Bailey's Irish Cream Chocolate Cake

This cake is all about two things:

1. Fun!
2. Butter!!

I'm not going to lie, this cake is NOT good for you!  It has a full 8oz cup of Bailey's Irish Creme, nearly four sticks of butter, heavy cream, and other pantry naughties.  It is awfully delicious though, and the texture is out of this world!  Picture a bite of something with a texture that falls somewhere between "undercooked brownie" and "fluffy cake."  But creamier.... and with more depth to the chocolate!

Let's Get Started!

For the cake

• Cooking spray, for the pan
• 1 box chocolate cake mix (your favorite), plus the ingredients called for on the box

For the "goop"

• 1 14-oz. can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk (who doesn't love this stuff?)
• 1/3 c. heavy cream
• 1/3 c. Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder (do NOT skimp on the cocoa powder!)
• 1/4 c. + 2oz Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur

For the frosting

• 2 Sticks of Butter, softened (NOT melted.  Let it sit on your counter for awhile)
• 5 Cups of powdered sugar (Yes... five (5) Cups)
• 1/2 Cup Baileys Irish Cream Liqueur
• 1/4 Cup Ghirardelli cocoa powder
• 1 tsp. vanilla (Genuine Vanilla Extract, don't use Imitation.  Ever.)
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• Three handfuls of mini-chocolate chips to garnish

Step 1 - The Cake
Step 1 is easy.  Simply bake a boxed chocolate cake, according to the directions on the box.  The only thing to worry about here is the pan.  You'll need a 13x9 pan, suitable for presentation (unless you plan to park your fanny on the couch in front of a 12 hour Hallmark Christmas Movie Marathon with this cake, a fork, and some Irish Coffee and if that's the case, who am I to judge?).  Cupcakes or layered cake will not work for this recipe.

Step 2 - The Goop
While the cake is in the oven (set a timer, the cake is kind of important), you can assemble the goop!  Pour all four ingredients into a mixing bowl.  Pour the 2oz of Bailey's Irish Creme into an empty coffee mug. Take turns sipping from the coffee mug while whisking the ever-loving-crap out of the goop!   Whisk, fast and hard and crazy, until your arm gets tired, then have another sip from the mug.  Repeat until the mug is empty and the goop is completely mixed together.

Scrape every single drop of the goop into a large vessel for pouring.  A small pitcher maybe, or a large tumbler.  Clean out the mixing bowl because you'll need it for the frosting!

Step 3 - "The Goopening"

When the cake comes out of the oven, set it on the counter and grab yourself something from your kitchen drawer that's about as thick as a No. 2 pencil.  The handle of a wooden spoon, maybe, or the fat end of a chopstick works well.  Begin in the upper left of the cake surface and while the cake is still hot, gently poke and twist a perfectly round hole into the cake, all the way to the bottom.  Move over an inch, and repeat.  Do this until you have impaled the entire cake with holes that are no more than one inch away from each other.  Take a deep breath and grab your goop.  With a steady hand, pour the goop all over the cake and into all of the holes.  Make sure you get nice, even distribution!  Park the goopy cake into the refrigerator for 90 minutes so the cake can recover from the shock!  I mean, how would YOU feel if someone pulled you out of a warm bed and covered you with chocolate cream??

Step 4 - The Frosting
While the cake coming to terms with its new goopy partner, you can make the frosting!  Using a stand mixer (a hand mixer will do, but you won't be able to make this frosting with a hand whisk), dump your softened butter into the bowl and crank up the horsepower.  Whip this butter until it's nice and creamy.  Slow the mixer down and add the Bailey's, Vanilla, and salt.  SLOWLY, add the cocoa powder, being careful not to allow your mixer to sling the powder all over your kitchen (it happens, trust me)!  While the mixer is still slowly doing its thing, add the powdered sugar in small doses, until you're out of sugar and you're staring at a beautiful, creamy, tan-brown, fluffy frosting!  

When the cake's 90 minutes are up, pull it out of the fridge.  It will look "funky" and not like cake at all.  In fact, it will look a little like a WWI "No Man's Land," littered with artillery holes.  IT'S OK!!  Frosting covers all!  Use every gram of frosting (except for what you already licked off of the beaters) to evenly cover this cake, then sprinkle on your min-chips (or chocolate shavings, chocolate sprinkles, dust, sugar, or whatever else might suit your fancy).

A word of caution... This cake is RICH and one piece is ENOUGH for awhile!  You may wish to consider it a "meal replacement" rather than an "after dinner treat" or whatever.  Also, this is a bit of an adult cake.  The chocolate is real, and it's rich, and the flavor is deep!  While kids would certainly enjoy it, they wouldn't enjoy it "properly!"

Thanksgiving Pig (Smoked Ham), and Sauce!

Turkey is great and all, but can we talk a bit about the OTHER meat that's on the table?  HAM, baby! While it may buck tradition a bit, here's how to make a whole ham that will rival your Turkey in presentation and taste!

35lbs of Juicy Pig Butt!

What's the deal with ham?  First let's talk about exactly where it comes from... It’s as if all of the butchers and hog farmers in the world got together and made a pact to confuse the general populace.  First things first, “Ham” comes from a pig’s buttock (left or right).  While a “Pork Butt” might sound like a pig-bootie, the Butt (or “Boston Butt”) is actually from the pork shoulder.  Confused yet?  It gets better.  If you cut the buttock out of a pig, it’s not called a “Ham” yet, it’s called a “Picnic.”  Some call it a “picnic ham” or a “country ham” which is even more confusing.  What you need to know is this; a “Picnic” does not become a “Ham” until it is salt cured, and cooked (usually smoked).  When you buy a ham from the store, if the label says “Ham,” then it’s already cooked and safe to eat.  Technically, you could bring it home, cut it open, and eat it right away (but it won't taste very good, to say nothing of the rubbery texture).

Curing and smoking your own ham from scratch, starting with a raw Picnic is a chore and while I’ve done it, I don’t recommend it because it’s involved, messy, and it takes days or weeks to do it right.  Therefore, I buy “Hams” and then cook them (ok, “re-heat” them, essentially) at home, adding flavor, etc.  They're super easy to find during the holidays, even Walmart sells Cook's 20-30lb whole bone-in hams at this time of the year!

Smoking a ham is one of the easiest things in the world to do.  

You Will Need:

• 1 Whole Bone-in Ham (not sliced, not "halved," not boneless) 
• 1/2 Cup Honey
• 1/2 Cup Dijon Mustard
• 1/4 Cup Chili Powder
• 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar

Why a "whole, bone-in ham?"  Lots of reasons... If the ham has been cut in half or spiral-sliced, all of the moisture will leak right the hell out when you put it on your smoker or into your oven and it will dry out like nobody’s business.  If your grandmother ever cooked one of these, she probably opened the oven and basted it every 10 minutes to keep it moist.  Thanks Grandma! I'm way too lazy to do that...  When it comes to boneless hams, most of them are little more than a processed (pressed) “loaf” of ground or many smaller pieces of ham.  That's perfect for breakfast or ham sandwiches, but it's not what we're going for, on Thanksgiving!

Lay the ham out on your cutting board, so the rind is down.  Take a small sharp knife and cut about 1/4" deep, scoring a checkerboard pattern through the skin, fat, and down into the meat.  

I tend to cut so that my squares come out 3/4" on a side.   As the ham cooks, it will swell and your squares will be beautifully presented.  Take your time with this, you'll be rewarded!  Once you're through cutting, have a cold beer and relax a bit.  The hard part is over!

Now, place the honey in a small bowl and heat it in the microwave for about 20 seconds.  Mix in the mustard and stir, stir, stir until you have a nice honey mustard sauce.  Spoon the sauce over your ham, pressing gently to squish it into your lattice cuts.

After all of the sauce is rubbed into your ham, sprinkle the dry ingredients over the top.  Press the spices into your "trenches"  and take a step back to marvel at what you've done!  You're one step away from a restaurant quality Holiday Ham, and you only paid 1/3 of the price for it!  Seriously, I've seen these things sell in Holiday Catalogues for more than $10/lb!  You're better than that!!

Jam a temperature probe into the center of the meat, being careful that the tip of the probe is away from the bone.  Set your Smoker, Grill, or Oven to 250 degrees, and lay it on!  Pull it off the heat when the internal temperature hits about 130 degrees.  Note how the meat shrinks away from the bone bit, giving you a nice handle for slicing?  Mmmmmm.....

Let's talk Sauce!  Why sauce?  Once you start pulling the meat off of the bone in the center (and it should just pull away, by hand), you may want to flavor it even more with a sauce.  Favorite sauces for ham usually include something to offset the salt cure like honey, pineapple, cherries, brown sugar, molasses, etc.  For presentation, I usually slice and pull all of this apart and then pour over my ham sauce, then put the whole damn thing into the middle of the table where people can dig in!  This Ham Sauce is full of all of the good things; Bourbon re-hydrated cherries, pineapple, butter, brown sugar... see?  ALL of the good things, AND, it's great on ice-cream, too!

Smoked Tri-tip

Many people compare tri-tip to brisket.  Some even say that tri-tip is the "poor man's brisket" when it comes to BBQ.  I couldn't disagree more!

Tri-tip is, literally, physically, the opposite of brisket.  While the brisket sits in the front of the cow, above the legs and under the chest, the tri-tip is the bottom of the bottom sirloin, at the BACK of the cow, above the REAR legs, under the butt!  Tri-tips are 1/10th the size of a brisket, they carry much less fat and connective tissue, and they need 1/10th of the time to cook.  While a brisket might be "king" when it comes to flashy pit-smoked BBQ, the tri-tip is also super delicious, but it requires 1/10th of the preparation effort and time in the pit.  In other words, if you haven't added tri-tip to your arsenal of BBQ weaponry, you should.  Tonight!

What you'll need:

• 1 Tri-tip roast
• Either:
• Kosher Salt and Pepper
• Or:
• BBQ Beef Rub of your choice

Here, we have a nice tri-tip.  Appropriately named for its three obvious points or "tips," this is a very well marbled, slice-able, affordable, hunk of meat, perfect for feeding a family of five.  The other thing I like about them is that my local restaurant supply store sells them 5 or 6 at a time, in bulk, for cheap!  This one weighed in at 3.2lbs, and considered BIG for a tri-tip.

I rubbed it down with Olive oil and seasoned it.  Purists preach that salt and pepper is all you need to season a tri-tip, and I'm sure it's delicious.  I upped the ante a bit by added some brown sugar and some Hatch chili powder.  Whatever you choose, just liberally season both sides and take it straight to the pit!

Preheat the pit first! This is important with tri-tip... Unlike a brisket which needs to sit for hours upon hours to break down gobs of connective tissue, a tri-tip only needs to cook up to medium rare, or 130 degrees.  Mine only sat in the pit for 90 minutes total, there's no need to let it sit there and dry out while your pit heats up to 225.  So... get your grill going and let it come up to 225 before laying in the roast, and inserting your temperature probe.

Let it sit, probed, until the internal temperature comes up to 125 degrees.  It won't take long!  I barely had time to pour myself a lovely beverage and to work myself into a proper recliner before the thermometer started beeping!

Once it reaches 125, take it off and wrap it IMMEDIATELY in aluminum foil!  Wrap it nice and tightly, and drop it into a regular room-temperature beer cooler (without the beer, unfortunately) to sit for 45 minutes.  Crazy?  No!  Magic things happen... it will cook up another 5 degrees or so, and all of the juice (lots and lots of juice), will settle and re-distribute itself inside.  I see lots of folks slice their steaks, roasts, etc, and brag as lots of juice runs all over the plate... Personally, I'd rather have the juice stay in the meat until it's in my mouth!  If juice is on the plate, it means the meat is that much LESS "juicy."

After your tri-tip has had a chance to rest, it's time for the slicin!  Cut it across the grain.  Notice here, the juice is sitting right there, inside that glorious slice of beef!  Tri-tip slices easily, it's super tender so it bites apart easily, and the flavor is top notch!