Daring Baker's Challenge for February: Flourless Chocolate "Valentino" Cake

When I saw that this month's challenge was a flourless chocolate cake, I danced a jig in my soul...these are easy cakes to make, they come out great and the challenge allowed us to make an ice cream of our choice. I haven't made ice cream in ages so that was an added "bonus".

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. They chose 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. I did mint ice cream instead.

The first thing that hit me about the recipe was its minimalist ingredients...I have made flourless chocolate cakes, and my favorite one has 1/2 cup of sugar in it. I assume this is to cut the "bitter" from the bittersweet / semisweet chocolate. And so, not wanting to mess with the recipe, I made it exactly as printed.

The cake was very easy to make (melt chocolate and butter, beat egg whites, voila) and it puffed up really nice. As it was baking, I made mint ice cream from Pierre Herme's Chocolate Desserts cookbook, which was easy to make and delicious but incorporated waaaaaay too many mint leaves. I don't like to chew my ice cream! But at least my dessert had fiber.

So the judgment hour was upon me as I brought my cakes and my ice cream to a friend's house for dinner. The first bite was definitely an 'oh wow this is good' bite for all of us. But I noticed that after about 3 bites, all the forks kind of went down and coffee drinking and chatting continued. Why were we not devouring this dessert? It was chocolate, it was cake, it was VALRHONA and cost me a bundle to make! Eat, dammit!! EAT! I know at that moment I wasn't even involved in the conversation, I was just waiting for someone to eat. But they seemed done. Why?

I think, in all honesty, that the chocolate (56% cacao) was too bittersweet, and that the recipe needed that 1/2 cup of sugar. This clarifies why the other flourless chocolate cakes I've made included a bit of sugar and tasted better in the end. I do think that this cake was good, but that the sugar would have made it much more "devourable".

In all, this is a good recipe but not the one I will use for flourless chocolate cake in the future. Or maybe I'll try it again, but add some sugar and see how it turns out! As for the ice cream, it was delicious...but Pierre calls for one heck of a lot of chopped mint!

Bon appetit!

Chocolate Valentino

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped

½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter

5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.

2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.

3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.

4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).

5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter.

8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C

9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.

Pierre Hermé's "Classic Hot Chocolate"

I feel like I've been a prisoner in my own home for the last week. Snow, snow, snow. You can only have so many snow days before you start to lose it a little. So I search for something to life my spirits. And nothing goes with snow quite like a good hot chocolate....which becomes the highlight of my snow days. Typically I serve my small children Swiss Miss. They love it, me..not so much. But it's warm and tastes somewhat like chocolate, so I just do it. But I had my last cup two days ago, there's no going back after Pierre's hot chocolate....

So yesterday while the snow was literally piling up outside, the kids were in bed, my husband was on the road trying to get home, I decided to make myself some real European hot chocolate. Anyone who's been to a café in Paris and ordered a "chocolat viennois" knows what I'm talking about...their hot chocolate is so rich, so decadent, you feel it from your head to your toes. The tastes almost come in layers, with a great punch of chocolate at the end. So I pulled out Pierre Hermé's "Chocolate Desserts" book and made his very simple "Classic Hot Chocolate".

One sip made me want to break out one of those Madeleines I made a few weeks ago. This sip took me right back to a little café on the Ile St. Louis in Paris, where they make the best and richest hot chocolate you'd ever drink. I never knew their secret, but it's one of those "must visits" when I'm in Paris, summer or winter. Turns out, their secret is just good, real chocolate. Not powder, but real dark chocolate. I never knew...it's as easy as that. Pierre's recipe proves it.

I might make another tonight...It's full of anti-oxidants, so they say!

Classic Hot Chocolate

(serves 2...I made 1/2 the recipe for one serving)

2 cups whole milk (I used skim, but I know whole would have been soooo much more sinful)

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup sugar (I found it a bit too sweet. Next time I will omit the sugar and add it at the end if necessary)

4 ounces melted bittersweet chocolate (NOT CHIPS)....a good chocolate like Valrhona would be best ( I didn't pre-melt mine, I just chopped it and let it melt in the milk)

Bring the milk, water and sugar to a boil in a medium saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add the chocolate and stir with a whisk until it combines. Pull the saucepan from the heat and whip for about one minute with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. Serve immediately in large cups, or you can refrigerate it for two days, covered tightly.

Madeleines

In Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (A la recherche du temps perdu) he uses the taste of a madeleine dipped in a cup of tea as a catalyst to involuntary memory in his main character. As a man, Swann takes a bite of a madeleine dipped into his cup of tea, and immediately he is thrown back to his grandmother's kitchen where he recalls the same flavors and scents as a young boy. If you've seen the movie "Ratatouille", they do the same thing when the food critic takes a bite of food at Remy's restaurant and is immediately transported to his childhood kitchen and mother's cooking. We've all had that experience, where we taste, smell or hear something that makes us recall something from our past.

I think Proust had a great idea in choosing the madeleine for this purpose. After living in Europe and having madeleines rather frequently, I find that every time I have another one, I am immediately swept back to the streets of Paris, madeleine in hand. Or at the breakfast table in Tours, having madeleines and coffee. Madeleines were a big part of my European life, shall we say. I have been dying to make madeleines at home for years, yes years. I used to buy them at Trader Joe's, so I didn't have to make them, but TJ's discontinued them (foolish error!)...so I have been left to my own devices. I scoured Dorie Greenspan's Baking cookbook (a MUST HAVE by the way) and found a plethora of madeleine recipes. I chose the basic one, but I will try the others in the future, because this is one easy recipe.

I made the madeleines for a New Year's Day brunch, and they were devoured in no time. Unfortunately I didn't get the characteristic hump on the back of the madeleines like I would have liked. I understand the trick to that is having cold batter. Mine was in the refrigerator overnight, so I'm not sure where I went wrong, but practice makes perfect! In any case, these are a keeper, and they will wow your friends!!


Traditional Madeleines

Source: Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home to Yours

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
½ cup sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¾ stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Working in a mixer bowl, or in a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and fragrant. Add the eggs to the bowl. Working with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer, beat the eggs and sugar together on medium-high speed until pale, thick and light, 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in the vanilla.

With a rubber spatula, very gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter. Press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of the batter and refrigerate it for at least 3 hours, or for up to 2 days. This long chill period will help the batter form the hump that is characteristic of madeleines.

(For convenience, you can spoon the batter into the madeleine molds, cover and refrigerate, then bake the cookies directly from the fridge; see below for instructions on prepping the pans.)
GETTING READY TO BAKE:

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter 12 full-size madeleine molds, or up to 36 mini madeleine molds, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. Or, if you have a nonstick pan (or pans), give it a light coating of vegetable cooking spray. If you have a silicone pan, no prep is needed. Place the pan(s) on a baking sheet.

Spoon the batter into the molds, filling each one almost to the top. Don’t worry about spreading the batter evenly, the oven’s heat will take care of that. Bake large madeleines for 11 to 13 minutes, and minis for 8 to 10 minutes, or until they are golden and the tops spring back when touched. Remove the pan(s) from the oven and release the madeleines from the molds by rapping the edge of the pan against the counter. Gently pry any recalcitrant madeleines from the pan using your fingers or a butter knife. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to just warm or to room temperature.

If you are making minis and have more batter, bake the next batch(es), making certain that you cool, then properly prepare the pan(s) before baking.

Just before serving, dust the madeleines with confectioners’ sugar.

Makes 12 large or 36 mini cookies

Serving: Serve the cookies when they are only slightly warm or when they reach room temperature, with tea or espresso.

Storing: Although the batter can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, the madeleines should be eaten soon after they are made. You can keep them overnight in a sealed container, but they really are better on day 1. If you must store them, wrap them airtight and freeze them; they’ll keep for up to 2 months.

Inaugural Carrot Cake!

I'm off to an Inauguration Party tonight chez some good friends. I've been asked to create an "Obama cake". I was stumped, I'm not a great decorator and had no clue how to make an "Obama cake".

Thank goodness for the Internet...where you can find things like "Obama's logo stencil" for free! I downloaded, made this wonderful carrot cake from Epicurious.com (the BEST CARROT CAKE EVER), and frosted it with gobs of cream cheese frosting.

To make the design, I cut the stencil out, and used cake "glitter" which I purchased at Michael's. Et voila....an Obama-teau!

Daring Baker's Challenge for November: Caramel Cake

Caramel is good. Who doesn't like it? Especially salted or with good chocolate, you can't beat a good hunk of caramel. But caramel in a cake...and in its frosting...well, too much of a good thing suddenly becomes not so good anymore. That's how I feel about the Daring Bakers Challenge for November: caramel cake. A bite of this cake was good, a few bites made me wonder about when my next dental appointment was, and a piece of it made me feel pretty uneasy for the next 24 hours. Yes, I should have stopped. But I soooo wanted to like it and so I kept forcing it down.

It has to be hard to choose a recipe for the Daring Bakers group. This month this daunting task went to: Dolores, Alex, and Jenny. A huge thank you to them for doing what so many of us have never had to do. Here you have a group of well over 1,000 people around the world, all with varying abilities and tastes, and as with everything in life you simply can't please everyone. I give kudos to all those who do all the research necessary to choose a recipe for the Daring Baker's group.

Usually I'm rather challenged and pretty excited about the monthly challenges. But this cake just didn't do it for me, and I'm sure that this is just a personal opinion. The cake prep itself was very straight-forward, as was the icing. The real challenge in this cake was in making the caramel, so that's good that bakers who had never made their own caramel got a chance to do so. The cake just turned out so very sweet, even with the addition of a huge amount of fleur de sel in the icing, it was still almost inedibly sweet. I brought it to dinner for a friend's birthday, and suffice it to say that this dessert-loving group ate very little of their servings and then declined taking home the leftovers. This was not a good sign! I think the cake would have been better either unfrosted, or with a cream cheese frosting. Something to cut the sweet factor waaaay down.

So, making this cake was a good experience in caramel, but I don't think I would make it again. My always reliable taste-testers were unimpressed, and there are simply too many other great cakes out there and too little time!

The recipe can be found on the Web site of Shuna Fish Lydon, who created it.

Chocolate Espresso Macarons

More and more, I am being associated with the macarons I bring to various parties and events. After 1 1/2 years of making them, I think I finally have the right recipe and "touch"...it takes a lot of practice to get that touch. But really, once you have it you have it, and you suddenly become a macaron superstar in your circle of friends and family.

So for a recent event I brought along a few batches of macarons: chocolate, salted butter caramel, and espresso. The other two recipes are already on the blog, the espresso ones are new so I will post about them here.

These suckers pack a punch of espresso, they taste great with coffee or hot chocolate and require nothing more than a bit of espresso powder.

For Macarons:
1 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar
1 cup almond flour
3 egg whites at room temperature
3 Tb. granulated sugar
pinch of cream of tartar
caramel coloring

Blend the confectioner's sugar and the almond flour in a food processor. Begin to whip the egg whites in a stand mixer until they start to froth. Add a pinch of cream of tartar, and as they foam up more gradually add the granulated sugar. Beat until stiff.

Add the almond mixture to the egg white mixture and fold until the mixture begins to flow "like magma". I would say this will take about 40 - 60 turns of the spatula.

Fill pastry bag fitted with 1/4 " tip and make 1 inch mounds on cookie sheets lined with either parchment or a silpat. Let sit for at least 20 minutes. Sift a bit of espresso powder (not too much) on each macaron before baking. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 12 minutes.

Chocolate/Espresso Filling
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 teaspoons corn syrup
1/2 cup cream
1 Tb. butter
1 tsp. espresso powder


Chop the chocolate into small pieces and place in a small to medium bowl. Heat the cream, espresso powder and corn syrup until hot and bubbles form on the outside edge of the cream. Pour the cream over the chocolate and let sit for 1 minute. Add the butter and stir until it comes together. Refrigerate until ganache is at a spreadable consistency.

Spread ganache over the flat side of one macaron cookie. Top with another macaron.

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The Best Pumpkin Pie You'll Ever Eat

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a huge fan of pumpkin pie. It's always rather gloppy and heavy, you could ball it up and throw it at the person sitting opposite you if you really wanted to. That's not appealing to me in my pie, or my dinner guest. So while perusing my Thanksgiving edition of Bon Appetit magazine, I saw an entire section devoted to the almighty pumpkin. Intrigued by some pretty good looking recipes, I decided to take on their "Pumpkin Butterscotch Pie" and go one further: I used a REAL pumpkin. No can 'o pumpkin puree for moi, I got the real thing. I had never done this in my life, and didn't know if it would make a difference.

OH MY GOD. The difference was astounding. The real pumpkin made the pie really light and smooth, almost like a light custard, rather than heavy like canned pumpkin tends to be. I've vowed that from now on, this will be my pumpkin pie recipe, and real pumpkin will be my partner in crime.

I'm cooking for zee French for Thanksgiving this year (well, not all zee French, only 3), and I'm pretty sure they've never thought to make a pumpkin into a pie. This pie will surely amaze.

(To get pumpkin puree, slice pie pumpkin (not Halloween carving pumpkin) in half, remove seeds and strings, turn upside down in about 1/2 inch of water in a pan, and bake at 350 until the pumpkin is soft, about 45 minutes. Remove the flesh from the pumpkin shell, puree in a food processor until smooth. Let cool before you use it for the pie.)

Pumpkin Butterscotch Pie

Crust:
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp salt
10 tsp chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubews
3 Tb. ice water

Filling:
3/4 cup packed golden brown sugar, divided
2 Tb. unsalted butter
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup Scotch (I didn't use this)
1 1/4 cups whipping cream
1 cup canned pumpkin (or puree of one small pie pumpkin)
3 large eggs
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice

Crust:
Mix flour, sugar and salt in processor. Add butter. Using on/off turns, process until very course meal forms. Add 3 Tb.ice water. Using on/off turns, process until moist clumps form, adding more water by teaspoonfuls if too dry. Gather dough into ball and flatten into disk. Wrap and chill for one hour.

Roll out dough to 12 - 13 inch round. Transfer to 9 inch diameter glass pie dish. Fold edges under and crimp as you wish. Chill dough until firm, about one hour.
(I used a tart pan with high sides, and i froze the dough for one hour, it eliminates bubbles while baking).

* Crust can be made one day ahead, cover unbaked crust and keep chilled.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line crust with sheet of foil. Fill with pie weights or dried beans. Bake 20 minutes. Remove foil with beans. Bake until just beginning to turn golden brown, piercing with fork if bubbles form, about 15 minutes longer. Cool completely.

Filling:
Combine 1/2 cup brown sugar, butter and salt in medium saucepan. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Boil until deep brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Add Scotch, then cream (mixture will bubble a lot) and whisk until smooth. Return to medium hea t and stir until most caramel bits dissolve. Strain butterscotch mixture into small bowl. Cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Whisk remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar and pumpkin in large bowl. Whisk in eggs, then spices. Add reserved butterscotch mixture, whisk to blend.

*Can be made one day ahead, cover and chill, rewhisk before using.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour filling into crust. Bake until just set, about 50 minutes. Cool to room temperature, about 3 hours.

*Can be made 8 hours ahead, store at room temperature.