Give thanks for late Thanksgiving posts

It's a tad late for a Thanksgiving post, but I still have two days til December hits, so I'm allowing it.
since Ken and I have been together, our Thanksgiving dinners have consisted of the glorious sides associated with the holiday. He said he would eat the turkey at his previous Turkey Days, but it was never a highlight. He's happy not to have it, so that omits the difficult task of cooking a poor, defenseless turkey for god knows how long. Yes, I'm pulling the ethical 'don't kill the turkey who has a Mommy somewhere' card.

Our dindin consisted of: string bean casserole (which I'm starting to lose passion for), mashed buttermilk potatoes, candied yams (!!!), cornbread, and stuffing. What would Thanksgiving be without dessert? I made an impromptu decision to make chocolate whiskey cake with pumpkin butter cream.

I'm attaching some photos of my favorite part: the candied yams. Again, my grandmom instilled my love for these gems. Sweet potatoes, butter, and brown sugar. Heaven.



We had seen  Chef Alex Guarnaschelli make cast iron skillet cornbread on her show a couple of weeks ago, so we decided to try it out ourselves. I used to LOVE cornbread as a kid. I remember my mom buying corn muffins for me at Acme when I was little, and I'm pretty sure I ate the entire four-pack every time (not at once!). At some point when I was older, I had really dry corn bread somewhere and was turned off. After seeing the show, I was motivated to try this festive bread one more time. Her recipe included a caramelized onion jam on top of the bread, but we excluded that. I love CO's, but it didn't sound appetizing in this context for some reason.

Basically, you preheat the oven with the skillet inside, make the batter (very easy), take out the skillet, throw some butter in (and watch it sizzle!), and pour the cornbread batter in. Once you do that, you get this:



As you can see, it starts cooking instantly. You then place the skillet in the oven to bake for about 25 minutes. The finished product is golden brown and warm! The bread was definitely yummy, but Hubby and I both agreed you need to at least top it with margarine or jam. I'm happy we made this, and I've had it subsequently had a piece or two with some eggs for breakfast. It's terribly Little House on the Prairie-esque, but it was a yummy idea.



Next up was the chocolate whiskey bundt cake w/pumpkin butter cream. In theory and taste, this cake was outstanding. Simply the ideal chocolate dessert. However, I hit a few snags during the process.

First you melt unsweetened cocoa powder, whiskey, butter, coffee, and sugar in a saucepan. My kitchen was smelling like a chocolate factory; it was awesome.



A dry ingredient mixture is whisked aside from the chocolate as well as eggs and vanilla whisked in a separate bowl. Once the chocolate is cooled for about five minutes, you add the egg mixture, then the dry ingredients to make the complete batter. I added some chocolate chips because both Hubby and I like the melted chips scattered throughout the cake.



Here's where problem one occurred. The recipe called for me to grease the pan and then add cocoa powder, rather than flour. I'm pretty sure this was for the cake's appearance since it wasn't intended to be iced after removing it from the bundt pan. I should have stuck with my usual method of using cooking spray and a little flour. The cake, even after cooling adequately, fell out of the pan. I didn't take a picture because it looked so bad, other than a single piece once the frosting was finished. I'll get to that at the end of the post.

While the deformed cake was cooling, I made the pumpkin butter cream. I was excited to try it and found a really easy, simple recipe. Up until the pumpkin entered the picture, the frosting was well on its way to perfection.



The second problem enters here. The pumpkin puree made the icing gritty. I got rid of the grit by adding extra powdered sugar, but that caused the pumpkin flavor to be lost. I consulted Hubby, and we decided to add a miniscule amount of pumpkin at a time to bring the taste back up. I did that, and it worked! But...(and there's always a but)...after the frosting cooled, it was back to being gritty. We were left with a beat up cake and weird looking icing. The catch?

Both were so so so so so delicious! The cake was really tasty with just enough chocolate, a hint of whiskey,  and perfectly moist. The icing had a mild pumpkin flavor with a subtle orange color, so it was really fun! I know I'll make this cake again and do the greasing my way. I won't add icing because I don't think it needs it. The pumpkin icing was a fun experiment though! Here's the finished product looking as good as it could be.

Here are the recipes for the cornbread and chocolate whiskey bundt cake!

Courtesy of The Food Network:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups coarsely ground cornmeal
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F and place a 9-inch cast iron skillet inside to heat while you make the batter.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk in the milk, buttermilk, and eggs. Whisk in almost all of the melted butter, reserving about 1 tablespoon for the skillet later on.

Carefully remove the hot skillet from the oven. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees F. Coat the bottom and sides of the hot skillet with the remaining butter. Pour the batter into the skillet and place it in the center of the oven. Bake until the center is firm and a cake tester or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 to 15 minutes and serve.

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Courtesy of Epicurious:

INGREDIENTS

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-process) plus extra for dusting pan*

(* I recommend  cooking spray and flour)

1 1/2 cups brewed coffee

1/2 cup American whiskey

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 cups sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 325°F. Butter bundt pan well, then dust with 3 tablespoons cocoa powder, knocking out excess.

Heat coffee, whiskey, butter, and remaining cup cocoa powder in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, whisking, until butter is melted. Remove from heat, then add sugar and whisk until dissolved, about 1 minute. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and cool 5 minutes.

While chocolate mixture cools, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together eggs and vanilla in a small bowl, then whisk into cooled chocolate mixture until combined well. Add flour mixture and whisk until just combined (batter will be thin and bubbly). Pour batter into bundt pan and bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes.

Cool cake completely in pan on a rack, about 2 hours. Loosen cake from pan using tip of a dinner

knife, then invert rack over pan and turn cake out onto rack.