Recipe #63, #64, and #65: Prunes, Potatoes, and Chocolate

The day after Christmas I was feeling defeat. My goal had been to finish the recipe challenge on Christmas Day, and here I was with three recipes left.

Sure, I was only one day off. No big deal, right?

Still all I could think of were the days I put off making a recipe for the challenge. I thought I had so much time left, but when it came to the final week, I was scrambling. Juggling the challenge with trying to finish up Christmas shopping, wrapping Christmas presents, and getting the house in some kind of sane order--well, I guess I'm lucky I was only one day off.

Recipe: Prune Cake
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: 40 min
Ease: 3
Taste: 6
Leftover Value: 7
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep in the Strainer!

PW's Prune Cake is in the breakfast section of The Pioneer Woman Cooks, however, the dust of the craziness of the holiday didn't settle until around 3 pm, so that is when I began to work towards finishing the recipe challenge.*

*Note: Yes, I did realize I had a chocolate cake left to make. And yes, I did realize that it would be just Hubby and me at home to eat these things...for dinner.

The most difficult* part of this recipe, you guessed it, were the prunes.

*Difficult, as in, added perhaps five extra working minutes.

The prunes are boiled to get them softened, and then are smashed before being added to the batter. I wasn't thrilled with their smell and was hoping that they would magically transform into clumps of sugar as the cake baked.

Sadly, they did not and when I ate the cake they remained my least favorite part of this cake. So much so, that my note in the book says, "could do w/o the prunes..."

I loved making the icing. In the recipe it looks terrifyingly hard, however, if specifically followed the ingredients literally work on their own to create this caramel colored icing that is poured over the warm cake.

I enjoyed it warm, but my sister-in-law (who we later would bring both the prune cake and chocolate sheet cake to at 9:30 at night) enjoyed it at room temperature.

Recipe: Chocolate Sheet Cake
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: 1 hr
Ease: 4
Taste: 10
Leftover Value: 10
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

This is one of the recipes from this book that I have made again and again...and again. In fact, I made it only a month previous to starting the recipe challenge. I made dinner for my sister-in-law's birthday and knowing the addictive wonderfulness that is this cake, she requested it as her cake of honor.

This cake is delicious warm or cold. If served warm, you must, I repeat MUST, have vanilla ice cream to serve with it. They pair so naturally, so beautifully, that I can't imagine forcing them to be apart. In my mouth, that is.

I don't know how the magic happens, but I have a hunch it has something to do with the cup of boiling water that is added to the cake mix.

The icing is poured over the hot cake and it is a flood of deliciousness.*

*Note: Make sure that the flood evenly disperses. It quickly begins to harden, and you don't want gaps of emptiness surrounded by mountains of icing.

I've noticed with baking this cake that sometimes 20 minutes leaves it a little underdone...like a fudgy brownie.

But, I'm not complaining about that if you aren't.

Recipe: PW's Potato Skins
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: 2 hr 15 min (active and non active time)
Ease: 5
Taste: 5
Leftover Value: No leftovers!
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep in the Strainer (however, several timing changes must be made)

This recipe almost did not come to be.

This is the picture that I almost left you with:

But I refused to be beaten by potatoes. So I put on my big girl panties and told them, "I'm going to make potato skins out of you yet!"*

*Note: This really didn't happen. I sort of puttered around the kitchen shouting all kind of spud obscenities and then told them they were getting eaten whether they liked it or not.

The problem here is that 45 minutes was far too long for these potatoes to bake. Right away, let me tell you that 1. yes I did use russet potatoes and b. yes, I did cook them at the right temperature. She doesn't say to let them cool, and considering that in her Twice Baked Potatoes recipe they weren't cooled before slicing, I thought it would be okay.

Perhaps I just had difficult potatoes that day. Potatoes that knew just how close I was to the finish. Impostor potatoes.

It was difficult, but I slabbed them with oil and baked them for the extra time they needed. Then I threw the fixings on them:

And out of the whole crew, there was one, one cooperative potato skin.

Despite the potato carcasses scattered on the pan, Hubby and I ate every single last one of those beasts.

Then I felt a wave of freedom pass over me, knowing that my recipe challenge had finally come to an end.