Crawlin Cake Recipes

CREEPY-CRAWLY CAKE

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make the cake: Coat two 9-inch cake pans with cooking spray. Line bottoms with parchment, and coat with spray. Dust with all-purpose flour, tapping out excess. Whisk together flours, baking soda, and 3/4 teaspoon salt.
• Beat butter and sugar with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Beat in flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat in melted chocolate. Divide batter between pans, and smooth tops using an offset spatula.
• Bake cakes until a toothpick inserted into the centers comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool in pans set on wire racks for 30 minutes. Turn out cakes onto racks, remove parchment, and let cool completely.
• Make the ganache: Bring cream to a gentle simmer in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Pour over chopped chocolates and butter in a bowl. Let stand for 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth and shiny. Let stand until thickened, about 40 minutes. Transfer 1 3/4 cups ganache to a bowl, and fold in malt balls; reserve remaining ganache.
• Transfer 1 cake to a serving platter (top side up). Spread ganache-malt ball filling on top, and top with remaining cake (top side up). Refrigerate until set, about 15 minutes. Cut a large wedge from cake to serve on another plate. Pour remaining ganache (reheat if necessary) over cake and wedge, and let drip down sides and into cut center of cake. Garnish cake and platter with rubber cockroaches.

LOUISIANA CRAWFISH CAKES

Steps:

• Heat oil in sauce pan and sweat onions and peppers for 1 minute. Add garlic and crawfish tails and heat through. Add Worcestershire sauce, crystal hot sauce, salt and L.A. spice. Remove from heat and let cool. Beat eggs in stainless bowl and add crawfish mixture. Fold in Parmesan and 1 cup bread crumbs. Combine all ingredients and form into 5-ounce patties. Dust cakes with additional bread crumbs. Heat crawfish cake through in broiler. Place corn puddding in center of plate. Place heated crawfish cake on top. Zig-zag cilantro cream over entire plate. Top cake with parsley sprig.

ORANGE CHOCOLATE CAKE

Steps:

• In a large bowl, beat the cake mix, eggs, juice, pudding mix and extract if desired until well blended and smooth. Sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts into a greased and floured 10-in. fluted tube pan. Pour two-thirds of batter into pan. Combine chocolate syrup with remaining batter; pour into pan. , Bake at 350° for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto wire rack.

BEST EVER CRAB CAKES

Steps:

• In a medium bowl, whisk together egg, mayonnaise, lemon juice, red pepper flakes, tarragon, and scallions. Gently stir in crabmeat, being careful not to break up meat. Gradually mix in cracker crumbs, adding until desired consistency is achieved.
• Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat. Form crab mixture into 4 patties. Place patties in skillet, and cook until golden brown, about 5 to 6 minutes on each side.

CRAB CAKES

Steps:

• Heat the broiler to 500 degrees (or its highest setting). On your oven's highest rack, broil all the bread slices on a baking sheet for 2 to 3 minutes, or until golden and crisp but not burned. Flip all the slices over and broil for another 2 to 3 minutes. Turn the broiler off and allow the bread to crisp in the oven until totally dry, 15 to 20 minutes.
• Remove the bread from the oven and let cool. Using a box grater or rolling pin, coarsely grate and crush the bread slices into bread crumbs (or, pulse them in a food processor). The crumbs should look and feel like sand; you should get about 4 cups. Set the bread crumbs aside.
• In a large cast-iron skillet, melt the butter over high heat. Once the butter is melted, add the onion and cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes.
• Pour the butter and onion into a large bowl. Whisk the flour into the melted butter and onion, then slowly whisk in the milk to make a creamy sauce. Once the sauce is smooth, whisk in the eggs, lemon juice, vinegar and mace.
• Add the crab meat to the cream sauce and mix lightly with a fork; don't break up the pieces of crab meat. Gently fold in just enough of the bread crumbs so that the mixture holds together (about 2 1/2 cups). Divide the crab mixture into 12 equal portions, setting them on a baking sheet as you go. They should be thick rounds - about the size of the palm of your hand, and roughly 1 1/2 inches thick.
• Using your hand, take a scoop of the toasted bread crumbs and coat each crab cake.
• Wipe out the skillet and heat the oil over high. Once the oil is hot, place a few of the crab cakes in the skillet. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 3 to 5 minutes on each side, or until browned and cooked through. Place the cooked crab cakes on a paper towel to drain. Working in batches, cook the remaining crab cakes, adding more oil as needed.
• Serve crab cakes immediately, or set aside in a warm oven (see Tip) while you cook the remaining crab cakes.

CRAWLIN' CAKE

Steps:

• grease and flour a 12 cup bundt pan mix by hand (canuse a mixer) the cake mix, eggs, milk and oil. Fold in the frosting ( use all of it or save a little to drizzle over the cake after baking) Spoon into the prepared pan and bake at 325° for 1 hr. Be sure to put a baking sheet under your bundt pan in case the cake 'crawls' over the sides of the pan and onto your oven. Cool for 10min.and turn the cake out onto a plate.