Continuing the discussion from 
Victory! :
Reciplease indeed. Post 'em if you got 'em!
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I get a lot of compliments when I make this recipe:
Normally, fudge is a pain to make, because you need to get it to a very specific temperature to get the size of the sugar crystals just right. This, however, uses Marshmallow Fluff as a cheater ingredient, which already has very small sugar crystals, so you don’t have to worry about it.
Of course, you need to use real butter. I mean, come on, it’s fudge. It’s not supposed to be healthy.
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ActionAbe’s Heart of Darkness Wolfpack Chocolate Cake
(So-called because it contains enough chocolate to poison a pack of wolves and is darker than the void that would normally house Donald Trump’s soul, if such a thing existed.)
For this you will need:
Cake:
- 3/4 cup Dutch Process or alkali process cocoa powder (It is critical that you use this and not “natural” cocoa powder. Natural in this context doesn’t refer to “organic” but rather “unprocessed” cocoa. Natural cocoa is brick red in color, looks tragically brown when cooked.)
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup of milk
- 1/2 cups of canola or vegetable oil.
- 1 3/4 cups of sugar
- 1/4 cup of dark chocolate sauce (look for something that’s basically just cocoa and sugar in the ingredients, nothing fancy).
- 1 3/4 cups of pastry or cake flour
- 1 1/2 tsp. (a long dash) vanilla extract
- 1 tsp (a short dash) salt
(I never measure these and it seriously makes no difference as long as you’re not being stupid.) - 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and
- 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda (on the other hand, I always go by the book with leavening, and you should too- unless you’re experimenting.)
- 1 cup of boiling water.
Icing
- 1/2 bar (2 oz.) of Ghirardelli semi-sweet baking chocolate.
- 1/3 cup of cocoa powder.
- 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar.
- 1/4 cup of margarine (divided).
- 1/2 tsp (a short dash) of vanilla extract.
- 2 tsp. milk.
- Fresh strawberries/raspberries/cherries for garnish. To taste.
- More chocolate sauce for garnish. To taste.
- Whipped Cream for garnish. (Optional. If you’re a wuss and things get too chocolatey for you. Wuss.)
Directions
Cake
- “Bloom” the cocoa in the boiling water. This makes it easier to dissolve in the batter and brings out the chocolatey flavor. You’ll also thank me when you turn on your mixer later and chocolate dust doesn’t immediately fly everywhere. Also oil and flour two nine inch cake pans and preheat your damn oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit!
Let me tell you a story about a little boy who didn’t pre-heat his oven. Once upon a time, there was a little boy who didn’t preheat his oven. A wise wizard asked him why, and the little boy told her that he didn’t see the point, and couldn’t you just cook it longer? The wizard warned him that he should always pre-heat, or tragedy would befall him. He didn’t heed her warning and then he dropped dead on the ground instantly. The End. Moral: Always pre-heat your oven!
- Put the sugar, oil, eggs, milk, and chocolate sauce in your mixing bowl and blend together using a mixer. You’re not going to get great aeration, and this cake comes out a little dense but not unreasonably so. For a fluffier texture, use butter or margarine and utilize a creaming method.
- Add the remaining ingredients and integrate well until batter is as smooth and creamy as it’s going to get. It will be very thin if you used oil and not a solid fat. Pour out evenly into the two cake pans
- Place cake pans in preheated oven for 35 minutes or until the world smells like cake and you’re singing Comfort Eagle and are dressed up like a sultan in your onion head hat. Test with a toothpick for doneness.
- Let cool before icing.
Icing
- Cut up the chocolate into bits and ever so lightly melt half the margarine. Place melted margarine over chocolate so that it melts and whisk together.
- Add remaining ingredients and whisk together by hand at first. You can use a mixer later, but even on its lowest setting chocolate powder tends to go flying.
- Refrigerate at least thirty minutes before icing.
- Use fruit and chocolate sauce for garnish. Use whipped cream if you hate America. Or the Queen. Or whatever.
Notes: This was based on some vegan recipes I adapted back out of veganism basically to accommodate someone who is lactose-intolerant. The milk I used was lactose free, but since these are adapted from vegan recipes, you may have luck replacing fats and proteins with typical non-animal sources. Hence some of the odd bits like “creaming” with vegetable oil. Also mandatory apology for volume measure where weights should be.
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Should one of those be soda?
ETA: Also, the oil seems to be missing from the cake ingredients
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Thanks for catching that. That was a test. Of your, uh… baking abilities. Well done!
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No worries! Thanks for the recipe.
I’ll be sure to make it the next time I have a way to get rid of a cake that size!
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Heh, heh, great-sounding recipe and great reading 
A few observations:
When you are using cocoa, sugar, and water in the cake recipe, it seems a bit odd to also use 1/4 cup of chocolate sauce that is “basically just cocoa and sugar in the ingredients”—why not just use a bit more cocoa, sugar, and water in the recipe? (One reason I can think of to use a prepared sauce is that blending different brands of cocoa/chocolate may give a more complex flavor? A second reason might be that the sauce is presumably already well-cooked, which deepens the chocolate flavor?)
Any recipe that calls for two 9-inch round pans will also fit in three 8-inch round pans. People are unreasonably impressed if you make them a three-layer cake! (Bake for a bit less time, and just make a bit more frosting, or perhaps put raspberry jam between two of the layers.)
That cake recipe is veeery similar to the recipe for “Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake” that’s on the label of Hershey’s cocoa cans, which recipe I’ve used to the great delight of many. (I haven’t actually used the Hershey’s brand in a while, but I’ve saved an old label with the recipe.)
Indeed the batter will be thin, and may feel wrong—just go ahead and do what Abe says!
With the Hershey’s recipe I’ve occasionally had trouble getting the cake out of the pans in one piece…an intended three-layer 75th-birthday cake became chunks-of-cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, and everyone loved it 
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Toffee Apple Pork Ribs:
Make some apple sauce - it needs to be sharp, as it’s getting covered in mucho sugary business, so don’t sweeten it. Bramley apples, some black pepper and a little balsamic vinegar is perfect. Liberally cover the ribs, and drizzle golden syrup/molasses/black treacle/maple syrup, whatever takes your fancy in that vein over the top, seal well with a double layer of foil and cook loooooow for a couple of hours or so, uncover, give 'em another dose of the treacle and sprinkle with demerara sugar, then caramelise under the grill. Everyone will love you.
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Canadian Jerk “ribs”
Imma use pictures.
First get some beef rib trimings aka “finger meat” comes like this:
Looks like this:
Then about 1/4 cup of this (or more if you like it really hot):
With about the same of this (more or less depending on your salt preference)
And one of these (I often use two so its more like a bath for the meat but its so wasteful. You do you.)
Pour over finger meats. Try to get all the meats submerged. Marinate in fridge at least 24hrs. The meats will start to turn black from the sugar. This is what you want. Stir and turn the meats a few times so all sides turn black. (Ive done 48hours and its amazing youre basically candying the meat)
BBQ. Propane is fine. Charcoal is better. Salty spicy sweet finger meats! Everyone will like!
Ive also done this as a dry rub when i dont have time to marinate over night. But you’ll need this instead of maple syrup:
And jerk powder instead of paste.
Jerk powder is delicious but NOT HOT. Spicy with a pleasant heat but if you want HOT you need to use the paste.
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You could absolutely adjust it this way, but I made the recipe for the first time yesterday, and I wanted to make sure it would work. I don’t like sweetness that much. The goal was to actually make it less sweet without going overboard and potentially screwing it up. I’ve found that chocolate often suffers for being too sweet and as long as you’re using decent cocoa and blooming it, you get more out of it by using less sugar. Chocolate sauce uses less sugar by volume than say… sugar- and is already well balanced. That was my reasoning. I think there’ are only so many things your should tweak with a recipe you’ve never tried. Though if you cook enough, you quickly realize that every American home cooking recipe basically comes from the same four canonical sources: Julia Child, The Joy of Cooking, The Taste of Country Cooking, and product labels from food suppliers. The Internet has interestingly made this more extreme, not less. So I’ve probably made that cake a bunch of times by now without realizing it.
I did use the different chocolates in the icing for the reason you described, though!
TRUTH. I think using 8 inch pans helps with that somewhat. Flexible silicone spatulas really help here because you can very effectively slip down the side and under going around the cake That way at least the edge is in tact and if the middle has a hole in it, you can spackle with fruit and icing.
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This reminds me of a recipe of my own.
American Jerk Orange
For this you will need:
- Donald Trump
- A discontented and gullible American public.
- Xenophobia.
- An aging broadcast media industry that is ratings focused and incapable of understanding the Internet.
- Several clusterfucks.
- A weak opposition.
Directions:
- Place Donald Trump in front of a camera.
- Combover badly.
- Toss in some xenophobia and about 3/4 of the clusterfucks, and broadcast to American public.
- While that’s going, run a weak opposition that does not seem responsive to genuine if misplaced malcontent coming from a lot of the country and let voters cool.
- Leave until the second Tuesday in November, adding remaining clusterfucks gradually.
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Ewwww.
You actually serve that to your guests?
I mean, I know that different people have different tastes, and that some blasphemers do not like the taste of chocolate (gasp!), but there are limits to my tolerance, and if someone tried to serve that to me, I’d get up from the table and find somewhere else to eat.
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Fair warning, this is draft one of a replacement I’m slowly working on for a fairly famous (but overcomplicated, ingredient-heavy, and time-consuming) dish called … Sausage Potato Lasagna. The important bit is “draft one.” 
I have made it. It does work. I’m just not promising anything past that.
Sauce
3.5 cups milk
Half an onion, diced fine
Half cup of parmesan
3 cloves garlic peeled and diced fine
1 tsp salt
Several grinds of ground pepper
2 tbs flour
Lasagna
7 medium potatoes, cleaned but not peeled, cut into 1/4in slices
1 lb hot (spicy) breakfast sausage
Fresh spinach
Small container Ricotta
Mozzarella
Instructions
- Fill a large pot with a teaspoon of salt and fill it two thirds full with water. Add the potato slices to the water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to medium heat and continue to heat long enough to finish the potatoes.
- Combine sauce ingredients (except flour) in a medium sauce pain and heat on medium until it starts bubbling. Incorporate the flour with a whisk and reduce temperature to low.
- In a 14 inch skillet, spread out the breakfast sausage and cook on medium eat until fully cooked.
- Pour one cup of sauce into a 13x11 baking dish and spread evenly. Cover bottom of baking dish with one layer of the potato slices. Cover potatoes with one layer of spinach. Use half of the sausage to cover the spinach. Use the entire ricotta container to cover the sausage.
- Use one cup of mozzarella on top of the ricotta. Use one cup of the sauce on top of the mozzarella. Cover sauce with a single layer of potatoes. Cover potatoes with one layer of spinach.
- Cover spinach with remainder of sausage. Cover sausage with one cup of mozzarella. Cover mozzarella with the last of the sauce. Place a final layer of potatoes on top.
- Cover baking dish with foil. Cook for 35 minutes at 350F˚. Remove foil and continue cooking for another 10 minutes.
- Place 1 cup of mozzarella on top. Wait 15 minutes before eating.
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You, sir or madam, are a baker and a wit and an all-around swell person!
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Cut banana(s)into slices. Freeze them. Then put in food processor. It’s dairy free one ingredient banana flavored ice cream! I may have seen this on here.
Optional: Looking at it.
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Using a spaceship to eat bananas is taking unitaskers to levels even @frauenfelder would balk at.
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I have two roommates on Weight Watchers, and as the work-from-home guy, I do the cooking and have food ready when folks get home. So I’m always looking for quick, easy, tasty, and WW-friendly recipes. Happily there’s several surprisingly excellent WW cookbooks I use that keep those things in mind. But I have a few back-pocket quickie recipes that are always hits.
Hummus Chicken
Use a mandoline slicer to thinly slice zucchini, squash, and some onion until you’ve covered the bottom of an oiled baking dish. Season liberally with salt & pepper (or Lawry’s or Old Bay).
Rinse off, then pat dry six chicken breasts. Salt & pepper. Nestle atop the veggies and coat with a good amount of your favorite flavor of hummus. Red pepper flavor works well. Sprinkle smoked paprika and some lemon juice over everything for color and flavor. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or so. The hummus will become a tasty crust and the veggies will brown.
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Another super fast low-WW-points tasty recipe:
Baked Chicken "wings"
Get a packet of chicken tenderloins. I usually get 2-3 lbs.
Get out two bowls. In one bowl, mix 1/2 cup milk, 1 egg white, and 1/4 cup of mayo, plus about 1/3 packet of ranch dressing mix (Italian dressing mix works well too). In the other, mix half-and-half seasoned breadcrumbs and panko breadcrumbs, plus the rest of the seasoning packet.
Dredge each tenderloin in the wet, then the dry, laying them out on a lightly greased baking pan. Bake at 400F for about 15-20 mins, flipping to make sure they’re browned and crispy. Serve on a salad or with dipping sauces and veggies on the side.
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