Chocolate Valentino -- Daring Bakers Challenge February 2009

I wish I were more of a chocolate lover, as I might have appreciated this month's Daring Bakers challenge much more. It's not that I didn't enjoy it -- I did! But I'm not one of those all chocolate, all the time type people, and this month's challenge was really catered to the ultimate chocolate lover.

Info for February:

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.

The recipe itself could not be simpler (and I made it even more simple), which was perfect for someone coming back from a 2-month hiatus. It uses 3 -- count 'em -- 3 ingredients: chocolate, eggs, and butter. As you can imagine, the quality of your ingredients matter a lot in this flourless cake; if one things tastes off, the whole thing is off. The original challenge stated that the finished cake would taste exactly like the chocolate used, and that cannot be emphasized enough. If you're a chocolate connoisseur, you'll probably need to use the super pricey stuff -- but you'll be amply rewarded.

Rather than go through the whole double boiler scenario, I melted my chocolate and butter by microwaving. I was very careful about this, only microwaving for 30-40 seconds at a time, and mixing after each time, to make sure the chocolate wouldn't burn and to fully incorporate the butter. I found that this also made the chocolate just warm, rather than hot, just enough so that it's melted. That was very helpful when adding the egg yolk, as I didn't have to worry about them curdling.



I loved the "batter," so creamy and gorgeously brown. I even loved it after folding in the egg whites and it looked grainier. I'm normally not a fan of licking the spoon or tasting batter (I know, I'm weird right? But I can usually taste the flour in it, and that's just kind of yucky), but that wasn't the case with this cake.



It was optional to use a heart-shaped pan (though if I'd been making this for anyone than just me, I might have tried to go find and buy such a pan), so I opted to bake mine as little cakes in ramekins -- a good choice actually, as right out of the oven, they had risen like little soufflés. And in fact, they sink with time just like soufflés as well.



I probably should have eaten them right in the ramekin, but mindful that this was supposed to be a cake, I tried to remove them from their baking dish and plate them ... not my best idea. It all fell apart (though that didn't make it any less tasty).

It's so cold here right now that I really could not imagine making ice cream (plus I have one of those tiny freezers that's already packed with all the stuff I freeze and forget about), so I also opted to make the suggested alternative of whipped cream, warmed up some strawberry rhubarb jam, and topped the cake with that. The cream, the tang from the jam, and the chocolate combination was wonderful.



The cake was so rich and so chocolatey, however, that I could not eat more than two of them (hence my wish that I were more of a chocolate lover -- or at least that I had a roommate or something who could have helped me finish).

Chocolate Valentino from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan of Malaysia

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
• ½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
• 5 large eggs separated

Method

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. (Or you can do what I did; place the chocolate and butter in a microwafe-safe bowl and microwave 30-40 seconds at a time, stirring each time, until the mixture is fully melted and incorporated. If you do this correctly the chocolate will be just melted and won't be super hot, which is good for the egg step.)
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.
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375°F/190°C
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. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting: Daring Bakers Challenge November 2008

I was really thrilled to be able to make my first cake as part of the Daring Bakers. (Just to clarify -- it's my first cake with the group, not my first challenge. :) ) I really liked how the consistency of the cake turned out -- the batter was smooth and wonderful -- and the frosting too came out great. Unfortunately this was one of those cakes that was far too sweet for me. I have a sweet tooth, but it has its limitations. It's a shame, too, because the cake was dense and moist, and the browned butter in the frosting gave it a sensational flavor.



Info for this month's challenge:

• Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting Recipe
• Author: Shuna Fish Lydon
• Hosts: Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity, Alex of the Blondie and Brownie duo, and Jenny of Foray into Food

Here we've got the start of the caramel syrup.

And many minutes later... I ended up, like most DBs probably, with a lot of the syrup leftover. Since I knew from just reading the recipe and from the comments other DBs had made on the forums that the cake was going to be extremely sweet, while making the frosting I opted to moisten it with heavy cream rather than more sugar. The leftover caramel syrup is now being used to sweeten my hot teas!

Here's the cake cooling -- the instructions didn't say whether it should be cooled in the pan or not, so I opted to do a bit of both.

The finished cake! It actually turned out fairly well (for me). I made it a two-layer cake because there was so much frosting. I still need much, much more practice in frosting a cake -- even using the method of "pre-frosting" it with a thin layer before putting on a thicker layer didn't quite work -- a lot of crumbs still got into the final frosting (though you can't tell so much in the picture). That could also be because I was rushing through this -- I was late to meet my cousin for dinner so the cake might not have been entirely cooled. I drizzled the whole thing with the leftover caramel syrup, since I had so much of it.

My original plan had been to decorate it with pieces of caramel candy, but I hadn't gotten around to making it yet, alas!

Pizza -- Daring Bakers Challenge October 2008

I felt guilty doing this month's Daring Bakers Challenge -- Peter Reinhart's method of making pizza. Why? Well, first, because I LOVE pizza and any excuse to make it is fine by me. (In fact, it was the subject of my very first post on this blog.) Second, making pizza at home is quite fun. And finally, I've made this particular pizza before, several times, with great success. If you're like me, and have failed to make good pizza for many years, finding a great recipe that produces a wonderful thin-crust pizza is a godsend. All those reasons are why making this pizza -- while fulfilling the challenge at the same time -- seemed like cheating.



The biggest roadblock I faced is that it's fall in Seattle, and a particularly cold one at that. It's fairly difficult to do anything with yeast when your room temperature is far below what it needs to be for optimal yeast activity.

But I managed to "cheat" even here. I used my homemade proofing box! It's basically just a styrofoam cooler with a hole cut out of the bottom, into which a 25-watt light bulb/socket is inserted. It's then flipped upside down over the cooler's lid (though a table or the floor would work fine), and an instant thermometer is inserted into the side. The light switch is one of those sliding kinds, so that I can change the brightness of the bulb to adjust the temperature inside the box (during colder months, it needs to be brighter to maintain the right temperature). The light bulb heats up the inside of the box so that it gets to a balmy 75-85°F -- the perfect environment for yeast to have a relaxing little vacation, encouraging them to multiply themselves. And best of all, I don't have to heat my entire house to do it. I got the instructions for fashioning one from Ed Wood's Classic Sourdoughs book. Since my home stays fairly cool even in the summer, I use it all the time.


Here's my proofing box, which is the key to my success with yeast-related baking.

I've been a fan of having broccoli as a pizza topping since I first discovered the Spinoccoli pizza at Uno Chicago Grill, which is, sadly for me, mostly on the east coast (and none in my state). It's a fairly rare topping, even at pizza establishments that have a wide range of other toppings. That makes making my own pizza even more worthwhile. The difficult part is that I prefer thin crust pizza, and broccoli's kind of heavy (Uno serves deep dish pizza). But hey, I like the challenge! The key to using broccoli on pizza is that you have to use raw broccoli (not frozen or cooked), because that, combined with an olive oil base, keeps it slightly crunchy and chewy -- which is what makes it delicious.


Broccoli, garlic, and mushroom pizza, fresh out of the oven.

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge required that we make a pizza with both sauce and toppings, and toss two pizza crusts the way Peter Reinhart describes in his book. I tried to take photos of me tossing the pizza, but it just didn't work out -- way too hard to capture on film when I'm just me in my kitchen. :-P I'm still a complete novice at it; I can successfully toss it a couple of inches, but no higher than that without compromising the integrity of the dough. I did stretch the pizza dough solely with my knuckles/hands -- no rolling pin -- so hopefully one day I'll be able to toss like a pro.

I suppose I could have made one pizza and simply tossed a second without fully dressing it, but why would I do that? So I made two pizzas. (I still really need to learn how to make pizza dough form a perfect circle. Mine always seem to come out rectangular.) First, of course, I made my favorite broccoli, garlic, and mushroom pizza.



For the second pizza, I decided to try a bit of an experiment.

If you happen to live in Washington like me, then you're likely lucky enough to have one of The Rock's locations at least within driving distance of you -- their pizzas are fabulous. I've always been intrigued by one of their appetizers, the "Brown Sugar Mozz Bread," which claims to be their garlic mozz bread sprinkled with brown sugar. I've never been there with anyone who really wanted to try it (to be fair, their pizzas are so large and delicious that ordering appetizers seems the height of gluttony), but I love sweet/salty combinations, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The Rock describes their garlic mozz bread as: Our legendary dough, brushed with crushed garlic, extra virgin olive oil, pecorino romano AND topped with mozzarella then baked in our brick oven.

And the Brown Sugar Mozz Bread as: The same garlic mozz bread sprinkled with brown sugar, topped with mozzarella then baked in our brick oven.

Well, I was missing the brick oven, but creating a reasonable facsimile of their garlic bread seemed easy enough, and all I'd have to do was sprinkle it with brown sugar.


The garlic and brown sugar pizza, before being sliced.

Both pizzas were very tasty. I only used a modest amount of sugar, but it was enough for me -- the combination of flavors blended very well together. The only change I'd make the next time would be to take the garlic and brown sugar pizza out of the oven a minute or two sooner. I usually like browned cheese, but I think for this particular pizza you just want the cheese to melt and take it no further.


Here we have minced garlic soaking in olive oil, and broccoli that's been mixed with a bit of olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper, along with some mushrooms, who are just there for the ride.

Recipes for dressing both pizzas are below. Both require that you make the pizza dough as described in Peter Reinhart's recipe, which can be found here. When you're ready to dress the pizza, here's what I did for each of mine.

Broccoli and Mushroom Pizza

I prepare the vegetables while the pizza dough is doing its 2-hour proof out of the fridge and while the oven is preheating so that I finish at about the same time the dough is ready to be tossed and shaped.

Ingredients:

• 2 oz fresh broccoli florets
• 2 oz fresh white button or cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• salt and pepper to taste
• red pepper flakes (optional)
• pizza sauce
• mozzarella cheese
• a hard cheese, like parmesan or pecorino romano (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to as high as it will go (mine caps at 500°F).
2. In a small bowl, combine broccoli, olive oil, and garlic until the olive oil is well distributed. Season as desired. (You can also add in the sliced mushrooms on this step if you like, but I usually leave mine unseasoned.)
3. Toss pizza dough and fashion into desired shape.
4. As directed in PR's method, I put the dough right on the peel so that it can be easily transferred from there (and I use a SuperPeel, to make it even easier).
5. Spread tomato-based pizza sauce over dough. Evenly distribute the broccoli and mushroom toppings onto the sauce. Sprinkle desired amount of mozzarella cheese over the vegetables, followed by the hard cheeses, if using.
6. Sprinkle semolina flour onto the baking stone just before you're going to put the pizza in.
7. Slide pizza onto the hot baking stone in a quick motion and close the oven.
8. Check pizza after 2 minutes and see if it needs to be rotated. It should take 5-8 minutes to bake.
9. Remove from the oven and wait a few minutes for the cheese and sauce to set a bit before slicing (makes it less messy). Serve and eat hot!

Brown Sugar and Mozzarella Pizza

Ingredients:

• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• mozzarella cheese
• a hard cheese, like parmesan or pecorino romano (optional)

Method:

1. Combine garlic and olive oil in a small bowl and mix well. (This is probably a good place to use crushed garlic that comes in a jar, but since I didn't have any I minced mine.)
2. Toss pizza dough and fashion into desired shape.
3. Place the dough on a peel.
4. Using a pastry brush, brush dough with olive oil/garlic mixture. Be careful here, as the dough is thin and might tear with rough handling. Use as much or as little as you like. I usually use up all the garlic and enough oil to cover the surface area of the pizza.
5. Top with mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.
6. Using your fingers, lightly sprinkle brown sugar over the top of the cheese. Do your best to evenly distribute, but little pockets of brown sugar here and there isn't a bad thing.
7. Slide pizza onto the hot baking stone in a quick motion and close the oven.
8. Check pizza after 2 minutes and see if it needs to be rotated. It should take 5-8 minutes to fully bake.
9. Remove from the oven and wait a minute or two for the cheese to set a bit before slicing (makes it less messy). This one is especially important to serve and eat hot, as the sugar seems to make the cheese harden a bit more than usual when it cools.

Chocolate Eclairs -- Daring Bakers Challenge August 2008

This was my first Daring Bakers challenge, and I lucked out because it was the perfect thing to bring to a barbecue/potluck, which we happened to be having in August for work. Though the challenge allowed us a bit of freedom in personalizing the recipe, I decided to make them just as the recipe suggested -- with chocolate pastry cream and chocolate glaze. My coworkers are chocolate fiends, and I was depending on them to eat all or at least most of the eclairs, as I didn't want to have to eat them all myself!



The barbecue was on a Friday, and I don't have the luxury of being able to take a day off from work just to bake (more's the pity), so I made of the components (the chocolate sauce and chocolate pastry cream) in advance, as suggested by the recipe. I didn't find that doing so detracted from their flavor at all.

Even though there are seemingly a lot of steps to eclair making, it's actually quite simple and not that time consuming (except for having to wash everything afterward, of course). The part I was most nervous about was the cream puff dough, which The first snag I had on that front was that I wasn't able to find a 2cm tip. That's fairly large, and all the stores carry are decorating tips, which are a fraction of that size. I even went all the way to freaking Sur la Table! I ended up having to improvise with a regular plastic food bag.

Step-by-Step Pictorial: Chocolate Eclairs


I made the least "important" component first, because it was the easiest. Here's the prep for the chocolate sauce, which is an ingredient that goes into the glaze. Here's heavy cream, sugar, chocolate, and water added together in a pot, about to be boiled.


Here it is after the first boil + 15 minutes. It's thickened enough that it should be ready now.


It's coating the back of my wooden spoon, as the instructions say, so yep, it's ready! At this point I poured it into a large mug to cool. I kept it in the fridge for about 3 days, after which time I warmed up a bit to use in the final glaze.


Here's a mixture of 4 egg yolks, sugar, and corn starch while 2 cups of whole milk are heating up on the stove. This will eventually become pastry cream.


A couple of spoonfuls of boiling hot milk have been added to the egg mixture to "temper" it. This raises the temperature slowly and will prevent the eggs from curdling (and making scrambled eggs!), as would probably happen if you just added all the hot milk at once.


All the hot milk has been added to the yolk mixture.


The milk/yolk mixture is strained into the saucepan to remove any bits of egg that's been curdled. I actually think I managed to avoid that. The bits in the strainer are unmelted yolk/sugar I think. Or... okay, maybe it's tiny pieces of scrambled egg, who knows.


After bringing the milk/yolk mixture to a boil, this lovely pastry cream is what it becomes. I was amazed to see it happen so quickly and beautifully.


Here I've added melted chocolate to the pastry cream, thus making it chocolate pastry cream. Wild, I know.


EXTREME CLOSE UP!!!


Here the pastry cream has been cooled to 140°F with an ice water bath (which you see pictured), and I'm mixing butter into it.


After adding the butter, the pastry cream cools to room temperature via the ice water bath. At this point it's going to be stored in the fridge until it's time to fill the eclairs with it. I was 'forced' to eat a spoonful when I had to take the spoon out and it was delicious.


So the morning of the BBQ, I prepared the cream puff dough and the chocolate glaze, and suffered through a conference call that was more than an hour long. But I digress. Here I've brought some whole milk, water, sugar, salt, and butter to a boil.


Added 140g of flour to the boiling mixture, resulting in this clumpy, unappetizing mess. Just a note that I weighed my ingredients where weight measurements were provided. It's much more accurate than volume measurements, and I need all the help I can get.


After 3 minutes of stirring, the dough has come together and is ready to be placed in the mixer for the addition of the eggs. A slight crust forms at the bottom of the pan during this step, which is to be expected.


Here's the dough after the addition of 1 egg. It separates a bit, as you can see.


After 3 eggs, it's starting to come together a little more.


Here's the dough after the 5th and final egg, and a couple minutes of extra mixing (to get the consistency to match what the instructions say, that the dough should fall back into the bowl in a ribbon when lifted).


I then scraped the still-warm dough (very important) into my makeshift pastry bag, which was just a large freezer bag with a hole cut into one of the corners.


I lined two baking sheets with parchment and made notations on each for 4 1/2-inch sections where the eclairs would be. The piped dough came out more like a ribbon instead of a chubby finger, so what I did was just go back over the first layer of piped dough with another layer. It worked decently well for being a makeshift thing.


Baked as instructed. There was one part where the instructions weren't clear though. You're supposed to put them in the oven and let them bake for 7 minutes, then stick a wooden spoon in the oven door to keep it slightly open for another 5 minutes for a total of 12 minutes. After that you're supposed to switch the trays from top to bottom and front to back, then bake for an additiona 8 minutes, but it doesn't say whether you're supposed to keep the door slightly ajar as you were doing right before, or go back to having the oven door fully closed. I learned from my bread experiments that doing so dries out the bread (or in this case pastry), and since eclairs/cream puffs are generally drier from what I recall, plus there would be pastry filling, I opted to keep the door ajar. At the first switch, the eclairs that were on the upper shelf had puffed much more than the ones on the bottom. After the full baking time, the ones that had been switched to the top were puffy while the ones on the bottom were flat. I'm not sure what I could have done to prevent this.


It didn't matter that much though, because after awhile even the puffy ones deflated quite a bit. I also don't know what to do to prevent that either! Also, I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but they weren't that big. They were like, mini-eclairs. Also, I ended up piping around 14 eclairs at a length of 4 1/2-inches each. The instructions say that there should be enough dough for 20-24 eclairs. So I don't know if those eclairs puff up much bigger than mine did, or if they're meant to be small.


Here's the chocolate sauce I made in advance.


I added the chocolate sauce to some more chocolate, butter, and heavy cream, and that created this glaze. The flash kind of ruined this shot. ><


Hmm, I guess I should have used parchment paper on the wire rack as suggested in the recipe, as the glaze was really ... drippy.


Filled the bottoms with previously made chocolate pastry cream and gingerly dropped the still-wet tops on them.


It would have been helpful if the instructions had said how long it would take the glaze to cool, because it definitely took awhile. The tops were still wet when I put them together. However, it took me about an hour to get to the BBQ, so they were drier by then.

I tried one to make sure it was edible and wouldn't be subjecting people at the barbecue to eclair rocks. The cream puff dough I thought tasted a bit eggy, but the chocolate covered that up pretty well. The chocolate pastry cream/glaze were both very good. And I was actually glad that they were miniature size, because eating a mini-eclair is much more acceptable than eating a normal-sized one.

They were a hit at the party (or everyone was being very polite). They all pretty much disappeared, and my manager even asked if I had made the dough myself and how I'd done it. Yay for chocolatey baked goods!