Even More Coming Soon!

As anyone who has been following Screw Your Diet is surely well aware, the updates here have slowed to a crawl. If only I had the time to earn straight As in culinary school, work my day job, do my usual boatload of homework, AND keep this site more up to date. But alas, there are only so many hours in a day. Even so, I’ve still got a load of content planned – I haven’t even come close to posting all of the meat dishes from my previous class!

The next wave of content is all about baking, since that’s the class I just completed. Everything from French bread (not pictured here, but still coming), éclairs, custards, plated desserts, and everything in between. Most of it is sweet, with a bit of savory baking here and there. There’s sure to be something for everyone, so check out the previews below to see what you have to look forward to. And, as always, I’ll do my best to start posting them as soon as I can.

Caramel Cake

This past week has not left me with a lot of time for cooking or baking at home, a fact you’ve no doubt noticed since I went 7 days without updating Screw Your Diet. Well, Saturday’s veal chops were the first step to getting things back on track here, and now I have something sweeter for your baking pleasure – caramel cake.

This is not an especially difficult recipe, and it isn’t as overpoweringly sweet as it looks. You will, however, be making caramel from scratch and that can be a tricky process. Just be sure you have a candy thermometer and that you use a small or medium sized sauce pan instead of a large one like I did. Kind of defeats the purpose of the thermometer if the liquid is too shallow to measure! I eyeballed it and got lucky, but I wouldn’t advise you take that risk yourselves.

Mini Molten Lava Cakes

Lava cake is one of those extraordinarily rich and decadent desserts that you often see on the menu of a fancy restaurant. The truth of the matter, however, is that there’s really nothing all that fancy about lava cake. It can be made quickly and easily, and with pretty basic ingredients. When done correctly, what you get is less like an actual cake and almost more like hot pudding that’s wearing a cakey hat. It’s creamy and delicious, and the perfect dessert to top off that impending food coma.

Chocolate Swirled Cheesecake Bars

There’s one thing that should be readily apparent by now to those who follow this blog with any regularity – lately, I really like desserts that can be made in bar form. So I figured, what better way to present a cheesecake than in bar form? It’s a relatively simple recipe and doesn’t even require a cheesecake pan – perfect for someone like myself who has never made a cheesecake before. I’m happy to report that the results were delicious, but come on – it’s cheesecake. Did you expect anything less?

Mixed Berry Upside Down Cake

Having exhausted a large portion of my chocolate stores making the Hot Cocoa Cookies last weekend, I decided that the next dessert I bake ought to be something that doesn’t use any. I spent the better part of my day just figuring out what the hell I felt like making. I wanted something interesting, but simple and light as well. I had almost given up searching, nearly resigning myself to just making another cinnamon pull apart bread, when I came across a recipe for upside down cake. It was love at first sight.

Having never made (or even eaten) an upside down cake before, I really did not know what to expect going into this one. It came out with a texture somewhere between bread pudding and cake and, frankly, I’m not sure if that’s how it’s supposed to be. One thing I am sure of however, is that it tastes quite good.

Easy, Light, Chocolate Cake

So I know this blog is called Screw Your Diet, but I did say that at least every once and a while, I would post something relatively healthy. I don't know how often that will actually happen, or if there will even be any regularity to the healthier stuff, but I'm sure I'll come up with a plan at some point.

Anyway, for my first healthy-ish recipe here on SYD, I've chosen a light and moist, almost spongy chocolate cake with a cream cheese based frosting. I mean, it's still a chocolate cake, but it's not particularly rich and won't fill you up the way something like cinnamon sugar pull apart bread might do. The original recipe called for espresso powder, making this a mocha cake, but seeing as how I didn't have any on hand, it's just chocolate.