TWD: Baking Chez Moi - Marquise au Chocolat

It's Tuesday's with Dorie time again!  This week our recipe was from Baking Chez Moi, and we made Marquise au Chocolat.  That is fancy French for frozen chocolate mousse.  Sounds fancy, yes?  I served mine with vanilla creme anglaise (another recipe in the book) and some fresh raspberries.  The raspberries are actually crucial, in my opinion, as they add a nice tart zip to a sweet dessert.  Which is not to say that the dessert is too sweet.  No.  It is not.  It is absolutely delicious and divine.  But I do l like a little zip to cut the sweet sometimes, just me.

This recipe is really not difficult at all, and it even includes FOLDING ingredients (a word that makes me tremble with anxiety).  It simply involves melting a large quantity of bittersweet chocolate (my fave) with some butter (how could this possibly go wrong?).  In the mean time you whip some egg yolks with sugar and some fleur de sel or sea salt.  Fold the chocolate in to the yolks then whip up some lightly sweetened heavy cream and fold that into the mixture as well.  Pour it into a plastic wrap lined loaf pan, wrap it up and put it in the freezer.  You are done.  It needs to freeze for at least 6 hours, so it is best to think ahead a bit with this dessert.

Here is where some bakers got stumped, though.  If you look closely to my abbreviated instructions above, you will see that in no place do the egg yolks actually get COOKED.  Uh, huh.  You mean this includes RAW EGGS?  Yep, essentially that is the case.  There are things you can do to change this up, which some bakers in the group tried, but I didn't go there.  I just bought some pasteurized eggs and called it a day.  Those eggs are safe enough for me.  The percentage of eggs that contain salmonella is very small and since my eggs were pasteurized they were theoretically safe from being part of that small percentage anyway.  Plus, if you added up all of the raw cookie dough/cake batter/etc. that I have munched in my entire life, I have probably eaten about a zillion raw eggs already!  Maybe this was chance-y, but it is the route I took.  If you follow this blog, you might recall that while I was pregnant I made a tiramisu for a birthday celebration that included 2 other pregnant gals.  Tiramisu (at least my recipe) also involves uncooked egg yolks and I took the pasteurized route that time too.  You have to bake/cook in a manner that makes you comfortable, and this works for me!

Anyway, back to the dessert.  Since the mousse freezes overnight, you can also make a creme anglaise to go with it, which is refrigerated overnight.  Then the next day, at dessert time, you can just grab these two pre-made amazing items, plate them, and you are ready!  No sweat! You can see in the photo below that my plastic wrap had some wrinkles, which were sort of carved into the marquise, but I don't mind.  I am actually not sure how to line the pan without getting wrinkles?  Maybe one of the other bakers did a better job and will have some tips to share!

This dessert was made as part of my very dear friend H's birthday dinner.  Happy birthday, H!  Your friendship is an amazing blessing in my life.  What would I do without you?  It is just too dreadful to contemplate!

The recipe for Marquise au Chocolat can be found on pages 357-358 of Baking Chez Moi, and the creme anglaise can be found on page 441.  

Happy Birthday, Sister!

My sister came to visit for her birthday!  Yippee!  She lives in Kansas City which is WAY too far from Houston for us to see each other as much as we would prefer.  Which would probably be about once a week at least, if we had our druthers!  Phooey.  So when I found a great sale on flights, I jumped at them!  An opportunity for us to spend her birthday together?  SOLD! 

One of my sister's favorite flavors is almond, so we picked a couple of recipes to put together for her birthday dinner celebration...  Almond Cake with Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry Ice Cream!  YUM.  The cake recipe is from Giada De Laurentiis.  While it was super tasty, it was a bit dry... maybe I could have cooked it a tad less.  The top was golden and the cake was pulling away from the sides of the pan, as the recipe suggests, but I thought it needed a little something.  If you were to make JUST the cake recipe, I would poke some holes in the top of the cake and drizzle over some sort of glaze when the cake came out of the oven.  A powdered sugar/milk/amaretto glaze would be quite tasty... 

However, the day after actually celebrating my sister's birthday, I had another slice of cake and drizzled the candied cherry sauce from the ice cream recipe over the top.  PERFECTION!  Why didn't I think of that for the birthday night?  Ugh.  Yum, yum, yum.

The ice cream recipe comes from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz.  Zowie.  That book has yet to steer me wrong!  This ice cream was SO good.  It was so creamy and the flavors were spot on.  Mmmmm. 

Are you ready for the recipes?  Here you go:

Almond Cake
adapted from Giada De Laurentiis
 Ingredients:
1/2 cup fine yellow cornmeal (I whizzed my stone ground cornmeal in the food processor to get it "fine", which seemed to work!)
1/2 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 stick (4 oz.) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup almond paste, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar, plus more to dust cake if desired
4 egg yolks
2 eggs
1/4 cup sour cream

Directions:
Place a rack in the lower third of your oven and preheat to 350F.  Butter and flour an 8-inch round cake pan.

Whisk the cornmeal, flour and baking powder together in a medium bowl.  Beat the butter and almond paste together on high speed with an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, until smooth.  This will take approximately 3 minutes.  Reduce the speed to low and add the vanilla extract. Slowly add the powdered sugar.  If the sugar is puffing up in clouds around your mixer, add the sugar slower and drape a tea-towel over the top of your mixer to help keep the sugar in the bowl and your kitchen safe from pesky white sugar dust.  Mix until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Increase the mixer speed to high and add the egg yolks and eggs, one at a time.  Reduce the speed to medium and add the sour cream and flour/cornmeal mixture.  Mix only until just incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.  Bake for 35 minutes, or until cake is golden on top and pulls away from the sides of the pan.  Transfer (in pan) to a rack to cool.  Remove from pan and dust with powdered sugar if desired.  Drizzle with some sort of glaze or candied cherry sauce before serving.
Printable Recipe

Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry Ice Cream
adapted from The Perfect Scoop

Ingredients:
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups whole almonds, toasted and coarsely chopped
5 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup Candied Cherries, coarsely chopped (recipe follows) (I used about 1/2 cup)

Directions:
Warm the milk, sugar, salt, and 1 cup of the cream in a medium saucepan.  Finely chop 1 cup of the almonds and add them to the warm milk.  Cover the pan, remove from heat, and let steep at room temperature for at least one hour.

Strain the almond-infused milk into a different medium saucepan.  Press the almonds with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon to extract as much flavor as possible.  Discard the soaked almonds.

Reheat the almond-infused milk.  Whisk the egg yolks together in a medium bowl.  Slowly pour the warm milk mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, and then pour this mixture back into the saucepan.  Stir this mixture over medium heat with a rubber heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom of the saucepan as you stir, until the mixture thickens and  heats to 170-175F.  The mixture should coat the back of the spatula.

Pour the remaining cup of heavy cream into a large bowl sitting in an ice bath,and set a mesh strainer on top.  Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream.  Add the almond extract and stir until cool.  Refrigerate the mixture until completely cool, overnight if possible.  Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's  instructions.  Once the ice cream is finished churning, fold in the remaining 1 cup of chopped almonds and the chopped cherries.  Freeze to desired consistency.

Candied Cherries
makes 2 cups

Ingredients:
1 pound cherries, fresh or frozen, stemmed and pitted
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1 TB freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 drop almond extract

Directions:
Heat the cherries, water, sugar and lemon juice in a large saucepan until the liquid starts to boil.  Reduce the heat to a low boil and cook the cherries for at least 25 minutes, stirring frequently to make sure the cherries cook evenly and do not stick.  The liquid will reduce to a light syrup consistency.  The syrup will become thicker after refrigeration.  Remove from the heat, add the almond extract, and allow to cool completely.  Drain the cherries for about an hour before chopping for use, reserving the syrup for other uses (like drizzling over almond cake!).  NOTE: I did not drain the cherries for an hour before chopping, I just took them out of the syrup, squeezing out as much syrup as I could before chopping and adding to the Toasted Almond ice cream. 
Printable Recipe

My sister loved her birthday cake and ice cream!  It was a delicious treat!  If you enjoy almond flavor too, give these recipes a try!  They are worth it!  Mmmm.....

Pistachio Ice Cream

It's here, as I promised.  In case you missed out, I made baklava and pistachio ice cream for a little get together with a couple of my neighbors recently.  Both turned out quite well, I must admit. 

I am really enjoying my DIY ice cream adventure this summer.  Besides being delicious, it is fun to try different things and see what recipes are out there.  The one thing that has been true for all of my homemade ice creams, is that you have to take it out of the freezer a bit before you actually want to scoop it.  Since we do not have a commercial ice cream maker, we don't incorporate as much air into the ice cream, thus it freezes a bit more solid.  If you want ice cream right away, you will need a chisel!  (Not as pretty but still delicious!)

I found this recipe on Epicurious.  It is very straight forward and didn't incorporate green food coloring, as I found in other recipes.  YUCK.  Why do you need to add food coloring?  I did not alter the settings of my camera or do any fancy photoshop technique and as you can see, the ice cream does actually have a natural green color.  No food coloring necessary, to get that not truly natural color of pistachio ice cream you might find at the grocery store.  Not that I am anti-food coloring in general, trust me.  Did you see my rainbow cake?  Yep, lots of food coloring there.  But let's save it for applications that actually NEED food coloring, okay?  

Oh, one thing to note:  The recipe calls for unsalted shelled pistachios.  I actually bought salted pistachios on accident, so I gently rinsed the pistachios in a colander and then spread them out on a sheet pan and put them in a very low oven (around 200F) to dry them out.  It seemed to work.  Still some salt but the ice cream was tasty so it didn't matter!

Anyway, here is the recipe I used for this truly amazing pistachio ice cream:

Pistachio Ice Cream
adapted from Epicurious
makes about 1 quart

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted shelled pistachios (I used salted and tried to get some of the salt off... )
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups whole milk
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
4 large egg yolks
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup unsalted shelled pistachios, toasted, coarsely chopped

Directions
Put 1 cup pistachios and 1/4 cup sugar in a food processor and finely grind.  Heat the milk and pistachio/sugar mixture to a boil in a heavy saucepan.  Remove from the heat and stir in the almond extract.

Whisk the egg yolks and the remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a medium bowl.  Slowly ladle the hot pistachio/milk mixture into the yolks, while whisking constantly.  Return the mixture to the saucepan and gently heat on low until the custard thickens.  When the mixture leaves a trail on the back of a metal spoon when you run your finger down it, it is ready.  Ths takes about 10 minutes of constant stirring.  Do not allow the mixture to boil.  Strain into a large bowl and chill overnight (or at least 2 hours).

Stir in 1 cup of whipping cream.  Process in your ice cream maker according to it's instructions.  When it is at the correct consistency, stir in the 1/2 cup pistachios by hand.  Transfer to an air-tight container and freeze overnight.
Printable Recipe

If you are a pistachio fan, go for this ice cream.  Yum.  There really is nothing like homemade ice cream!
  

Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

We made Mr. Clever Mom some Toasted Coconut Ice Cream for Father's Day!  This is part of the clever girl's and my summer initiative to become ice cream pros.  Thus far we have had good success, with an amazing chocolate ice cream for the clever girl's birthday.  Since Mr. Clever Mom loves coconut desserts (see coconut cream pie and coconut cake for more options), we decided to try Toasted Coconut Ice Cream.

Yum.  Again, success.  Honestly, I think this is solely due to the fact that I am using David Lebovitz's book The Perfect Scoop, wherein he describes the ice cream process in detail.  The toasted coconut flavor is perfect - not too much, just right, just like Baby Bear's porridge in Goldilocks!  You toast the coconut and then let warm milk and cream steep with the coconut and vanilla beans for a while, to really get as much flavor as you can.  Then you toss the coconut bits, so the ice cream is still perfectly creamy.  Mmmm.

Toasted Coconut Ice Cream
adapted from The Perfect Scoop

Ingredients:
1 cup shredded coconut, unsweetened
1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
3/4 cup sugar
big pinch of salt
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthwise
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, or 1 teaspoon rum

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350F.  Spread the coconut on a rimmed baking sheet and toast for 5-8 minutes, stirring frequently.  When it is golden brown and smells incredible, take it out of the oven and allow it to cool.

Warm the milk, 1 cup of the heavy cream, sugar, salt and coconut in a medium saucepan.  Once it is warm and steamy, remove the pan from the heat.  Use a small paring knife to scrape the vanilla beans from the pod and into the saucepan, and put the pod in as well.  Cover and allow to steep for at least one hour at room temperature.

Re-warm the coconut/milk mixture.  Strain the coconut/milk mixture through a mesh strainer set over another medium saucepan.  Press on the coconut with a rubber spatula to extract as much of the flavor as possible.  Remove the vanilla bean pod, rinse and save for another purpose (like adding them to your sugar bowl for vanilla sugar!)  Discard the coconut.

Pour the remaining 1 cup of heavy cream into a large bowl and set the empty (rinsed) mesh strainer over the bowl.  Whisk the egg  yolks in a separate bowl.  Using a ladle, slowly pour the warm coconut-infused mixture into the egg yolks, whisking briskly the entire time.  Pour the warmed yolks back into the saucepan and return to the stove. 

Warm the custard mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, until the custard is thick and leaves a line on the spatula when you wipe it with a finger.  Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the remaining cream.  Stir in the vanilla extract or rum.  Set this bowl in an ice bath  and stir until cool. 

Chill overnight in the refrigerator and then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the maker's instructions. 
Printable Recipe

I wonder, instead of throwing away the soaked coconut, if I could dry it out in the oven again and use it to sprinkle over the ice cream when serving??  Maybe something to try next time! 

Another success on our ice cream journey.  What should we try next??

TWD: Baking with Julia - Phylloccine Ice Cream Sandwiches

 

Our recipe this week for Tuesdays with Dorie is Phylloccine Ice Cream Sandwiches.  I have to admit that the entire time I thought about and prepared this dessert, I was pronouncing the name wrong.  I didn't actually read the intro to the recipe (oops), otherwise it would have been very clear.  The bed of the "ice cream sandwich" (which you can admittedly barely see at all in my photo) is a nest made of phyllo that is cut into ribbons like fettuccine.  Thus, phyllo-ccine.  Duh.  Good job putting two and two together on that one.  Ahh well...

 

I actually altered this recipe a bit.  I made it an open-faced ice cream sandwich, as I thought that the phyllo nests were too big to use two.  I wonder if I actually made them bigger than they were supposed to be.  In looking at the photo in the book (again something I did AFTER making the dessert), the phylloccine nests look much smaller.  The recipe calls for "one box of phyllo dough".  Is it possible that there are boxes that come with less dough?  The boxes I buy always have two packages/rolls of phyllo inside.  Since I halved the recipe, I used 1 roll of phyllo and made 8 nests.  Had I used only half of the phyllo roll, or made 16 nests instead of 8, I think the nests would have been a better size.  Does this make sense?  I only wanted to make 4 sandwiches, not 8.  Anyway, since the nests were large, I used only one, on the bottom.

 

The layering of this "sandwich" is as follows:

• blob of brown sugar/rum flavored whipped cream
• phyllo nest
• raspberry/blueberry salad made with pureed raspberries, blueberries, and a little sugar
• homemade toasted coconut ice cream (look for recipe in following post)
• another blob of whipped cream
• homemade hot fudge sauce
• sliced figs and peaches around the sides of the nest

The sandwich was supposed to have two layers of the phyllo nest, the whipped cream on the side, and have a skewer of fresh berries coming out of the sandwich.  I changed it up simply due to the fruit I had on hand.  Peaches and figs aren't as skewer-able as berries!  And I added the hot fudge sauce because, well, what isn't better with hot fudge sauce??

 

Honestly, I thought this dessert was just ok.  There is a lot going on.  And I felt like all that extra fruit and whipped cream detracted a bit from the deliciousness of my homemade ice cream.  However, if you used a nice vanilla ice cream (as the recipe suggests), this would be a really elegant dinner party dessert that is pretty easy to make.  I'd still leave out the whipped cream though, I just don't think it needs it - which is a lot to say, as I do love whipped cream!

 

You can find the recipe on pages 405-406 of Baking with Julia, or by going here.  And be sure to check out what the other TWD bloggers thought of this one, by going here!

 

 

 

 

 

Chocolate Ice Cream

While the clever girl is out of school for the summer (She just finished Kindergarten!  So hard to believe!!) we decided that we would learn how to make our own ice cream.  And let me tell you, we got off to a fantastic start!  We purchased the book The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz, for recipes and inspiration.  Actually, we first checked it out from the library.  But almost as soon as I opened the book, I knew it was a "cookbook" that I needed to own. 

David Lebovitz describes this chocolate ice cream as "perfect", "irresistible", "you won't be able to wait to dig in", and he is RIGHT.  Wow.  We all agreed that this is the best chocolate ice cream we have ever had, and I MADE IT!  I can do this!  The clever girl did not help with this one, as I made it over several nights as a surprise for her birthday.  With Rainbow Cake, also a surprise. 

She ate the ice cream and then ran around the house singing "I'm in love with the Ice Cream Girl", which is a song by Brady Rymer, a kids band that she enjoys.  She also informed Mr. Clever Mom that he was in love with the Ice Cream Girl as well.  Honestly, I think anyone who makes this ice cream will have people falling in love with them.  It's that good.  I know there are dishes out there called "engagement chicken" and such, that supposedly if you make for your love they will propose within days or something.  Forget the chicken.  Serve your love some of this ice cream and they will be forever yours.  I promise. 

Chocolate Ice Cream
adapted from The Perfect Scoop
makes 1 quart

Ingredients:
2 cups heavy cream
3 TB unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate (or semisweet, if you prefer), chopped
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions:
Whisk 1 cup of the cream with the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan.  Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and allow to simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly.  Remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate pieces.  Stir until smooth.  Stir in the remaining 1 cup of cream.  Pour this mixture into a large bowl.  Scrape the saucepan with a rubber spatula as well as you can, but do not rinse it out.  Set a mesh strainer over the bowl, and set the bowl in an ice bath.  Set aside.

In the same saucepan, warm the milk, sugar and salt.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.  Once the milk is hot and steamy, use a ladle to very slowly pour it into the bowl of egg yolks, whisking constantly.  This will keep the eggs moving around so you don't end up with scrambled eggs!  Make sure the sauce pan is no longer on the heat when you do this. 

Once all of the milk is whisked into the egg yolks, scrape the mixture back into the saucepan.  Use a heat-proof rubber spatula and stir constantly over medium heat.  Make sure you are scraping the bottom of the pan as you stir.  Stir until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula.  It is done when you can run your finger down the spatula and you leave a trail that does not fill in. 

Pour the custard over the strainer (which is over the chocolate/cream mixture, which is in an ice bath), and stir until smooth.  Add the vanilla extract and stir until it is cool.

Chill thoroughly in the refrigerator, preferably overnight.  Then freeze it according to your ice cream maker's instructions.  It is generally best to freeze the ice cream in the maker, transfer it to an air-tight container, and then allow it to freeze overnight in your freezer. 

Get ready to taste the best chocolate ice cream ever!
Printable Recipe

This ice cream is amazingly creamy and SO chocolaty.  It's a deep, rich chocolate.  Mmmm.  It is very difficult to resist eating the entire batch at once.  And would that really be a bad thing?  Aren't there supposed to be tons of antioxidants and stuff in chocolate?  We'll go with that.  Yep.  Go ahead and eat as much a you want.  It is good for your soul!