CHOCOLATE - RASPBERRY CAKE

I am feeling that my sugar high is coming to an end… So here is what might be the last of my sugar coated postings for a while… well, then again, you never know !
Although the weather has really not been that great recently, the fruits for this season of the year are terrific. All my favourite fruits are stacked on the shelves these days looking ripe and irresistibly seductive! The other day I bought some gorgeous raspberries, enjoyed some on their own and used the rest for a chocolate-raspberry cake with plenty of chocolate ganache and raspberry liqueur. I’m a genuine chocoholic, and I do love all sorts of cakes, but chocolate cakes are by far my favourite.

Above: beautiful raspberries. Below: coating the cake with the chocolate-raspberry ganache

Anyway, I’m going to cut this post short- but I do have to say that I’ve always enjoyed the fabrications of cakes: the layers, textures, colours, flavours… I love the process of dressing them and matching up their edible accessories. It’s almost like dressing up a doll… even though for the latter I’ve gone way past the age of doing that!

Recipe for my Chocolate-Raspberry cake:

>Chocolate Genoise ingredients:
4 eggs
125 gr sugar
125 gr flour
60 gr butter, melted
30 gr cocoa
Raspberry liqueur

Prepare a bain-marie. Place the sugar & eggs in the upper pot of the bain-marie and whisk for about 10 minutes until ribbons form and fall off the whisk beaters. Then add half of the flour and cocoa and quickly fold. Repeat with the remaining half of the flour and cocoa. Finally gently add in the butter. Transfer batter to a buttered cake mould, and bake in oven for 30 mins (checking with a sharp knife later if it needs more baking time). Remove from oven, let cool, unmould and slice horizontally in half. Brush each slice with raspberry liqueur.

>Chocolate – Raspberry ganache ingredients (sorry no measurements incl, I eyeballed the ingredients for this one) :

Raspberries, crushed
Liquid cream
Dark chocolate

Heat the liquid cream and crushed raspberries together- but do not let it boil. Then lower heat and add in the dark chocolate. The proportions are usually the cream being half the amount of the chocolate used. Allow all the chocolate to melt until ganache becomes smooth. Set aside, let cool and then with a spatula spread a layer in between the chocolate genoise and use the rest of the ganache to coat the cake at the end. Finish off by decorating cake with raspberries (optional).

FIG & ROSEWATER ICE-CREAM WITH CRUSHED PISTACHIOS & DARK CHOCOLATE

Guys, I am still on a sugar-high...and I did ice-cream, again! This time I played around with one of my favourite ingredient combinations ever: figs, rose water, pistachio and dark chocolate. I’ve used these flavours before in other pastries, such as the sablés I posted about way back when I first started blogging. Figs and rosewater are like a match made in heaven (and I am so happy that figs are finally in season now!) They complement each other so perfectly, and although I could enjoy the duo on it’s own, I just feel that throwing in an explosion of crushed pistachio and dark chocolate does something to the taste and adds some wonderful colour visually.

To be honest, initially I really wanted to make a milk chocolate & lavender ice-cream… but as much as I love lavender, I’m not as excited to use lavender these days... I think I’ve experimented enough with it when the purple wave hit us all a while back invading our kitchen closets, perfuming our recipes and entertaining our tastebuds.

So it is with no regret that I ditched one flowering plant (lavender) for another (rose), especially when I enjoyed it outside in the garden surrounded by a view of colourful blossoming roses and realizing that as I was looking at them, I was tasting them too.

Recipe for Fig & Rosewater ice-cream with crushed Pistachios & Dark Chocolate:

Ingredients:
4 egg yolks
125gr sugar
300ml low fat milk
200ml liquid cream
Figs (peeled)
2 tablespoons rose water
Crushed pistachios
Dark chocolate chips (70%)

How to make it:
Mix the egg yolks, peeled figs and sugar in a bowl. In a pot, bring the milk, cream, and rosewater to boil. Pour the boiling milk mixture over the cold mixture (eggs + sugar) while stirring. Return to heat and continue to stir until the cream starts to thicken. This stage of cooking is known as “la nappe” which is achieved between 82-85C. If the cream is not heated sufficiently, the ice-cream will be thin and watery. Remove the pot from the heat and stop the cooking process by place it in cold water mixed with ice cubes. Transfer the mixture to your ice-cream machine. Add the crushed pistachios and dark chocolate chips before churning. Follow manufacturers’ instructions and enjoy ice-cream on the same day, fresh and tasty!

*Remember: you can always replace the eggs with gelatine, pectin or agar-agar.

*I'm also submiting this recipe to Mike's super event You Scream, I Scream, We all Scream for Frozen Desserts! I'm generally screaming frozen desserts all year long, but it's always a bit louder in the summer!

SLICES OF CAKE...

I am in an incredibly sweet-tooth mood lately. Everyday there has been some chocolate, cake, cookies, ice-cream & company included somewhere in my diet. I know, it’s not very good for the health and for the waistline, but quite frankly sometimes if your taste buds are craving something then they should enjoy it. In moderation, there is nothing to worry about! Plus, I go to the gym at least 3 times a week, so that makes up for my sugar indulgences. Yes, I am a woman and this is how most women (without wanting to generalize) think when it comes to justifying their defeat to a sugar coated temptation!

Sometimes I crave a simple piece of bread with Nutella, or a slice of a humble cake, and then other days I will be capricious and lust for an orange-saffron Ladurée macaron or a piece of chocolate from the master himself Pierre Marcolini. However most of the time, I lean on the more adventurous side: I like matching up flavours I haven’t tried before. It doesn’t have to be out of this world, like say for instance, hmmm… caramel coated frog legs! It just needs to be something interesting. Cakes are a good way of playing around with flavours. I know that this weekend I’ll be busy with cakes, and probably ice-cream too, , but for the moment here are two examples of my many favourite home-made cake flavours:
Which one do you prefer? And what are YOUR favourite cake flavours?

Chocolate laced with cinammon and bits of pistachios and luscious figs OR juicy cherries with some chocolate & almond crunch?

I love using base cake recipes and then throwing in some ingredients imagining myself experimenting at Willy Wonka’s factory. I personally enjoyed both cakes but maybe I had a slight preference for the morello cherry, dark chocolate & almond one- especially when it’s still warm and accompanied with some fresh cream! To die for!

P.S: I’m not including a recipe here. I just used a base cake recipe and then threw in the extra ingredients at the appropriate steps. Sometimes (actually most of the time) I just do kitchen-play and really enjoy the feeling of not following a recipe word for word and gram for gram!

CARDAMOM, PISTACHIO, ALMOND & HONEY ICE-CREAM

You know how people always talk about the wonders of homemade bread ? Well I believe the same is applicable for ice-cream. About 7 or 8 years ago, when I was somewhere half way through high school, we bought an ice-cream machine. For the first year, I was making ice-cream all the time, experimenting around with flavours and so on. Then, the excitement wore off for one reason really: I wasn’t following any recipes. I was just randomly adding milk, sugar, and other ingredients with resulting odd textures after 30 minutes of churning in the ice cream machine. It wasn’t until I moved to Switzerland where I learned the proper approach to making good ice-cream at the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne. Ever since, I only swear by the techniques and recipe I learned there, and now the pleasures of homemade ice-cream has completely revived.

Although the weather has been quite cold and grey for this time of the year, my ice-cream mood nonetheless is quite permanent- regardless of the seasons! However I really did not want to make a “classic” flavour such as chocolate or vanilla. So instead, I ended up making cardamom, pistachio, almond & honey ice cream. The matching up of ingredients to create this flavour was very spontaneous, but unconsciously I was sure that there was a Middle Eastern influence. I made a small quantity as a “test”, and without a doubt next time I’ll be making a lot more. The flavour turned out delightful, and what I probably loved most was the refreshing edge the cardamom added coupled with the smooth sweetness of the honey. Each spoon brought a smile on my face, and that I believe is one of the best feelings of home-made ice-cream.

Recipe for cardamom, pistachio, almond & honey ice cream (for 6 people)

Ingredients:
4 egg yolks
125gr sugar
300ml low fat milk
200ml liquid cream
Vanilla
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
Crushed pistachios & almonds
Honey

How to make it:
Mix the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl. In a pot, bring the milk, cream, cardamom and vanilla to boil. Pour the boiling milk mixture over the cold mixture (eggs + sugar) while stirring. Return to heat and continue to stir until the cream starts to thicken. This stage of cooking is known as “la nappe” which is achieved between 82-85C. If the cream is not heated sufficiently, the ice-cream will be thin and watery. Remove the pot from the heat and stop the cooking process by place it in cold water mixed with ice cubes. Pass the mixture though a strainer and transfer to your ice-cream machine. Add the crushed pistachios and almonds before churning. Follow manufacturers’ instructions. Half way through the churning, add the honey (while ice-cream is still churning).

*The base recipe I use for ice-creams, including this one, is from the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne pastry & desserts techniques. If you don't like using eggs, you can replace with other binding agents such as gelatine, pectin, agar-agar... I personally do not like using eggs and replaced the eggs with gelatine for this one.