There are few things more comforting in the winter than a warm bowl of chili. I mean, really, very few. A warm fire, hot chocolate, chili… that's my winter comfort list. I must confess I've never made chili myself. I decided around the age of 10 that my favorite chili ever was from a place my family stayed in the Grand Tetons, and despite the fact that there's no way I still remember what that chili tasted like, I deemed it unbeatable. The close second contender was the chili made in church chili nights growing up. Some of the best food seems to be made at church events, but I couldn't begin to tell you what the ladies who made it used in the recipe.

My boyfriend happens to be a great cook, so it's easy to swap some homemade desserts for a few of his homemade meals from time to time. A few weeks ago he made this chili, and I couldn't get enough of it. I was scraping my bowl and legitimately upset when I finished off the container he gave me to take to work. It's much different than a lot of chili I'm used to because it's sweeter. He says it's the tomato puree that does this--I don't know if that's it, but I'm a fan. 

The sweetness somehow makes it even better with a bit of sour cream stirred in. I know it's January and we all try to avoid the extras like sour cream as a topping, but you shouldn't skip it with this chili. This chili + cheddar cheese + sour cream = Grand Teton good chili. I didn't have sour cream at my office so I put a spoon of Greek yogurt in it and that was delicious too. Sidenote: after this success I tried adding Greek yogurt to my Chipotle bowl when I decided to skip on the sour cream to be "healthy" and that was not a good swap. Just a word to the wise if you're like me and have backwards ways of convincing yourself things are not that bad for you.

Long story short, I got him to make it again this weekend because tomorrow the high in DC is 18 degrees, and I think I'll need this chili. For all of you in the mid-west and up north who would gladly take 18 degree weather over the negative temperatures you are experiencing right now, I think you need this chili even more than I do. If you don't have a crockpot you can also make this in a large stockpot. Because everything is already cooked it's just a matter of heating it long enough for the flavors to really blend together. The more time you give it the better it will get. Enjoy!

Sweet Crockpot Chili

Makes 8+ hearty servings

4 15 oz cans tomato puree 

1 15oz can of diced tomatoes 

2 15 oz cans of sweet corn 

1 15oz can of black beans 

1 15oz can of red kidney beans 

1 yellow onion diced 

1 6oz can of green chiles 

2 packets of McCormicks Original Chili powder 

1 lb ground beef (90% lean) 

1 package of chicken Andouille sausage 

Put tomato puree and diced tomatoes in the crockpot. Add corn, black beans, kidney beans, diced the yellow onion and green chilis. Stir to combine.

Brown the ground beef until no pink remains. Drain pan almost entirely and add beef to crockpot. Next, cook the chicken sausage in a little of the beef drippings reserved in the pan. When sausage is cooked through, pull off pan, slice into 1/4-inch slices and quarter the pieces. Add sausage to chili. Alternately, you can slice the chicken sausage before cooking and cook this way instead. 

Stir in both packets of McCormicks Chili powder with 1/4 cup of water. Cook in the crockpot on low for 5 hours. 

Yellow cake with chocolate icing. Such a simple concept, yet I always find it incredibly hard to execute up to my expectations. I would say about half of the people I know consider yellow cake with chocolate icing their all time favorite cake. Maybe it reminds everyone of childhood. I think of delicious yellow Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines cupcakes with chocolate icing and sprinkles being brought to school for birthdays. It's just too darn hard to beat. With yellow cake, boxed is better more often than not (though I do like to add sour cream to the boxed version to jazz it up a notch).

I always find something wrong with the homemade versions. This is the best I've made yet. Shirley O. Corriher's fantastic, well-known book BakeWise is to thank for it. She offers three different ways to make the cake. I didn't have buttermilk, which was required in the others, so I made the "Dissolved Sugar" method. I highly recommend buying this book. She was a biochemist, so she breaks down recipes scientifically to explain why they work and what each ingredient does. This is without a doubt the only science I have ever been interested in. What can I say, I'm an advertising and anthropology major...it's just not a pre-req.

I think the cake got even better after the icing had cooled and settled. I tend to think sour cream-based icing is much stronger at first, and not always in a good way. But then it seems to become milder as it cools. Maybe that's just me. I may try it with a buttercream next time, but this icing was fantastic.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! If you have any great yellow cake recipes with high success rates, or perfect chocolate icings (can you ever have too many of those?) I'd love to try those out as well!

Magnificent Moist Golden Cake
Recipe from Shirley O. Corriher's BakeWise

Makes 2-3 9-inch cake layers or two dozen cupcakes
2 large eggs, at room temperature
3 large egg yolks, at room temperature
1/3 cup buttermilk, divided
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups cake flour, spooned and leveled
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9-inch springform pan or two (or three) 9-inch cake pans with cooking spray and dust them with flour, or line two 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners for cupcakes.

In a large measuring cup or similar vessel, whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, 3 tablespoons of the buttermilk and vanilla.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of your standing mixer. Using the paddle attachment, beat in the butter, oil, and remaining buttermilk on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened, then crank it up to medium speed and beat for 1 1/2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl. Add one third of the egg mixture, and beat for about 20 seconds, and scrape the bowl again. Repeat two more times until all the egg mixture is incorporated and the batter is smooth.

In a cold bowl with cold beaters, whip the cream to just beyond soft peaks. Stir a quarter of the whipped cream into the batter to lighten it, then carefully fold in the remaining cream.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans (about 2/3 full for cupcakes). Drop the pans onto the counter from a height of about 4 inches to knock out air bubbles. Bake until the center of the cake springs back when touched and a toothpick comes out clean but moist–about 40 minutes for one thick layer, 25-30 minutes for individual layers, and 17-20 minutes for cupcakes (checking progress early and often).

Do not overbake. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely before frosting.

Lucious, Creamy Chocolate Icing 
Recipe from Shirley O. Corriher's BakeWise

(she sure does like descriptive titles!) 

12 ounces milk chocolate, cut into medium pieces
9 ounces semisweet chocolate, cut into medium pieces
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon (pinch) salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 1/2 cups sour cream

1. Place both chocolates in a food processor with the steel blade. Use quick on/offs to finely chop, or alternatively finely chop the chocolate with a sharp knife. (The whole point of her book is to emphasize why little things are important, she has a reason for chopping it up, but my food processor is at my parents house so I skipped this step. Whoops!) Place the chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat in the microwave on 50% power, stirring every 30 seconds. Stop and remove it from the microwave when most of the chocolate is melted. Continue to stir until all of the chocolate is melted and smooth.
2. In a mixing bow, stir together the brown sugar, salt, vanilla, and corn syrup. Stir in the sour cream with 1 or 2 strokes only. Add the melted chocolate. Beat on low until very smooth. It will be beautiful. If it is too thin, allow it to stand for an hour or so at room temperature until slightly thickened. Use about 1/4-inch later of icing between the cake layers.

**Addition: the bf was upset because this cake disappeared so quickly around my house that I never got to bring him any. I guess I was feeling nice, because I made him another one two days after this one (yes, it disappeared that quickly). It was EVEN BETTER. I am quite confident that this is the best yellow cake I will make for quite some time.