I *Heart* Chocolate

This month, our hosts pulled out all the stops for a wonderfully decadent dessert--a flourless chocolate cake.

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.


This recipe came together very quickly, and was easy for me to put together while the Munchkin was napping. There are only three ingredients -- chocolate, eggs, and butter -- so getting top quality ingredients was key. Especially the chocolate. I've always read that Valrhona chocolate is the preferred chocolate for many pastry chefs. But...it's kind of pricey. However, given the prominence of the chocolate in this recipe, I decided that if there was ever a recipe that warranted the splurge, this was it. I'm glad I went for it. The chocolate was wonderfully smooth and decadent and everything chocolate should be.

Ideally, the Chocolate Valentino should be baked in a heart shaped pan, but when I poured the batter in, I realized the pan was way too big. Rather than risking a too-thin, unevenly cooked cake, I ended up using an 8" cake pan instead. It was just the right size. But, even though the heart-shaped pan didn't work out for me, I kept the valentine's theme going in my decorative elements.


In addition to the cake, Wendy and Dharm presented us with an optional (but very much encouraged) challenge -- ice cream. But even if we didn't make the ice cream, we were required to make some sort of topping (the original recipe called for the cake to be served with whipped cream). I opted not to make ice cream. An ice cream maker is on the top of my list of must-get kitchen gadgets, I don't have one yet. And while it is possible to make ice cream without a machine, I didn't really have the time to be tied to the house to regularly stir the ice cream. So I went ahead and made the whipped cream suggested with the recipe. But to mae it a little more fun, I froze some of the whipped cream in my "hugs and kisses" silicon cake mold. In addition to the frozen whipped cream, I made some raspberry sauce, some of which I also made into Xs and Os, which I served with the cake.

This cake was wonderful! The whipped cream and raspberry were perfect with it, and our dinner guests raved about it. And the frozen whipped cream was a perfect addition to my coffee.

Head on over to Wendy's or Dharm's blog for the recipe and give this a try. You won't be sorry!!

Parmesan Crusted Chicken

I hadn't yet figured out what to make for dinner, when I came across this post. I've only recently discovered the Pioneer Woman (yeah, I realize I'm a little late on this one), and have been drooling over some of the recipes she posts. Since I had everything on hand to make this, I decided to give it a try.



This was really good. Psycling (who doesn't even like mayonaise) thought it was really good. It was also quite quick and easy to put together. I prepped it earlier in the day while the Munchkin was napping, and was able to just stick it in the oven at dinner time. With a green salad and roasted CSA sweet potatoes, this was a great weeknight meal.

Southern Saute

One of the nice things about living in the south is the long growing season. Our CSA is able to deliver produce year-round. These days, we're getting lots of leafy greens and root vegetables. Recently, we got a nice big bunch of collards. Despite growing up in the South, I've never particularly liked collards. I think that's because all the collards I grew up with were boiled to the point of becoming mush. I figured there had to be another way to eat collards. I started playing around, and this is what I came up with.

Psycling and I both really liked this. It made for a nice one-dish meal, and was fairly quick and easy to pull together.

While it's actually more of a braise, I like the alliteration of "Southern Saute." This was really good. Turns out I like collards after all :-)

Southern Saute
(makes about 3 servings)

5-6 strips of bacon
1 Onion, vertically sliced
1 Bunch collards, coarsely chopped
~3/4 c. chicken broth
1 c. soaked black eyed peas
2 c. hot cooked rice (I used brown rice)
Hotlanta Hot Sauce (or Tobasco)

1. Cook bacon inlarge skillet. Set aside to drain on paper towels. Crumble into bacon bits.

2. Pour off all but about 2-3 tsp. of bacon grease. Add onion, and saute until getting tender. Add collards, and sautee for a copule of minutes, until leaves are coated in bacon grease and just starting to wilt. Add chicken broth; cover and cook until broth is absorbed, about 4-5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Add black eyed peas, and cook, stirring, until beans are warmed through.

To serve, put about 2/3 c. of rice in a bowl. Top with about 1/3 of collard mixture. Sprinkle with bacon bits and drizzle with hot sauce to taste.

LIVESTRONG: A Taste of Yellow -- The Book

To those of you who found your way here from Barbara's blog, Hi! As you can see, posting here is sparse these days, as I haven't quite figured out how to fit blogging back into my life since the arrival of the Munchkin. But, I'm hoping to get back to it soon.

Barbara launched the Taste of Yellow blog event as part of LIVESTRONG day in 2007. She is a cancer survivor, who was greatly inspired by the story of Lance Armstrong, and created this blog event to raise awareness for cancer, as well as promote the great work done by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

I came up with the idea for this book a few months ago, after losing my mother-in-law to cancer. After surviving both melanoma and breast cancer, the melanoma returned, spreading to her lungs and brain. Despite their best efforts, it was too much, and she passed away in November. My mother-in-law was an amazing woman, and I feel very fortunate to have had her in my life, even if it was for just 7 short years.

To honor her memory, my husband and his brother decided to participate in the LIVESTRONG Challenge, and will be doing a 90 mile bike ride in Austin, TX this October. I will be doing the 5K run/walk with the Munckin. In brainstorming fundraising ideas for their team, I remembered reading the Taste of Yellow round up on Barbara's blog, and an idea was born. I thought that if we could publish a cookbook of the Taste of Yellow recipes, all proceeds from the sale of the book could go directly to the Lance Armstrong Foundation. While I'm not sure that this project will be completed in time to benefit Psycling's LIVESTRONG challenge ride, it is my hope that it will continue to bring in money for the work of the Lance Armstrong Foundation well into the future.

I honestly have no idea what the timeline for this project looks like. As of now, I am compiling the recipes, blogs, and contact information of all the Taste of Yellow submissions. Once I pull everything together, I'm not sure how long it will take to get the book put together and published. But Barbara and I will keep you posted on its progress. We really appreciate everyone who has already emailed or left comments giving us permission to use your recipes and photos. I'm realy looking forward to seeing this project come to fruition, and I hope that it will bring attention to and raise money for the amazing work being done by the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Until then, LIVESTRONG!

Daring Bakers December 2008: Murphy's Law Edition

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. I have few pictures for you this month, mainly due to the fact that this month's challenge was pretty much a complete failure. It seems that this month, my baking mojo left me to fend for myself. Believe me, it was not pretty. After what seemed like the ten-billionth thing to go wrong, I found myself in a ball of tears on the kitchen floor around 9:00 pm on Christmas Eve. But even though this was the challenge that made me want to rip out my kitchen and give up baking forever, I completed it. And it was edible (if not pretty). And this month, that in itself is quite an accomplishment.


A quick preface: A French Yule log is different quite different from what I consider to be the more traditional Yule log. The French version is more of a frozen entrements, or "creamy dessert," as opposed to a cake. It includes a variety of different elements, each surrounded by an insanely rich and delicious dark chocolate mousse. So...without further adieu, here's the story of the dessert that got the best of me.

We were given lots of freedom to play with flavors, and I quickly settled on a chocolate and hazlenut dessert with a hint of coffee. So, I started baking the dacquoise. I decided to use hazlenut meal instead of almond meal. I made my own meal, but ran into trouble when I just couldn't seem to grind my hazlenuts into a fine enough meal. It worked, but my dacquoise was grainer and thinner than I would have liked, partially because the larger pieces of nuts deflated my heavily whipped egg whites, which is what normally would give the biscuit its lift. But, since it tasted fine, I didn't worry too much about it.

Second was the dark chocolate mousse. The mousse recipe involved making a pate a bomb which involved beating egg yolks with a sugar syrup. This gives the mousse added structure to be able to support the other elements of the cake. On my first attempt, I heated the sugar too hot, and when I added the syrup to the beaten egg yolks, it hardened and left a lump of yolk covered rock candy at the bottom of the mixng bowl. (Though the little bits of syrup that hit the whisk as it was mixing turned to cotton candy, so I accidentally made cotton candy with my Kitchen Aid). After cleaning the bowl, I went back for take two. Instead of waiting for the syrup to reach 244 F, I just let it go until it reached the lower limit of the "softball" range indicated on my candy thermometer. This time it worked, and the rest of the mousse came together really well. (Did I mention that it was insanely rich and delicious?)

Next, I made the creme brulee insert, which is what really did me in. When infusing the cream with the vanilla bean, I few in a few coffee beans as well. This was an experiment, and flavor wise, it actually worked out really well. The coffee flavor was more subtle (which I wanted) and the beans didn't discolor the creme brulee, which was also good because I wanted the contrast of the light custard against the dark chocolate of the rest of the dessert. It was in the baking and setting of the custard that I ran into trouble. The recipe said to bake at 210 F degrees, but I read that many daring bakers had trouble getting the creme brulee to set at that temperature, so they increased it. So I started out baing it at 245 F. After an hour, it was still liquid. So, I bumped the temp up to 270 F and baked for another hour. When I pulled it out, I gave it a jiggle, and it seemd "firm on the edges and slightly wobbly in the center." So I covered it and put it in the fridge to continue setting.

The next day, I went about finishing the dessert. I started by making the praline feuillete, or crisp. Knowing my own limits, I knew better than to attempt to make my own praline, and instead decided to use Nutella instead. I'd read that it worked really well for some other DBs, and it went very well with my chocolate-hazlenut flavor. But I did intend to make my own gavottes (very thin lace crepes which are used to make the crisp part). It seems I wasn't able to spread the batter evenly, so while I got nice crisps in some part of the pan, the rest was softer and more crepe like. Unusable. So I tossed those and went to Plan B: Rice Krispies. Not as elegant, but they worked. And really, I discovered that chocolate and Nutella covered Rice Krispies are a treat unto themselves.

It was finally time for me to start assembling my Yule Log. I assembled it upside down in a loaf pan, not having the more traditional half-pipe mold. I put down a layer of the dacquoise and topped with a third of the mousse. So far so good. Then, I went to get my creme brulee, and when I unmolded it to place it in the mousse, I discovered it hadn't set at all. Still runny. And since I unmolded it unto my loaf pan mold, I couldn't take it out. This caused me to turn to Psycling and inform him that it was ruined, and it looked like we wouldn't have dessert for Christmas dinner. But, already having put so much time and effort into this dessert, I soldiered on. So I added the next third of the mousse and my Rice Krispie feuillete, followed by the last of the mousse. Then I put it in the fridge to stay cool while I made the ganache insert.

(Convinced this dessert was totally ruined, I made a back-up dessert, which also totally failed when my cake didn't rise enough, so that ended up in the trash too. It was not a good night.)
When I think of ganache, I think of chocolate melted together with some cream and butter. But this ganache was done differently. I started by making a caramel. When the caramel was just about ready, I realized I hadn't started heating the cream yet, and when I went to go get it started, I bumped the glass and spilled it everywhere. There was cream all over the kitchen floor, under the oven, everywhere. At this point (about 9:00 pm Christmas Eve) that was the last straw. I collapsed in a big pile of tears convinced I would never be able to do anything right agian. Once I had that cleaned up, the sugar caramel was burned, and I had to start over. So,m I threw that out and started over again. This time, I manged to not spill the cream, cooked the caramel to a nice dark amber, (darker than I made it for last month's challenge), and when I whisked them together, and added my chocolate and butter, I got a wonderful smooth ganache with a deeper flavor thanks to the caramelized sugar. I added it to my log, topped with another layer of the dacquoise, and stuck it in the freezer for the night.

The next day, after a nice breakfast, and a quiet and low-key Christmas with Psycling, my mom, my brother, and of course, the Munchkin, I set out to make the glaze. This was the only element that I completed without a hitch. It was a beautiful shiny glaze that set just right.

I ended up bringing this dessert to our Christmas dinner with friends (with a pan of uber-yummy brownies just in case) with the caveat that they might not be edible. When I sliced it open, it wasn't very pretty (more marbled than layered thanks to the runny creme brulee), but it tasted great, and it got lots of compliments. Though to be honest, I didn't particularly enjoy it. It tasted good. But I was so jaded by how much trouble it gave me that I didn't particularly want to eat it.

I'd like to try this again sometime, and get it right. But I think it will take a while before I work up the guts to go for it again.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and that you have a wonderful 2009!

Daring Bakers: Mmmmm...Caramel

I love caramel. I find the sweet, creamy, gooeyness to be irresistible. So it is quite appropriate that I officially end my Daring Bakers maternity leave with Shuna Fish Lydon's signature Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, as published on Bay Area Bites. There was an optional challenge of Alice Medrich's Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels from Pure Dessert. This month's challenge was co-hosted by Delores, Alex, and Jennny, with Natalie helping out with the gluten-free option.

I have to admit that I was a little intimidated when I read what Shuna had to say about this recipe:

"This is one of those cakes that is truly about baking. It may sound strange because aren't all cakes about baking? What I mean is that getting this cake to bake is about balancing fat with acid and protein JUST RIGHT...It would be very easy to get various other flavours in the caramel cake but what's tricky is making sure the flavour does not screw up the liquid-fat-flour ratio too much...Various flavouring ingredients and agents carry with them their own acidity and moisture contents...But I will say this about flavours: you will hide and lose the subtlety of the caramel flavour in the cake and that's what this cake is about."

I initially was thinking about trying to add a little coffee flavor to this cake, as I LOVE the coffee and caramel flavor combination (my guilty indulgence at Starbuck's is a Caramel Macchiato, and my standard order at Cold Stone involves coffee ice cream and caramel), but after reading Shuna's warning, I decided that this cake would probably pose enough of a challenge as is.


I decided to make this cake for Thanksgiving. I started Wednesday night by making the caramel syrup. It's amazing how just sugar and water (and heat) can turn into such a wonderfully flavored syrup! Following the warning of the DBers who'd already made their cakes, I wore long sleeves and a heavy oven mit to pour in the water to stop the caramelization process. I think this was wise. There was lots of sputtering and spitting of molten hot sugar. The instructions said to cook until "dark amber" which I realized as I was making it is a rather subjective term. In retrospect, I think I could have let the syrup cook a little longer before stopping it, and let it develop a richer caramel flavor.

Does this look "Dark Amber?"

Despite that, the syrup still had a wonderful caramel flavor.

Once the syrup was made and cooled, I got started on the cake. I have to admit that I got a little distracted, and realized as I got into it that I added some of the ingredients in the wrong order. I'd started adding my dry ingredients and milk when I realized that I'd forgotten to add the caramel syrup (only the key ingredient to the cake). So I went ahead and added it as soon as I remembered, but I was a little nervous, as Shuna's warning about this cake was floating around the the back of my head. Fortunately, this little lapse did not affect the final product in any way. (Side Note: One of my favorite kitchen tricks involves the measuring out sticky things like honey, molasses, or caramel syrup. If you spray the measuring spoon or cup with cooking spray before measuring out the sticky stuff, then it slides right out when adding it to whatever you are making. It makes things so much easier!)

I made the Caramelized Butter Frosting on Thursday afternoon. I was quite wary when I saw that the first step in this recipe was to brown the butter. I've always been scared of browned butter as everything I've read is that it's easy to burn. And the recipe did not give much direction as to how to go about it. So, I did what I always do in such situations, and I asked Google. Google provided me with several good links, and after reading through a few web pages, I decided it was time to bit the bullet and conquer my fear of browned butter. (The best tip Google gave me was not to use a dark bottomed pan to brown the butter, because it makes it too difficult to see the color of the butter and the milk fats as it's cooking. So I figured I'd share the love and pass that tip on to you!) My butter browned successfully on the first try. And it was nearly as scary as I'd been making it out to be. Once the browned butter had cooled, I started beating in the powdered sugar, and thinning with cream and caramel syrup as necessary. After frosting the cake, I used some of the left over caramel syrup to decorate the cake.

With all the warnings and sputtering caramel and browning butter, it actually came together really easily for me. It seems that the DBs have all had different experiences with this cake. Some said it was dense like pound cake, others said it was light and airy. Mine was somewhere in between. But it was very moist, and DELICIOUS!! It got rave reviews from everyone at the table. I'd read from the other DBs that this cake, particularly the frosting, were very sweet, and I was worried that they might be a little too sweet for me. But they weren't. It was perfectly balanced. The cake was sweet, but not in the gave-me-a-tummyache-and-sent-me-into-a-sugar-coma kind of way. The subtle yet rich flavor of the caramel was just right. Not over powering, but enough to really infuse the cake with that little something extra. And it was even better the next day, after the flavor of the caramel had time to mellow and deepen.

While I could go on and on about how wonderful this cake was, it boils down to this: simply amazing! Go find it and bookmark it. This is definitely a recipe you want to try!

P.S. I didn't get to the caramels, but those that did raved about them, so I'm going to try to get to them before Christmas.

P.P.S. I've been cooking and even remembering to photograph, but I haven't had time to blog. Hopefully I'll get to some of these backlogged recipes soon. But it's so hard to tear myself away from this:

Black Bean and Butternut Squash "Lasagna"

I got the idea for this dish when I was looking for something fun to do with the butternut squash we got in our CSA bag. As I was browsing through various recipes, I noticed lots of black bean and butternut squash combos. I decided to see what I could do with it. I ended up with a yummy and filling vegetarian entree.

I was planning on doing either tacos or buritos or something along those lines, but this is one of those dishes that just evolved as I was making it, based on the things things I had on hand. I'm glad I made this "lasagna style." It worked really well, and was quite tasty. Psycling and I both went back for seconds. The spiciness of the pepper jack cheese complimented the sweetness of the squash, which was enhanced by the hint of cloves. This lasagna makes for a filling vegetarian main dish, and

Black Bean and Butternut Squash "Lasagna"

olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 butternut squash, peeled, seeds scooped out, and cut into ~1/2" pieces
1 tbsp. oregano
1 tbsp. cumin
1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/4 tsp. cloves
1 c. vegetable broth
2 15 oz. cans black beans, rinsed and drained
10-12 small corn tortillas (depending on the size of your dish)
1 1/2 c. grated pepper jack cheese

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and sautee until soft. Add garlic, squash, and spices and cook about 30 seconds.

2.) Add vegetable broth to skillet and cook, covered until liquid has evaporated and squash is tender (add more vegetable broth if needed to get squash to desired softness). Add beans to skillet and cook until heated through.

3.) Grease a baking dish (I used a smaller one, about 8 x 11, but a 9 X 13 would work too) with cooking spray. Cover bottom of dish with tortillas, tearing them if necessary to fit. Spoon half of the bean mixture over tortillas, and sprinkle with 1/2 c. cheese. Place another layer of tortillas on top of this. Add rest of bean mixture, and sprinkle with another 1/2 c. of cheese. Top with another layer of tortillas.

4.) Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until hot and bubbly. Remove foil and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake uncovered for another 5 minutes until cheese melts.

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry, no pictures because 1) I'm lazy and 2) the software we use to upload them crashes Psycling's new computer. We're working on fixing that...