bowls we're going in anyway. So work a little bit of air into the yolks so they're nice and creamy. See that? It's really kind of beautiful. Really pale yellow, nice and frothy. Then we're going to add another whisk to the mix. We're going to whisk up the egg whites. And then we're going to put the whole thing together. If I dump all the chocolate into the eggs at one time, the possibility of the eggs becoming scrambled eggs is pretty high. So what I want to do is warm the egg yolks up first before we add all the chocolate. By that, we're just going to add just a little bit of chocolate just to kind of bring it back up to temperature so it's not such a shock. Then, once it's all safe, we're just going to dump the whole thing in. So we've got egg yolks, we've got sugar, we've got chocolate, we've got butter. Sounds like a chocolate jacuzzi to me, right? All right, great. So now I've got all the chocolate and the egg yolks incorporated. Now we're going to take the whites, and we're going to fold the egg whites in in one big clump. And we're going to try to incorporate the eggs without deflating them, because this is what's going to give us a lot of lift. We're going to take a springform pan, which has a little latch on it, and the bottom comes out. All right, we're going to use this, because it's going to be really easy to get the cake out once we're finished with it. Now, right now, we've got the oven preset at 375 degrees for our roasted sweet potatoes with honey and cinnamon. All right, I'm going to take those out, and we're going to drop the temperature just a little bit, like 350 degrees. And this is going to bake for about a half an hour, and it's going to look absolutely beautiful. It's going to look all crunchy and crackly on top. It's a really great dessert, and it takes you like five minutes to make. OK, so we've got a rack. I've got a sheet pan. How hard is that? It's going to go right on top, and into the oven for a half an hour. And I'm going to put together just some simple whipped cream. You know, because I'm a chef, it's always about the garnish, right? All right, a little bit of whipped cream to go on top of the cracked chocolate earth when it comes out. And we are well underway from having an amazing Sunday meal. All right, so our cracked chocolate earth, our flourless chocolate cake, is back in the oven. It's rested, and it looks really beautiful. It smells amazing. And what I'm going to do, it's still a little warm, but I'm going to pop it out of the spring form pan and just slide it out just like that. All right, we're going to take it. We're going to dust it with some powdered sugar right on top. One little dust, all right? And then hook up a little bowl of whipped cream around the side and let people come and get it, and that's it. Perfect flourless chocolate cake. You're going to make this every time you want to make a chocolate cake, I promise you. I'm making a chocolate cheesecake with a chocolate pretzel bark. I'm starting off with making my crust. So I've added about 15 chocolate sandwich cookies to this bag. I'm going to add in about two cups of thin pretzels. It's going to add that little bit of saltiness to it. Mash these really fine. Dump this in a bowl. Add four tablespoons of melted butter, two tablespoons sugar. And the sugar and butter acts as a glue to keep the crust together. That butter should be nice and cool. I'm going to use my hand. I'm going to get my spring form pan that I've lined with parchment paper. If you line your pan, it will pop right out. Make sure that it's nice and even. I have the oven set to 350, bake for about 8 to 10 minutes, and then I'm going to get started on my chocolate filling. I'm going to get started with four 8-ounce sticks of room-temp cream cheese. If not, you'll have thick chunks of cream cheese throughout your batter. I'm going to beat this until I can't beat it anymore. I need it to be nice and fluffy. Add in one and a half cups of granulated sugar, about a half a cup sour cream, one fourth cup cocoa powder, 10 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate. Got to add in my eggs. You got to hold that cheesecake together. Four eggs total. Get my crust out of the oven. Woo! Cheesecakes can crack easily. The way to prevent that is to bake it in a water bath so the heat distributes evenly. Got my oven set at 350. Want to bake this off for about 60 to 70 minutes. Turn off my oven, prop open the door for about an hour. That's going to help the cheesecake get to room temp, and it's also going to help prevent cracking. I'm going to share the secret to my chili orange chocolate souffle, which we didn't do at Le Cirque. So I'm going to put a pan on the fire here. I have a little milk. I'm making a roux. So I'm going to put a little bit of salt, orange zest, chili pepper. Wow. I know. It's controversial. I'm going to stir that around. What kind of chili pepper? Just pepperoncini, dried pepperoncini. Nothing fancy. And sugar. OK, this is going to be the base for my roux. And while that's just heating up, we don't want to get that too hot. We just want to get that warm so that when the addition of the flour and butter go in, the roux comes together. So that's there. We have egg whites. Try to get them as room temperature as possible. And we've wiped the bowl with either white vinegar, or you can sprinkle tartaric acid in it, or cream of tartar. This helps the pH in the egg white explode and get beautiful and fluffy. So we want to start this low. I start with sugar. This is what we used to do. And then I end with sugar in the middle, just a little bit of sugar all the time. And at the end, the rest of it. OK, so while that's going on, this is warming. I'm going to make my panade. So I'm going to take soft butter, flour, and just sort of mash that in here. Define to us panade, Geoffrey. Butter and flour, softened. And it's just coming together like that. Now, you can do it in your hand. You grab some butter and flour, go like that, throw it in the sauce, and it thickens the sauce right up. OK, so I'm going to put this right into the cream mixture. And that's step one of step two. So it's starting to come together. I'm going to add a little more sugar. OK, stir this. And at this point in time, try to get a whisk, because we're going to add eggs and chocolate to this mixture. Oh, the smell of the chili and the orange is fantastic. So this is going to come together quite quickly. And don't worry if it seems lumpy. What you did right now is probably the opposite of what I always say to do, hot to hot. But you see how it is right now? Yeah. The roux's formed. We're going to cook it just a little longer, not too much. And if it gets a little thick, just add a touch of milk. It's fine. So this is the base. It's nice and thick. It's OK. It's supposed to be thick, because it's a roux. And we simply add the base to a pan, get it room temperature, and fold in this mixture. Then we're going to add a little to the bowl. We're going to add our yolks so we don't scramble them, like this. A little tempering, a little quick tempering there. Yeah. And I'm going to put this right in here. And I'm going to add my chocolate to the roux, like that, and melt it like that. Just dark chocolate? We are done. Yeah, what kind of chocolate are you using? So this is bittersweet chocolate, which is chocolate that's a little bitter. It's really good, really delicious. Look at that. Can you see that? See that? It's like a chocolate paste. So that's, like, amazing to me. Put it right in here. All right. Now we have our chocolate base. This is what the souffle will be able to give you the chocolate. It'll convey the chocolate to you, this right here. But it needs lift, and the lift is the egg white. So it's a very simple method, and you can do it with anything. So like I said, this is the base you would make the flour, the butter, the milk, and then anything you want into it. And we have the chocolate, which is this one. So exciting. It's bringing back a lot of memories. Good ones, actually. Stop crying. OK. Foldage. Is that a word? Foldage is a word, yeah. Now, so we're going to take a little of this in here. And we're going to really get it in there. This is what you probably are taught not to do. Just stir it up. This is going to form, almost temper the egg whites also, but make it easier for me to fold the rest of this mixture in. OK? Then we're going to take it and plop it just in and around. OK? Very gently turning the bowl while using that pointy edge of the spatula. Just want to make sure that you don't overwhip it, but you have to get it together. So now we're going to pour. Really important that these are buttered and sugared. What does that mean? Soft butter. Pour a bunch of sugar in it. Turn it so everything gets really sugared, really important. Look at that. And so you know that you have enough, which I do. Just want to put a little bit in everything. Then go back. What's the goal here with the fill? To the top. Yeah, and I'm going to show you a little secret that usually works. If the batter is done properly. Oh, man. OK? Just top it off, right, like this. And then your oven is at 350 degrees, OK? You don't want to kill these. You have to have like a gentle heat. So put them on a medium bottom rack so they have some room to expand and nothing above them, obviously. And then before they go in, you want to give them a little wrap on the bottom. So we spread them apart, like you mentioned, to get even heat distribution. Just like that. And then take your thumb and put it in barely. This helps get an even seal on the edge. OK. And you're just kind of creating a space between the top, right? Yes. And it makes, hopefully, for straighter sides. Very cool. Into the oven, about 18 minutes. You can open the oven that's a wives' tale. You don't want to keep it open, but I like to turn it halfway through because some ovens aren't even cooking. Yeah. The back is hotter. Every oven is like that. I thought this was a watch-through-the-oven-door dish. Oh, oh, oh. I think we've got a bunch that are ready. Oh, I see it. Nice, look at that. Here we are. That's gorgeous. Dude. OK, so onto a plate. We don't want to mess around. Onto a plate. Oh, oh. Powdered sugar. And this is creme anglaise, which you just put in the middle like this. This makes me so happy. And you just put it right down the center. If you don't have creme anglaise, melted ice cream. There you have it. Le souffle. Let me try it. Oh, yes. So hot. That's what I love. So, so hot. No one doesn't smile at the table when you bring it. Totally. You're happy. And for one minute, you suspend everything and just enjoy the souffle. If I have one go-to chocolate cake, this is it. It's chocolate ganache cake. And it starts with a quarter of a can of unsalted butter. And it has to be at room temperature. One cup of sugar. This cake is amazing because you can make it in almost any size and it's completely foolproof. I'm just gonna cream these together until the butter's light and fluffy and the sugar is mixed in. So first what I've done is I've buttered an eight-inch round pan and it's got a nice high two-inch side. And then the question is, how do you get a square piece of parchment paper into a round pan? So take the piece of paper and do it in half. And then fold it in half again. Fold it in half again. Just as many times as you can. Just like that. And then you put the tip right where the middle of the pan is and cut off inside the pan like that. And if it's too big, you can just refold it and recut it. And now what I wanna do is butter the paper and the pan and flour the whole thing. So I just use the paper the butter came out of. Easy as can be. Little bit of flour. And just flour the whole pan. The sides and everything. Just make sure you get the whole thing. The butter and sugar is perfectly mixed. It's kind of light and fluffy and the butter is pale yellow. So now the next thing I wanna add is four eggs. Just I'm gonna do it on low speed. And I add one egg at a time, just until it's incorporated. The next ingredient in this cake is the secret ingredient, chocolate syrup. It's a whole 16-ounce can. I'm just gonna pour it right in. Next is a tablespoon of vanilla. It's a lot of vanilla for an eight-inch cake, but it really makes it taste great. Okay. And the last ingredient is flour. Gonna turn it on low. One cup of all-purpose flour. And at this point, I don't wanna overmix it. So I'm just gonna put it in slowly. If you dump it in, you'll end up with lumps. But if you put it in slowly with the mixer on low speed, you'll end up with a delicious cake every time. Just until it's mixed in. I love the smell of this. Okay, I think it's perfectly mixed. Okay, I wanna make sure there are no lumps, no flour. Perfect. Just gonna pour it right into the pan. This cake isn't gonna rise very much, so don't worry about it filling the pan. It doesn't have any leavening in it. I'm gonna bake this cake 325 degrees for about 40 to 45 minutes, just until a cake tester comes out clean. And in the meantime, I've actually made not one, but two cakes. I bet you're wondering why. I'm gonna tell you in a second. And I've made chocolate ganache to pour all over the cakes. Look how gorgeous it is. It's so rich and wonderful. Let me tell you how I made it. I poured a cup of heavy cream into a bowl, set over a pan of simmering water. I added a pound of semi-sweet chocolate chips, two teaspoons of instant coffee granules to bring out the flavor of the chocolate, and stirred it occasionally while it melted together. In fact, the more you stir it, the shinier it gets. Now you're gonna find out the reason why I made two cakes. Lydie Hoick, who does social media with me, we did a video recently for Instagram of how to do a chevron pattern on a chocolate cake. You made it look very easy, so I'm nervous. It was so much fun. So I'm turning the tables on Lydie, and I'm gonna teach her how to do the chevron pattern. So I combined one and three quarters cups of confectioner's sugar and about three tablespoons of water. You wanna adjust it a little bit just so you get a really thick pouring consistency. Okay, so now you take a little knife, and you use the back of the knife, not the cutting edge, the back, and you slide it right across, kind of lightly. One more. Yay! Double chocolate bread pudding. Really, really decadent, I must admit. It starts off with croissants, which is just wrong because it's really supposed to be like day-old bread, you know, some day-old white bread, maybe even day-old wheat bread. You could do that, sweeten it up, and you know, what I like to say, dumb it down, make it fattening. And then, of course, I've got some raisin bread. I really just love raisin bread. One day, I was thinking about making a bread pudding, and I said to myself, why am I not using raisin bread? It's kind of already got ingredients in it that I like, the cinnamon, the raisin, so it makes sense. I'm gonna take the entire loaf and get my edges off and cut them down to about one-inch squares, my croissants as well, and get them ready for my buttered dish. So, right into my custard, I've got my six eggs, some cinnamon that's really good, nice and warm, of course, perfect for the bread pudding. I've already got it in my raisin bread, and it's swirled up in there, along with my croissants. Don't forget, this isn't just raisin bread pudding. Got some buttery croissants in there as well. Now, I'm getting in some nutmeg, and then I wanna add some flavor and love from some brown sugar, a little sweetness in my custard here. I fell in love with bread pudding in New Orleans at this place called Mother's there. They put fruit cocktail in their bread pudding. I cannot tell you enough about the goodness of that fruit cocktail in the bread pudding, and when I was putting together this recipe, I thought, I really like raisins. Why not put some raisin bread in there? It's really, really cool when you kind of have something sitting around and you work it into a recipe, and now it is there to stay. If you have not done bread pudding with raisin bread with a cinnamon swirl, get it done this holiday season. All right, so six cups of my whole milk going in. This is really, really bad dessert. So bad it's good. I'm gonna top it off with some bourbon whipped cream in a second. All right, now then adding to that, I'm gonna add some of my chocolate syrup. So this is gonna be the first part of the double chocolate. We're gonna add some chocolate chips in in a second as well, and you might say, well, Sunny, why not chocolate milk? You know, when you drink chocolate milk, it's got that really kind of texture to it. I think they put stabilizers or something in there just to make sure that all the chocolate stays at the top and doesn't settle down at the bottom. There's just something about the texture I don't really love. So a little bit of chocolate syrup goes a long way in our whole milk here. Now, of course, I've got some sweets, so I've gotta add a little bit of salt. This is a lot of custard, so a little bit of salt times two. Whisk it right in. And this is my custard. The eggs are gonna make it nice and kind of binding. It's gonna hold everything together. And then everything else in here is just gonna provide more flavor for our bread pudding. Now, this is the double chocolate right here, some semi-sweet morsels, but if you're doing a pantry clean out and you've got some milk chocolate or some bittersweet, throw that in there, no big deal. What I like to do is kind of sprinkle them over the top. About a cup or so. And then, you know, give like a little bit of a move around and a jiggle. I just don't like them settling on the bottom too much. All right, now, over the top, my big old dish here that's buttered. Don't forget to butter it. Pouring on this custard. Now, the key here, a little bit left in the bottom, is not putting it in the oven right away, all right? What you wanna do is just kind of press it down and let the bread soak into the custard. Push it down. Oh, this looks so good. All right, onto my back counter. For about 10 minutes or so, I'm gonna let that hang out so it can soak into the bread, all the custard. Now, look at this. Speaking of moist, this is my raisin bread with a cinnamon swirl. It's gonna feed a lot, but trust me, there will not be any left the day after. All right, so that's gonna get nice and golden brown, 350 degrees. It's gonna take about 45 to 50 minutes or so. I'm just getting my whipped cream. It's already sweetened, ready for my double chocolate bread pudding. Now, it's a little bit soft peaks. Good time to add in a little bit of bourbon. Why not? Reminds me of my days in New Orleans, standing in line, waiting on my bread pudding at Mother's. They'd finish it off with a bourbon butter sauce, so good. So I say, why not put it into your whipped cream? I'm gonna get my bread pudding out now, talking about it so much. Now, it's double chocolate because I started with a chocolate custard. It's just some whole milk, some chocolate syrup, the eggs to hold it together, some brown sugar, and a little bit of salt. And then, of course, I put the chocolate chips in there. Now, the double chocolate bread pudding. You know what? I really do have to say, that bread pudding I had at Mother's has really been responsible for a lot of the things that I do in my bread pudding today. Just like they put a little bit of fruit cocktail in theirs, I say a little bit of raisin from my raisin bread does the trick. I'm gonna go in and get this in my belly. Mm, wow. First of all, the bourbon, the whipped cream, gotta try it. The buttery from the croissant, the chocolate upon chocolate upon chocolate. So we're gonna go back to basics and make a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. In here, I have three sticks of unsalted butter and two cups of sugar. Lot of salted, unsalted butter chat. Always get asked about that, right? We're just mixing this. You can always add salt, right? You know, if you have salt, it's salty. Salted butter is salty. I love the fact that you're starting with three sticks of butter. I love a good, dense, rich, buttery cake. I'm adding the eggs, six of them, one by one. Add them in a little bit. And with that, when you are done with your shenanigans, four teaspoons of vanilla. A lot of people don't talk about when they're baking, like using a medium, large, or extra large egg. It does make a difference, right? Yeah, generally for baking, I go with the large eggs. You do? The dry ingredients. One and a half cups of all-purpose flour, one and a half cups of cocoa powder. We're going deep on the cocoa in this. Love this. That's for the flavor, more than anything else. But also, cocoa powder is considered acidic. When you mix that acidic cocoa with leavening agents, baking soda, baking powder, that are not acidic, you get a fluffier, higher cake. Hello? It's also good for you. Don't sift salt. It generally doesn't go through the sifter. Add it in at the last minute to your wet ingredients. Now the fun part. Do you sift all your cocoa powders and flours when you bake a cake? You know what, I do. It does fluffen and lighten. That's a verb, to fluffen. It's worth it. I'm gonna add about half of this. You'll notice there's really not a lot of flour in this recipe, all right? But we don't, all the same, we don't wanna overwork it. So I put about half in. Oy. I know. Oy. Oh, it happens. Sacrificial. Now to that, I'm gonna add a cup of sour cream. Wow. Ooh. Wow. That's a lot of tang. Rogue, you're going rogue. That's more acid. So I added half the dry. And the sour cream to get that all mixed together. But now that the sour cream is in there, I don't need to use the mixer to mix the rest of the flour in there. Because I wanna work the flour as little as possible. And so we should add 12 ounces of chocolate chips. I find that I love cocoa powder. It's my favorite. But I always hanker for like a little bit of like, just good old semi-sweet chocolate. Does the chocolate stay or does it melt? No, the chocolate, mm, a little of both, honestly. You get a little texture in there, maybe? A little fudgies. Then, in the cocoa powder and greased lined pans. And we have the cocoa powder in there again. Gives it more flavor. Gives it more flavor, gives it a darker color, more chocolatey. Notice how I'm putting the batter down and then just tapping it. So I don't smear the bottom and ruin the effect of the greased pan. We're almost tapping it. And don't be afraid to push the batter down a little bit. We want something somewhat even. You can be super precise about this, if you're that type. We are really ready to go in the oven. Give them a couple of taps, just to even them out. We're gonna go in the oven. So I'm gonna let these bake in the oven at 350 for about 40 to 50 minutes. While we're making a little frosting, and I'm just gonna kind of show you. I've melted chocolate and sugar. And underneath it is my cream, right? Instead of pouring hot cream over cold chocolate, warm that chocolate up, get it ready, and just pour the cream over it and it's better. This is just really easy to do, right? Chocolate, sugar, melt it gently over your cream on the stove so they're both kind of warm. And then just gently stir them, no need to whisk, no need to get, you know. Excited. Add a little bit, another dash of vanilla. And when this is all stirred together, and you can see, do you see how unbelievably glossy the chocolate is getting, right? They were both warm, right? They were both ready to go in the jacuzzi. And then you just get this vibrant, glossy ganache, right? So then we add butter. How much butter? Just a little bit. Just a little bit, I saw that. I don't want any lies about buttercream. The words in the frosting are buttercream. What do we think is going on here? Yeah, I love buttercream. Right, and then we just gently stir in a stick and a half of butter to this cream and chocolate mix. And this is essentially our souped up buttery ganache. You let this chill in the fridge, right? And then it becomes this, and you just whip it a little bit in the mixer. Oh, this is gonna be like insanely good. I can tell just by the sound of it. I've got equal parts of bourbon and simple syrup here. It's kind of like a, yeah. Oh, yeah. And this is called imbibing your cake, right? That's the actual technical term. To imbibe or to drink, right? You're letting your cake have a little good old American drink of bourbon. If you have kids in the house and you don't want to use all this booze, you can totally replace it with some vanilla. Just do simple syrup with a little vanilla. But here we're creating a little insurance policy for the moisture of your cake. And this is even better when you let the cake hang out and sit for a while. But who can wait for that? Another thing, let your cake be room temperature when you eat it. So important. Yeah, I'll show that to Sonny. Sonny, close your eyes. Put a little bit right in the middle, right? Cause we're layering. Oh. Spread, but not too much. You gotta let gravity do some of the work, right? We don't need to spend all this time spreading so much. I know if you spread too much, you get a lot of crumbs mixed with your frosting. So you see, I went almost to the edge, flat bottom on top. And then you know that the rest of this is to just go on top and on the sides. I like to just go for broke. Put all the frosting you have. So you notice when I'm spreading, I'm not getting anywhere near the cake and I'm not spreading any crumb into my frosting. I'm just pushing it off to the sides a little bit. It's going down. And then we just push gently. Now you can frost away like this and have a real party, obviously. You can also, when you're done, take a spatula and run it under hot water and just smooth the edge with a hot spatula. Look how beautiful that looks, just like that. Yeah, I agree. How do you get that off of the thing? Oh, we're just gonna lift it up off it. Are you worried about it? I'm worried for you. I would just take a spatula. Maybe I've just made too many cakes. She don't care. No. You're like the honey badger of food now. Right underneath. Oh, yes. Don't ever doubt her again. I don't know. Here we go. All right, here we are. Is that too thin a slice or was that a single? That is just so perfect. Like the cantaloupe. Where there's equal parts. So chocolatey. I'm making my peanut butter bars, which are so sweet and satisfyingly chewy and they're a Midwest classic. I have a cup of sugar in my pot and now I'm gonna add a cup of light corn syrup. These bars are sticky and so chewy, they are just addictive. I'll add one teaspoon of vanilla and a few good pinches of salt to counteract that sweetness. I'll just stir this around and let the sugar melt. It's looking shiny and glossy and good. These come together so quickly. I'm gonna grab my peanut butter and cereal now. I'm using unsweetened peanut butter because there's a lot of sugar already in the pot and toasted rice and grain cereal, which comes in the nice big flakes. I'll add one cup of my peanut butter, but you could also use almond butter. I'd love to make them with tahini, because I'm me. I'll stir this in. Now I'm ready for my cereal. These are big, crunchy, sturdy flakes. I think the best texture with this. I'll add seven cups of cereal and stir it all in. This is so crunchy. These will help achieve that perfect combination of chewy and crunchy texture. I wanna fold it in pretty gently so that I don't crush the cereal. This mixture is fully coated in this peanut buttery goodness. I'm gonna grab my pan. I've got my pan that I've lined with parchment paper and I've sprayed it with cooking spray because this mixture is very sticky. So I'll pour it right in. Oh yeah. Peanut buttery. Now I'm gonna pat this out evenly and firmly in my pan. And now I'm ready for my chocolate and butterscotch chips. I'll dump these right on top. About a cup, but you can eyeball it. And a cup of butterscotch chips too. I'll spread these over the top. And now these bars are pretty much a no-bake treat, but I am just gonna stick this in the oven so that the chocolate melts. You could easily melt the chocolate in a microwave or double boiler, but this way you cut down on dishes. The chocolate chips are melty and shiny. Now I'll spread them around with my offset spatula. Oh, that's satisfying. I'll make sure that the chocolate chips melt down and are really smooth. Gorgeous swoops. Perfect. And now I'm gonna add a few pinches of flaky salt and of course, the sprinkles. Big surprise, I know. We'll make it rain sprinkles. I'll let these set and then slice into squares. My chewy peanut butter bars have set beautifully. I'm just gonna slice them into squares now. I've got my accordion cutter here that I'm gonna use to score them. And now I'll cut. So cute. I'm making chocolate overload cookies. So I'm gonna cream together butter and sugars. I've got three sticks of salted butter, a cup of regular sugar, and a cup and a half. There we go. Of brown sugar. And I'm gonna go ahead and let the mixer start creaming these together. Cream. And while those cream together, I'm gonna mix up the dry ingredients. I'm gonna drop in three eggs, one at a time. And let each one mix in just a little bit before you move on. Nine times out of 10 when I do this, three or four go in at once, so. This is a lucky day, it didn't happen, but it's the first time it didn't happen. Tablespoon of vanilla. Okay, I'm gonna turn the mixer to low, and then I'm gonna use a measuring cup to slowly add the dry ingredients. This is gonna be a chocolate explosion. Okay, I'm gonna turn up the mixer and just let it really get that stuff mixed together. Yeah, baby. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I'm gonna just make sure all of this is mixed. And now I'm gonna fold in all of the rest of the chocolate. So I've got dark chocolate chips. You don't wanna add too many dark chocolate chips because they are really strong, but just a little bit. And then regular semi-sweet chocolate chunks. A bunch of candy-coated chocolate pieces. And I'm folding them in because if I added all of this while it was mixing, all the candy-coated chocolate pieces would break up into a million pieces. So folding them is always better. So Alex, look at this batter, or this dough. I mean. Oh boy, boy. Just kidding. Ah, okay. Now I'm gonna form the dough into balls. So I've got a sheet pan with parchment. I'm gonna get rid of this so you can see what I'm doing. And then, ah, I've got my trusty scoop. Okay, so I'm gonna get a big, generous scoop of dough and then roll it into a ball. Sort of a ball. And put it on the parchment, and then mini candy-coated chocolate pieces. Candy-coated chocolate pieces, candy-coated chocolate pieces. And I'm gonna press them all over the surface. And that'll ensure that when the cookies bake, you'll still see those beautiful candies all over the top. Ooh, I could just eat that dough right now. But I can't, I'm gonna do the exact same thing to the rest of the dough. Okay, now I just need to chill the dough. So come with me, Alex. Yes, ma'am. I don't want you to miss a single second of this. I just need to chill the dough for 30 minutes before the cookies bake. All right, I actually left a few balls of dough in the fridge, and we can bake those off later as we need them. I just transferred 12 to baking sheets. And let's go put these in the oven. These are so much fun. Wait till you see them after they bake. So I'm gonna put them in a 350 degree oven, and they're gonna bake for just about 18 minutes. You are going to be so excited. Okay, these beautiful cookies are out of the oven. They've been cooling. Look at these. Are they gorgeous or what? They are gorgeous. And I know this is a cake stand, but I'm gonna call it a cookie stand for today just because I can. All right, this is what you call chocolate overload cookies, and there's a good reason for that. Come on in here. Ready? I mean, that is like chocolate heaven. I thought I'd surprise Michael and Jim with a cake for their anniversary party. So it's one and three quarters cup of flour. I'm gonna sift all the dry ingredients together. Two cups of sugar. I'm gonna sift them right into the bowl, mixing bowl. And since it's a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream, it's got three quarters of a cup of cocoa powder, dark chocolate cocoa powder. Smells so good. So chocolatey. Okay, one teaspoon of baking powder. Two teaspoons of baking soda. It helps it rise. One teaspoon of salt. I'm just gonna sift all these together. So the method of this cake is to sift all the dry ingredients together in a cloud of chocolate. And then I'm gonna slowly mix the wet ingredients into it. Okay, that's the dry ingredients. I'm just gonna mix them on the mixer until they're combined. Okay, now for the wet ingredients. The first thing is a cup of buttermilk. I always shake it, because it does settle. Make sure it's well mixed. So I'm gonna do it in a measuring cup. That'll be easier to pour into the cake batter. So I need one cup of buttermilk. Half a cup of vegetable oil. Two eggs. Just beat the eggs a little bit. Right into the wet ingredients. I use extra large eggs. One teaspoon of good vanilla, really good. It's really important when you're doing chocolate. Okay, I'm just gonna combine these. And then with a mixer on low, I'm just gonna put it into the dry mixture. And then I have a secret ingredient. Or I should say Michael's grandmother had a secret ingredient. This recipe calls for a cup of hot brewed coffee. And I always think coffee is really important for chocolate. It makes it taste really chocolatey, and that's exactly what this does. Right into the mixture. I've got two eight inch cake pans. I've lined them with parchment paper, butter and flour. Pressure's on, it has to be good because Michael knows exactly what it is. He actually served this cake to me once at dinner, and I just begged him for the recipe. I didn't have to beg very hard. I wanna make sure they're pretty equal size. Okay, into the oven, 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes. And then we're gonna cover it with the easiest, most delicious buttercream you've ever seen. So chop up six ounces of really good semi-sweet chocolate. I'm just gonna melt the chocolate in a bowl that I've set over simmering water. In the meantime, I'm gonna start the rest of the buttercream. So I need two sticks of butter, half a pound at room temperature. I'm just gonna beat that on medium speed. Okay, the next thing I need is one extra large egg yolk. And a teaspoon of good vanilla extract. Okay, I think the chocolate's gonna be ready by now. Let's see. Take this off the heat. And just let the chocolate cool while I turn the cakes out. Just add it to the butter and vanilla. So I've got two teaspoons of hot water. I'm just gonna put in a tablespoon of instant coffee powder, which is a very intense coffee. Just melt this together. And pour it into the buttercream. And I'm just gonna whip it for a minute. Make sure it's really well blended. I'm gonna turn it on low and add all this gorgeous chocolate. The chocolate's actually cooled now a little bit. You don't wanna pour hot chocolate into butter. Otherwise, the whole thing will melt. You can really smell the chocolate and the coffee together. A little hint of vanilla. And that's Michael's grandmother's chocolate buttercream. Icing a cake, just go over it very gently. Start from the top and work your way down the sides. Okay, so now I've got buttercream on all sides of the cake. I'm just gonna go up and down the sides. The good news about an old-fashioned cake is it's supposed to be a little messy. And then I'm just gonna smooth the top. Just sort of big swirls. I can't wait for dessert.