Dessert Auction

For the last few years the young women have done a dessert auction. It basically earns us all our money for camp. I have a lot of fun coming up with cake ideas. I do like to make them look fancy but most of all taste really good! This year our Laurel advisor/Camp Director gave me some money to basically make one for her to be auctioned. I was really debating what to do and ended up trying out something a couple days before to make sure it would taste good. So here is what I made:

 This is a homemade chocolate cake with chocolate whipped cream filling and frosting. I decorated it with french vanilla pirouette cookies, chocolate blossoms (basically chocolate curls), and white chocolate dipped strawberries.

This cake is my new favorite. I made a similar one but have yet to make one for myself this awesome. It's homemade chocolate cake filled with peanut butter filling, peanut butter cups, and homemade hot fudge. Then I frosted it with a peanut butter frosting and topped it with peanut butter cups and homemade hot fudge.

For anyone wanting to try either of these you can get the recipe for everything below. Then you can put it together yourself. I did pipe on the hot fudge because it is much easier to control and make it look better.

For the cake you can get the recipe here (big secret I know!): https://www.hersheys.com/recipes/recipe-details.aspx?id=184&name=HERSHEY%27S-PERFECTLY-CHOCOLATE-Chocolate-Cake

For the chocolate whipped cream I use this recipe. It is my favorite and keeps the cake from being too sweet like a buttercream would: http://www.recipes4chocolatecake.com/frosting/whipped-cream.htm

Just a tip for dipping strawberries in case you don't know... always make sure your fruit is dry. I have much better success with white chocolate. Unless I refrigerate them when I dip them in milk or dark they just don't set up and that drives me crazy. So I prefer white chocolate because it hardens well and you can drizzle it with milk or dark and just pop it in the freezer or fridge to get it to set.

The peanut butter filling I used was close to this. I took a recipe but limited the amount of sugar and it turned out thicker like the pb in a pb cup. So that's why I used it for a filling. But it was so good!:
1 c. creamy pb, 1/2 c butter, 1-2 c powdered sugar (depending on your taste of sweetness), 2 tsp vanilla, and 4-6 tbsp milk. Blend it all together.

I used this recipe for the pb frosting. For sure my new favorite frosting. It's not super sweet which I love. I don't like frostings that are too sugary. Bleh. I think it kills the flavor of a good cake:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/fluffy-peanut-butter-frosting/

Then last but not least I used this hot fudge recipe. It. is. so. good. And it's super easy and piped on the cake really well. I needed one that wasn't too thick and if you use a good dark chocolate the bitter goes so well with the sweetened condensed milk that it just adds this really good flavor to the cake:  http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/06/hot-fudge-sauce-and-fondue/

So maybe I feel a little too passionate about cakes. But if I had two favorite cakes, these would be them. And they're so not hard to make. I'm the sporty tomboy. How on earth did I create these? I can't hardly even put makeup on. I just get really excited to make stuff like this each year to help earn the girls some money and to deliver a great cake! Sadly this year we found out that a member of the bishopric was trying to move the bidding along quicker so items wouldn't go for too high. I think there was some concern with some members spending too much money that maybe didn't have it. My cakes used to earn anywhere from $75-100 (one year $150!) and I think this year they went for only like $60 each. I was bummed because I really spent a lot of time and some money we didn't really have to perfect the pb chocolate cake recipe so that it could sell for a lot since I was unable to purchase an items myself. I was in the kitchen helping when my items were put up for auction so I don't even know how it went but a couple people told me it kind of got cut off quick. Bummer! Well $120 is better than nothing but I was really hoping to help the girls out more. Oh well. So there ya go!