Hello, Baker!

It’s the end of the month and time for a Daring Baker’s post again! In the spirit of Valentine’s Day we were instructed to make a flourless chocolate cake and accompany it with an ice cream of our choice. Having missed the last two challenges cause I’m a total lame-o, I was mega excited about doing this challenge. In fact, I actually didn’t procrastinate like I usually do and made it ahead of time! High five, Rebecca!

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. They 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 cake is extremelyyy chocolatey, which is perfect for all you chocolate lovers out there. I used a huge block of dark chocolate so the ice cream was definitely needed to tone down the extreme richness of this cake. Seriously, it’s so rich that it’s hard to eat it plain, but I’m sure there are some chocolate loving people out there that would have no problem with it. I also covered my cake in brown sugar whip cream to assist in toning down the chocolateyness.

Some of the things that they told us to keep in mind while making this cake is that you should use your favorite chocolate. This cake will taste EXACTLY like the chocolate you use. This cake also has a high cocoa percentage, which increases the bitterness of a cake. If you want a sweeter cake, then use milk chocolate. Also, some people were able to make this cake with white chocolate, but it isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish because white chocolate is not the same as real chocolate. If you do produce a cake with white chocolate it won’t be the prettiest thing in the world, but I’m sure it’ll taste great.

Note on recipe – the recipe consists of 3 simple
ingredients and how you interpret them is part of the challenge. The
simplicity of this recipe gives credit to the ingredients much in the
same way of French baguette.
-This recipe comes together very quickly with a hand mixer.
-This is a very decadent cake that will sink a little as it cools but will still hold its shape.
-Very dense and fudgy cake that tastes divine.
-The top forms a light crust kind of like a brownie

Chocolate Valentino

(Recipe from Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy)
I used a 6 inch pan and got two cakes out of this recipe.

• 16 oz/1 pound/454 grams of chocolate, roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) + 2 tablespoons 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/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. 10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

As seen in my previous post, Brown Sugar Toffee Ice Cream with a Dulce de Leche Swirl is my current ice cream obsession so it was obvious that I’d choose to make that to go along with this cake. I decided to follow the theme of my ice cream and made brown sugar whip cream to cover the cake. I felt like a frosting would have been too much so a light whip cream was perfect. I also sprinkled toffee bits along the top and covered the sides of one of the cakes completely in toffee bits. I also added dark chocolate curls for decoration and tried to make white chocolate curls, but they turned more into flakes so I just scattered them on top too. 

This cake was good, but again not quite my tastes. I’m not a major chocolate lover and I also only like my cakes chilled, but that sort of hardened the cake too much. I think I might have also baked it too long (considering it’s hard to tell when it’s done) because my cake came out pretty dry. It was still good for a new treat to enjoy, but I think my cakes actually got thrown out in the end because no one wanted to eat them. Oh well!

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I’m not dead, I swear!

I know, I know, I’m an incredible slacker, but it’s finally time for an update! I have a few things that I need to address and then I’ll get down to business with my Daring Bakers stuff (because that’s really all anyone cares about)!

First off, I know I was super excited about joining Tuesdays with Dorie. I know I bought the book as an excuse to bake more. I know that I got lucky because they closed off membership. I know, I know that I should really be more active with it, but I’m just so busy with school that if I actually do want to bake on the weekends, then it’ll be something I’m craving and not a TwD recipe that I have to make.

I did, however, attempt the Thanksgiving Twofer Pie over break, thinking it’d be my amazing contribution to Thanksgiving dinner, but I failed miserably at it. I’ve never had a fancy for any type of pie so it was my first time every bothering to make one. The recipe sounded so simple; the hardest part was making the crust, which really wasn’t all that complicated (it tasted amazing by the way). However, when I took my pies out of the oven they weren’t, let’s just say, the most appealing things I’ve ever seen. Frankly, at least to me, they looked kind of disgusting, but my dad assured me that it was just funky because the sugar crystallized a bit on the top. No biggy, right!? Not quite.

I thought it’d be smart to have a taste test and although they tasted alright (the vanilla was a bit overpowering), they just weren’t worth it. My pies lacked the nice smooth, silkiness of a pumpkin pie and were strange and crumbly. Oh well! At least I can say I’ve made pie before!

Now, does this explanation mean I’ll make an effort to attempt more TwD recipes? Probably not. The recipes chosen for this month are actually appealing to me, but who knows how many I’ll get around to. (Plus my sister makes like thirty bazillion sugar cookies in December so I doubt I’ll be trying any cookie recipes)!

Secondly, I have a lot of recipes I’ve tried, taken amazing pictures of, and started posts on. I’ve just been too lazy to actually complete them. I’m not going to make any promises, but I’m going to try and them up because I’ve made lots of yummy things should definitely be shared with the world!

Okay, now for the only thing people probably care about, my cake for November’s Daring Bakers!

The fantastic hosts of this month, Dolores, Alex, and Jenny, chose Shuna Fish Lydon’s signature Caramel Cake, which was published in Bay Area Bites! Shuna, of Eggbeater, is a pastry chef that has been baking and cooking professionally for over 15 years. Along with this cake challenge, they also gave us the option to attempt Golden Vanilla Bean Caramels, which I would have loved to try, but I wasn’t about to buy golden syrup because I’d probably never use it again.

Now I must admit that I was a little intimidated by this challenge because I had never been successful with caramel in the past and am still not after making this cake. I actually almost didn’t even make this cake because I was so frustrated after failing FOUR TIMES at making the caramel syrup that I didn’t want to bother with it anymore. My first attempt became hard as a rock when it cooled. On my second try I was overly cautious and didn’t use enough heat, which caused all of the water to evaporate, leaving me with crystallized, white sugar. For my third try I turned the heat back up, but this time I cooked it for too long and it ended up being burnt. Sadly, after burning it, I foolishly repeated the mistake from my second attempt again.

After wasting eight cups of sugar I was ready to give up, but figured, “Hey I’ve come this far! What’s two more cups?” and decided to give it another go. This time I needed to be ready! I needed to have a clear vision of what I was supposed to be looking for while making the caramel syrup. I am a very visual person when it comes to baking and the recipe provided obviously didn’t include any pictures so I took it upon myself to watch multiple caramel tutorials on youtube. Let me tell you, they were incredibly helpful! I’d definitely suggest watching some for anyone that has trouble with caramel.

Most people seemed to stick to the basics when it came to this cake and didn’t get too fancy, but since I’m not much of a light frosting on light cake type of person I felt that my cake needed some chocolate. Between my cake layers I added dark chocolate mousse covered in a blanket of caramel syrup and then cheated by frosting the cake with a different caramel buttercream. The frosting we were required to use was more like a brown butter frosting and I absolutely hate how that tastes so I wasn’t about to use that. Finally, I poured a dark chocolate ganache over the cake and also piped it around the top and bottom.

In the end was this cake everything I hoped for? Not quite. I obviously have not yet mastered caramel and I think my syrup was a bit underdone because it didn’t have that amazing sugary goodness that caramel usually has. However, I wasn’t about to try again and my lame caramel syrup definitely caused the cake to lack flavor. Between you and me, the beautiful caramel syrup you see dripping down the sides of the cake in my pictures was secretly the kind you get at the store. I felt like the cake needed it added because it had absolutely no caramel flavor to it at all.

Overall my sad little cake was nothing to write home about and less than a fourth of it was eaten before being thrown out. From reading everyone else’s posts about how amazing this cake was I’m sure it was meant to be great, but it frustrated me so much that I doubt I’ll ever try it again. I’m so bitter towards this recipe that I’m not even going to post it. Instead you can go to Shuna’s post on Bay Area Bites or visit the DB blogroll and read the many posts about it.

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Once again it’s time for Tuesdays with Dorie and this week Clara of I Heart Food4Thought chose the Chocolate, Chocolate Cupcakes! These cupcakes are extra chocolatey because they are made with cocoa and melted chocolate, then covered in a luscious bittersweet chocolate glaze. I apparently missed the part where Clara urged us to decorate them in spirit of Halloween, but I guess that’s alright. Having never been a fan of Halloween, I secretly wouldn’t have wanted to do that anyways. Instead my double chocolate cupcakes were filled with toffee sauce (courtsey of Harry and David), covered in the chocolate glaze, frosted with white chocolate buttercream infused with a bit of toffee sauce, and then finally finished off with a drizzle of the sauce and mini chocolate chips.

As you can see here, there was a trend in the comments about the cake coming out dry, so I decided to alter the recipe a little bit. I didn’t exactly have time to make the original recipe in order to figure out what needed to be changed, so instead I blindly modified ingredients, crossing my fingers all the way. Luckily for me, my alterations proved to be a success because the cake came out fluffy and moist! However, I think if I ever planned to make this again, then I’d probably tweak a few more parts because it still wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for it to be.

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