Not sure what to cook for dinner, or what kind of cake to make for your loved one’s birthday? Try what I like to call recipe hacks. With a little help from google, allrecipes.com user reviews, and a bit of creativity and thought… you can mix up and tweak some of the best recipes out there!
For the past year I’ve grown fond of googleing recipes that I’ve never made before, or tried in a restaurant and wanted to make at home. I usually land on websites like allrecipes.com and recipezaar.com. Occasionally I make it to Food Network or Martha Stewart.
Once I find the recipe or two that appeals to me the most, I check out the reviews. The reviews are a where you’ll find a wealth of awesome tips and advice of what works and what doesn’t. At this point I may print out one recipe or both, and make some notes. If there is an ingredient we don’t like, I may substitute for something else or leave it out if it’s not crucial.
Today I decided to try this method with Mike’s birthday cake. White chocolate cake to be specific. All the reviewers claimed these cakes are very time-consuming and difficult, so I was looking forward to the challenge. I made TWO different white chocolate frosting recipes. One from my cake doctor recipe book which is thick and rich from the cream cheese, another from this recipe on allrecipes.com. The second one turned out lighter and has a neat texture to it – you use regular sugar vs powdered. I was not interested in making the cake from scratch since the reviews were not as good (claimed it was “greasy”) so I pulled another Cake Doctor hack and made white cake mix according to the directions and added white chocolate pudding mix to make it extra yummy. I ended up testing the frostings to determine which one to use in between the layers as filling, and which one to frost the outside with. I ended up using the cream cheese based white chocolate icing in the middle and the fluffy textured one on the outside. Add some chopped pecans (Mikey’s favorite) and a nice cake stand, and it’s complete!
Some other recipes I’ve hacked that we particularly love: sweet tomato chutney, butter-finger cupcakes (from Mikey’s birthday last year), Outback potato soup, and sour cream enchiladas.
Please excuse the lovely generation one iPhone pics!
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