White Chocolate Lemon Bark: Kaye Wilkinson Barley

Photo: Kaye Wilkinson Barley

The other day my friend author Kaye Wilkinson Barley posted a photo of her favorite holiday bark: White Chocolate Lemon Bark. Well, of course I had to have the recipe, so I asked her if I could post it. Still time to make this for Santa and for your guests. Thanks, Kaye! 

Happy Holidays!

KAYE WILKINSON BARLEY:
White Chocolate Lemon Bark

Use 1 package of Log House CandiQuick (Vanilla Flavored) White Chocolate.
Follow directions on back of package for melting in the microwave.

Stir and pour into a large bowl over smashed up Lemon Drops (I used Brach's 9 oz package, and used a hammer to smash em).

Stir, pour out onto a sheet of waxed paper on a cookie tray.

Allow to harden, break into pieces.

Another version is to add 2 packages of the white chocolate to 1 package of lemon drops. It just depends on what you want to do - neither is right or wrong. But either way, it'll be the easiest candy you've ever made (except for the smashing the lemon drops part . . .)

Enjoy!!

Kaye Wilkinson Barley's Chocolate Walnut Pound Cake

Photo: Kaye Wilkinson Barley

Today is National Pound Cake Day. Pound Cake is so versatile. The name Pound Cake comes from the fact that the original pound cakes contained one pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Made it easy to remember! No leaveners were used other than the air whipped into the batter. A cake made of one pound of each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour would have been very large and would have been able to serve multiple families. As years went by, the portions of the ingredients used were adjusted to make a smaller, lighter cake. However, the name of the cake stuck. Pound cakes are generally baked in either a loaf pan or a Bundt pan. They can be iced or dusted with powdered sugar.

I've posted many pound cake (and bundt cake) recipes over the years. I love this recipe by my friend Kaye Wilkinson Barley. Kaye blogs at Meanderings and Muses and Jungle Red Writers about mystery and crime fiction, but more importantly, she just published her first novel, Whimsey. Check it out. It's wonderful! I love when my chocolate and mystery worlds collide.

Happy Pound Cake Day!

Kaye Wilkinson Barley:
Bittersweet Chocolate Walnut Pound Cake

Ingredients:
Sifted cocoa for preparing the baking pan
2 sticks butter, room temperature
1 1/3 cup sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup vanilla yogurt, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
2 3-oz. bars bittersweet chocolate, chopped

Preheat oven to 325. Butter a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan. Dust with sifted cocoa (instead of flour).
Cream the butter with an electric mixer. Add the sugar gradually and continue to beat for 5 minutes Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each one.
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, soda and salt. Alternately add the dry ingredients and the vanilla yogurt to the batter, ending with the flour. Mix in the vanilla extract, nuts and chopped chocolate.
Pour into prepared loaf pan and bake at 325 for approximately 1 hour and 10-15 minutes, being EXTRA careful not to overcook (mine only took an hour).
Let the finished cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Then turn cake onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

This recipe is from The Pound Cake Cookbook by Bibb Jordan. I love this little book.

Notes: I didn't use the loaf pan called for in this recipe, obviously. The dough was much thinner in a bundt pan than it would have been in a loaf pan, so took much less time to bake. Much less. The first time I baked it, I left it too long and the cake was dry. The next time, I think I only let it bake for about 45 minutes or so. Check it early and often! The other thing I did a little differently was to toss in few extra walnuts along with a few more bittersweet chocolate chunks than called for. Yum!

Bittersweet Chocolate & Orange Bundt-lette Pound Cakes

Recently my friend Kaye Barley posted at Jungle Red and Meanderings and Muses, about Holiday Traditions. I'll be reposting the entire article on Mystery Fanfare later this month, but I thought since a portion of the post  contained this recipe for Bittersweet & Orange Bundt-lette Pound Cakes, that it was a natural for Dying for Chocolate. Thanks, Kaye, for sharing this Holiday Tradition.

Kaye Barley is a recently retired person having the time of her life spreading her wings and trying new things. She's written her first novel which she hopes to have ready for agent querying in January, she's become an avid amateur photographer - you can see her photos at her blog, Meanderings and Muses,  and she can be found the first Sunday of every month at Jungle Red Writers talking about anything that might cross her mind and strike a chord. When she's not doing those things she's likely got her nose in a book or taking a walk with Harley the Wonder Corgi.

KAYE BARLEY: 
BITTERSWEET & ORANGE BUNDT-LETTE POUND CAKES

One Christmas tradition I love is baking. And I love love love baking with my mini-bundt pans. The first round of baking has begun.

Using one of my favorite cookbooks, Bibb Jordan's "The Pound Cake Cookbook."

It's a teeny little cookbook full of the best pound cake recipes you'll find. Fruit pound cakes, chocolate pound cakes, old-fashioned pound cakes, outrageously inspired pound cakes, a cheese savory pound cake and special miniature pound cakes. yum.

I made several "Bittersweet & Orange Bundt-lette Pound Cakes"

My gift to each of you is Bibb Jordan's scrumptious recipe for these little mini bundts. If my name were Santa, I would deliver some to you, but, well - it's not. So I share this recipe along with a "Ho, Ho, Ho!"

Bittersweet & Orange Bundt-lette Pound Cakes
Makes 14 - 16 mini pound cakes

Ingredients:
Pam or Baker's Joy
1-1/2 sticks of butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup Crisco
3 cups of sugar
5 large eggs (room temperature)
3 cups of flour
1/4 teaspoon of salt 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1 cup of milk (room temperature)
6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate (nuggets or chopped - your choice)
1 Tablespoon of finely grated orange zest
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of orange extract

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Spray Bundt-lette pans with Pam or Baker's Joy. (this non-stick cooking spray is needed. The traditional method of buttering and flouring the individual molds does not work well).
Cream together the butter and Crisco on high speed until lightened in color, about 3 minutes. Gradually add the sugar and tehn continue beating for 5 minutes.
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.
Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the batter, blend well, then add 1/2 cup of the milk, blending well again.

Repeat with the remaining flour and milk.
Fold in the chocolate, zest, and extracts.
Fill the Bundt-lette molds with the batter, coming to within 1/2-inch from the top.
If they're over-filled they will over-flow.
Bake at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes,or until tested done.
Note: The Bundt-lettes may not brown on the top, but when turned out of the pan, they will be a golden color and look like miniature pound cakes.
Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool completely.

Enjoy!!!!

Chocolate Truffle Sour Cream Bundt Cake: Kaye Wilkinson Barley guest blog

As many of you know I have several blogs. I blog about crime fiction at Mystery Fanfare, I blog about chocolate here on DyingforChocolate and I blog about team building at TeamBuilding Talk. 

My worlds often collide, and today is one of them. Kaye Wilkinson Barley  blogs about mysteries and crime fiction at Meanderings and Muses--and she loves chocolate! Last January she guest blogged here on Dying for Chocolate with a fabulous recipe for Chocolate Walnut Pound Cake. You're going to love this recipe, too, for Chocolate Truffle Sour Cream Bundt Cake. Kaye is the Bundt Cake Queen! Thanks, Kaye, for stopping by again!

Kaye Wilkinson Barley:

I don't really do a lot of cooking.  I'm not overly fond of cooking, and I'm not all that good at it.
But I do love to bake.  Husband Donald and Wonder Corgi Harley and I live in a very rural neighborhood in the North Carolina mountains.
We're a small, close knit neighborhood.  And we all love to eat.
We get together fairly often for pot luck meals and since everyone else cooks so well, I just leave them to it and I bring a dessert.
Usually a pound cake or a bundt cake; and usually chocolate.
Who doesn't love chocolate?!
This was my first try with the Chocolate Truffle Sour Cream Bundt Cake and wouldn't you know it; I left out an ingredient (which I've noted in the recipe below).
But, you know what?  It didn't matter!  The cake was divine and was a huge hit, so probably that missing ingredient will be permanently scratched from my version of the recipe.
Enjoy!  with or without that missing ingredient!

Chocolate Truffle Sour Cream Bundt Cake
(Modified version of recipe originally from Sur La Table)
...
Ingredients:
 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder (Valhrona)
1 teaspoon espresso powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt (do not use kosher salt)
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter at room temperature
3 cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs at room temperature
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream at room temperature
1 cup boiling water (note: This is the modification. I forgot to add this cup of boiling water and the cake still turned out wonderfully, so I'm not even sure what the point of it is.)

Chocolate truffle mixture:
2 teaspoons unsalted butter, melted
¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ teaspoon unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
2 teaspoon powdered sugar
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate coarsely chopped
Powdered sugar for dusting

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 12 cup capacity bundt pan and dust with 1 tablespoon cocoa powder. In a large bowl, using a triple sifter, sift the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk well and set aside.

In a standing mixer fitted with a paddle (I just used my hand mixer), beat the butter until creamy. Add the granulated sugar and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well for about 30 seconds, after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract. At low speed, beat in the dry ingredients in 3 additions, alternating with two additions of the sour cream. Mix until ingredients are well incorporated. Gradually beat in the boiling water.

Prepare the chocolate truffle mixture by melting butter with vanilla. Sift cocoa with powdered sugar. Toss bittersweet chocolate with melted butter-vanilla mixture then add cocoa-sugar mixture and fold into the cake batter

Pour the cake batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 50 to 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan for ten minutes on top of a wire rack. Turn the cake out onto the wire rack and cool completely. Dust it lightly with powdered sugar before slicing.