Epic Portions

Tag: chocolate

  • Chocolate-Strawberry Cheesecake

    I’d been trying to get one of my co-workers, Chris, to come to a cake party ever since I started writing here. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t come because he just wasn’t that enthused about sweets or because he thought my friends were weird, but when he told me his favorite dessert was cheesecake, I took it as a challenge!

    Of course, this being Epic Portions, I wanted it to be more than just cheesecake.  Chris, who sits next to me at work, got a first-hand taste of why cake party came to be in the first place, when over my lunch break I was trolling recipes for ideas and said repeatedly, “what do you think would happen if I used ___ instead of ___? (His response? “I just like cheesecake! Plain old cheesecake!” Silly boy.)

    The result was chocolate- strawberry cheesecake. It was heavenly. I think I ate my weight in batter from the bowl alone. Mine was a little under-done… my oven tends to run hot and I wanted to keep it low to be on the safe side, but ended up keeping it a little TOO low… but even so, it was great.  I took two Martha Stewart recipes and used elements from both, along with some sage advice from my own mum and a serious personal aversion to corn syrup (love of marshmallow aside, if I don’t have to use it, I don’t use it), and the proof is in the pudding (er, the cheesecake) that you really can trust Martha. Her recipes may be complicated and difficult, but they sure are tasty.

    I should note, this recipe really isn’t very hard at all, but it’s bloody time consuming. You have to roast the berries for an hour an a half, bake the cheesecake for an hour or more, let it slowly cool in a turned-off, unopened oven for another hour, and chill it for at least four hours. It’s a lot of “down-time,” but you can’t really go run errands while your oven is on, so plan on staying home and babysitting this one for a significant amount of time.

    Chocolate- Strawberry Cheesecake
    1 lb fresh strawberries
    2 cups white sugar
    1 cup water

    9 oz chocolate graham crackers
    one stick (8 tblspn) unsalted butter
    32 oz (4 pckgs) cream cheese
    1.5 cups white sugar
    1 tspn salt
    4 eggs
    1 cup sour cream
    11 oz good-quality baking chocolate, as dark as you like
    additional strawberries, washed, hulled and sliced, for garnish.

    Begin with your berries: With the 2 cups sugar and the 1 cup water, make simple syrup by bringing the mixture to boil in a saucepan until dissolved and combined. Hull and half the washed 1lb of berries, and toss in the simple syrup. Arrange on a lined baking sheet, and roast at 300F for an hour and a half. Try not to eat them straight from the oven. Cool in the fridge for about an hour, then puree them – I used my mini-chopper but a blender would probably actually work better.

    Meanwhile, raise your oven temp to 325F and monitor it for awhile to make sure it holds a steady temp.  Take your graham crackers, and turn them into graham crumbs (as I have previously mentioned, I like beating them into submission with a rolling pin, but a mini-chop or food processor also works.) Melt your butter over LOW heat in a saucepan, and mix it into the crumbs until just moistened.  Press the mixture into an even, condensed, crust-like layer in the bottom of a 9-in springform pan, and bake at 325F for about 10 min.  Remove from oven and set aside.

    In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese, 1.5 cup sugar, and salt until combined and smooth. (Martha calls for a food processor, but I don’t have one. Stand mixers are also popular, but I don’t have one of those either. I used a hand mixer, and in addition to it working fine, I also got a nice upper-arm workout.) Meanwhile, in a double boiler, melt your chocolate until smooth.  Beat eggs and sour cream into cream cheese mixture.  Beat in melted chocolate, and continue to beat until thoroughly mixed and smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl with a spatula to get all the stubborn bits.

    Pour the mixture onto the crust in the springform pan. With a spatula, or a spoon, or really whatever you think will make the prettiest designs and least mess, spiral the strawberry puree into the batter in the pan, making swirls and patterns and whatnot.

    Bake until just set, at 325F, without opening the door too much because that will make the cake crack on top, about 1 hour, maybe a little more.  Turn your oven off, and allow the cheesecake to slowly cool in the oven, without opening the door or messing with it, for another hour. Remove from oven and cool to room temp on a wire rack, then transfer to the fridge and chill for at least four hours.

    Top with hulled, washed, sliced fresh strawberries for a pretty and fruity touch.

    Enjoy!

  • Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Bacon S’mores.

    Yeah, that’s right: Bacon S’mores.  Chocolate-covered candied bacon smothered in marshmallow in a graham cracker crust.

    I can’t take credit for this idea, and actually I’m not sure I would want to.  A friend tweeted about The Complete Sale of Selma Lee posting about Chewbacca Bars, which they also call Chunky Chewies.  I immediately started telling my friends about them, calling them bacon s’mores, until someone pointed out the lack of graham. So of course,  I added graham! Below is my own recipe, which is extraordinarily similar to others’ recipes, except where I made some changes.

    Start with one pound of thick-cut, peppered bacon. Cut the uncooked slices into quarters or even sixths, and marinate the pieces for a few hours (in the fridge!) in equal parts balsamic vinegar and maple syrup (the real stuff, none of that Mrs Jemima gunk.) Coat with brown sugar and more pepper, and bake on a wire rack on a LINED baking sheet at 350F until delicious. I didn’t time it. If you are someone who can leave baking bacon well enough alone, good for you. I stuck my head in there to smell it every, oh, ten seconds, so it took a while to bake but it was easy to tell when it was done.

    Here is some delicious, marinated bacon ready to bake:

    And here is what happens if you don’t line your baking sheet with tinfoil.

    SERIOUSLY, I have been soaking and scrubbing my baking sheet since Sunday and it hasn’t come clean yet.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you to line it.

    When the bacon is done, remove it from the oven and move it to a plate to cool.  Melt about 2 1/2 cups chocolate – I used dark, but it’s up to you – in a double boiler, and when the bacon is sufficiently cool, dump it in and fold it in to coat. Really coat it. No wimpy half-coated pieces here. Place a greased wire rack on a large amount of newspaper in an area of your kitchen that you don’t much need to make other things, and dump the chocolate-covered bacon onto it to set. Let it set. Stop eating it, just let it set.

    Meanwhile, take 2 of the 3 packets of graham crackers that come in a normal sized box, and make really fine crumbs out of them. I did this using freezer bags and a rolling pin and beating them into submission. You can also use a food processor, but the rolling pin method is actually quite fun! Place 1/2 of the crumbs into a glass 9×11″ baking dish, and set the other half aside.

    Now, you make marshmallow. Yes, you make it from scratch, because homemade marshmallow is god’s gift to the world and about 427times better than store-bought. Really. I used Joy of Baking’s recipe and I used it verbatim*, because everyone warned me it was really gooey and kind of difficult. It is really gooey, but it actually cleans up pretty easily with just water, and it is not that difficult.

    1 cup cold water
    3/4 oz unflavored gelatin (usually comes in 1/4oz packets, 4 packets in a box)
    2 cups white sugar
    1 cup light corn syrup
    1/4 tspn salt (I use popcorn salt)
    2 tspn vanilla extract

    Put 1/2 cup cold water into a large, clean metal bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let stand until gelatin softens, about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, place the sugar, corn syrup, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup cold water into a saucepan. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Attach a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and boil on high heat until the syrup reaches 240F, about 10 minutes.  With mixer running (it helps to have about three hands at this point) pour the hot syrup into the water-gelatin bowl. Add the vanilla. Gradually increase the speed of your mixer to high and beat the mixture until it turns into marshmallow cream. Try not to cut off your fingers with the mixer when you are sticking them into the bowl to taste it.  Be prepared to stand there for awhile – the recipe says 10 min, but mine took 15 min or more. It will grow, so be sure to use a big bowl.  It will also taste really good, like even better than you are expecting, so don’t eat it all with your fingers (if they’re still attached.)

    NOW – chop the chocolate covered bacon into bite-sized pieces and set aside. Pour 1/2 of the marshmallow cream into your crumb-prepared baking dish, and put the chocolate-covered bacon on top. Add the remaining marshmallow and sprinkle the other half of the graham crumbs on top.  Allow to set for a few hours – I gave it four hours but sped it up a bit in the fridge, and it was fine.

    It will look delicious and pretty like this:

    … and it will be divisive.  My sister says chocolate-covered bacon is the most disgusting thing she can think of;  fair-goers across America think it’s a wonderful treat.  Everyone who tried a piece liked it, but only one went back for seconds. I thought it was good.  I think most things made with bacon and most things made with marshmallow are good.  Chocolate doesn’t hurt.

    Will you like bacon s’mores?  Only one way to find out! 🙂

    *verbatim? OK, so not really. I don’t really do verbatim. But I came pretty close this time… I doubled the recipe because I needed extra to make s’mores cakes for the vegetarians and the Muslim (blog post to come) and I also used a hand mixer instead of the recommended stand mixer, because I don’t own a stand mixer. But otherwise: totally verbatim.

  • Lumpy Bumpy Toffee Cake

    My friends were pretty excited when I announced that I’d be blogging here – not just because they’re supportive and stuff, but because I also announced that I’d be hosting regular dessert parties in order to have something to write about. This past Sunday was our first: I made Lumpy Bumpy Toffee Cake, a chocolate-mascarpone-Baileys-toffee creation that was even better than I expected… and which, aesthetically, lives up to its ridiculous name.

    I should note that I did not make the toffee myself. Have you ever tried to make toffee? Perhaps some day when I have nothing else to do, I’ll give that a shot. In this case, I already had two other delicious layers to make up, so I left the toffee to a pro: Audra Martin, a local toffee whiz. I bought a small jar of milk chocolate toffee and a small jar of dark, mixed them together in a ziplock bag, beat them into submission small pieces with a rolling pin, and I had my topping.

    As for the rest – this is a combination of about five recipes, inspired by a sort-of similar cake seen at Sugarland in Chapel Hill NC.

    Lumpy Bumpy Toffee Cake

    A chocolate sponge cake with Bailey’s-mascarpone cream and toffee topping.

    For the cake:

    6oz good-quality dark melting chocolate (I use Ghirardelli 60%)
    3 tablespoons coffee
    6 large eggs, separated and brought to room temperature
    2/3 cup white sugar, divided into two 1/3 cup amounts
    1/2 tablespoon salt (I prefer baking with popcorn salt for the texture)

    In a double-boiler, melt the chocolate and the coffee together, then allow to cool almost to room temperature. Don’t force it in the fridge, you’ll mess up the texture. Leave it be, go watch a movie or something, and just let it cool.

    In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks, 1/3 cup sugar, and the salt until it all turns pale and thick. Fold in the melted chocolate.

    In a separate bowl, with clean beaters, beat the egg whites until soft peak form.  Gradually beat in the other 1/3 cup sugar until it just holds soft peaks.

    Gradually fold the egg whites into the yolk-chocolate mixture. Pour batter into a 9″ springform pan and bake at 350F for about 25 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in the springform on a wire rack.

    A note: this cake is going to deflate while cooling.  One minute it’s filling the pan, then you set it to cool, and suddenly it’s 3″ tall. It’s OK.

    For the cream:

    100ml Baileys Irish Cream
    16oz mascarpone
    2 tablespoon white sugar
    slightly less than 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream (the cream and Baileys should add up to about 3/4 cup liquid)

    In a large bowl, beat the mascarpone and sugar until combined. Add the Baileys and cream, and beat until it reaches a consistency you like. Try not to eat it all before you get around to assembling the cake.

    To assemble:

    Remove the cake from the springform and place it on a serving plate. If yours is anything like mine, your cake will have deflated, leaving a crater in the middle with slightly raised edges. Fill the cake crater with a thick, lovely layer of mascarpone, and top with roughly 2 cups toffee crumbles.

    Enjoy!