For the Love of Chocolate....

It's that time again.... Daring Bakers!!!

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.

In trying to stay true to my Low Carb dieting... Trust me... I over did it plenty when making my valentines day treats. There's something addictive about those ickle little cupcakikins... ;o)

So for my challenge, I was pleased to find that this recipe was easily adaptable into something that would fit within my plan... here is my adapted recipe - my changes are off to the side....

Chocolate Valentino

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

16 ounces of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped ( 16 oz Hershey's sugar free chocolate chips)

½ cup Plus 2 TBSP 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. {link of folding demonstration}

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

9. Bake for 25 minutes until 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.

The second part of this challenge was to make ice cream. I was excited to attempt this as I do not have an ice cream maker. So above, is the cream mixture before going into the freezer and below is a picture I took of it mid freezing. I'm not sure if it took so long to freeze because I used Agave Nectar as my sweetner or if it was my idiotic freezer, but it certainly took a few hours... I'd do it again though and stop before total frozen... milkshake texture would have been nice. How awesome would that be to make homemade milkshakes and never have to turn on the blender?

Again... the recipe, my changes are off to the side....


Wendy's Ice Cream Recipe
Vanilla Philadelphia Style

Recipe Preparation Time: 5 minutes

2 cups of half and half

1 cup heavy cream

2/3 cup sugar (1/3 cup Agave Nectar - mine was vanilla flavored)

Dash of salt

1 tablespoon of vanilla

Mix all ingredients together (we do this in a plastic pitcher and mix with an emulsifier hand blender-whisking works too).Refrigerate for 30 minutes or longer Mix in your ice cream maker as directed.

Without ice cream maker, put your bowl in freezer and stir it every 45 minutes until ice cream has been formed.



And then the cake was done....

For serving, I decided to serve it with Raspberry sauce... the chocolate even though sugar free was bound to be a bit much for me.

All I did was take a few frozen cubes of raspberry puree... crushed and frozen last summer at the height of their season... yummo! And drizzled them with a little agave nectar for sweetness and let them thaw out completely. This plating was the one I did when I was too anxious to wait any longer.

One of my friends sent me the placemat for a Valentine's present... Thanks Sweetie!!! I love them.

The cake is ready for it's close up... See - the ice cream wasn't quite frozen enough to not be a pool of cream... still very yummy though.

Then, I did a plating the following day... when the ice cream was able to hold the shape of the scoop...

It was fun... I've had my eye on a flourless cake for a while. Can't wait til next month!! ooh, which is tomorrow already. LOL

Valentines Day Treats

Ah yes... February is such a short short month!!! It made me realize I hadn't shared my desserts that I took to work yet. By popular request, I had to make these sweet little cupcake bites ~ Bakerella ROCKS! ~ I have become like the most popular person at work when it comes to party day because I make these little guys. (Of course it helps that I found the sweetest little teeny tiny heart sprinkles. They were perfect on the little guys...)

I used Chocolate cake with deep fudge icing and Cherry Chip Cake with Cream Cheese Icing. The chocolate ones... well, some of them were in a 'peanut butter' candy melt cup and topped with 1/2 of a cherry jelly belly. I also used cotton candy and bubble gum jelly bellies for a fun themed color scheme. The cherry chip ones were mostly topped in white and in red or purple cups.

Here's the assembled tray. I realized afterwards that the only ones that were dipped in a colored top were the chocolate ones. But that's okay because the few that were white topped were showing the flavor underneath.

And then for comparison, I made 6 cupcakes of each flavor and decorated them in a similar styling to the mini ones. With bigger heart sprinkles and a whole jelly bean on top. These were frosted with a Whipped Cream Icing - it's pretty good... Betty Crocker does lovely things with frosting. LOL

I had to show off my cupcake stand... one of the girls at work got it for me at Christmas in our secret santa gift exchange and this was the first chance I had to use it. I somehow missed taking pictures of them but I also did up a couple boxes of pillsbury valentines cookies and rolled the edges of about a dozen in the mini heart sprinkles before baking and then frosted the rest with the left over frosting and decorated with cinnamon hearts and sprinkles...

my most favorite salad ever...

Okay... so maybe not my favorite salad ever...

Just at least my favorite since I started trying to be low carb.

Isn't it gorgeous?

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So... it's a steak salad...




Start in your pan with some diced celery and sliced onion... browning to caramelize them, add a little butter towards the end before you put in enough sliced steak for your serving...
Brown to your preferred doneness level...

this is about 2 cups of shredded lettuce... I love using the Fresh Express Shredds... it makes salad making go much quicker.

Put the celery, onions and steak on the lettuce.

Sprinkle with bleu cheese crumbles

And the final topping... which doubles as your dressing is the horseradish sauce.

Horseradish sauce:

1/4 C Sour Cream

2-3 tsp Horseradish - to taste

Black Pepper

Lemon or Lime Juice

Stir Horseradish and pepper into sour cream and add the juice of your choice until it thins out to your desired texture. It keeps in the fridge fairly well and is easily thinned again if it thickens.

Lemon Curd

So this is the juice of 3 Meyer's Lemon's in my cute little food processor.

It was a lovely juice. LOL

And finished lemon curd.

Daring Bakers - January 2009- Tuiles with something Fruity

Oh goodness... I guess time flies when you're not really paying attention.

But here it is, already time for the next challenge...

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

So my first batch of tuiles... attempted by using template and so forth did not turn out. These lovely 'snakes' if you will, were piped out using a pastry tip and spread out quite nicely to a good thin-ness and then I just put them over my rolling pin.

For my Something Fruity element... I made lemon curd. My first attempt... **sigh** Called for a Cup... A CUP !! of butter. Talk about lemon butter. **shakes head** I suppose it may have been good and buttery on pancakes but it definitely didn't have a good mouth feel when chilled.

So I made this recipe... I adore these books... they're by Laura Childs and they are the teashop mysteries. The third book - Shades of Earl Grey, had a Lemon Curd recipe and I got myself some Meyer lemons and had at it...

Haley’s Lemon Curd- From Laura Child’s Shades of Earl Grey 2003
3 large lemons
5 Eggs
1 C granulated sugar
8 TBSP (½ C) Butter
Grate the lemon rind and set aside. Squeeze the juice and put into a blender or food processor. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth. Pour into the top half of a double boiler. Stir in the lemon rind and cook over simmering water for about 10 minutes until thickened. Stir the mixture with whisk if it appears lumpy. Chill the lemon curd before serving.

I then topped it with a fruit salsa... the strawberries were a bit mushy for this purpose so it's more of a fruity sauce that I think would be excellent on ice cream.

1/2 C Strawberries

3 slices apple - the kind after you use an apple corer on it...

1 yellow Kiwi

Pulse in your food processor until *hopefully* chunky and add 1/2 tsp apple jelly. Mine was apple cinnamon jelly from Knotts Berry Farm.

(This is also excellent with cinnamon sugar pita chips)

**more pictures later**

So I've done something new... something that matters.

Of course... everything that matters is in here. As the end of the year rolls around, I look back and realize that it sure does seem like food matters a lot... But I've joined a group called Daring Bakers and each month, there is a recipe intended to challenge you and make you bake outside your normal box of comfort.

So without further interuption.... I bring you my first ever completed Daring Baker's Challenge...

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

That is my completed log... well... mostly. I had icing issues... And it all slid off of the "log" which looks suspiciously like a cake. LOL

My favorite layer by far was my crisp layer... I made it with melted sugar free dark chocolate, frosted flakes and crushed candy canes.

Oh my goodness this part was wonderful and even though I am trying... !! very hard... to follow an Atkins lifestyle, I would certainly blow a few carbs on frosted flakes so that I could make and eat this again.

So the "log" consisted of a thin spongy cake layer, a mousse layer, the crisp, a creme brulee layer and the icing.

I had issues with my creme brulee layer when I didn't put enough of it into the "mold" ie: pie plate... so when I unmolded it to put into the final product, it split up and was a very thin layer. Fortunately, I had more of the brulee that I had put into another bowl so I was able to fit that in for an even cover.

I made the cake as a chocolate cake, white chocolate peppermint mousse, a dark chocolate peppermint ganache, the peppermint crisp, chocolate creme brulee and chocolate icing.

It was quite yummy and a very worth while experience to attempt making this dessert.

My icing issues were solved with a very nice spray of whipped cream and crushed candy canes.

More cupcake bites!

Okay... so cupcake bites... Pumpkin Spice Version....

Take that left over half pumpkin spice cake... or in this case a little more than half... and crumb it up...

And then... add 1/2 a can of Cream Cheese Frosting... maybe a little less because that pumpkin cake was quite moist already.

Mix up and chill... roll into balls and treat them the same way - White coating into Peanut Butter cup mold, chill and dip again.

I wanted these to be a little different as well as the fact that pink jelly bean halves wouldn't have worked on pink coating... so pumpkin spice are topped with 1/2 of a cream soda jelly belly and I think they're just adorable and you know what? they were yummy too!