Daring Bakers in February - Chocolate Valentino and Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

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.


February’s challenge is a Flourless Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Valentino, inspired by Malaysia’s “most flamboyant food ambassador”, Chef Wan. Recipe comes from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan and can be found on Dharm's or Wendy's blog, listed above.

For my ice cream recipe I chose to make a Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream from David Lebovitz's fantastic book, The Perfect Scoop (which I am sure will be being used a lot today around blogs!). It is the same ice cream I used the other day with my TWD Caramel Crunch Bars.

I really liked the flavor of this cake - but if you like chocolate, why wouldn't you since it is a full pound of melted chocolate, somehow held together with just eggs and butter. It was a lot of fun to make, but even though I used an instant read thermometer to check the temperature of my cake for doneness, it still seemed a bit undercooked.

The ice cream was super easy to make and is absolutely refreshing and delightful. I will definitely be making this ice cream all summer long. I made a small change to the recipe and mascerated the strawberries with some really good pure vanilla (bourbon) extract instead of vodka (since I don't have any). It seemed to have worked just fine and there was a nice lovely little hint of vanilla to the ice cream as well.

Be sure to head over to the Daring Bakers blogroll to see all the chocolatey goodness. I would like to say a thank you to everyone who comes here and reads this blog, even when things have been a bit slow this past month. Today's Daring Baker's post marks the 200th post on PheMOMenon as well as my one year anniversary of joining the Daring Bakers. It has been a great year and this community continues to not only amaze me, but really, to often restore my faith in the goodness of the majority of people around the world. So, again, thanks for being here! I really do love you guys!

Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream

Source: The Perfect Scoop

Makes about 1 1/4 Quarts

1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
3/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon vodka or kirsch (I used Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla)

1 cup sour cream
1 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Slice the strawberries and toss them in a bowl with the sugar and alcohol, then stir until the sugar starts to dissolve. Cover the bowl and let it stand at room temperature for one hour, stirring every so often.

Pulse the strawberries and their liquid in a food processor along with the remaining ingredients until almost smooht but still slightly chunky (not fully pureed). Refrigerate the mixture for one hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers instructions.

TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars - Two Ways

For Tuesdays with Dorie this week Whitney of What's Left on the Table? chose the Caramel Crunch Bars.  I have had this one bookmarked since I got the book, but just never got around to making it.   Before I get into all that though, I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Mardi Gras today!  I will be making a New Orleans inspired dinner tonight, complete (hopefully) with a homemade King Cake (barring any disasters throughout the day that is).  At least if I don't get to make the King Cake, our friends can still munch on some of these delicious bars.

I know now that I will make this many more times.  It was easy and delicious.  It lends itself to lots of interpretation as you can see above.  The cookie base is buttery, with a dark, caramel-like flavor from the brown sugar.  I used good milk chocolate for my finely chopped chocolate in the cookie base and for the chocolate / toffee bit version above I used bittersweet chocolate and some milk chocolate on top (since the only toffee bits I could find were actually more like just broken up Heath candy bars instead of just the toffee).

In the future, I will probably just make some toffee with nuts myself since I think that is way I would have really, really loved this.  Also, though the original recipe calls for espresso powder in the cookie base, since I don't have any of that and never do, rather than leave it out, I decided to grind up about a teaspoon of cocoa nibs in a spice grinder and substitute that.  I scored some of the new cocoa nibs that local Utah Chocolatier, Art Pollard, is making over at Amano Artisan Chocolate. I love their chocolates and the fact that they are right here in our little State, so it was an extra special treat to use them.  They have several different varieties, but for my first go around I decided to use the Ocumare.

For my ice cream filled variation on the caramel crunch bars I topped the cookie base with white chocolate and then sprinkled it with some of the cocoa nibs.  After the cookies were all set I sandwiched two cookies each with some Strawberry Sour Cream Ice Cream I made (I will be posting that recipe soon - promise!  It comes from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz). The ice cream was simple and so fun to make.  It was dreamy and refreshing to eat too and I know I will be making it again in the future.

Be sure to check out the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll to see everyone else's creations this week.  I am sure there are insane amounts of chocolate-y goodness running around out there to enjoy.  I am just grateful that I will still have a couple of these to nibble on while viewing.

TWD: Devil's Food - The Cover Cake

For Tuesdays with Dorie this week Stephanie at Confessions of a City Eater chose the Devils Food White Out Cake, located not only on pages 247-24

9 of Baking From My Home To Yours, but on the cover.  That is right.  Someone finally chose the cover cake! And me? I went and changed it all up anyway. It wasn't intentional though. For once.  Really. I swear.

For once, I had no intention of messing around with the recipe. I wanted to make that cake and make it look just like the one on the cover. There were just a few little (or not so little problems) in my way this time around. First off, you may have noticed that I have stalled on my Four S's for the last several posts. It isn't intentional, it is simply the fact that by the time I have had a few minutes to put together my TWD post, it has been late Monday

 night and I have been too tired and grumpy to really have much creative to say.

Long story short, for the past month, both of my boys have been sick, sick, sick, si

ck and those were the only four S's making it out of my kitchen. I won't get into a long list of problems, but suffice it to say, 2009 has been a crapper in the health department for us so far, and doesn't look to be getting better very soon.  In the mean time, TWD is the only blogging commitment I feel like I haven't failed on yet and want to keep it that way.

Which brings us right back to my Devil's Food White-Out Cake... or really, I should say, as A. called them, "our army of baby cakes." Since there was no way I was going to be able to deal with a huge 3-layer cake at our house with just me and two sick kids, and since A.'s Kindergarten Valentine's party was on Friday, I decided to make mini cupcakes for his class treat.

This recipe may very well be my new favorite chocolate cake recipe. It was simple to put together, with fantastic results, and the clincher here people? 

I SCREWED UP THE DIRECTIONS AND IT STILL WORKED FOR ME. 

In my sleep-deprived, tired and frustrated mind that equals love with a recipe for me. You see, I just couldn't seem to read the instructions (1) correctly and (2) all the way through, to save my life. So, even though chocolate was listed twice and there were instructions on what to do with it, and when to add it to the batter, it was just apparently too much for my brain.

So... what did I do? Well, as much as it pains me to admit this, I did finally at least catch the correct amount of chocolate for the recipe, but I just melted all of the chocolate with the boiling water, gave it a good stir and incorporated it at the point when the melted chocolate was suppose

d to be added. Toward the bottom of that paragraph of mixing directions is when I finally unfogged my brain long enough to figure out what I should have done. Basically, with my usual flair, just in time for it to be too late, and to hope for the best. All I can say is I am am grateful that Dorie's recipe seemed to be foolproof, 'cause this fool sure feels lucky that it all worked out.

The issues above are also the reason you are not seeing any beautiful, white, frothy frosting on my cupcakes. First, I just ran out of time since I was trying to frost the cupcakes to take to class, literally 15 minutes before I needed to be there, and second:

me + working with hot sugar syrup + sleep deprivation = bad idea written all over it.

So, I will definitely make this recipe again and will try to make the right frosting with it as well since I really wanted to try that too. For this go around, I made a little cocoa / whipped cream frosting that is always super fast and delicious that we love. The recipe was simple and made enough for all the cupcakes (incidentally, here that was 36 minis and 12 regular sized ones).

Don't forget to check out how everyone else's glorious cakes turned out today - visit the TWD blogroll!

Chocolate Whipped Frosting

1 cup cold heavy cream

1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used Dutch process)

2 cups sifted powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Whip all together til thick piping consistency (thicker than whipped cream) - about 3 minutes in stand mixer on medium-high.

Utah's Hottest Food Blogs

Little ole me?  One of Utah's Top 10 Hottest Food Blogs?  So sweet and too cool.  I am beyond flattered to be included in this list, especially considering the fantastic company I'm in.  Check it out on Utah Stories.com (a great resource for what is happening in the Beehive State).

TWD: Floating Islands

Well, to be completely honest, this week's recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie, Floating Islands, chosen by darling Shari over at the fabulous Whisk:  A Food Blog, was something that until recently, I had never even heard of.  It was an enigma to me.  While I could read the recipe and figure out what I thought this would be like, at the same time, perhaps because of that, I just really couldn't imagine this dessert was something I was going to be in love with.  I had been eyeing the picture in our Baking From My Home To Yours book though in curiosity ever since I saw it though, so I was happy to try to make it and find out what it was all about.

Nonetheless, I forged on and made the components anyway.  As I made the creme anglaise I realized that it basically was the same type of custard I make for ice cream, without the freezing. I knew that I would at least like that part.  What I wasn't so sure of was the actual floating islands themselves.  You see, for all intensive purposes, the 'islands' are poached puffs of meringue, without anything else really done to them.  I am not that much of a meringue person all by its lonesome, so that didn't really appeal to me.

I would like to tell you that I ended up loving this dessert... but I just didn't.  There was certainly nothing wrong with it, it just isn't my kind of dessert.  I will tell you that I had just baked a few more of the WP Cookies off my log stashed in the freezer and that those, dipped in the creme anglaise were perfectly fabulous.

For my floating islands, in honor of the upcoming Valentine's holiday, I decided, actually at the last minute, to add a little bit of red powdered food coloring and then to pipe the meringue into heart shapes.  I really wish I had pictures of how lovely and fun they were when I molded them or when they were poaching, but my camera was no where to be found at that point and I was already in the process and didn't think I should delay any further.   I also decided to do a few little chocolate swirls with a bit of melted dark chocolate on the islands and floating in the creme as a bit of decoration instead of the caramel strings.

Since I have nothing to compare these too, I don't know if mine were at all over-poached or deflated too much, but they still tasted good.  As I said, there was nothing at all wrong with this dessert, but it wasn't something I loved either.

Don't forget to check out all the islands floating around on the other Tuesdays with Dorie baker's blogs today!  (See that, I made a completely lame joke with a totally straight face.  Yeah. I'm a dork... but strangely, okay with that.)

TWD: World Peace Cookies

I could hardly contain myself I was so excited that someone finally chose to make these cookies for our Tuesdays with Dorie pick - huge thanks to Jessica of cookbookhabit. These cookies may very well be what got me interested in food blogs in the first place. I remember, it was almost two years ago, when I decided I should find out what food blogs were all about. I didn't know where to find them though, so I remember I just did a Google search for 'food blogs'. Well, no big surprise here, but the one I remember coming up was Smitten Kitchen. Now that I was hooked and reading Smitten Kitchen it should come as no big surprise that when Deb posted the World Peace Cookies I basically went straight home and made them. Deb's writing was so funny and I the cookies looked so amazing... and they are.

I will never forget the title of her post though because it just stuck with me... especially after I tasted one of these cookies. "In which world peace eludes me." I have to agree with Deb here because, frankly, I share most everything I make and love to share and want others to enjoy. These little chocolate cookies though? Not so much. I hoard them. They don't make me feel peaceful when I think of giving them away. However, should the governments of the world choose to provide a cookie or two a day for all the populations, then I could see world peace happening. If I have to share these... maybe not.

I freeze the dough and hide the baked cookies to keep them all for myself. I don't know of any other recipe that makes me into such a selfish person, but these cookies - oh yes. I become as stingy as they come. Well - I do share they with my immediate family, but that is about it. The problem with that of course is also that it means I eat them all myself. They are just so good and so eatable. I wish I could describe how insanely good these are, and the fact that if you haven't made them before, you are really missing out on possibly one of the very best chocolate delivery devices that are available to us mere humans.

Now, I implore you, go forth and make these cookies so that you can eat them while you are reading all the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers posts today - if you don't have one in hand while reading, you will be very sad indeed!