Chewy Almond Chocolate Cake

We had a Happy Birthday Celebration at our house this week! Grammy A’s Bday!
On the menu was:
~ Salad with Homemade Croutons
~Lasagna
~Garlic Bread
~Chewy Almond Chocolate Cake
The cake was a big hit! Something different and definitely chewy-yumminess!
The only thing I tweaked on this recipe from Taste of Home was the name. Surprise, surprise for me.
Chewy Almond Chocolate Cake
3 cups sugar
3/4 lb. melted butter (uhm yeah, that is 3 sticks)
4 eggs
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. almond extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup raspberry jam
1 cup mini chocolate chips
3/4 cup sliced almonds
Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Mix the sugar and butter in a mixing bowl on low. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add the extracts.
Sift together flour, cocoa and salt. Add to batter, mixing until smooth.
Pour into a greased and papered 9 inch cake pan, reserving about 1/3 of the batter. Carefully smooth out a thin layer of the raspberry jam. Top with chocolate chips and half the sliced almonds. Carefully cover with the remaining batter.
The word “carefully” is used …that translates to it’s a little tricky to do without getting your ingredients mixed together. BUT, if I can do it so can you!
Sprinkle the top of the cake with the remaining sliced almonds.
Bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.
I let it cool. Then removed it from the pan.
And so this is how it turned out…

Homemade Hot Fudge

I promised recipes and I have been slacking off! As you know we homeschool and I’ve been having to re-evaluate our learning tools (curriculum!)  and blogging has gotten put on the back burner. Only so much computer time and I’ve been researching instead of blogging right now. :-)
So without further a-do…
HOMEMADE HOT FUDGE
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
1/4 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups water
1-2 tsp. vanilla
Mix all ingredients EXCEPT VANILLA, into a medium saucepan. Stir constantly and bring to a boil. Lower heat and continue stirring for 8 minutes on a low boil/simmer.
Remove from burner and add 1-2 tsp vanilla.
Cool a bit…then drizzle over anything you can think of! :-)
Store in refrigerator. This makes quite a bit which is nice. I don’t know how long to tell you it will keep for ~~ it never lasts THAT long in our house!
I have had this recipe for years and really don’t know where it came from so I can’t give credit. And gasp! This one I haven’t tweaked at all. Surprising hey?