Park Avenue Gooey Butter Cake

Want to impress out of town guests with St. Louis' most famous original dessert?  Treat them to a gooey butter cake made by Park Avenue Coffee in Lafayette Square.  Not only did they win Food Network's "Food Feuds" for best gooey butter cake, but they have over 76 different flavors to choose from!

You truly aren't a St. Louisan until you've tried Gooey Butter Cake, which for all of you out of towners, is a dense yellow cake-like base (the crust) filled with a mixture of powered sugar, butter and cream cheese.  There is nothing like it.

If you haven't tried it before, I'd recommend getting the original, otherwise I would choose a medley of 3 or 4 to try because choosing just one flavor is impossible!!!  For a recent dinner party I got their chocolate chip cookie dough flavor (I just couldn't pass it up!).  It was amazing!!!  And for Jessie's wedding she and Joe gave out different flavors as wedding favors: Pumpkin, Original, and Triple Chocolate.  People were stealing them off the table!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Gooey Butter Cake

Here is a list of the top 10 flavors at Park Avenue:

#1 Mom's Traditional
#2 Triple Chocolate
#3 Turtle
#4 Red Velvet
#5 Pumpkin
#6 White Chocolate Raspberry
#7 White Chocolate Blueberry
#8 Caramel Apple
#9 Keylime
#10 Lemon

Click Here for a slideshow of all 76 flavors.

Thanksgiving Turkeys!

Hey folks! Sorry for the lack of recent posts... Jessie and I have been very busy this holiday season, but not too busy to cook and try some new restaurants!!!  Here's a cute idea that I did for Thanksgiving this year that the kids went crazy for.

OREO TURKEYS

Ingredients:

- Oreos

- Candy Corn

- Malted Milk Balls

- Red Hots

- Chocolate Icing

Directions:

1. Open up oreo so that icing is all on one side

2. smear chocolate icing on the non icing inside of the oreo

3. Place four candy corn on chocolate icing to make fan (turkey wings)

4. Push Candy Corn sided oreo perpendicular into a corner white icing sided oreo

5. Push malted milke ball into front of white icing sided oreo (turkey head)

6. push red hot in front of malted milk ball (gobbler)

So much fun!  and no cooking involved!

Monkey Bread Muffins Recipe

So as some of you know, I am not a big dessert person, but I do have a particular sweet tooth for cinnamon sugar!  (I will out eat anyone in a cinnamon roll eating contest).  So of course I go absolutely bananas for MONKEY BREAD!!!  I found a recipe that makes individual servings of monkey bread by serving it as muffins.  Genius!  I decided to try it out and they were so good!  Here is the recipe I used:

Monkey Bread Muffins (yields 12 muffins)

Ingredients:
1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, chilled
3 tbsp maple syrup
1/3 cup + 2 tbsp granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup confectioners sugar
2 tbsp milk

 Directions:
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line 1 muffin tin with 12 liners

Maple Butter:
In a small bowl, microwave 4 tbsp butter and the maple syrup at high power until melted, about 30 seconds

Cinnamon Sugar coating:
- In a small bowl, mix together 1/3 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon

Dough:
- In a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, the remaining 2 tbsp of granulated sugar, and salt. Pulse until well combined. Cut the remaining butter into small pieces and pulse together until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
- Pulse in the buttermilk until the dough comes together.

Glaze:
Mix together confectioners sugar and milk to make the glaze.

Create the Muffins:
-Transfer to a floured work surface, and pat dough into a 10" square. Use a pizza cutter or sharp knife to quarter the dough, then cut each quarter into 16 equal pieces. Roll into balls
- Dip each ball in the maple butter, then the cinnamon sugar coating. Place 4-5 coated balls into each muffin cup press down gently.
- Tent the muffin tin with tin foil and bake until cooked through and golden, about 15-17 minutes.
-  While the muffins are still warm, drizzle the glaze over the muffins. Serve warm.

They are delicious!

Square of dough before separating into balls

balls of monkey bread in muffin pans before baking

Finished Result!

Rubix Cube Cake

As a big fan of the rubix cube, I thought I'd share this fun cake idea with you!

This traditional "Battenberg" cake's creator gave the following instruction:

"Battenberg cakes are constructed of rectangular pieces of alternatively coloured Victoria sponge cake, sandwiched together by jam and held together with walls of Marzipan. We decided that the different pieces of cake could be dyed the traditional six colours of the Rubik’s cube – white, red, blue, orange, green and yellow. Then to make the cake a little more Rubik’s like, we decided to have each slice of the cake reveal a different combination of coloured squares, just like a Rubik’s cube. To achieve this, we cut the coloured rectangles of sponge into different lengths. This was definitely a case where I needed the engineering mind of my other half to figure out the maths of this cake."

Looks like it would take all day to make, but how fun!

Avocado Ice Cream

Disclaimer: I did not find this recipe delicious but maybe you will. I still had to share!!!!

After watching the first season of Top Chef: Masters I became a huge fan of Rick Bayless, the chef mostly known for his Frontera Grill in Chicago. When Josie sent me Rick's recipe for avocado ice cream I knew I had to try it. You can find the link to the recipe here and below is the recipe with a few tweeks I made.

• 1.5 cups avocado puree (Peel and pit 3 ripe medium avocados and process in the food processor until smooth.)
• 1.5 cups water
• 1 and 1/3 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
• 1/3 cup tequila

In a small sauce pan heat all the water and sugar together until sugar is dissolved.

To the avocado puree in the food processor, add the water/sugar mix, lime juice and tequila. Pulse until well combined. Pour into a bowl and cover tightly with saran wrap (like put the saran wrap directly on top of the mixture to keep out any air. Pop in the refrigerator for at least an hour. After you puree your mixture should look like this:

Remove the mixture from the refigerator and pour into a prepared ice cream maker. It should stay in there for approximately 15-20 minutes until it firms up a bit.

Once it starts to look like ice cream (you will see the texture change from liquid to a bit more crystal like) move the ice cream into an airtight container. Once again cover with saran wrap. Pop it into the freezer to continue to harden up.

Serve the ice cream in small servings as the tequila gives it a rather strong flavor. Joe and I ate it after we had enchiladas. Josie and I had it after we had Italian sausage. Somehow no matter what you eat before will really prepare you for this unique taste. I have to say that Joe, Josie and I were not fans of this ice cream, possibly because of the strong tequila taste or possibly because we just couldn't wrap our heads around eating cold avocado as a dessert. The lesson learned is you will never know how something tastes until you try it! I love trying new and crazy recipes for fun and to broaden my taste horizons. Hopefully you will step out on a limb and try this dish or something else crazy that you have been wanting to try but never had the courage to. If you end up loving avocado ice cream please let us know!!!