Happy Birthday, Tim: S'more Layer Cake

Duuuuuuudes, this cake is good.  So good.  

When I saw this S'more Layer Cake recipe in the Smitten Kitchen cookbook, I knew I had to make it, but I needed an occasion.  Luckily it didn't take much convincing for Tim to agree that his birthday was just that occasion.

Plus, this recipe required the use of a kitchen torch, which I always secretly wanted to buy, but could never really justify.  Heh heh... cool... fire! fire! fire!  Now I have to plan some cooking around that new flaming utensil.

A moist graham cracker flavored layer cake with a milk chocolate ganache filling and toasted marshmallow frosting...  what's not to love?

The cake itself is made by processing a bunch of graham crackers until they turn into a flour (thanks to Amy for bringing American graham crackers to us across the world!).  Buttermilk (or in my case milk plus sour cream) keeps it super moist (I actually had to cook my layers a few minutes longer to get them cooked through, but that may be my wonky oven).

Super rich milk chocolate ganache in the middle mimics the traditional Hershey's bar (I kinda wished there was more of that- maybe next time a layer of it under the frosting would do the trick?) and fluffy, sticky, marshmallowy frosting (not dissimilar from the frosting I made on this cake) is dolloped on top and torch toasted to perfection.

We ate the cake early, the weekend before his birthday, because Tim had to attend and present at a conference this week.  Don't feel too bad for him, though, because the conference is in Bali (life is tough, eh?):

S'mores Cookies-The City S'more

In honor of Labor Day and end of summer, Tony and I had some friends over for dinner.  We made the Real Martha's pulled pork and potato salad.  I was looking for an easy, yet summer-y dessert.  I found this recipe on Pinterest (my new obsession).

Quite delicious, but next time I would add more marshmallows for more gooeyness.

UPDATE:  This is Meg.  I tried out Chuck's recipe this weekend- good stuff!  All the chocolatey/marshmallowy goodness of s'mores, but in a pre-made cookie package.  I took Chuck's advice and added much more marshmallow.  I only have large marshmallows, so I cut them up with scissors and wedged probably one and a half between the cookie dough and the graham cracker.  They tried to flop over in the oven, but once you smoosh the whole thing down with the Hershey's, it's all good.

Homemade Honey Graham Crackers (and obligatory s'mores)

Happy 4th of July!!  America... f*ck yeah!  ;-)

This holiday is somewhat of a non-event here in Jakarta, as you can imagine.  But Tim and I tried to celebrate in little ways.  Important ways.  Namely, hot dogs, s'mores and Budweiser.

Turns out both hot dogs and ingredients for s'mores are not the easiest thing to locate.  Sausages, yes.  But regular old American hotdogs?  Not so much.  Eventually we found something close enough, but it still was no Ballpark frank.  Oh well.

S'mores, on the other hand, were even more of a challenge.  Nary a graham cracker in sight and I ended up with some strangely shriveled, but passable Filipino marshmallows.  

Since I couldn't find graham crackers, I decided to make my own, largely inspired by the cover of this month's Martha Stewart Living magazine.  I didn't follow her recipe because I couldn't find whole wheat flour, but instead I largely followed this recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen, substituting 1/2 cup of the AP flour with toasted wheat germ.

A little bit of a pain in the ass to make (have I ever explained how much I hate making rolled cookies?), but ultimately a really good honey and molasses flavor and nice texture.  My rolling and cutting (I just used a square, fluted edge cookie cutter) efforts were not the best, but I only baked about 1/3 of the dough, so I still have a chance to redeem myself. Also, I skipped the cinnamon sugar topping because that's how I like it. The crackers held up to s'more-ification better than store-bought since they weren't perforated- no cracking in half mid-bite:

Cheesecake Ice Cream

When preparing for our non-Super Bowl Super Bowl party, as a result of some faulty spur-of-the-moment grams-to-cups-to-ounces calculations, I over-purchased both sour cream and cream cheese... not wanting it to go bad, I decided to put it to good use in this very easy and very rich cheesecake ice cream, from my favorite ice cream cookbook, David Lebovitz's "The Perfect Scoop."

I had leftover "fudge ripple" from my tin roof ice cream, so I layered that with the cheesecake ice cream, and, while I was at it, dumped in the closest thing I could find to graham crackers here: some crumbled "digestive" biscuit cookie things... I was hoping the cookies would simulate the graham cracker crust of a cheesecake. 

Came together pretty nicely!  The ice cream is great- super creamy and rich, just like cheesecake.  I bet you could throw all sorts of other things in there if you weren't feeling the chocolate... strawberry, blueberry.

P.S.: As a funny aside, I noticed that many products at the grocery stores here in Indonesia, whether made here or elsewhere (such as Australia or Thailand), are sold in bags... sour cream (see below), cooking oil, mayonnaise, among other things.  

P.P.S.: Turns out I didn't actually use cream cheese in this recipe, but rather the oft sought-after "cream chess."

Belated Birthday Magic Bars

Tim's birthday was last Saturday, but I didn't get around to baking something sweet in honor of his 32nd until Sunday. And we were hungover. So basically we ended up with whatever I could easily make with goodies out of the cabinet.
Ta da: Magic bars! A perennial favorite...

S'mores Brownies

I have been thinking about making these S'mores Brownies from Joy the Baker for months.
I love s'mores, I love brownies- what could be bad about these?

After reading some of the comments on Joy's recipe, I was a little nervous about the brownie part of her recipe, so I decided to take her general s'mores idea and combine it with my favorite (reliable, but ridiculously named) brownie, the Man Catcher brownie.
Good idea... the brownies were fudgey and delicious, with bits of graham cracker scattered throughout, topped with gooey toasted, caramelized marshmallows. Awesome.