Kerrygold Butter Gets the Gold Medal from Us!
Watch the video below to hear why Kerrygold Butter always gets the gold in our book!
This is our favorite cooking ingredient! As we say: always use quality ingredients!
Just a quick tip from The Dads: Harris & Dave!
Video: Harris Bakes a 3 Layer Chocolate Cake!
Recipe: The Dads’ Perfect Chocolate Cake!
Who can resist a bite of this delicious, decadent Chocolate Cake?!
Chocolate Cake
Cake Ingredients:
1 C Unsweetened Cocoa
2 C Boiling Water
2 ¾ C Sifted All-Purpose Flour
2 t Baking Soda
½ t Salt
½ t Baking Powder
½ lb. Unsalted Butter – softened
2 ½ C Sugar
4 Eggs
2 t Vanilla
In a bowl, combine cocoa and boiling water. Mix with whisk until smooth. Allow to cool completely. When cooled, preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour-dust three 9 inch layer cake pans. Cut rounds of wax or parchment paper and place on bottom of cake pans to help remove cake from pans after baking.
In large bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
In large mixing bowl, at high speed cream together butter and sugar for about 5 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla. At low speed, alternately beat in 25 percent of flour mixture and chocolate mixture until fully incorporated – do not over beat. Divide equally into the 3 cake pans and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the top springs bake when gently pressed with fingertip. Allow cake to cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan. Allow to completely cool on rack.
Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients:
1 10 oz. Package of Semisweet Chocolate Chips or Squares
¾ Light Cream or Half & Half – Room Temperature
¾ lb. of Unsalted Butter
3 ¼ C Confectioners Sugar
In saucepan on low heat, melt and combine the butter and chocolate. Add cream and sugar. Whisk until smooth and holds shape.
Assemble and frost the cake. Enjoy!
Harris’ Homemade Flaky Pie Crust!
1 Day Left!
1 more day!
After quite the adventure, Melissa, her husband and their 2 friends, finally arrived last night. The heavy rain and holiday traffic caused their bus to show up 2 hours late, leaving them to wait outside in the freezing rain with hundreds of people. We hope your holiday guests aren’t having similar issues!
We finally made the Pumpkin Cheesecake and Pumpkin Pie! Additionally we made 2 batches of our Pecan Tassies, but of course as soon as the kids came home, they ate about 10 of them!
Today we’ll be making the floral centerpiece. Since we made the crusts for the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Pie and a Lemon Meringue Pie, we will be baking them as well.
Dave’s sister Carol has been staying over the past couple of days and has been a big help. She’ll be making her traditional Sugar-Free Trifle today, for those with diabetes and the diet conscious. Perhaps, we’ll have to have her give up the recipe and share it with you!
Finally, we’ll be making our smoky salmon ball tonight.
Believe it or not, this year we will be having the least amount of guests for Thanksgiving in years. Typically we have around 20 guests. But this year we’ll only have 12. We had to downsize this year because we have been building an addition to our outside porch. So, with all of the construction, we just couldn’t have that many guests over this year.
Tomorrow’s main cooking event begins at 6:00 AM to start smoking the bird! What time will you be starting?
All the best,
-The Dads: Harris & Dave
Our Pecan Tassies that we made last night!
Melissa’s Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner!
2 Days to Go!
Here we are, 2 more days to go until Thanksgiving!
Yesterday consisted of house cleaning, fixing antique dining room chairs, dropping off clothes to the homeless shelter, setting up a bookcase for the guests to have a place for their toiletries, running errands, and more. Was any cooking or baking done as hoped? Did we get to the Pumpkin Cheesecake yet? Nope!
Yesterday, Harris was able to pick up our kosher turkey. He also purchased some smoked white fish, lox, herring and bagels for a special breakfast while our guests are here.
Then, we were off to the butcher’s to grab a Prime Rib Roast for our Wednesday night dinner. We were also able to find some Kishka to serve up with Wednesday’s dinner. It’s hard to resist the urge to eat it before!
After all of that, our boy, Jacques, even made it to his groomer, Carissa, so that he is ready to greet our guests properly when they arrive!
Whew!
We had such a full day that we didn’t get to do any of our Thanksgiving cooking, but we’re hot on the trail today! As we write, it’s about 11:00 AM and we already have 2 pie crusts done! Oh, and we made the cornbread for the stuffing. It needs to be baked a couple of days ahead so it dries out a bit, making for much better stuffing!
Below is a photo of the flowers Harris picked up. He will be making our holiday centerpiece with these beauties!
Hope you’re preparations are coming along well!
All the best,
-The Dads: Harris & Dave
Pastry Rolling Sheet
Whenever we make pies, we love to use the Tupperware Pastry Rolling Sheet!
As demonstrated in our White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Pie video, this measuring sheet comes in handy when rolling your crust. We’ve had the same one for over 10 years! It seems like it is indestructible!
It costs around $18. You can find it on Amazon.com.
Happy Baking!
-The Dads: Harris & Dave
The Dads’ Jewish Apple Cake
Jewish Apple Cake is a recipe which we absolutely love. It’s the perfect holiday dessert which works not only for the evening, but also for the next morning. It’s also great to bring to parties, and when sliced, has beautiful rings of apple and cinnamon between the layers of cake. We will be serving it at our Thanksgiving feast! We hope you will give it a try for your next holiday party or brunch. What are your favorite comfort desserts?
Ingredients
- 5-6 Granny Smith Apples, thinly sliced
- 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 5 teaspoons white granulated sugar
- 3 cups flour
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup melted butter
- 2 1/4 cups sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/3 cup orange juice
- 2 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 3 teaspoons baking powder
Directions
Mix cinnamon and 5 teaspoons of sugar.
Place sliced apples in a bowl, sprinkling each slice with the cinnamon and sugar.
In a separate large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
In another separate bowl, beat together on medium-high speed, the vegetable oil, butter, and remaining sugar until light and creamy. If you wish, you can use all butter, all oil, or a combination, so long as you have a half cup of oil, butter, or a combination of both.
Add one egg at a time to the wet mixture with a mixer on low speed.
Add the vanilla to the wet mixture.
While still on a low speed, alternate between adding the dry ingredients and the orange juice, until well blended.
Grease your pan. We prefer to use a bundt pan for this recipe.
Pour a short layer of batter in bottom of pan, just enough to cover the bottom.
Line the pan with apples.
Continue to alternate between layers of batter and apples, ending with apples on top.
Bake 350 degrees for 1 ½ to 2 hours.
Test with a toothpick, but you will know your cake is ready when it looks like this:
Simply flip your cake and enjoy. This cake is delightful warm, but is just as good for breakfast/brunch the next day. Enjoy!
