The Ultimate Dessert

Here's the recipe from Melissa--straight from an email she sent me. (I cheated and just bought Heath bars for the one I made and yeah--I figured out how to not turn the heavy whipping cream into butter finally--the pictures above are the cake I made. Yum yum yum.)

The North Pole Toffee Cake-- my way-- is a bit more work than the normal one because I made everything from scratch so as to avoid any hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup in the ingredients. The cake itself was a fairly simple recipe.

Emergency Chocolate Cake

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/4 cup water
1 cup mayonaise
1 tbsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8'' square cake pan. Whisk the flour, sugar, and baking soda together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl , whisk cocoa and water together until smooth. Whisk in mayo and vanilla. Stir the mayo mixture into the flour mixture until combined. POur batter into prepared pan, smooth the top and bake unitl a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes. Let the pan cool on a wire rack for 1 to 2 hours.

Toffee

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 tbsp water
1 tbsp lite colored blue agave nectar (or corn syrup)
1 cup chocolate chips (semi-sweet or milk chocolate)

Line a 15x10x1 baking pan with foil. Butter the sides of a 2qt heavy saucepan. Melt butter in pan; add sugar water and syrup. Cook and stir over medium high heat until mixture boils. Reduce heat to medium and clip candy thermometer to side of pan(if using one). Continue boiling at a steady rate, stirring frequently, until thermometer registers 290 degrees (soft crack stage), about 15 minutes. Remove saucepan from heat. Pour candy into prepared pan, spreading quickly. Let candy stand for 2 minutes or until set. Sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over top. Let stand one minute. When chocolate is softened spread it over the candy with a knife or spatula. Chill about 20 minutes or until firm. When firm use foil to lift candy out of pan. Break into pieces. Store tightly covered.

I made two of the eight inch cakes and cut each one in half so that I had four layers. I used about 1/2 -2/3 of the toffee (about 2 cups crushed into small pieces).

Whipping cream works a lot like egg whites, you have to watch closely so that you don't get butter (yes, you made butter). You beat the whipping cream (I used 1 qt for this cake) on the highest spead and test it periodically for "peaks". Soft peaks curl over, Stiff peaks stay up straight. If you haven't done this with egg white before let me know and I will explain it to you aver the phone. When you get to soft peaks. You atart adding powdered sugar slowly (2-3 tbsp at a time) until you get the desired level of sweetness. For Northe pole toffee cake I also added 1/4 cup of cocoa. Once you have the right sweetness and stiff peaks ,you are ready to mix in 1 cup of toffee pieces. Then assemble the cake. Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of pieces for the top. Put the whole cake into the freezer for 30 -60 minutes. This will make it easier to cut.

This is one incredible dessert!