Good Enough To Give You Diabetes: Nutella Swirl Pound Cake

I don’t have much to say about this recipe other than it’s delicious. Katie has a particular weakness for Nutella, so when I see an interesting recipe I bookmark it and eventually treat her to a bit of baking.

The recipe originally came from Food & Wine, but I found it on the Chicago Foodies website.

If you want to make it extra sugary to guarantee your own health downfall, and possible stomach ache, just do what I did and accidentally boost the 1 1/4 cups of sugar up to 1 1/2. It makes the crust extra crispy and your teeth extra tingly.

Nutella Swirl Pound Cake

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• One 13-ounce jar Nutella

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9″x5″ loaf pan. In a medium sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.

2. In a separate large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy using a mixer. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature to ensure your cake rises properly. Gradually add in each egg, and then the vanilla, until fully incorporated.
3. With your mixer on low, add in the dry ingredients to the wet little by little.
4. Spray or butter your pan. Pour in 1/3 of your batter. Spread with 1/2 of the jar of Nutella. Now, pour over 1/3 more of the batter. Top with the rest of the Nutella. Finish off with the rest of your batter.
5. Before baking, lightly swirl through the pan with a butter knife once or twice. Bake for about an hour and ten minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.

Allow the cake to cool thoroughly before serving. I know it’s tempting to dig into warm Nutella, but you will have a runny mess if you cut into the cake immediately. Serve for dessert with ice cream or enjoy with a cup of coffee for breakfast. Nutella is a healthy breakfast food, right?

Pumpkin Shakes At Jamba Juice

I guess calling them a shake isn’t fair. It’s technically a smoothie. But the seasonal smoothies at Jamba Juice may as well be milkshakes. Between an eggnog or a pumpkin option, they’re quickly trying to replace my eggnog shake addiction that for years belonged solely to McDonald’s. And now the pumpkin smoothie has only rekindled my love of the pumpkin pie Blizzard you could get seasonally from Dairy Queen.

But those aren’t healthy for anybody. Shoving an actual piece of pumpkin pie into a cup of already unhealthy ice cream is just a date with self loathing and disaster. DELICIOUS self loathing but self loathing nonetheless. It was like when I discovered the chocolate cake shakes at Portillos. Did the world NEED a chocolate milk shake blended with a piece of Duncan Hines chocolate cake? No! Did America make it anyways? Yes!

I would go to Portillos every other weekend with my best friend Chris and we’d order a large cake shake and just sit there happy as clams. I’d order a large cheese fries, because really when you’re on a lactose binge, go all out right? If I could have ordered mozzarella sticks covered in neon yellow cheese I probably would have. I’m not a healthy man.

But that’s why I’m actually happy Jamba Juice came out with these shakes. Sure, nothing beats the real deal of a pumpkin pie blizzard. I’m not an idiot. This shake doesn’t have piece of pie, or swirls of whip cream in it. BUT it does taste something like that original experience at half the calories (even less if you order up the light version). And they are pretty damn tasty. Granted, you don’t get a cool bracelet with one like you would with the Twilight branded Berry Midnight or whatever they’re calling it, but it’s good. And who needs Kristen Stewart sitting around looking listless while you’re trying to enjoy your drink anyhow?

The eggnog smoothie does indeed taste like eggnog, but it’s nowhere near as good as an eggnog shake. Eggnog by its very nature is gross, disgusting and REALLY unhealthy. Trying to healthify eggnog is a fruitless endeavor. You need whole cream and eggs and the feeling your heart may explode to truly enjoy it. And drinking an eggnog shake from McDonald’s gave you that experience. Of course it made it even unhealthier by adding nearly 2000 calories to it (if you got the large like I always did). So skip it. It’ll just make you sad you’re not drinking the real thing.

So long live the Jamba Juice Pumpkin Smash smoothie. I applaud it for getting me addicted to it. But I am a seasonal pumpkin drink whore. Except for you Pumpkin Latte at Starbucks. You taste like my spice cabinet full of nothing but all-spice and nutmeg exploded in my face.