HCB - Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

Not too long ago, the Heavenly Cake Bakers baked the Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache. Unfortunately, I didn't have a chance to bake along that week so I postponed it to this week's Free Choice. The advantage is that you get to read everyone's experience/likes/dislikes. Those that followed the recipe in the book, said that the cake was too crumbly. While those that followed the alternative mixing instructions on Rose's blog said the cake was too dense. My mission: figure out a way to make a good "in-between" cake. Easier said than done but I thought I'd give it a try.

Devil's Food Cake with Midnight Ganache

Aromatic Lamb Stew with Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato

After seeing pictures of Kayte's Aromatic Beef Stew with Butternut Squash, I really wanted to try it. It wasn't until I read that she made it in a crockpot that I knew we were having that for dinner this weekend. It's served over whole wheat cous cous which we both love. What could be more perfect? The recipe comes from Ellie Krieger's book "So Easy".  You can also find the recipe HERE.

Lamb stew with squash and sweet potato served over cous cous

My changes:

• Doubled the recipe.
• I didn't have beef stew meat so I used lamb (some pieces were boneless, others were not).
• Marinated the meat in a spice paste made with: EVOO, cumin, turmeric, ground ginger, paprika, garlic, salt and pepper.
• Browned the meat on all sides for about 5-7 minutes.
• Cooked the chopped onions, garlic, and ginger in the meat juices for about 5 minutes.
• Placed the meat and onion mixture in the crockpot, and added the remaining ingredients from the recipe, except the butternut squash.
• Kept the amount of cinnamon the same.
• After 4 hours of cooking on HIGH, I added 1lb of cubed butternut squash and 1lb of cubed sweet potatoes. This cooked on HIGH for another 2 hours.
• Towards the end of the cooking process, I added chopped cilantro to the stew instead of parsley.
• Cous cous: boiled water with the following spices: salt, pepper, turmeric, and garlic. I also add a little bit of EVOO in the water to avoid "sticking" issues later.
• Served the stew on a mixture of regular cous cous and whole wheat cous cous because hubby finds the taste of whole wheat cous cous by itself too strong.

HCB - Moist Chocolate Genoise (anniversary cake)

As you can tell from the title of this post, I skipped the "raspberry" part of this week's Heavenly Cake Bakers cake. I also skipped the cocoa syrup and the ganache. So what did I make? Just half of the chocolate genoise recipe in two 6" round pans, and then I took a big detour :o) One of the main reasons is that I didn't want to make the cake too "chocolaty" because hubby is not a fan of super-chocolaty desserts. Since this is our wedding anniversary cake, I figured we should both like it :o)

Four layer chocolate genoise cake with strawberry-and-cream filling and chocolate whipped cream frosting