Daring Bakers in February: Flourless Chocolate Cake & Fresh Mint Ice Cream
February 28, 2009 at 2:02 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, ice creams & frozen, sweet things | 40 Comments
I skipped out on last month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge, so I wasn’t about to miss this one– especially since our hosts Wendy at wmpesblog and Dharm at Dad – Baker and Chef chose something exceptionally decadent. Actually, they chose two exceptionally decadent things: a flourless chocolate cake (called “Chocolate Valentino”) and homemade ice cream.
It may surprise you that a cake worthy of a restaurant plate has just three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs. Since chocolate is the star of the show here, use the best stuff you can. The recipe calls for semisweet chocolate, but I only had bittersweet so I threw a couple tablespoons of sugar into the meringue component. This sweetened it up a bit and also made the meringue more stable. I should also note that making the cake is just as easy as remembering the three ingredients! Melt the butter and chocolate together, add in the yolks, whip the whites to a meringue, fold them in, and bake. Keep a close eye on the cake in the oven, as mine baked quickly…but then again, I did just make a half recipe. This cake is so dense and chocolatey– it’s a really special dessert, but not at all hard to make.
To tell the truth, I think a rich cake like this pairs better with a light whipped cream than it does with an equally rich ice cream. But ice cream was part of the challenge, and it is really one of my favorite things to make. We were given the option of making either a traditional custard-based ice cream or an eggless Philadelphia-style one. I happened to have several yolks leftover from the coconut cake I had made a few days before, so that meant a French-style ice cream for me. I also had some fresh mint in the fridge…since I love the combination of chocolate and mint, I thought that would be a good way to go.
I have made a lot of ice cream at home (incidentally, I use the KitchenAid ice cream attachment and have had good results with it), and something I’ve learned is that if you start with a good vanilla ice cream recipe as your base, you can easily modify it for other flavors. For my mint ice cream, I used the custard-based classic vanilla recipe provided by Dharm, and rather than steeping the milk with a vanilla bean, I steeped it with a couple handfuls of fresh mint leaves. I also increased the sugar by two tablespoons, but this was just a matter of personal taste. Getting the mint flavor right can be a little tricky. The more mint you use, and the longer you infuse it, the more herbal the ice cream will be. That may sound obvious, but I’ve made several batches in the past that have tasted almost grassy. I was going for a subtler flavor here so I was careful when adding the mint, and made sure to taste the milk after it had steeped.
Check out the DB blogroll! And visit Wendy or Dharm for the recipes for both the Chocolate Valentino cake and the ice creams.
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel Crunch Bars
February 24, 2009 at 2:51 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 60 Comments
We have another yummy cookie for TWD this week. Whitney of What’s Left on the Table? had me putting caramel crunch bars on my table, and trust me, nothing’s left!
This cookie does have a lot of crunch. It’s a brown sugar shortbread, flavored with a little cinnamon and espresso powder and a lot of chopped chocolate. On top there’s melted dark chocolate and a generous sprinkle of toffee bits. I have never bought Heath Toffee Bits before, and was completely amused by the package. Not only does it say “Bits o’ Brickle,” which is enormously funny to me, but it also says “finest quality English toffee” in one spot and then “artificially flavored” in another. Hmmm…
In the book, Dorie suggests using these for ice cream sandwiches. I had a little homemade fresh mint ice cream, so I decided to give it a try. I topped the bars that I was using for the sandwiches with cocoa nibs instead of toffee (these I scattered sparingly, because they are kinda bitter). Tasty? Yes, but also a little hard to eat. I thought the bars were a little too crunchy for ice cream sandwiches. They were difficult to bite into frozen…I think I prefer a softer, more yielding cookie for that purpose. The caramel crunch bars are sweet enough and rich enough on their own, that I preferred them just as they were. Well, with a cup of herbal tea, that is.
For the recipe, read What’s Left on the Table? or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
Oatmeal-Raspberry Pancakes
February 22, 2009 at 7:18 pm | Posted in breakfast things, pancakes/waffles | 32 Comments
Did you know that this Tuesday is Shrove Tuesday, a.k.a. Pancake Day? Thought I’d post this tonight in case anyone is interested in celebrating with me! To be honest, most Tuesdays are Pancake Day in this apartment. As anyone else in the food business will understand, the work schedule can be a bit weird. My days off are right smack in the middle of a “normal” workweek. I don’t mind so much…while everyone else is off to the grind, I get a luxurious sleep-in, and exactly what I want for breakfast.
This recipe for Oatmeal-Raspberry Pancakes comes from Sunset Magazine, but I actually saw these beauties first on Joy the Baker last year. As soon as I saw Joy’s post, I thought, “That’s brilliant!” Pancakes and oatmeal are my two favorite breakfast foods…I most often enjoy them separately, but a combination sounded positively intriguing. You might think oatmeal would make the cakes heavy and gunky, but they’re actually fluffy and high. I’ve made these a few times now…half a recipe gives two generous portions.
If you’re tired of the maple syrup thing, serve these with a berry coulis instead. I never tire of the maple syrup thing, and here I gently heated my syrup and tossed in a handful of frozen raspberries, just as I turned off the heat. As the berries thawed in the warm syrup, they gave off their lovely pink color.
Want pancakes but don’t feel like these? Check out the Bill’s Ricotta Hotcakes I made awhile back!
Oatmeal-Raspberry Pancakes– makes about 12 pancakes
adapted from a recipe in Sunset Magazine (May 2002)
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup fresh or frozen (but not thawed) raspberries
oil or butter for the pan or griddle
-In a bowl, mix oats and buttermilk. Let stand for 15-30 minutes.
-Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
-In a large bowl, beat eggs, milk, and vanilla to blend. Stir in flour and oat mixtures just until evenly moistened, then gently stir in raspberries. Let the batter sit while you prepare your griddle or pan.
-Place a griddle or a large nonstick frying pan over medium heat (350°F). When hot, coat lightly with oil or butter and adjust heat to maintain temperature. Pour batter in 1/2-cup portions onto griddle and cook until pancakes are browned on the bottom and edges begin to look dry, about 2 minutes. Turn with a wide spatula and brown other sides, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes longer. Coat pan or griddle with more oil or butter as necessary to cook remaining pancakes.
-Serve the pancakes as cooked, or keep them warm in a single layer on baking sheets in a 200°F oven for up to 15 minutes. Stack and serve with berry coulis or syrup.
The Cake Slice: Southern Coconut Cake
February 20, 2009 at 2:39 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, layer cakes, sweet things, the cake slice | 45 Comments
I am a coconut cake fanatic. I love it in all its forms…filled with pastry cream or lemon curd, iced with cream cheese frosting or buttercream. Any which way you slice it, I’ll take a piece! Coconut cupcakes are scrummy too…I made some here awhile back. So, naturally I was excited when Southern Coconut Cake won The Cake Slice group vote this month (although I know it only came from behind to beat out a chocolate-peanut butter cake because of the current salmonella scare, but so what).
There are no yolks in this cake, so the crumb is snow-white fluff. I really like that the recipe incorporates coconut milk into the batter. I punched up the coconut flavor a bit more by using a combination of vanilla and coconut extracts (rather than straight vanilla), and by folding a handful of finely grated unsweetened coconut (the desiccated stuff from the health food store) into the batter at the end. I made half a recipe, but rather than baking it in three 6-inch pans, like I usually do, I spread the batter into a quarter sheet pan (measuring something like 9″ x 13″). I then cut it into three strips, which I stacked into a rectangular cake… for some reason, I was obsessed with having a slice that looked like Pepperidge Farm.
The finished cake is not frosted with a traditional cream cheese frosting, but with a super light cream cheese buttercream, made with an Italian meringue. Wow, is it good…and it’s something that I never would have thought to do. The book that this recipe comes from, Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes, has so many cool ideas– I’m really glad to have it. I made a two-thirds recipe of buttercream, so I could have leftovers to frost my Valentine’s cupcakes.
Not only does this cake taste great, but it’s also soooo pretty. I want it for my wedding cake. Oh, darn…I’m already married! But there’s actually something else I can celebrate with a yummy coconut cake– a whisk and a spoon turns two today! I can hardly believe it (especially when I go back and look at those early posts–ha!), and if it weren’t for all of you who read and leave such encouraging comments, I may not have kept at it for so long. Thank you for making blogging so wonderfully fun and fulfilling!!
Here’s a printable link to the recipe. Better yet, get your hands on a copy of Sky High: Irresistible Triple Layer Cakes by Alicia Huntsman and Peter Wynne. Cruise through the list of The Cake Slice Bakers to check out all of our coconut cakes this month.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Devil’s Food White-Out Cake
February 17, 2009 at 2:19 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, cupcakes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 49 Comments
Oh, I bet a lot of TWDers have been waiting a long time for this one, and we have Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater to thank for finally choosing it! Actually, I feel a twinge of guilt posting this picture. It’s almost as if, by turning Dorie’s cover cake into cupcakes, I haven’t quite done her recipe justice. Please forgive me…it’s just that I’ve been doing a lot of layer cakes with The Cake Slice group lately.
Geez Louise, I love devil’s food cake. I mean, really…it’s so chocolaty, and that moist but dense thing it has going on…it’s just the best type of chocolate cake (by the way, I like it chilled). This particular devil’s food recipe is extra-special because it has little chopped chocolate bits throughout. I made a half recipe and got ten cupcakes. I actually only turned six of them into White-Outs. The others went, unfrosted but nicely wrapped, into the freezer, and later (along with some leftover cream cheese frosting you’ll read about in a few days) became Valentine’s cupcakes.
The White-Out Cake is Dorie’s spin on the classic Brooklyn blackout cake, but here the filling/frosting is homemade marshmallow Fluff. Yay, Fluff! I even cut a hole out of the center of each cupcake and filled it with extra marshmallow meringue. You know where I was going with that, right? I reserved the little plugs of cake for my crumbs. One note about the frosting: I reduced the cream of tartar in the recipe. A friend had made this cake about a month ago, and told me she thought the frosting had a slightly metallic taste…the large amount of CoT was the only culprit I could think of.
So good…it was so good. Make it yourself and see– the recipe, of course, is in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but she also has it here on NPR’s site. Don’t forget to read Stephanie’s post and check out the TWD Blogroll to see what everyone else came up with!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
February 14, 2009 at 3:32 am | Posted in cupcakes, sweet things | 20 Comments
Tuesdays with Dorie: Floating Islands
February 10, 2009 at 2:39 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 41 Comments
Shari, a loyal TWDer who does cool things with classic dishes on Whisk: a food blog, chose Floating Islands (île flottante), a traditional French dessert, for this week’s recipe. I actually would have called this “snow eggs” (oeufs à la neige), but now I realize I don’t know what the difference is, if there really is one (and Googling it didn’t help, as I found different info on each link…too much information sometimes just confuses me).
This dessert makes me smile; it looks kind of goofy, don’t you think? The basic idea is this: a milk-poached meringue sits in a pool of crème anglaise custard. It’s light from the meringue and, at the same time, rich from the custard…and because it’s served chilled, it’s really quite refreshing.
Rather than quenelling smooth, egg-shaped meringues, I tried to make cute, spiky little islands. Unfortunately, my cute spikes flattened as I turned the meringues during the poaching process, and I ended up with deformed blobs. Whatever…looks aren’t everything. I made my meringues first, and so that I wouldn’t waste the poaching milk, I strained and remeasured it and used it as the basis for the custard sauce.
Traditionally, a drizzle of caramel finishes off floating islands, but because caramel doesn’t keep, and I had to take the blog pictures several hours before I’d be eating the dessert, I chose to skip that bit. I didn’t want my islands to look barren though, so in an effort to spruce them up another way, I decided to infuse my anglaise with orange zest and garnish with a few fresh berries. And since this is an old-school dessert, I went with some old-school baby mint sprigs, just for good measure.
For the recipe, read Whisk: a food blog or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies
February 3, 2009 at 2:50 am | Posted in cookies & bars, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 54 Comments
I know these cookies. Not that I’d ever made them myself before Jessica of cookbookhabit chose them for this week’s TWD, but a few summers ago, I spent a couple of days in Paris visiting a friend. It was August and several of the shops I hoped to visit were closed for their own vacations. That was a bummer, but I was happy to find that Pierre Hermé on rue Bonatparte was open. I pretty much scarfed down the entire macaroon display, and then moved on to the shelves, where I picked up a little baggie of chocolate sablés for the plane trip home. I hadn’t a clue that these cookies were super-famous, but I knew after tasting them that they should be! Honestly, I couldn’t believe how good they were– crumbly and chocolaty…but it’s the hit of salt that really made me say, “Oh la vache!”
I used Sel de Guérande in these cookies, but if you don’t have fleur de sel, don’t worry. I maybe wouldn’t recommend regular table salt (which is too harshly salty– if that makes sense–for my tastes, even for everyday cooking), but a “softer” salt, like Kosher or sea salt, will work just fine. The recipe has a bit of chopped dark chocolate folded in at the end…you can be experimental with this bit, if you want. I used a combo of chopped bittersweet chocolate and cocoa nibs, so that there would be a little gooey melted chocolate and a little bitter crunch in each bite.
Can world peace really be achieved through a cookie? Oh, if only it were that simple…but if the new Administration wants to give it a go, I’ll happy accept the position of Secretary of Snacks! To feel like you’ve gone to Paris without leaving home, read cookbookhabit or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan for the recipe (she also has it here on The Splendid Table’s website). Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
TWD Rewind: Quintuple Chocolate Brownies
January 29, 2009 at 4:13 pm | Posted in cookies & bars, events, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 40 Comments
Quintuple–that’s five! I’m sure you know that and I’m not trying to insult your intelligence, but I myself am still a bit shocked that five types of chocolate can fit into a single brownie. Somehow, in one little square, there is room for cocoa powder and unsweetened, bittersweet, milk and white chocolates.
Talk about a fudgy brownie…I think this one may actually be fudge! If that white chocolate glaze looks I laid it on a little thick, well umm, that’s because I did. I thought the original amount seemed a little thin so I added a bit more white chocolate and a bit more cream, and suddenly I had a thick slick of icing!
These brownies are so dangerously good, that I’d feel guilty (in many ways) keeping them to myself. Jenny from All Things Edible has a beautiful new home, and I’m going to bring them to her housewarming party!
This was Brown Eyed Baker Michelle’s TWD pick shortly before I joined the group, about a year ago. For the recipe, look in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it here on NPR’s website) or read Michelle’s post.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread
January 27, 2009 at 1:46 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 57 Comments
I’ve had my eye on this recipe for quite awhile, and I was pretty happy when Heather of Sherry Trifle picked it for this week’s TWD. My mum made gingerbread cookies with us every year at Christmastime, but gingerbread in cake form is one of those “newer discoveries” that I wish I hadn’t missed out on for so long.
With the addition of chocolate and icing (yay, icing!), Dorie’s version takes the classic gingerbread cake and shakes it up a bit. I have been a little cacao-deprived as of late, so I really liked the little flecks of chocolate speckled throughout the cake. And the chocolate icing..my gosh, the icing. I used a shot of espresso from the coffee shop to make it, so the coffee kick was quite noticeable, and quite tasty. The chocolate and coffee worked really well with the cake’s spicy ginger trifecta (fresh, ground and candied).
I made two-thirds of a recipe and baked it in an eight-inch sqaure pan. I did this before I even saw Dorie’s note, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that one. Dorie’s serving size suggestion was a bit…ummm…gigantic. I was actually able to get nine pieces (instead of six) out of my smaller cake. This was four nights worth of dessert for us, so we paired it with vanilla ice cream one night, whipped cream the next, and enjoyed it plain-Jane with tea another. Every which way, it was delicious, and stayed nice and moist the whole time.
For the recipe, read Sherry Trifle or see Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (she also has it here on Serious Eats). Don’t forget to check out the TWD Blogroll.
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