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
5 comments:
Your final photo presentations are so 'Valentine' vibrant! The colors just jump out at you, Nicely done!
Great job! Glad you were able to do something you've been wanting to do.
That is a cute plating! Beautiful cake!
Cute plating...i love your placemat :)
You did a great job on last month's challenge...your cake looks delish! :)
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