Triple-Chocolate Buttermilk Pound Cake

Junior has been totally into cooking recently. 

Y'all know we are homeschooling. I decided this year I wanted the boys to take cooking classes. Junior has LOVED it! He's even cooked 2 complete meals for our family. Main course, side, and dessert! He even figured out what we'd need from the store! 

The first time he cooked dinner, it was a class requirement. The second time was because he begged! I was like, "YES PLEASE! SOMEONE, ANYONE ELSE PLEASE COOK!"

He eats better when he cooks it. Can I get an Amen?

On to the recipe. My sweet grandmother gifted me (and my sisters!) a subscription to Southern Living Magazine this year. WOOT! I'm loving it. Especially when the first issue I got looked like this:

This cake.Y'all. First of all, it's beautiful. Second, it's a triple-chocolate. Can anything get better? I think not.

Then Junior saw it. 

He immediately decided we NEEDED the cake. 

Frankly, I agreed. Because cake and also because you'll remember that this happened at the store:

(accidentally, mind you and only partially because of the triple-chocolate cake)

 

He initially decided to make it when he had some friends coming to spend the night. Junior had told me (completely serious) that he wanted to cook for "someone outside the family" - I'm not sure what to think about that. 

At any rate, it didn't work out time-wise for him to bake it that day. He ended up baking it on Tuesday. And. Yum.

Here's his final product.

You can see from the knife in the foreground that we'd already dug in.

I was proud!Okay fine, it's not as beautiful as the cover, but he's 11 y'all! And really I want to see someone in real life make it as beautiful as the cover!

Plus, it was/is REALLY good. The buttermilk gives it an almost cheesecake-y flavor. It's really delicate and super chocolatey. J-Boy doesn't like it. Because chocolate hurts his throat. Ahem. Baby Girl LOVES it. She made me go to the kitchen tonight and took me to the cake. I had to give her some. A girl needs her chocolate fix. And I had to help her eat her slice. The tragedies of motherhood.

I seriously only helped with greasing/flouring the pan and getting it out (stuff he'd never done before). 

He convinced The Hubs to take about half to work. Because he wants to cook for "someone outside the family" and all. Junior will be eagerly awaiting the level of enjoyment report. I'm sure it will be favorable!

Buttermilk Refrigerator Rolls (Southern Living 1982)

Hey y'all! It's been a while. We're still here, and have still been cooking... just not much posting. 

Okay, fine. 

Not any posting.
 

Things have changed some around here.  Baby Girl is not so much a baby anymore.
 

Waaaah!

She's a full blown toddler. She's perfected the furrowed brow and refusal of foods she ate with gusto the day, or even the meal before. So that's been fun. 

The boys are growing up too. Mostly just up. Junior is nearly as tall as me! Sniff!

We traded in our cookbooks! I'm using 1982. (aka the best year ever, aka the year of my birth)

Okay, on to today's recipe. I'm a sucker for bread recipes. I. Love. Bread. But yeast breads and raising and all that jazz can be about 0% fun in winter.  This recipe goes straight into the fridge, which I love.

The recipe:

 

Only one major change. The recipe calls for shortening. I try not to cook with shortening - I don't keep it in the house. 

So, for this recipe I used a combination of butter and coconut oil. Halfsies.

I used 2.5 cups of regular ap flour and 2 cups of white whole wheat. I think that's all. 

Except this happened. 

For the first time ever I bought a gallon of buttermilk. A. Gallon. I got a teensy bit excited about all the buttermilk recipes in my cookbook and in the February issue of Southern Living magazine. I'm looking at you triple chocolate buttermilk cake.

So get ready for the buttermilk. 

Those of you who know me well know I have approximately no memory. But, for some inexplicable reason I can remember that my music teacher in 4th grade drank buttermilk with her lunch. I can still picture her cartons of buttermilk sitting untouched by anyone but her in the milk fridge thing in the lunchline. I guess it was so scarringly gross my crazy brain decided to remember that. Not Disney World. The buttermilk-drinking music teacher.

So. The rolls are good. I'm glad I didn't go all coconut oil or all butter. The mix was yummy. No coconut flavor at all.

 

But this happened.

Just a touch too long on the last batch. Just a touch. You can see the few that got a bit too much love. I'll blame it on the fact that we were already eating when I put in the last batch. It can be really hard to hear that timer go off. And other excuses.

All in all, it was a winner. Next time I would cook them a bit longer than I did the first two batches, but not quite as long as the third batch. Probably 15-18 minutes in my oven.