Daring Bakers June: Chocolate Pavlova

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard.

Paired with fresh Swedish strawberries and cherries, this was the perfect dessert for our Midsummer's Eve dinner. Midsummer is a big deal in Sweden and there are a lot of "musts" and traditions and expectations coupled with it, which I really don't like. So we decided to do Midsummer our own way - with a delicious, untraditional dinner consisting of Atlantic catfish poached in beurre montée (recipe to come) and then the Daring Bakers challenge as dessert.

We started a few days early by making mascarpone using the recipe from the February Tiramisu challenge. The actual challenge then had four parts: chocolate meringue, chocolate mascarpone mousse and a Crème Anglaise which was used in a mascarpone cream.

The meringue recipe was really good. Besides flat meringue shells for the Pavlovas, we also made decorative choclate meringue tops. The batter held its shape very well and allowed for some really high piping.



The Crème Anglaise was easy as well. But the chocolate mousse, well that's another story...



What went wrong? We used Lindt chocolate which I believe is decent quality. Can somebody tell us why we got grainy goo and a lot of oil? Into the trash it went and we made a second attempt (good thing we had bought too much chocolate). The second try threatened to end up the same way, but somehow we saved it although it still was a bit grainy.

The mascarpone cream also looked weird to begin with but ended up fluffy and delicious. And bountiful, which means we got to dip strawberries in it today, and there is still enough left for an apple pie tomorrow!

All in all, we really liked this challenge. By themselves, the parts weren't spectacular (especially the chocolate mousse where the flavor didn't seem to match the amount of work it took), but the sum of them can be summed up in the word YUM!

Thank you Dawn! Please visit the Daring Kitchen for recipes, a look at the other Daring Bakers' creations and lots of other good stuff.



Chocolate Pavlovas with Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse

Chocolate Meringue:

3 large egg whites
110 grams white granulated sugar
30 grams confectioner’s (icing) sugar
30 grams cocoa powder

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 200º F (95º C) degrees. Line two baking sheets with silpat or parchment and set aside.
Put the egg whites in a bowl and whip until soft peaks form. Increase speed to high and gradually add granulated sugar about 1 tbsp at a time until stiff peaks form. (The whites should be firm but moist.)
Sift the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder over the egg whites and fold the dry ingredients into the white. (This looks like it will not happen. Fold gently and it will eventually come together.)
Fill a pastry bag with the meringue. Pipe the meringue into whatever shapes you desire. Alternatively, you could just free form your shapes and level them a bit with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 2-3 hours until the meringues become dry and crisp. Cool and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse:

355 mls heavy cream (cream with a milk fat content of between 36 and 40 percent)
grated zest of 1 average sized lemon
255 grams 72% chocolate, chopped
390 mls mascarpone
pinch of nutmeg
2 tbsp (30 mls) Grand Marnier (or orange juice)

Put 120 mls of the heavy cream and the lemon zest in a saucepan over medium high heat. Once warm, add the chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let sit at room temperature until cool.
Place the mascarpone, the remaining cup of cream and nutmeg in a bowl. Whip on low for a minute until the mascarpone is loose. Add the Grand Marnier and whip on medium speed until it holds soft peaks. (Do not overbeat as the mascarpone will break!)
Mix about ¼ of the mascarpone mixture into the chocolate to lighten. Fold in the remaining mascarpone until well incorporated. Fill a pastry bag with the mousse. Again, you could just free form mousse on top of the pavlova.

Mascarpone Cream:

1 recipe crème anglaise
120 mls mascarpone
2 tbsp (30 mls) Sambucca (optional)
120 mls heavy cream

Prepare the crème anglaise. Slowly whisk in the mascarpone and the Sambucca and let the mixture cool. Put the cream in a bowl and beat with electric mixer until very soft peaks are formed. Fold the cream into the mascarpone mixture.

Crème Anglaise (a component of the Mascarpone Cream above):

235 mls whole milk
235 mls heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
6 large egg yolks
6 tbsp (75 grams) sugar

In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture turns pale yellow.
Combine the milk, cream and vanilla in a saucepan over medium high heat, bringing the mixture to a boil. Take off the heat.
Pour about 1 dl of the hot liquid into the yolk mixture, whisking constantly to keep from making scrambled eggs. Pour the yolk mixture into the pan with the remaining cream mixture and put the heat back on medium. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture thickens enough to lightly coat the back of a wooden spoon. Do not overcook!
Remove the mixture from the heat and strain it through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until the mixture is thoroughly chilled, about 2 hours or overnight.

Assembly:
Pipe the mousse onto the pavlovas and drizzle with the mascarpone cream over the top. Dust with confectioner’s sugar and fresh fruit if desired.

Daring Bakers May: Croquembouche, or Piece Montée

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

I had never heard of a Croquembouche ("crunch in the mouth") before but when I started reading the recipe that hey, this is essentially a dessert made up of éclairs, and who doesn't love those? At least I do! I hand the mike to our host this month, Cat from Little Miss Cupcake:

The classic piece montée is a high pyramid/cone made of profiteroles (cream-filled puff pastries) sometimes dipped in chocolate, bound with caramel, and usually decorated with threads of caramel, sugared almonds, chocolate, flowers, or ribbons. Modern pastry chefs have taken to assembling this dessert in all manners of shapes and sizes, and you should feel free to express your creativity too!

As (almost) ususal we made this in the very last minute, so being elaborate and creative wasn't really an option. We went traditional: the choux were filled with vanilla pastry cream and we decorated our (not very high and neither cone nor pyramid shaped) piece montée with dark chocolate.

We made a whole batch which, in hindsight (*pats very full belly*) wasn't too smart - these things are rich, people! But oh so so delicious!

The whole thing wasn't very complicated at all - we were a bit worried when our choux was in the oven because they didn't seem to puff up at all at first, but that was an unfounded worry. We didn't have enough pastry cream to fill all the choux (good thing) so we will definitely try some savory experiments with those left over. We tried one filled with the sauce we had with dinner tonight (dinner was oven-poached char with lemon, dill and white wine, served with boiled potatoes, sugar snap peas, and a sauce made of sour cream, dill and red caviar) and it was really nice with a savory flavor as well. That sauce together with some smoked salmon would be really nice for a savory choux, especially if you flavor the dough with some herbs.

Thanks Cat for a cool challenge, we're really glad we made it - with two hours to spare before deadline!



Croquembouche

For the Vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla. Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly. Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny. As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes. It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.

Piping:
Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide. Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top. Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

Filling:
When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.

Chocolate Glaze:
8 ounces/200 g. finely chopped chocolate (use the finest quality you can afford as the taste will be quite pronounced; I recommend semi-sweet). Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.

Assembly of your Piece Montée:
You may want to lay out your unfilled, unglazed choux in a practice design to get a feel for how to assemble the final dessert. For example, if making a conical shape, trace a circle (no bigger than 8 inches) on a piece of parchment to use as a pattern. Then take some of the larger choux and assemble them in the circle for the bottom layer. Practice seeing which pieces fit together best.

Once you are ready to assemble your piece montée, dip the top of each choux in your glaze (careful it may be still hot!), and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up. When you have finished the design of your piece montée, you may drizzle with remaining glaze or use ribbons, sugar cookie cut-outs, almonds, flowers, etc. to decorate. Have fun and enjoy! Bon appétit!

Drömtårta

Oh look, another title with weird Swedish characters! Faithful readers might recognize an element of the word: tårta, meaning cake, which we have talked about before. Dröm means dream, and thus the name of this particular cake is "dream cake". I don't know why it got that name - it's certainly not that spectacular, but it's a childhood classic for me. My mom used to make this all the time, and I think this was one of the first baking items I attempted to make on my own. I distinctly remember it being a disaster. The top of the cake was burnt to the point of resembling charcoal, and when I tried to salvage it by peeling away the burnt bits, I found that the bottom of the cake was still runny and uncooked. Lots of tears ensued. That, plus the great 1990 rice-cooking disaster, made me firmly believe that I should stay out of the kitchen. Luckily, things have changed. However, for some reason I still utterly fail every time I try to make omelette. It's like a curse, I tell ya.

Anyway, drömtårta is a Swedish classic. I think these types of cakes are called jelly rolls in English, although this one has nothing to do with jelly. It's a light chocolate flavored sponge-type cake that is filled with vanilla buttercream. You can find perversions of it in grocery stores - always unchilled and with the shelf life of a formalin-stored alien. I haven't dared to look at the ingredient list for one of those, but I'm pretty sure that you can believe it's not butter. Sadly, that seemed to be the only type of "dream cake" that Markus had eaten, prompting him to tell me that he doesn't like it. Well, that needed to be changed! I have successfully gotten him to like spinach (but sadly I have realized that I need to give up on broccoli, as dislike for that seems to be genetic), so how could I fail with a buttercream filled chocolate cake?! That, plus the fact that we had French vanilla buttercream in the freezer (leftover from the triple x macaron feast), prompted me to make this cake a few days ago.

I think it was the first time I made it since that disastrous attempt over 20 years ago. Appearance wise, it left a little to be desired, but it tasted just like moms, with better buttercream. I'll give you the buttercream recipe from the original version as well, but if I were you I would go with the French one, even though it's more labor intensive.



Drömtårta
from Sju sorters kakor (Swedish Cakes and Cookies)

3 eggs
1½ dl sugar
3/4 dl potato starch
2 tbsp cacao powder
1 tsp baking powder

Set the oven to 250°C.
Whip the eggs and sugar until the mixture is light and airy.
Mix the flour and baking powder, sift the cacao and add the dry ingredients. Mix well.
Place a parchment paper on a cookie sheet with higher edges. Spread the batter out as evenly as possible (this is where I apparently went wrong, judging from the appearance of my cake). You want it to be quite thin (~3 mm) as it rises a bit when it bakes.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes.
Take a piece of parchment paper and sprinkle it lightly but evenly with sugar.
Transfer the cake upside down to the sugar coated paper. It's not as tricky as it sounds, as the cake will be stuck to the parchment paper that has been in the oven. Just be quick! Peel of the parchment paper carefully. Let the cake cool before filling.

Traditional buttercream filling

150 g butter
2 dl confectioner's sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 egg yolk

Beat the butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Add vanilla sugar and stir in the egg yolk. Mix well.

French vanilla buttercream
Note! this recipe yields more buttercream than you need for filling the cake. It can be frozen.

80 g egg yolks (about 4)
½ vanilla bean
60 g water (60 ml)
125 g sugar
250 g unsalter butter, at room temperature.

Whip the egg yolks until they are light colored and airy.
Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put them in a small pan. Add water and sugar, and bring to a boil. Use a wet pastry brush to brush down the sides of the pan, this will remove any sugar crystals that have stuck there. Boil until a sugar thermometer reads 117°C.
Add the sugar mixture to the egg yolks, while whisking constantly.
Continue whisking until the mixture is cool. Add the butter little by little, and whisk until the buttercream is light and airy.

To assemble the cake:
Let the cake cool completely before filling it. Make sure your buttercream is at room temperature. Spread the filling over the whole cake and roll it up. Wrap the cake in plastic and store it in the fridge for a few hours before cutting it. The whole cake can be frozen, but note that if you use previously frozen buttercream (like I did), you can not freeze it again.

Daring Cooks October: Phở Ga (and a little extra something)

Fall is here: the days are getting shorter, the temperature is creeping towards zero, and the trees are showing off their new colors of orange, red and yellow. It's the perfect season to escape to the kitchen and make stews and casseroles, apple pie and hot chocolate. Or as in this month's Daring Cooks challenge: a flavorful, warm soup.

The Daring Cooks had a special guest host this month, Jaden Hair of the blog Steamy Kitchen, who just published her first cookbook: The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook. As the challenge, she graciously shared her recipe for a Vietnamese chicken noodle soup, Phở Ga.

We had great expectations for this challenge. I love noodle soups, and Vietnamese food has never disappointed me. I remember the Phở Ga I had at a small Vietnamese place in a back road in Jordan, Hong Kong. It was packed with flavor of warm, fragrant spices, the noodles were perfectly cooked and the chicken oh so tender.

I was very excited about getting to recreate something so yummy in my own kitchen. We could either do a quick version of Phở, using store-bought chicken stock, or a longer version, where you make the chicken stock yourself. We of course opted for the longer version - making the broth from scratch would surely mean that the soup would be super delicious!


Meet the meat, up close and personal.

We followed the recipe perfectly, and even threw in an extra chicken carcass that we had laying in the freezer, to get some extra bone and marrow in there. We took great care to toast the spices and char the ginger and onion - these are steps that both Jaden and other Daring Cooks said were essential in creating a rich, flavorful broth. Judging from the smell coming from the oven and the stove, it would indeed be lovely.

We had started cooking kind of late, so the clook was approaching 9pm when I finally dipped a spoon into the broth in anticipation of what was to follow: the taste of a rich broth with layers of flavor from the spices.

Total anticlimax.

The broth was watery, and didn't taste much else than chicken fat. We were so disappointed. We really don't know what went wrong. We both went back and re-read the recipe, but no, we hadn't missed anything. The only reasons we could come up with as to why the broth was so flavorless were:
1. We couldn't find whole coriander seeds, only ground. We used the same amount, they were fresh and had a lot of aroma, so I can't imagine that this would have done that much for the end result.
2. It hadn't been simmering enough. The recipe said to simmer for 1½ hours on "low". We did exactly that - we even let it simmer for closer to two hours, but maybe we should have cranked up the heat a little bit to get some more bubbles going. We think this was problem.



We ate the soup with all the sides: rice noodles, the cooked chicken breast, bean sprouts, red onions, red chilies, freshly squeezed lime and fresh cilantro. We had also found sriracha sauce in the store (another bottle of strange condiments for the fridge), and we found ourselves pouring a lot of sriracha into the soup to make it taste something.

While we were eating, we had turned up the heat on the stove so that the broth was simmering more vigorously. The recipe yielded a lot of broth, and the idea was to freeze the remainder, so that we can make more Phở in the future. I want to say that the broth tasted more after it had boiled for another hour or so, but I couldn't really tell, so maybe that's just me wanting to like this recipe. Because I really want it to be great. It has potential, definitely. But in this version, I'm sorry to say, it was only... meh.

Anyway, the remainder of the broth is now in the freezer, and I hope that when I thaw it, heat it and add those lovely Phở ingredients, I will be pleasantly surprised. Maybe the extra boiling was the secret key to a flavorful, rich Phở. I will report back when we have tried it.

The recipe for the long version of Phở Ga can be found on the Steamy Kitchen blog. Jaden also has a recipe for a beef Phở (the challenge said that we could do chicken, beef, seafood or vegetarian/vegan). The recipe for the quick version of Phở Ga can be found on the Daring Kitchen website, where you also can see the other Daring Cooks' creations.

The fine print:
The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

But wait, there's more!

As a bonus, Jaden gave us her recipe for deep fried chocolate wontons (you'll find the recipe in the Daring Kitchen). This optional challenge was to make a creative wonton dessert. Sadly there were no wonton wrappers in our grocery store, and it was way too cold to bike across town to the Chinese shop (we got our first snowfall yesterday; it didn't stay on the ground, but still kind of early in the year), so I had to use phyllo dough instead. I hope this will count as "in the spirit of the challenge"! Voilà, my dessert:



Ganache filled banana in a wrapper

Bananas (the thicker and straighter, the better)
Dark chocolate ganache (I used this recipe)
Phyllo dough
Melted butter
Vegetable oil for deep frying
Vanilla ice cream
Caramel sauce (I used this recipe, scroll down for caramel sauce)

Peel the bananas and cut them in smaller sections of about 5 cm. Use an apple corer to make a hole through the banana (this is why you want straight and thick bananas).


Bananas with holes, ready to be filled with ganache.

Make sure your ganache is soft but not runny. Use a pastry bag to fill the banana with ganache (this didn't work for me so I had to use my fingers, which was messy but got the job done). Place the chocolate filled bananas (standing up) in the freezer for about one hour.

Things to remember about phyllo dough: the sheets are very delicate and need to be stored under a wet cloth, otherwise they'll dry out and break apart!

Cut the phyllo dough into squares of about 15×17 cm. Take a sheet of phyllo, brush it with some melted butter, and put another sheet on top. Place a chocolate-filled banana piece on the short end of the square, roll it up and twist the ends (carefully!) to make it look like wrapped candy.

Place your little packages in the freezer for at least twenty minutes. Heat the oil for deep frying. Deep fry two rolls at the time for 2-3 minutes, turning them halfway through. Place on a paper towel to get rid of excess oil before plating. Dust with confectioner's sugar. Serve with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.


Needless to say, this was incredibly yummy!

Paper Chef 44: Fall is upon us

It's time for Paper Chef again, and this time the four ingredients were chosen by Deeba Rajpal of Passionate about Baking. The three randomly selected ingredients turned out to be ricotta, ginger and dark chocolate, and the fourth one was fall... as in autumn. Never seen that one in the supermarket! Fortunately it should be read metaphorically, so we are all encouraged to brain storm ingredients we associate with the season currently upon the northern hemisphere.

Residing in a country that's mostly populated by pine and spruce (Sweden), the mushrooms growing under them is a given fall-lly ingredient, particularly chanterelle. That will be our fourth ingredient!

This time around I figured we should go minimalistic, adding as few other ingredients as possible. Pushing the envelope as far as I could reach, the dish became

~~~
Chanterelle Toast
with Chocolate Ricotta
and Jellied Ginger
~~~

So I just added a slice of toast and some seasoning!

The chocolate ricotta might need some explaining. A while back we discovered that it's not that hard to make your own ricotta. It's basically just milk, cream, salt and lemon! Now what if you dissolved some luxurious dark chocolate in the simmering milk before clotting it? Why you'd get chocolate ricotta, wouldn't you! (Don't answer that, despite the exclamation mark the odds are stacked against this crazy idea!)

So, down crazy lane I went, measuring up 9½ dl milk, 1 dl cream, 130 g dark chocolate and a pinch of sea salt in a large pan on the stove. I also measured up 1½ tbsp of lemon juice to have handy later. After bringing the milk and friends to a steady simmer (stirring occasionally), the lemon juice went in. I stirred it and let it simmer for a minute, then stirred again and again let it simmer for a minute. Since there were no clotting I continued simmering and stirring occasionally, steadily thinking “d**n this, f**k, f**k, f**k, this isn't working” for an unknown amount of time, after which I just tipped it into the cheese cloth and gave up. But then, lo and behold, it actually separated, and in the cheese cloth was a thick creamy, brown pulp, which tasted a whole lot better than that sounded...

Triumphantly I had Jenny agree to the tastiness of the chocolate ricotta!

For the chanterelles you need
100 g Chanterelles
1 Shallot
1½ tbsp Butter
20g Honey
30g Red Wine Vinegar

Finely chop the shallot and dice the chanterelles while a frying pan is heating up with the butter. When the butter quiets, add the shallot and chanterelles. Let them fry for a few minutes. Add the honey and let it be absorbed. Stir like crazy so that it doesn't caramelize on it's own. Add the vinegar (and stand back). Let the vinegar absorb as well before taking it off the heat.

Putting it all together
Toast the toast, and spread the chanterelles on the toast. Mix the chocolate ricotta with chopped jellied ginger (one lump per toast), and spread it over the chanterelles. Enjoy!

(Surviving crazy lane, the enjoy-part was the best!)

“But how” do you ask “shall this be enjoyed? 'Tis not starter nor dessert!” While this is true, we just had it for starters, and it was a lovely prelude to one of our favorite soups!

Daring Bakers August: Twice the Dobos, twice the fun

This has been the most challenging Daring Bakers mission for me so far. Today was a weird day, and not in a good way. I got some pretty bad news, so I was not in a good place to begin with. And I knew I had to make the challenge by myself, because as has been our MO lately, we put off making it to the very last day. Knowing how long it would take to do the challenge, I couldn't wait until Markus got home from work. Thus, I was on my own.

Anticipating a lot of stupid mistakes, eggs and sugar splashing all over the kitchen, and stuff burning to oblivion in the oven, I went baking. But rather than in the company of Murphy, I found myself in a very focused and relaxed place. Things went smoothly, stuff worked the way it was supposed it, there was flow.

Oh, I guess I am supposed to tell you what I was making, huh?

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

I had never heard of a Dobos Torta before, but Angela and Lorraine provided us with a bit of neat background history:

The Dobos Torta is a five-layer sponge cake, filled with a rich chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. (You may come across recipes which have anywhere between six and 12 layers of cake; there are numerous family variations!) It was invented in 1885 by József C. Dobos, a Hungarian baker, and it rapidly became famous throughout Europe for both its extraordinary taste and its keeping properties. The recipe was a secret until Dobos retired in 1906 and gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, providing that every member of the chamber can use it freely.

So, today I was going with the flow of the Dobos. There was no way I was going to make a big buttercream-filled cake just for the two of us, so I decided on miniature cake. And since I was doing this last minute, by myself, and with bad news whirling around my brain, I of course opted for two different kinds of miniature cakes. Can't just make one vesion of this kind of tricky, time-consuming cake you've never heard of before, now can you? Nope, obviously not. So, I made one regular chocolate Dobos, and one white chocolate and rasperry.

I halved the recipe, and got started on the sponge cake. I decided to spread the batter out and, using a glass, cut out little disks for cake layers after it was baked. It worked like a charm, and I got 17 disks - meaning 9 layers for one cake, and 8 for the other.





Then came the buttercream, which also went smoothly (as long as you didn't think about OMG, all that butter!!!). However, the white chocolate one was a lot runnier than the normal one. Maybe that has something to do with the properties of white chocolate (which isn't really chocolate)? I had not planned to mix the raspberries in with the buttercream (the idea was some kind of layering within the cake), but let's just say there was a glitch in the flow.





The finishing touch of a Dobos is the caramel decoration. To see how it should look, you can visit our lovely hosts Angela and Lorraine because they know their stuff. Me, I felt that caramel would be poking the flow to hard, risking its disappearance, so I skipped that, sorry to say. But I did stay within the spirit of the challenge, because I made raspberry caramel (toffee?) to decorate the white chocolate-raspberry Dobos with. I used another recipe which I was more comfortable with (and by this time Markus was home so I got help), and it turned out very yummy. Maybe not too practical to eat together with the cake, because it sticks to your teeth like crazy, but it looks nice. For the chocolate Dobos, we just decorated with some chopped up almonds. To add an extra layer of flavor, we also brushed the chocolate Dobos cake layers with Grand Marnier (triple orange) liqueur.



So, how did it taste? Well, very very rich, but also very delicious! At two o'clock this afternoon, I never thought I would have made two finished miniature Dobos Tortas by the end of the evening. This challenge turned what could have been a lousy and stressful day into something enjoyable and relaxing. Thank you Angela and Lorraine! To see the recipes as well as the other Daring Bakers' creations, visit the Daring Kitchen recipe archive and blogroll!



Raspberry caramel/toffee
(adapted from Godis by Maria Öhrn)

(about 30 pieces)

1 dl pureed raspberries, fresh or frozen and thawed
1 tbsp lemon juice
1½ dl cream
2½ dl sugar
1 tbsp light molasses

Line a small tin, no larger than 20*20 cm, with parchment paper. Run the berries through a fine mesh sieve - we skipped that part which meant caramel and raspberry seeds in the teeth. Mix with the lemon juice, and put together with the other ingredients in a pot. Let it boil slowly, stirring frequently, until it reaches the hard-ball stage (120°C). Pour into the pan and let it cool. Cut into squares. Store in a cool, dry place.

Daring cookie monsters!

This month's Daring Bakers challenge was done in the very last minute - on the day of the reveal (i.e. today). Fortunately, the challenge this month wasn't too time-consuming:

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

Yum! Both these cookies are versions of store-bought cookies, Mallows and Peppridge Farm's Milano Cookies. I've never had Mallows, but we both like Milanos. The challenge said that we could do both cookies, or chose just one recipe. Due to lack of time time we had to limit ourselves to one of the recipes, and chose the easiest one, the Milans. I was really looking forward to making my own marshallows, but alas, that has to wait for another time.

The Milan cookies were easy to make (and the batter was delicious!). We halved the recipe and omitted the vanilla extract as that is hard to find in Sweden (we get vanilla sugar and whole vanilla pods/beans, but normal grocery stores don't sell extract). We also didn't find any lemon extract, only "lemon aroma" which is oil-based, so we reduced the amount to one teaspoon.

The Milans turned out great - they are light and delicate, and taste very close to the original. Thanks Nicole for a tasty challenge!

Here's the recipe for the Milan cookies - for the recipe for chocolate covered marshmallow cookies, go to the Daring Kitchen recipe archive or to the Food Network.

Milan Cookies
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 0 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.
7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

---

Previously completed challenges:
February 2009: Chocolate Valentino
March 2009: Lasagne of Emiglia-Romana
April 2009: Cheesecake
May 2009: Strudel
June 2009: Bakewell Tart...er...pudding

No-bake cookies

Sorry about the very scarce posting lately. It will probably go on this way for much of the summer - I'm going to be away from home a lot, so unless Markus whips up stuff for himself in the kitchen while I'm gone, the blog won't be updated very regularly.

We're having a heat wave in Sweden at the moment, and spending time in the kitchen hasn't been too appealing, apart from opening the fridge to get fresh strawberries. Or one of these cookies!

I found them at Munchkin Munchies, a fellow Daring Baker. They're perfect for summer since they are super quick, require no baking, and are made from stuff you probably already have in the kitchen (well, okay, maybe not too many Swedes have peanut butter at home). It's not a sophisticated "grown-up" cookie, but one you sneak out in the kitchen to munch down together with a glass of cold milk. Peanut butter, cocoa, the caramel-taste of butter and sugar, and crunchy oats - yum!

Sue of Munchkin Munchies tells us it's an old family recipe. Sue has framed the recipe that her mom wrote down for her, and has it framed, hanging in the kitchen. I think that's very sweet!



Cocoa Oatmeal Cookies
From Munchkin Munchies

In a mixing bowl put:
3 cups oats
½ cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla (I left this out since we didn't have any)
Pinch of salt

In a saucepan put:
½ cup butter
2 cups granulated sugar
3 heaping tablespoons cocoa (Sue says she and her mom uses Nestlé Quik. I used quite dark organic cacao powder which gives a more intense and less sweet chocolate flavour)
½ cup of milk

Bring the mixture in the saucepan to a full rolling bowl, and boil for one minute and ten seconds. Too little boiling makes it too gooey, too much makes it too firm. Immediately pour the hot mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper (Sue's instructions) or into small paper cups (that's how I did it). Refrigerate until firm.

I halved the recipe and got 12 cookies.

The best blondies

I could write and ode to these blondies in many, many words. About their gooey delishiousness, about how they only take minutes to make (plus about 20 more in the oven), that they create very few dishes, and that you can put just about anything in them. I am already thinking about what to try next time. Maybe almonds, dried cherries and bourbon. Or white chocolate, white cacao liqueur and raspberries. Or dark chocolate, candied oranges and Cointreau. Or... Well, you get the idea; just like the originator if this recipe, Smitten Kitchen, says: these are infinitely adaptable. And infinitely delishious.



Good stuff blondies
(adapted from Smitten Kitchen via Anne's Food)

110 g butter, melted
1 cup sugar*
1 egg
Pinch of salt
1 cup flour

For flavoring I used:
30 g dark chocolate, chopped
½ cup hazelnuts, chopped
3 small bananas, mashed
2 tsp espresso powder
3 tbsp Bailey's Irish Cream

Mix the melted butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg. Then add salt, flour and the flavorings. Pour into a buttered 20*20 cm pan (or do like me and use a round one). Bake at 175°C for 20-25 minutes. It's better to underbake than to overbake - it doesn't matter if it's still a bit gooey in the middle. In the unlikely case of left overs, these freezes and reheats well.

*The original recipe has brown sugar, I was out so I used regular sugar instead.

Snickerons

After a recent fit of innovation it dawned on me that if you could make pistachio macarons, you probably could use other kinds of nuts, and as peanuts aren't really nuts they should work as well (there's no logic there, just creative thinking). Since it's possible to make peanut macarons (by creative inference), and also chocolate ones, you could take one of each shell and stick caramel cream between them and have something that's kinda like a snickers bar. The natural name for this thing would of course be “snickerons” – hence the title of this post. I sincerely hope we do not offend the French nation by blatantly dragging the crown of French pastry mastering into the cheap filth of American mass consumerism. I mean, that's what we're doing, we're just hoping no one takes offense... :-)

So, the three components needed are peanut and chocolate macaron shells and caramel cream.

Macaron shells
100 g Egg whites
30 g Sugar
100 g Ground Almonds
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
dash of Lemon Juice

Mix the ground almonds and confectioner's sugar in a large bowl. Whip the egg whites and lemon juice to a foam, add the sugar and whip it to a soft meringue. Fold the meringue into the dry mixture without overworking it. Pipe small rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (use a round tip). Let them sit for at least 30 minutes before baking at 175°C for 7–8 minutes.

Chocolate macaron shells
Substitute 20 g of confectioner's sugar with 20 g powdered cocoa. Add a light touch of green food coloring to get a more chocolaty color to the finished shells.

Peanut macaron shells
Substitute half of the almonds with peanuts. Make sure they're roasted and unsalted. The only ones I could get that matched those criterion were unpeeled Raffles style peanuts (the Long bar at Raffles Hotel is home to the Singapore Sling, and the shells of the complimentary peanuts are supposed to be discarded on the floor – colonially decadent and barbaric, but fun), which makes for some gruesome peeling... the things we do for treats!


Peanut macaron shells fresh out off the oven

Caramel cream
120 g Sugar
1 tsp Lemon Juice
300 g Cream

Melt the sugar and lemon juice in a pan. Add the cream little by little and let it absorb. When all the cream is in the pan, give it a quick boil up and then strain it into something that you can cover up and put in the fridge. Cover up and put into the fridge. :-)

Assembly
Put some caramel cream between two different kinds of shells. Enjoy!


The finished snickerons

It actually worked. They taste somewhat like a snickers bar, only better. I think it needs more peanut though, so I'll try adding some salt in between (to lift the peanut flavor), or add some chopped regular (roasted and salted) peanuts. I guess the salt could have been added to the caramel cream, that would probably have worked out beautiful.

Another thing about following fits of inspiration is that you rarely stop to think things through, which I've had time to do now, and I really don't know why I made two shells... could've just made chocolate flavored peanut shells and caramel cream.

Guess that's the next iteration of this insanity: salt caramel cream and chocolate flavored peanut macaron shells. Or do you need almonds to call it macarons? Never mind – we're calling them snickerons anyway!

Monday Macaron Madness

Do you know what a good activity at 9.30 pm on a Monday evening is? We do: it's making macarons for the first time! Crazy? Guess it fits us then... :-)

We figured we'd start off easy and try a plain almond macaron with dark chocolate ganache for filling. So, we need a chocolate ganache and some macarons! Here's how we made them:

Chocolate ganache
125 g Cream
100 g Dark chocolate (70%)
20 g Honey
1 tbsp Havana Club Añejo Especial (Cuban rum)

Chop the chocolate finely (go ahead, be as masochistic as me and do it by hand, or use a mixer). Add the rum to the chocolate. Mix the cream and the honey in a pot and bring it to a near-boil experience. Pour the cream mixture over the chocolate and fold it together. Let it stabilize in the fridge.

Macarons
We basically ripped one of Tartelette's excellent recipes. Although it originally called for pistachios we just substituted them for even more almonds.

90 g Egg Whites (about 3)
30 g Sugar
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
110 g Almonds

Mix the confectioner's sugar and almonds to a fine powder. Whisk the egg whites and add the sugar gradually until a meringue is formed. Fold in the almond/sugar powder until the whole batter has a “magma-like” consistency. Use a pastry bag with a plain tip to pipe 2 cm rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (or two in our case). Let them sit and harden for 30–60 minutes before baking them in 130°C for 20 minutes (or longer if you made them bigger). Actually, make it longer and make them bigger, that's what Tartelette (a.k.a. The Macaron Queen of the Blogosphere) does... Let them cool before assembly. Supposedly, they survive well in the freezer, and two baking sheets of macarons is quite alot if you're not having guests over. We'll have to get back to you about that though, we're definetly shoving some of them in the freezer before assembly.

Assembly
Just put them back-to-back with some filling in between! Oh, and enjoy with a glass of milk – it goes great with the sweet and chocolaty macarons!


Mmm, this looks yummy...


...let's move in for a closer look!

Also, having made macarons we feel that there should be some sort of rite of passage into a new stage of our blogospheric career, so if anyone knows of a graphic or something to proclaim that we are “amateur food bloggers with macaron capabilities,” please comment!

Daring Bakers February: For the love of chocolate

I am happy to announce that as of February 2009, I am a member of an incredible online baking community called "Daring Bakers". The Daring Bakers was born in 2006, when a couple of bloggers decided to bake pretzels using the same recipe and then post about it. Since then, the group has grown and grown again, but the premises are the same: each month, a recipe is presented that all participants have to follow exactly, except for specifically allowed alterations. On a given day at the end of the month, the Daring Bakers post their experiences, photos and thoughts of the challenge. It's a great opportunity to challenge yourself and try recipes that you otherwise would not have chosen, and to get to know loads of wonderful bakers and food bloggers from all over the world. You can see the blogroll here.

So, the challenge this month:

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker and 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.

The Chocolate Valentino is a flourless chocolate cake created by Malaysia's "most flamboyant food ambassador" Chef Wan. The recipe comes from his book "Sweet Treats", and contains three simple ingredients: chocolate, eggs and butter. We were given a totally free choice on what type of chocolate to use. It was said that the finished cake would taste exactly like the chocolate used - I will get back to that statement in a little while. I decided to go local (or at least national) and use Swedish Marabou milk chocolate. A lot of people get Sweden and Switzerland mixed up and say "oh, Sweden, that's where you have the cuckoo clocks and the chocolate, right?". Well, cuckoo clocks not so much, but chocolate - yes, we do have good chocolate in Sweden.

The other part of the challenge was to make our own ice cream - a first for the Daring Bakers. But not for me; I got an ice cream maker for my birthday a few years ago, and it has not been sitting unused in a cupboard since. So the challenge for me was not to make the actual ice cream, but to find a flavour that would go well with my chosen type of chocolate. We were given two different vanilla ice cream recipes, but we didn't have to use them and could go with other flavours than vanilla. After much thinking about what flavours go well with milk chooclate, I decided to make a caramel (burnt sugar) ice cream, using a recipe from our go-to-guy when it comes to anything pastry related: Jan Hedh. The idea was to play on the flavours of another Swedish candy, Dumle, which is a milk chocolate covered caramel toffee.

Now, the orginal recipe for the flourless chocolate cake is as follows:

Chocolate Valentino
(from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan)

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.
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.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

I halved the recipe and decided to make individual cakes in muffin cups rather than to make one big cake (to make it a true Valentino it should be heart shaped but I don't have a heart shaped pan, so...). From the halved recipe I got 7 small individual cakes.

The only mistake we (Markus and I did this together) made was to whip the egg whites too early. I was on chocolate and butter melting duty while Markus was taking care of the eggs. When he had whipped the egg whites perfectly, the chocolate hadn't started to melt yet. Stiffly whipped egg whites does not hold their shape forever, so we were a bit worried about this, since we also had to let the chocolate cool a bit before adding the eggs. That's what you get for trying to be efficient, people! When we finally folded in the egg whites, the mixture got really grainy and had a weird consistency, so we were a bit worried about the end result and that the cake would get too dry. Other than that, everything was very straight-forward and easy.

We didn't use a thermometer but instead just set a timer to 20 minutes (our oven is a bit unreliable at times). When we got them out, the cakes that had been to the front in the oven were clearly done, while the ones in the back still looked too pale and undercooked. I chucked those back in the oven, went back to the computer and....... gaah, I totally forgot the cakes! Luckily, only about seven minutes had passed and they didn't look burnt at all, so, phew! I didn't notice any difference in taste between the 20-minute cakes and the 27-minute cakes so this seems to be a very forgiving recipe.

We let them cool for a while (they do sink quite a bit while cooling), got the caramel ice cream out of the freezer (don't worry, I'll give you the recipe below!) and plated. A small cake, a chunk of ice cream on top, a Dumle candy to decorate and then, to add a bit of tartness to complement all the sweet flavours, we sprinkled a few frozen lingonberries on the plate - lingonberries and caramel is a great flavour combo!

I said above that it was stated in the challenge that the cake would taste exactly like the chocolate used. We didn't find that to be the case at all. The cake tasted much more stronger and intense than milk chocolate does - as if baking had removed the mildness and milkyness and left a much more concentrated chocolate taste. We weren't saddened by this at all - it was still delicious and I am definitely making this again, and trying it out with different kinds of chocolate. Lindt has a Fleur de Sel chocolate that I love and I am very tempted to try that in this cake. The cake was fudgy and moist and it tasted even better the next day, and still good the day after that (I kept them in a well-sealed plastic bag in my pantry). Then the seven small cupcakes were gone!

This recipe is a keeper! Thanks Wendy and Dharm for a very tasty challenge!



Here's the caramel ice cream recipe. It comes from Jan Hedh's book Desserter (Deserts).

Time: 2 days

2 g gelatin (~1 leaf)
1/4 vanilla pod
2 ½ dl heavy cream
2 ½ dl milk
125 g sugar
120 g egg yolks (~6)
25 g honey

Day 1:
Soak the gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes.
Slice the vanilla pod open, scrape out the seeds and put them in a sauce pan with cream, milk and the opened vanilla pod. Bring to a boil.
Melt the sugar until it has a golden brown color. Get the vanilla pods out of the cream mixture and pour it over the caramel (be careful, there will be a lot of smoke and bubbles). Stir until the caramel has melted completely.
Whip the egg yolks light and airy together with the honey. Add them to the caramel cream mixture.
Stirring instantly, let the mixture reach 85 degrees C. If you don't have a thermometer, do the "rose test": dip a wooden spoon in the mixture. lift it up and blow at the mixture on the back of the spoon. When a rose-like pattern is formed, it is done.
Squeeze the excess water out of the gelatin. Put it in the mixture and stir until dissolved.
Transfer the mixture to another bowl that you place in a bath of ice-cold water to let it cool down fast. Cover with plastic and place in the fridge until next day.

Day 2:
Put the mixture in an ice cream maker for 30-45 minutes. Transfer to a plastic box and freeze until needed.

Sunday dessert

For our late V-day dinner, I also created a dessert, largely from previous posts! So, what I didn't tell you about the meringue was that I also made a “marängbotten” – I'm totally at a loss as to what this is called in English! Please help me out. Anyway, I made a disc of meringue by moving the pastry bag in a spiraling motion, and in Swedish it sort of means cake foundation in meringue. All you need is a steady hand and a full pastry bag, which you can see from the picture were not as fully stocked as I would have wished for... it's the first time I made it though, so next will be better!


Word wanted!

I then scoped up some cherry ice cream on top of that...


The beginning of a wicked cool dessert

And then sprinkled some chopped chocolate on that.


All done!

Maybe not a winner of beauty contests, but tasting divine! There's a moral to this story as well: if you keep busy making goodies during the week, the weekend desserts doesn't have to be all that hard to make!

And if you've just shared a bottle of wine between the two of you, you'll probably want something strong to go with it. In this case I would suggest that you do like we did and enjoy this dessert with a nice avecish drink called God Father. Just pour 1 part amaretto and 3–4 parts scotch over some ice cubes. And I don't mean the bar-tender type parts (~15 ml), but the ones you decide the size of yourself, because the recipe only gives you the proportions. Although the bar-tender's part will result in a fairly well sized drink.

Seven cookies week day 4: Chocolate crinkles

Today I have tried an all new recipe and not made any major changes, besides halving it, because I didn't want to get too many cookies. Let's say I get an avarage of 20 cookies out of each day this week. That times seven is 140 cookies - that's a helluva lot of cookies people.

I had never heard about chocolate crinkles before, but when I read about them I immediately got interested. Soft gooey fudgy chocolate cookies? That I gotta make!

Please use a really good chocolate for this recipe, don't be cheap with the sugary fake stuff. You really should use a dark chocolate (or bittersweet or whatever it's called where you are), cause otherwise I think these cookies will be overwhelmingly sweet.



Chocolate crinkles (Recipe from Joy of Baking.com)

Makes about 20 cookies

25 grams butter
100 grams dark chocolate (I used one with 70 % cacao)
1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used the seeds from about 3 cm of a vanilla pod instead)
3/4 cup (105 grams) flour
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
Confectioners sugar for topping

Place the butter and chocolate in a stainless steel bowl and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water. When it has melted, stir and set aside. Beat the egg and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and then the chocolate mixture. Mix the dry ingredients and add them. Stir until just combined. Cover the bowl with plastic and place in the freezer to set for a couple of hours or overnight, until the dough is firm enough to shape in to balls. Put the confectioners sugar in a shallow bowl. Using your hands, roll a small amount of the chilled dough into a small ball with a diameter of about 2,5 centimeters (1 inch). Then roll the ball in the confectioners sugar until it is completely covered. Place the cookie balls on parchment covered baking sheets, about 5 cm apart. Bake in the center of the oven at 175 degrees C for 8-10 minutes until the edges are set but the insides still soft. Overbaking will turn the cookies dry. Eat these with a cold glass of milk and a smile on your face!

TGI Friday part 2: Desert

Well, the previous post probably had all the health freaks and GI-eaters running away, so for the rest of us who believe that food is for the soul as well: here's the incredibly tasty desert that I made for my TGI Friday-dinner. It's taken from Nigella's website, but I changed it a little bit. She actually called for three kinds of ice cream (vanilla, fudge/caramel and chocolate) but since I am trying to cut down on unnatural food with tons of additives and weird flavoring, and didn't have time to fire up our ice cream maker, I decided to just use vanilla (I got Häagen Dazs which I know is not at all comparable to home made ice cream and can charge premium money just 'cause they have a "European" sounding name and stuff, but the ingredient list for their vanilla ice cream was reassuringly short and simple).

I halved the recipe to make it for two, but still got a lot of the peanut butter-chocolate sauce (not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't really keep), so unless you're really greedy, this will make enough sauce for three people. The original recipe calls for smooth peanut butter, but I used an organic peanut butter (which only contains peanuts and sea salt) which isn't entirely smooth but a tad grainy, and it worked perfectly well. I also added some more (maybe 20 grams) of chocolate towards the end, cause I wanted the sauce to be more chocolate-y. Enough talking, let's have desert!




Chocolate peanut butter fudge sundae

For the sauce:
87 ml double cream (I used Swedish "vispgrädde" which has 35-40 % fat)
50 g milk chocolate, chopped
50 g smooth peanut butter
1½ tbsp light syrup

Plus:
Vanilla ice cream, how ever much you want
Coarsely chopped salted peanuts, to taste

Put everything for the sauce in a pan, place on the heat and stir until everything is melted and combined, it takes no more than 2 minutes. Let the sauce cool slightly, and spoon it over the ice cream. Top with shopped salted peanuts. Eat and be happy! Very happy.