Saturday, February 28, 2009

Daring Bakers are all about flourless

daringbakers-0902

he 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.

Flourless chocolate cake is a very dense dessert, consisting of just three ingredients - chocolate, eggs and butter. I frequently make one by Rose Levy Berenbaum which also has a little bit of sugar, and uses a different method. I have to say that I much prefer that one, and won't be making this one again, but it was fun to compare them.

For this challenge, I decided to use up some of the chocolate I already had. Since it was such an intensely chocolate cake, I decided that slightly spiced chocolate might be perfect. So, here's what I ended up using:

90 g Organic Meltdown Indian Spices
100 g Green & Black Maya Gold
100 g Green & Black 70%
100 g Green & Black 85%
60 g Green & Black Milk

I quickly decided to take advantage of the option to not make an ice cream. It's not that I don't like ice cream, or am scared of making my own - oh no, I love it! However, I don't really like ice cream with cake. I much prefer ice cream on its own, and cake with whipped cream. So, I decided to serve this cake with raspberry whipped cream. The raspberries worked really, really well with the subtle spicing in the cake. However, the cake itself was too chocolatey, too bitter and too dry.

The instructions said to bake the cake until the internal temperature was 60°C and suggested 25 minutes. Well, after 18, mine was at 64°C so I took it out at that point. This resulted in, sadly, a very dry cake. I wish I had used a thermometer from the beginning, but I didn't think the timing would be *so* off. Oh well - lesson learned!

pink_db

Do go to the blogroll or the forums and check out what everyone else made!

12 comments:

Lisa said...

That's awesome that you used some spiced chocolate in the cake. It looks great, and I have no doubt it tasted evem better. Good job!

Unknown said...

Wow...raspberry cream....sounds delicious! I bet the spices added to the cake as well. Sorry it was a bit dry.

Rosa's Yummy Yums said...

A great spiced cake! Lovely! That raspberry cream sounds really good...

Cheers,

Rosa

Sweet Bird said...

I'm intrigued by these Indian spices...

Anonymous said...

Bet the spices added an interesting element. You'd have done fine with the ice cream, Anne! I'd never made it either, but I had pretty good luck even though I didn't have an ice cream maker. I really enjoy your blog!

Anne said...

Adventureswiththewoods - I make ice cream all the time, but I chose not to this time since I really don't like ice cream with cake :)

Meeta K. Wolff said...

this sounds really d'lish. love the addition of spice in the cake!

Anonymous said...

I am truly amazed at your adventurous baking! Too bad you think the cake came out a bit dry because it looks wonderful!

Anonymous said...

Good grief I feel like a moron...I misread your comment. Sheesh! I guess cake w/ ice cream kind of an acquired taste :)

Anne said...

Adventures - it definitely might be :) I better start practising!

ChefSara said...

i'm glad i'm not the only one who didn't make ice cream..the whipped cream was just perfect with this cake.

Stomp said...

Hej, I have made flourless chocolate cake with chocolate, butter, eggs and icing sugar. Icing sugar makes it very fluffy and moist at the same time. I don't have my recipe written at the puter, but I used this link as the basic idea http://www.cooksister.com/2008/11/decadent-flourless-chocolate-cake.html . So if you want to compare more, maybe you try that one as well. And of course served with ice cream and raspberries :)