Brownie Cookie Sundae Bowls

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Hubs was out of town over the past week-end so I had a few girlfriends over for a girls night. Since the food is as important as the gossip, I wanted to make something fun for dessert. I came across Michael Ruhlman's chocolate chip cookie sundae bowls and thought they were perfect. How fun, we could all make our own sundaes and eat the bowl too! I made some caramel and chocolate sauce, toasted some coconut, and got out the sprinkles. What's more girlie than a than a bowl of sprinkles?

The cookie sundae bowls were a hit. We were so busy eating them, I never got a picture of the chocolate chip cookie bowls. While we were devouring our cookie sundaes, one of my friends asked if brownies could be used instead of cookies. Well of course I had to try it out to see if it would work.

Okay don't judge, but I had a brownie mix in the pantry that I thought would be perfect for this experiment. I used the brownie cookie recipe on the back of the box. It just cut back on the oil and liquid for a denser batter. I thought cookie dough would work better than the thinner brownie batter. I used the same process as I did when making the chocolate cookie bowl.

How to make brownie cookie sundae bowls:  
1 recipe of brownie cookie ( I used Hershey's brownies and followed the brownie cookie recipe)

 Oven proof bowls that nest inside one another. (one needs to be a little smaller than the other.)

Spray the inside of the larger bowl and the out side of the smaller bowl with cooking spray.

Lightly press 3-4 tablespoons of the brownie cookie dough into the bottom of the larger bowl. Press the smaller bowl into the dough so that it starts to come up around the sides. As it cooks the dough will expand to the top of the bowl. (If you put too much dough into the bottom of the large bowl it will cook over.)

Bake in a 350 degree  oven for 20 minutes. Remove the bowl(s) from the oven and carefully twist the small bowl to free them from the dough then remove it.  Return to the oven and continue to bake the cookie bowls for 5 minutes of so until the inner bottom of the cookie bowl finishes cooking.
When the bowls are cool enough to handle, cut off any dough that’s over flowed the edge and, very carefully, run a pairing knife along the sides, gently lifting up to free the bottom of the cookie bowl. Cool completely.

Fill the bowls with ice cream and the toppings of your choice!

I think almost any cookie would work as a cookie bowl. I can't wait to try all different kinds of cookie bowls. If you make cookie bowls, leave me a link to your post in the comments section. I'd love to see your bowls!

Caramel Sauce
Source: Simply Recipes (slightly adapted)
Ingredients:
1 cup of sugar
6 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
pinch of sea salt
1 Tbs bourbon (optional)
Method:
Have all your ingredients measured out and ready to go. The process goes very fast once the sugar starts melting. You have to work fast as the sugar burns quickly so all your ingredients must be ready to go.
Heat sugar on moderately high heat in a heavy-bottomed 3-quart pan. As the sugar begins to melt, stir vigorously with a whisk or wooden spoon. As soon as the sugar comes to a boil, stop stirring. Just swirl the pan a few times. As soon as all of the sugar crystals have melted (the liquid sugar should be dark amber in color), immediately add the butter to the pan. Whisk until the butter has melted.
Once the butter has melted, take the pan off the heat. Slowly add the cream to the pan and continue to whisk to incorporate. Be very careful with this step. When you add the butter and the cream, the mixture will foam up and sputter quite a bit. Add the sea salt and the bourbon. Whisk until caramel sauce is smooth. Let cool in the pan for a couple minutes, then pour into a glass jar or a small bowl. Let sit to cool to room temperature.  The caramel sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Rewarm before serving.

Four years ago this week, I started this little blog. I totally started it on a whim, and for this reason I named my blog Half Baked. I didn't know what I was doing, whether or not I'd enjoy blogging, or if I'd even keep it up. The whole thing started with a half-baked idea and here I am at my four year blogiversary! My own birthday is just about a week away so lot of reasons to celebrate around here.
Thanks to all of you that have been with on this blog adventure over the last four years. An unexpected, but wonderful gift that has come with doing this blog is getting to "meet" so many wonderful people from all over the world. Hope to see you here again soon!

I say Caramel...you say Careamel

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Southerners have had a long love affair with cake. Like sweet tea, it's a staple at church dinners, family reunions, funerals, and celebrations of any kind. Many of these cakes have names as interesting as their ingredient list. Hummingbird cake, a longtime favorite for showers of any type, contains mashed bananas and pineapple. Lane cake, a specialty from here in Alabama, is a multiple layer cake filled with whiskey soaked raisins. Then it's frosted with a fluffy white boiled icing, another Southern favorite. There are many more cakes, each with interesting histories and closely guarded family variations on the recipes, that make the baker a legend in their part of the world.
I grew up in a family with Pennsylvania Dutch roots. We were more likely to eat a funny cake than a Mississippi cake. My first experiences of Southern cakes as a child, came while visiting an elderly woman that lived nearby. It didn't matter when you stopped by, she always had some kind of cake under a glass domed cake plate in her kitchen. Mom would stop by often to visit this particular neighbor, for various reasons. Not exactly a thrilling prospect for me and my younger sisters. We were expected to sit quietly while the adults conversed. The television, which was always on, offered no escape from our boredom. Our neighbor was an avid watcher of what she called "her stories", daytime soaps.  Mom knew to time her visits until after "As the World Turns" or there would be no conversation until a commercial break. She used the commercial break to fill us non-watchers in on what was going on in the World as it Turned. Yeah, not exactly the way I wanted to spend a summer afternoon. However, these visits did come with a silver lining; cake!  She would always offered us slice, or rasher, as she called it, of cake. I didn't know what a rasher of cake was, but I knew I wanted it! All of her cakes were amazing, but I especially loved her twelve-layer chocolate cake. Unbelievably thin layers of yellow cake stacked twelve layers high with rich chocolate frosting between all twelve layers. One bite and I was sent into cake induced nirvana, even the Turning World became a bit more enjoyable.
I recently purchased Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott. It's full of all the old Southern favorites. I decided to attempt a caramel cake for my book club. I have a couple of older Southern ladies in my book club and I knew they'd love this cake. I'd made a burnt caramel cake before so I thought this would be similar and no big deal to make. The yellow cake was very straight forward and made a lovely light as air cake. However, the icing was nothing I've ever worked with before. Maybe Southern women have some crazy lighting fast cake icing skills. Perhaps this icing recipe, which comes from before the days of air conditioning, doesn't set up as fast in an 80+ degree kitchen. Whatever the case, you've got to get this icing on this cake in 5 minutes or less or forget it! It starts to harden and I don't care what the recipe says there's not much you can do about it. So my first attempt at this cake was not a pretty one. It tasted divine which is really what matters, but my cake did not look like the picture in the book..at all!
I served it at my book club and found out I've been mispronouncing the name of this cake my whole life. Southerners love syllables as much as they love cake. I called it cara mel cake (2 syllables) and got odd looks from the 2 older ladies in my book club. They both simultaneously said, oh you mean care a mel cake, (definitely 3 long syllables). Oops, there go those Yankee roots popping up again!

Gigi's Fabulous Caramel Cake
Source: Southern Cakes by Nancie McDermott

Ingredients:

Yellow Cake 
3/4 cup butter
1 cup milk
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2teaspoons salt
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Gigi’s Caramel Icing
2 2/3 cups light brown sugar (or one 1-lb box)
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
7 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pre-heat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.
Combine the butter and milk in a small saucepan, and cook over low heat until the butter melts. Do not let it boil or the milk will curdle.  Stir well and let cool to room temperature.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, and mix well with a whisk. In a large bowl, combine the eggs and sugar, and beat well at high speed, scraping down the bowl often, until light yellow, smooth an thick. 3-5 minutes.
Stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture, mixing only until the flour disappears. Add the cooled milk mixture and the vanilla, stir well, and divide the batter between the prepared pans.
Bake at,325°F for 25 to 30 minutes, until the cakes are pale golden brown, spring back when touched lightly in the center, and begin to pull away from the sides of the pans.
Cool in pans for 10 minutes on wire racks. Then turn out the cakes onto racks to cool completely, top side up. 
Make the icing; have the cake layers handy and ready for frosting, so that you can spread the warm frosting quickly once it is ready. In a heavy medium saucepan, combine the brown sugar, butter, evaporated milk, and vanilla. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir well and then adjust the heat so that the frosting boils and bubbles gently. Cook for 7 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool for 5 minutes.
Beat the icing with a wooden spoon until it thickens, 2 to 3 minutes. Place a cake layer, top side down, on a cake stand or serving platter. Quickly spread some icing over the top, and cover it with the second cake layer, top side up. Ice the top quickly and then spread the remaining icing over the sides.
If the icing becomes to hard to spread, warm gently over low heat, add a spoonful or two of evaporated milk, and then scrape and stir well until the icing softens enough to spread again. Dip a table knife in a very hot water to help soften and smooth out the icing once it is spread.

N

See the icing looks like it was put on with a putty knife!

Burnt Caramel Cake

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I was excited about this month's daring baker's challenge. I love caramel cake but I was worried that I may not have time to squeeze in the challenge this month. I'm really glad I did because this is a really good dense cake. I didn't have the right size pan so I made mine in an 8 inch cake pan. It made a thicker cake so I had to cook it about 6 minutes longer. After my cake cooled, I split the cake into two and put the frosting in the middle as well. I added sea salt to the frosting which really complimented the burnt sugar flavor.
This was a fun challenge and I loved the finished cake!
Thanks to our hostessShuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater, for sharing her signature cake recipe! The recipe can be found here . Helping to host this month's challenge as well are, Alex of Blondie and Brownie, Jenny of Foray into Food, and for all your gluten free questions, Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go. Check out all the other DB'rs cakes here.