Desserts for When the Livin' is Easy

Alli and Gina have to feature recipes in one of their upcoming culinary mysteries! Now which book? Maybe the recipes could be in Ancient Grease. Or maybe I could feature desserts in Doughmestic Dispute or I Scream Murder.

I can see where Berried Alive has possibilities, but I don’t want only fruit recipes. Hmm! I think I’ve got it! Devil’s Food Wake (a witch story with the murder of a coven member) would be a good book for dessert recipes. Glad that’s settled!

Now who doesn’t like dessert? DH is mad for chocolate. Even more than my women friends, so I make lots of chocolate desserts. Given how hot it is in Phoenix these days, I especially appreciate desserts that don’t heat up the kitchen. Here are three for you! The first uses avocados as the base for pudding. Weird? Maybe, but it is tasty! The second is a one-minute microwave cake that is too easy! And the third is even healthful!

Imagine what else you could put in to modify the basic recipe. I’m going to use Greek Honey Yogurt next time instead of the cocoa powder. I’ll leave off the caramel and sea salt but add chopped pistachios (since it will be greenish). It will serve more people and should be yummy with fresh fruit on top or served on pound cake.

Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Avocado Pudding (4-6 servings)

3 ripe avocados, in food processor

1/2 cup honey

6 tablespoons dark chocolate cocoa powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 tablespoon caramel syrup per serving

Sea salt to taste

Beat until smooth. Refrigerate in mixing bowl or individual dishes for an hour.

Put into serving dishes (if not already), top with caramel and sprinkle with sea salt.

You know me, I’m not much on pre-packaged food stuffs, but I have made an exception for this too-easy microwave cake recipe for when I need a dessert in a minute. I also do sometimes make my own cake mixes for microwave cake, just so you know.

For my own mix, I use Ethan Adeland’s recipe that I published here a few years ago (http://sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com/2011/01/wild-cinnamon-and-cup-cakes.html). You can follow him @EthanAdeland or at FeedingEthan.com

But for quicker and easier, try:

One-Minute Chocolate Microwave Cake

1 box Angel Food Cake Mix

1 box chocolate cake mix

Thoroughly combine the two cake mixes and store in a gallon zipper plastic bag.

To make a single serving:

3 tablespoons cake mixture

2 tablespoons water

1 teaspoon mini-chocolate chips

1 teaspoon finely chopped nuts

In a 12-ounce mug, thoroughly mix cake mixture with water. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

Microwave on high for one minute. Let sit for five minutes.

Serve as is or top with more mini-chocolate chips, ice cream, whipped cream, or fresh berries.

You've seen this third one floating around the Internet recipe sites, I'm sure. No real recipe so just make sure you have the ingredients on hand.

Frozen Chocolate-Nut Bananas (serves 2)
1 very ripe banana
Mini-chocolate chips (maybe 1/2 cup)
Finely chopped nuts (maybe 1/2 cup)

Cut banana into four equal sections cross-wise. Roll banana in nuts, pressing into the banana flesh all around and on ends. Roll in mini-chocolate chips, pressing into banana flesh all around and into ends. Wrap in foil and freeze for a few hours until solid. Serve as a finger-food dessert. (To make it easier or less messy to eat, before freezing, cut each of the four sections into bite-sized chunks and serve with toothpicks after frozen.)

Correction Alert! Wild Cinnamon and Cup Cakes

I added more to the previous post than was needed. Drop the "e".

The microwave chocolate cake recipe belongs to Ethan Adeland at "Tastes Better with Friends". You can follow him on Twitter @EthanAdeland

My apologies to you and Ethan. I really hate to spell someone's name wrong. My bad. My really, really bad!

Wild Cinnamon and Cup Cakes

Once upon a time, my good friend Gina (who co-stars in my culinary mystery “Dinner is Served” series) and I started a food mixes company. Hey, why not? How hard can it be to start up a company, develop recipes, sell product, and provide full-time income for two women?

Right! I see you got it immediately. While we were long on energy and ideas, we were not so much into marketing strategies. Those were two words we didn’t seem to know the English translation for. Marketing? Strategies?

Add to that our somewhat different styles. If you read my bio, you see that I think “measurement” is a four-letter word. Gina was a math teacher. So, great as my ideas for recipes might be, putting that to paper so we could replicate the recipe hundreds of times was ummm, challenging for me. But I did get the hang of it. I’m not stupid after all, just lazy and impulsive.

A tip indicating our longevity prospects should have been sales. Our biggest bucks came from selling at friend’s craft and yard sales. Right! You get the picture. We had vague plans for selling on the Internet, but we didn’t have a clue how one went about such a thing. We did talk to someone about putting up a website for us, but he was going to charge us $$$.

What was the name of this great incipient company, you ask? What did you sell?

Picking the name was a cinch. We were at a meeting for teachers, waiting in the entryway for the doors to open, when someone complimented me on my most recent hair color. I was known for ranging from “Hisbiscus” (a shade of purple) to “Lucious Mango (an orange-y red). I used to say (actually, I still do) “So many reds, so little time.” But back to the story. I had just become “Wild Cinnamon” and one of our friends said, “That would be a great name for you company.”

Indeed! I loved it! The name implied we were spicy, untamed, yet traditional. Perfect.

So we registered “Wild Cinnamon” with the AZ business folks downtown and we were official. We created easy-to-prepare mixes for soups, dips, salad dressings, cookies, and other things.

One of our best sellers (now this is all relative, you understand, when I use the term “best seller”) was our ingeniously named “Cup Cakes”. These were mixes one added water and oil to and then put into the microwave to bake in a 12-ounce glass mug. Add water to the frosting packet, and dessert was ready in a couple of minutes. One could purchase the mugs from us as well. We had a range of flavors from “Tropical Paradise” to “Spice” to the most popular of all, “Chocolate”.

And it was pretty good, but this recipe is better! I follow @EthanAdelande on Twitter, and he has created a great 5-Minute Chocolate Cake for the microwave. You can find it and more on his “Tastes Better with Friends” blog on at http://bit.ly/eLOqMj Visit his blog and see for yourself what other yummy things he has concocted.

From Ethan Adelande’s

Revised and Better than Ever 5 Minute Chocolate Cake

4 tablespoons of flour

4 tablespoons of sugar

2 tablespoons of cocoa

1 egg

3 tablespoons of milk

3 tablespoons of oil

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

A handful of chocolate chips

1 – Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

2 – Add the egg and mix well.

3 – Pour in the milk, oil & vanilla and mix well.

4 – Place the mixture in a tall glass or mug and into the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at “high”.

The cake may rise over the top, but it will settle, don’t be alarmed! Let it cool and eat out of the mug or tip it out onto a plate.

Sharon’s Note: I like to make a little cocoa/sour cream/confectioner’s sugar glaze for the top or put some more chocolate chips on top and let them ooze over the sides of the hot cake. Yummers!