chocolate

Overwhelmed and drowning in work, I must say I feel quite guilty for abandoning this blog and keeping away from the kitchen for so long.

So this month I tried to get back to it, even if I still couldn’t keep up with the Daring Bakers’ reveal date.

But hey, better late than never, isn’t it?

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.

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I’ve been told I’m a sweet sort of person, but when it comes to Valentine’s Day… Boy, am I bitter! And as hard as I try to ignore this cursed date, hearts suddenly appear everywhere and make it impossible to bury my head in the sand. The Daring Bakers were no exception this month, with a heart shaped chocolate Valentino 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.

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Lately, work has been so crazy that I missed the December Daring Bakers, and almost missed January’s too. But after a whole month of postponing, I decided it was too good a challenge to miss, baked away until obscenely late, and hoped the sun would come out this morning for some nice photos.

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.

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The night before this month’s challenge was posted, I dreamed it was going to be all about profiteroles. I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up the next morning and realised it was indeed a choux pastry recipe.

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Yet another chocolate birthday cake!

Truth is, tough to please birthday boy only likes chocolate cake, and even then, he’s very demanding. The brownies I made for him were a bit too dry, Claudia’s cake was a bit too strong… But I’m not one to give up.

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My friend Cláudia’s was 30 on Friday - Happy B’day C! - and I promised her a proper birthday cake for the dinner party.

She loves chocolate mousse, so I thought of creating a mousse-brownie sandwich sort of cake. But some of my recent experiments haven’t been very lucky, and I didn’t have the time to try again if this cake didn’t turn out just right. So I turned to one of my favourite food blogs - Smitten Kitchen - for something tried and tested, and found this recipe for a Double Chocolate Torte that seemed just perfect.

I adapted the quantities a little bit, removed the vanilla extract as I didn’t have any, and instead of using fresh raspberries I decided to decorate with chocolate shavings, following instructions I saw on a cook book. As it turns out, it’s not that easy to get nice big chocolate spirals, but I ended up with enough for what I had in mind.

In the end, everybody seemed to like it. The hard-core chocoholics, like the birthday girl, certainly did love it. But for me, it was a bit too rich and chocolaty, specially after the heavy meal we’d just had. It would have gone well with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side, to tone it down.

Double Chocolate Cake for Cláudia

Decoration
100ml whipping cream
1 tbsp sugar
100g dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 200ºC. Butter a 25cm diameter springform pan and dust with sugar.
In a heavy large saucepan over low heat, melt chocolate and butter, always stirring. Remove from heat, and whisk in sugar and then the eggs, one at a time. Finally, mix in the salt and the flour.

Bake for about 35 minutes. Cool completely before chilling, and do not remove from the pan.

For the mousse, melt the butter in bain-marie. Whisk egg yolks and half of the cream in small bowl to blend and then whisk this mixture into the melted butter. Keep whisking over simmering water for about 6 minutes and then add the chocolate and mix until it melts. Mixture may appear broken.

In large bowl, beat the egg whites and the sugar to medium-stiff peaks. First, add a bit of the egg whites into the warm chocolate mixture. Then, fold in remaining egg white mixture, until smooth, but without beating too much. Pour mousse over cake in pan and chill until mousse is set.

For the shavings, you need to warm the chocolate a bit in your hands, and use a vegetable peeler to create the little curls. You’ll get your hands dirty, but if the chocolate isn’t warm enough, it will break into small bits. Chill the shavings in the freezer while you whip the remaining cream with a spoon of sugar.

Remove the cake from the pan, by loosening it with a sharp knife around the edge, and place it on a serving dish. Spread the whipped cream over the top, and decorate with the chocolate shavings.