Comfort Food Round 2

Chris likes to find random videos online and play them for me to try and make me smile. I am not very good at navigating you tube and Chris has much more fun finding the best videos than I do.

He played this one for me and I can’t get the song out of my head!

On the poll, no one voted for chocolate cake. I was surprised since I always thought people loved chocolate cake. I am not a big cake fan, or really a very big fan of sweet foods altogether, a savory dish is more my style of comfort food. I could not stop thinking about it though, is chocolate cake no longer a comfort food? I decided to turn to the queen of comfort, Mama Deen.

I chose to make Paula Deen’s Mississippi Mud Cake. I don’t normally bake and the idea of exact measurements was frightening. After a late night trip to the store, and then sending Chris for one more ingredient, I finally managed to concoct the extreme, rich, sweet comforting cake. If you don’t find chocolate cake comforting, you have to try this recipe.

Recipe courtesy of Miss Paula Deen
Serves: 12 to 16 servings

Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup cocoa
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 bag miniature marshmallows

Icing:
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons cocoa
6 tablespoons milk
1 (1-pound) box confectioners' sugar
1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 13 by 9-inch baking pan.
Combine the sugar, salt, and flour in a large mixing bowl. Bring the butter, oil, cocoa, and 1/4 cup water to a boil in a saucepan. Add to the flour mixture.
Beat together the eggs, baking soda, buttermilk, and vanilla. Add to the chocolate mixture, mix well, and pour into the prepared pan. Bake for 30 minutes.
While the cake is baking, make the icing by melting the butter in the cocoa and milk over low heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, then remove from the heat. Stir in the confectioners' sugar. Slowly mix in the nuts and the vanilla. Take the cake from the oven, and when it cools a bit cover it with miniature marshmallows. Pour the warm icing over the cake and the marshmallows. Cool the cake before serving.

Here is the cake portion in the oven, without a mixer I was nervous about the lumps you see in the batter.

While the cake was baking I made the icing, oh my! A stick of butter and a pound of powdered sugar later I had an amazing, fudgelike syrup, check it out!
Here you can see the marshmallow layer. I tucked in a layer of mini marshmallows and then put it under the broiler for 30-45 seconds to puff up the marshmallow and make it nice and soft. It turned out really nice.

Here are our plates of midnight comfort food, with the only appropriate drink; milk.