Slow Cooker Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

It has cooled down here just a bit; the heat index isn't in the 100's, but it's still hot.  So, here is another slow cooker recipe!  I was very excited about trying to bake a cake in my crock pot and the results were amazing. Absolutely delicious!  Goose and Tink told me to never make my banana chocolate chip cake in the oven again.  Now that I can successfully make a cake in the slow cooker I want to try making bread...and maybe even cookies, cupcakes, and everything else!! :)

You will need:
my recipe for banana chocolate chip cake
aluminum foil
deep-sided 8-inch round pan
butter and flour to grease the pan
2 paper towels
large slow cooker

Fold a large piece of foil in half and half again and place in the bottom of your cooker.  Take another large piece of foil and wad it up.  Place it on top of the folded foil and use your pan to squash it a bit, making sure that your pan will be able to sit on it without tipping to one side.  The point of this is to raise your pan off the bottom of the slow cooker.  Don't skip this step.

After you have made the cake batter, butter and grease your cake pan...

and pour in your batter.

Place the pan into your slow cooker and make sure that the pan sits flat on the foil.

Turn your slow cooker to HIGH, place two paper towels across the top to catch the moisture that will collect and then place on the lid.

Cook for exactly two hours, without removing the lid.  Now it's done perfectly!!

I took a picture of my cake stand.  It was my  mom's, but she gave it to me when they moved down here to Florida.  Every cake I ever had or made growing up was served on this cake stand.  I love it!!  (I thought it was interesting that it is smaller than the cake stands you see in stores today. So, Americans dinner plate size and cake stand size has increased.)

Let the cake sit for 10 minutes in the baking pan, then run a knife along the sides and invert it onto your cake plate.

The top of my cake was prettier than the bottom, so next time I will invert it onto a plate and then flip it again onto the cake stand, pretty side up.  But I fixed its looks with a bit of powdered sugar. :)

I let it cool for about an hour, but only because we were having dinner.  Even then I had to fight off the cake jackals!   So, feel free to dig in right away.

The slow cooker keeps this cake so moist.  I asked Bubba and the girls what they thought, but all I got was a bunch of mmmm's and ahhhh's.  Definitely a big hit!

Not only was it crazy delicious, but I didn't heat up my house by using the oven.  Always a plus for me this time of year.  If you have any leftovers, this cake is just as beautiful the next day.  In fact, I think the flavors are deeper the next day--just like how banana bread is better if you can wait a day to eat it.  I didn't refrigerate the cake, just wrapped it in plastic wrap overnight.  You can freeze it, too.  Wrap it tightly in foil and seal it up in a freezer bag.  You'll love this cake!!

Enjoy!!

Slow Cooker Potatoes Au Gratin

It has been feeling more like July than June lately, so I'm still cooking everything in my Crock Pot. The poor thing is starting to feel the wear, too. An hour after I turned these potatoes from high to low I went to check on them and the pot was cold. I panicked, of course, fiddled with the switch, and it came right back on and I had no more troubles. Maybe I just didn't get the knob turned all the way to low or something, but I think I may be in the market for a new pot soon. Two pots would be great anyway! There have been nights when dinner was slow cooking away and I thought, some slow cooker chocolate cake would be awesome right about now. :) These potatoes are easy and relatively quick for a slow cooker recipe. And I haven't even started to describe how freaking amazing they taste!

You will need:

6 medium potatoes (I used Yukon Gold)
8oz cheese, shredded
3T butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk (skim is fine)
chopped garlic (optional, but recommended)
salt (not optional)

Wash, peel, and slice your potatoes.  You want them about a medium thickness.  (I ran them through my food processor.)  Grease your slow cooker.  I used 2T of extra butter, but pan spray would work just fine as long as you really coat the pot.  Add one layer of potatoes and salt them.  You can use regular table salt, Kosher salt, or even garlic salt, but do not skimp on the salt or your potatoes will be bland, bland, bland. 

Continue layering and salting until you have used all the potato slices. (You could also add chopped onions to each layer, but my kids don't like them.  Don't add too many, though, because they can overpower the potato flavor.)

When all the potatoes are in the pot, melt the 3T of butter in a large saucepan.

Add the flour and whisk.

Cook over medium heat until mixture starts to bubble up, then cook for 2 minutes whisking constantly.

Slowly pour in the milk and whisk until thickened.  (Add 2T chopped garlic now if you like. It's good!!)

Add the cheese...

and stir until melted. 

Pour over the top of the potatoes.  Don't stir the potatoes, but give them a jiggle to get some of the sauce down into the bottom of the pot. 

Place 2 paper towels across the top of the slow cooker and put on the top. 

Turn the pot on high and leave it for an hour.  You can leave it on high for two more hours or turn it to low for 3-4 hours. 

Time to feast!  These potatoes are sooooo good.  Creamy, cheesy, with a hint of garlic. 

Yummy! Scrumptious!  The perfect comfort food.  They are wonderful the next day, warmed in the microwave, too.  

Enjoy!! 

Our Garden

It's been one of those weeks. We had guests over the weekend, two birthdays, and then Tink was sick Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Now the Goose is sick. I haven't gotten anything done and am seriously happy that today is Friday! This week I made my slow cooker chocolate cake and then gave in and turned on the oven to make my chocolate chip cookies because some weeks call for heavy consumption of chocolate. So, because I didn't make anything new this week and basically just subsisted on cake and cookies, I thought I would share some pictures of our organic garden.

We have a raised bed garden and we planted yellow onions, strawberries, and sweet corn. Only one of 8 strawberry plants is growing (sad), but the onions and corn are growing like gangbusters!




Look at that silk!!



I just love how fast corn grows.



We also have tomatoes. Once they reach full-size some of them will be sacrificed before they are ripe because a Southern girl has got to have her fried green tomatoes!



And a black raspberry bush. Very excited about that!!



We have a blueberry bush with one remaining blueberry. Just one...



the rest were eaten by this beast.



And this one, too!



But not this one. He is a walking heart. Sweetest baby in the world!!



Our orange tree is heavy with baby oranges. They won't ripen until January or February. This year we had soooo many oranges we didn't know what to do with them all. We decided we would prune the tree so we would have less oranges next year.



But how to you choose which pretty baby orange to kill? I can't do it. We'll be swimming in oranges again come January. :)



We have a tiny lemon tree. It was my Valentine's Day present from Bubba!



Here's another picture of our small dinosaur who thinks she is a chicken. Originally she was named Eragon, which then became Eragonsian, then Gonsie, then Donsie, and now she's just Don.



She can pretend she is a chicken if she wants...as long as she keeps leaving us a present every day.



The other one has embraced her dinosaur side and has stopped laying eggs. Maybe she's just lazy. When you look into her eyes you can see there are no lights on in there. :) :)



And last, but not least, our banana tree. We've had it for three years now and are hoping this is our year for bananas.



So that's it! Our garden. I dream about making lemon meringue pies, blueberry pie, black raspberry jam, banana pudding, orange juice, and strawberry shortcake. And then I ask Bubba, for the fifteenth time, to put some chicken wire around the blueberry bush. Dang dinosaurs!

Slow Cooker Chocolate Cake

I have to apologize right off the bat for this recipe. You definitely should not make it...because it will ruin chocolate cake for you forever! IT'S THAT GOOD. Beyond good, insanely awesome, ridiculously delicious. Chocolate cake made any other way will seem plain, unexciting, tasteless, and cold. This recipe is very easy to make and the result is out of this world. You don't even have to turn on your oven--a big bonus for those of us who have had to turn on our air conditioning already this year. And you eat it while it's still hot so it's also perfect for people, like my Montana family, who need something to warm them up since their Spring weather has not started yet.

You will need:

slow cooker
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
6T butter
2 oz (1/4c) semi-sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup white sugar
3T Dutch-processed cocoa
1T vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup milk
1 egg yolk
***************
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup Dutch-processed cocoa
1 1/2 cups hot water
****************
2 paper towels



A word on the cocoa--in this recipe you really need to use the Dutch-processed. In my grocery store it's sold right alongside the unsweetened cocoa. Hershey's Special Dark is what I use and it's perfect. Dutch-processed cocoa has been treated to neutralize the acids in cocoa and is used in baked goods that call for baking powder, like this one. If you use regular unsweetened cocoa you will end up with a slightly bitter tasting cake. It's the same price as regular cocoa.


Mix together the flour and baking powder and set aside. In a medium-sized pot melt the butter and then add the chocolate chips. Stir until melted and combined and then remove from heat. (I melt the butter first because adding cold butter to chocolate can cause it to seize. That's happened to me many, many times.)



Whisk in the 2/3 cup sugar and 3T Dutch cocoa.



Now whisk in the vanilla, salt, milk, and egg yolk. Combine thoroughly.



Whisk in the flour/baking powder mix.



Pour the batter into a greased slow cooker. I used 2T of butter and rubbed it on the bottom and halfway up the sides of my Crock Pot. You can use pan spray if you like--just make sure it is greased well.



In a medium-sized bowl whisk together the brown sugar, sugar, and cocoa.



Slowly pour in the hot water (I nuked the water in the microwave for one minute) and whisk until smooth.



Pour into the slow cooker on top of the cake batter. DO NOT STIR.



Place two paper towels (do not rip apart) across the top of the slow cooker and put on the top. The towels will keep the condensation from dripping onto your cake.



Turn the slow cooker on HIGH and leave it alone for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The cake is done when it is set and pulls away slightly from the sides of the slow cooker. Turn off the cooker, take off the top, and lift out the removable bowl. Set it aside on a hot pad and leave the cake alone for 25 minutes. It will hard not to sample, but resist!



Heaven. On. Earth. You'll never see chocolate cake the same way again. The top of the cake is moist, chocolaty, and amazing, but the bottom is fudge sauce. Fudge sauce! (My pictures came out a bit unfocused. Maybe my hands were shaking in anticipation!)



There really aren't adequate words to describe how divine this cake tastes. There were no leftovers. I asked Bubba and the girls how it tasted and I got a bunch of grunts and "mmmmmmmm's." :) No need for ice cream with this cake!!





After she finished eating Goose said, "Wow. That's the most awesome cake ever."



Enjoy!!