Flourless chocolate cake and coconut ginger ice cream

I am sort of embarrassed to admit this, but I joined this on-line baking group called "Daring Bakers," which I found because I noticed that some of the blogs I ended up on when I googled things like "pumpernickel flour substitute" had references to it. It's basically a group of people with blogs involving baking or food who all bake the same thing once each month. A couple of members choose a recipe for the entire group, and you are supposed to make it at some point during the month and then post it on a designated day (yesterday! I hope I'm not on the outs already). There are some pretty lengthy rules about posting that I am still not entirely clear on. For example, we are required to post the following statement with this month's flourless chocolate cake and ice cream recipes:

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.

There is also a website for members with forums with people fielding questions about baking and cooking.

I was feeing a bit skeptical until I started in on it and looked at this month's host Dharm's blog for guidance on how the cake should look when it came out of the oven (answer: sort of still wet and wobbly in the center). I found out that Dharm is a dad of two cute kids in Kuala Lumpur who recently posted a chocolate layer cake he made from a recipe he found in a 1978 edition of Australian Women's Weekly. How can you not love that? So I am sold again. Plus, I brought the cake and ice cream over to our new friends' house for a (pretty fantastic) pot luck dinner, and it was a hit. I respond very well to positive feedback, and they gave me a lot of it. Hostess Priyanka took this picture for me. I made the cake, plus a coconut ice cream with candied ginger (they gave you leeway on the ice cream part). I had extra heavy cream so we made whipped cream, too--which was unnecessary but always good.

The cake has just three ingredients: chocolate, butter and eggs. The tricky part is beating the egg whites and folding them into the chocolate/egg mixture -- on the first try I let the eggs sit too long and they separated, so I had to beat a new batch and added some cream of tartar that time. It worked. Second tip is to use the best chocolate you can afford -- it will (as the Daring Bakers instructions told me) taste exactly like whatever you use. I went part expensive chocolate, part cheap.

The ice cream is easy enough, but making a custard base always means hovering over the stove for a while. Good study break. I used the opportunity to test out the confection thermometer I've had for years without using (not sure where it came from), and turns out that yes, the custard does seem to thicken considerably somewhere between 150 and 170 degrees. Very cool.

Here are the recipes, the cake from DB and the ice cream adapted from Peggy Fallon's Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts:

Flourless Chocolate Valentino Cake

Printable Recipe

• 16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped. [I used 1/2 Valrhona from Trader Joe's, and 1/2 nestle chocolate chips; 3/4 semisweet and 1/4 bittersweet]
  
• ½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter [I accidentally skimped on the butter by those extra 2 tablespoons and didn't notice until just now]
  
• 5 large eggs separated

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.

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

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).

With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

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.

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

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

Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.

Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Coconut Ginger Ice cream

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 14oz can unsweetened coconut milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3 tablespoons candied ginger (for a garnish or to mix in, or more if you want)

Heat the cream, coconut milk, sugar and salt in a saucepan until the sugar melts and the mixture is smooth. Remove from heat.

Beat the egg yolks, and very slowly whisk in a cup of the warm cream to heat the eggs without cooking them.

Add the egg/cream mixture slowly into the remaining warm cream and coconut milk and return to the heat, stirring regularly until the custard thickens and coats a spoon.

Remove from heat and strain into a bowl. Cover and let come to room temperature, and then chill in the fridge for a few hours or up to a couple of days.

When ready to freeze in an ice cream machine, add a teaspoon of vanilla and the diced ginger (if mixing in), combine well and freeze according to your machine's directions. Return to teh bowl and leave in teh freezer for a while if you have the time.

So that's my first Daring Bakers challenge. Happy Sunday!

Long ice cream post for Lisa's birthday!

Today is Lisa's birthday! Or maybe it was yesterday? I'm bad with birthdays. And she's in the UK, so it is tomorrow there already even if her birthday is today over here. In any case, she is special and this is her special day!

Here's me and Lisa in Des Moines, Iowa two and a half years ago -- this is the last time I saw Lisa, I think. Which is shocking considering the amount of time we used to spend/waste together. She has created an entire new person since then (see Gillian!), and I can't wait to meet her.

Lisa has specifically requested ice cream recipes to use with her new ice cream machine. We have had several conversations about the glories of ice cream makers. I love mine, even if it is in the cabinet now because I have no room for the bowl in the freezer. But as an incentive to make vs. buy, we were just informed by QFC that some peanut butter cup ice cream we bought was recalled for the salmonella scare. Yuck.

So I'm no expert, but here are some ice cream recipes for Lisa. The ones I've tried and liked so far are:

Berry and vodka sorbet
Pumpkin rum-raisin ice cream

I also direct you to the chocolate cashew ice cream I posted a few weeks ago.

And then by request, Plain Vanilla. I have not actually made them but I'll pass them to you and you can tell me how they go.

First, here are some rambling things I picked up by trial and error:

There are a couple of approaches to ice cream. First, the slightly challenging custard base with tons of eggs and time on the stove, then time chilling, before it can go in the freezer. So delayed gratification but richer and fattier and creamier and probably a crowd-pleaser. Second, the completely idiot-proof all milk and cream no-cooking involved kind (unless you steep something in the cream, which is always a good idea). It's quicker and easier, but doesn't keep well and can be kind of icy. There's apparently an additive (pectin? gelatin? Rennet?) that you can use to cut the icy/crystalline quality, but I haven't tried yet. Too lazy. And then there is the skimp-on-fat frozen yogurt or low fat kind. The texture changes with frozen yogurt--particularly if you use no milk at all, or no fat at all. Nonfat frozen yogurt sticks to the ice cream maker bowl, but ice cream does not. And the frozen yogurt doesn't freeze as smoothly. If I'm making it for me, I use plain non- or lowfat yogurt. If it's for anyone else, I use the full fat kind or add cream or whole milk.

For all recipes, it's a good idea to chill the mix in the fridge before you freeze it, so that the flavors come together. They can sit for a couple of hours to a couple of days and be fine. A tiny bit of booze is also really nice in ice cream (like, a tablespoon or two) -- particularly in sorbet. It keeps it from getting too hard, and helps it be creamy. But not too much or it won't freeze right. Finally, all machine instructions and recipes seem to say that you should churn it in the maker and then transfer it to a bowl and let it sit in the freezer for a while to firm up. I sometimes do this and sometimes I can't wait. Seems like the custard ones need it while the yogurt really doesn't. Lower fat kinds are better fresher and softer, I think.

So here goes:

1. Pumpkin Rum Raisin (adapted from Peggy Fallon's Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts)

I made this one for my neighbors and they liked it. But it got kind of grainy from the pumpkin after a day or two in the freezer, so is best eaten pretty fast.

1/2 cup dark rum
1 cup dark raisins
2 cups sugar
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 can pumpkin (unsweetened -- not pie filling)
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
pinch of salt

Bring the rum and raisins to a boil, remove from the heat, and let soak for an hour.

Whisk the sugar and the creams and salt together to dissolve the sugar, then whisk in the pumpkin and spices. Taste it to see if you like it sweeter, but I can't imagine you do. Chill it for a couple of hours. Follow your machines instructions -- adding the raisins and the rum when you are in the final few minutes.

2. Berry Vodka Sorbet

I used frozen mixed berries (blueberries, raspberries and blackberries) for this, and it was great. Straining the stuff to get rid of the seeds and skins is a pain, though. I bet you could do this with other fruit -- I've been meaning to try pureed canned peaches (without adding sugar if they are packed in syrup), and fresh ripe mango might be nice. The zest makes a big difference, and I bet other citrus juice or zest swapped in would work well. If you don't have juice or cider of any kind (maybe a berry juice might be good) you probably want to add some sugar.

1 to 1.5 pounds mixed berries, fresh or frozen.
3/4 cup apple cider or juice
3/4 cup maple syrup or sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
pinch of salt
grated lemon zest (about one lemon)
1-2 tablespoons vodka

Blend the berries with the apple juice in a blender or use an immersion blender in a big bowl. Strain the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds and skins. Stir in the maple syrup, lemon juice, salt, lemon zest, and vodka. Freeze according to the machine's instructions.

Long post! Here's a picture to break it up: This (really scary) monkey stole a cookie from me in Gilbraltar, on a trip that Amy and I took a couple of years ago. She tried to get me to pose with the monkey but I would not. Lisa REALLY LIKES monkeys, and also likes the Pixies quite a bit. She once made me promise to do an interpretive dance to the Pixies song This Monkey's Gone to Heaven at her funeral -- wearing a flesh-colored body suit. Clearly both the request and promise were made after a few too many drinks. I have never understood what made her come up with the body suit.

3. Vanilla, two ways (cooked and no cooking, both from the Ice Cream book noted above)

A. Cooked Fancy vanilla

1 vanilla bean
3 cups heavy cream
1 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
4 egg yolks
1 tablespoon good vanilla extract

Split the vanilla bean in half and scrape the seeds out into a saucepan with the milk, cream and the vanilla bean itself. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.

Add the sugar and salt, and return the pan to medium heat for about 5 minutes, until it is hot.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks. Gradually and slowly whisk in about a cup of the hot milk mixture -- slowly enough to heat the eggs without cooking them. Add the egg and milk mixture to the pan with the rest of the cream and cook slowly, on low heat, until it starts to thicken into a custard. It should coat the back of a spoon. Don't let it boil.

Strain the custard through a sieve and remove the vanilla bean. Cover and refrigerate the mixture for at least 6 hours. When you are ready to make it, stir in the vanilla, and freeze according to the machine's directions. Transfer to a freezer container and let it firm up for another couple of hours.

B. No Cook Plain Vanilla

1.5 cups whole milk
1.5 cups heavy cream
pinch of salt
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix all, dissolving the sugar. Let sit and chill for as long as you can, and then freeze according to the machine's directions. The recipe says freeze for three hours after you have churned it.

But in a pinch this past summer, I'd take whatever yogurt I had in the fridge -- generally vanilla or plain -- and add some milk or cream (1/2 cup? a cup?), a touch of vanilla, and some maple syrup or sugar to taste. You can add some berries at the end if you want -- or cook down some frozen or fresh berries with some sugar and/or a touch of lemon juice and put it in or on top. Easy and quick and good when Gilly is too cranky to let you deal with custard.

Finally, I have a cup of coconut milk in the fridge, some full fat yogurt, and a couple of almost over-ripe bananas. I think I will put them together with some sugar and vanilla and see what happens and then let you know next year.

I hope this helps! Happy birthday Lisa! And congrats on the new job. I hope you had a great day, and have many more great ones this year. I hope we even get to have a couple together. Much love.

Belated Christmas recipes

My neighbor and her very adorable son Noah just stopped by and gave my a glass of excellent carrot juice she made, which I think gave me a burst of energy that I am hoping will help me churn out this recipe post. Otherwise I'll probably lose track of where I put them and have to hunt for them next time I want to make them.

So this is what I remember from baking at this point:

Torres' chocolate mudslide cookies
Chocolate cashew ice cream
Anisette toast
Cranberry orange bread
Pumpkin chocolate chip bread
Lard bread
Caramel pecan pie

And then there was potato leek soup and chicken stew with CSA veggies, but I think I just threw stuff in a pot for those. I think I'll post the ones I found on-line today, and then the ones I dug out of books or adapted from somewhere next time. The lard bread in particular took some effort to find.

Some of the baked goods went to pre-holiday dinners, some to the pug-sitter's family, some to Christmas eve dinner at Jake's cousin's house, and a bit to a friend who had a baby recently.

The anisette cookies, however, are mine alone. They are rock hard and perfect for dipping in coffee, and no one likes them but me. It took a while to find a recipe I liked, which oddly enough is apparently from a Sopranos cookbook, of all places. Who knew? There are multiple Sopranos cookbooks, it seems. Most of the other recipes I found for biscotti used butter or oil to make them more tender, and had lots of nuts -- not the hard, dry cookies I was looking for. This one has a lot of eggs but nothing that would make them fall apart in your coffee or somewhere between your mug and mouth (landing on your laptop). I added about a teaspoon more of anisette extract than the recipe called for, plus about a half a teaspoon of vanilla.

The chocolate cookies were a last minute find, because Jake's cousin requested something chocolate. But I've been hoping to make the ice cream for quite a while and never got around to it.

The cookies have a very official name, Jacques Torres' Chocolate Mudslide Cookies, and are all over the internet. That Torres has marketed the hell out of them, with good reason. You can apparently even buy a mix on Amazon, and they come with their very own video demonstration that I just watched now but wasn't too interesting. I thought the ice cream and cookies went really well together, even though both were really rich. But I had some mishaps with both. I ended up burning a batch of cookies because I was toying with the time (his recipe is for large cookies, and I made small, so if you try that cook them for like 10 minutes, tops), so I kept the slightly burnt ones shown in the photo--I froze them before we left and we've been picking at them since we got back. The ice cream didn't have enough time to freeze well, and we threw in some marshmallows that were on hand but turned out to be really stale. Not that the stale marshmallows stopped us from eating it. FYI: stale mini marshmallows in ice cream sort of pop when you bite them.

The real winner from the cookies is Torres' tip of spreading cookie dough onto a cookie sheet and chilling it, and then scoring or cutting the dough so that all the cookies are the same size. What a good idea. You could just cut them and then freeze them--which is so much easier than scooping out dozens of cookies. I've been freezing cookie dough already in balls, so that you can just put a couple on a tray frozen.

The cranberry orange bread was inspired by the pound of cranberries I got from the CSA and the really nice looking photo on the blog I found it on when I googled for cranberry recipes. Everything looks really beautiful on her blog, but this is the first thing I've tried. It tasted great and was a nice change from all the rich food going around, but I think it was a bit soggy and didn't hold up all that well. I'll leave out some of the juice, buttermilk and/or butter next time. The glaze was great, though. A keeper.

The other stuff will come next time. I'm off to walk the pug (who snuck into the neighbor's apartment and ate their cat's food, the little shit), and to hopefully get some work done. Happy weekend!