Category: chocolate

by Rachel Sally

Can’t Trust That Day

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter B.
 
It’s Monday, people.
We could all use more chocolate and butterscotch on Mondays.
It’s tough going- I know.  I’m currently taking my 3rd of 4 AP tests. 
I chose blondies as my last meal.  And I chose well.
When I say bbbbblondies, it’s because I cannot possibly call these what they really are without sounding like a crazed sugar addict- 
brown butter brown sugar banana butterscotch blondies.
 
They’re gooey and sweet and rich, studded with more mix-ins than batter, and hit the spot straight out of the oven/freezer.  (More on this in the recipe itself)
 
They take 5 minutes to throw together, 25 minutes to bake, and, if you’re being very patient, 30 minutes to thicken and become dense in the freezer.
But you don’t have to do that, not if you’re ever so hungry.
 
These make Mondays just a tad bit more bearable.
Catch y’all on the flip side of these last two tests. 
Bbbbblondies
adapted from smittenkitchen
ingredients:
8 tablespoons (1 stick) of butter
1 packed cup light brown sugar
two big pinches coarse sea salt
1 egg
1 medium banana, mashed (about 1/2 cup)
splash vanilla
1 cup of flour
1/3 cup butterscotch chips
1/3 cup chocolate chips
1/3-1/2 cup chopped pecans
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Pam spray an 8-inch round tin or an 8×8 square pan.
Brown the butter in a large saucepan.
Once butter is browned, beat it with the sugar until the mixture looks like very, very wet sand.  
Add in the egg and the salt and beat on medium speed until mixture has lightened in color and most of the sugar is dissolved, about 2 minutes.
Beat in the banana.
Stir in the vanilla, then beat in the flour until the mixture is homogeneous.
Stir in the mix-ins.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, until top is shiny and gives slightly to pressure.
The trick for super dense, gooey blondies: 
Let your blondies cool most of the way on a rack in the pan, then transfer the pan to the freezer and freeze for 30-ish minutes.  The gooey center will become dense.
by Rachel Sally

Love’s Light Wings

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
by any name would smell as sweet…”
Romeo and Juliet, Act II Scene II
 
Yesterday, I ran a marathon.  
 
Which is my excuse for not having a WISE blog post in more than a week.
It’s also my excuse for being late to all my classes today.
Stairs are just a wee bit difficult today.
 
Here’s a Super Sad True Love Story super short true summary of the super long (26.2 mile) race:
(I break long runs into chunks… I like to pretend that it makes it less mentally exhausting.  
It doesn’t.  But hey.)
 
Miles 1-8 are terrifying.  In the beginning, I’m stiff and aching and tired, which makes me very nervous for what’s ahead, seeing as I’m huffing and puffing and I’ve only run 2 miles.  
Luckily, by mile 6, I’m locked and loaded on cruise control.
At which point, I look at my Garmin and realize, 
I have 20 miles to go.  Jésus Marià.
 
Miles 8-13 are spent surreptitiously looking at my fellow runners’ shoes, to see which of them have the bright orange D tags which were only given to marathon runners to record times.  I have the sinking realization that there aren’t many runners around me with tags.
 
Miles 13-20 are my fastest.  I spend time listening to “I Don’t Care” by Iconapop.  As in, on repeat for about 50 minutes.  No shame.
I pick out runners to pass and do so by powering through all of the water stations- I keep the word “slingshot” in my head and will myself not to stop or slow down, and in doing so, spill about 4 brimming cupfuls of bright orange Gatorade down my white shirt.  Good looks.
 
Miles 20-25 are grueling.  The stations ran out of power gels around mile 18, and my own supply has also been completely diminished.  My glycogen is running on red and I am not a happy camper.
I keep thinking why the hell Pheidippides didn’t take a damn horse.
Seriously, what in god’s name was wrong with him?  
 
25-26.2 are like running another 12 miles.  Where was the finish line again?
Why do I still see people running?  
Are we done yet?
My intended mile split was a 10:25.  I ended up finishing 23 seconds ahead of that, with a 10:02 average mile split.  I’m not the fastest, that’s fo’ sho.  Honestly I’m just glad to have crossed the finish line!!!
 
(Turns out, I finished first in my division, female 15-19 year olds.  That was a surprise!)
Back to our regularly scheduled program: WISE jabber.
 
In class today, I had a revelation: in truth, I’ve been doing plenty of “research,” which is basically just utilizing different sources. 
What I haven’t been doing is keeping a proper log of said resources- different blogs and cookbooks etc.- which means that I have some serious back work to do.  Ahem.
Also, I received my time slot for my presentation!
June 10th from 3-4 PM.  More details later.
 
I chose the name of this post, and the intro, because a) it’s one of Shakespeare’s most classic, and one of my favorite, scenes and b) because the dessert I’m showing to you is a misnomer and should have a different name.
Right? Right.
 
This dessert is based on a deconstruction of the famous German chocolate cake.
Which, in truth, is not the slightest bit German.
It’s based off of a recipe that appeared in 1957 in a newspaper’s recipe of the day column, which used a type of chocolate that had been developed more than a century earlier, in 1852, by Sam German, a worker in the Baker’s chocolate factory; it was a sweeter dark baking chocolate, which was marketed as Baker’s German Sweet Chocolate.
Thus was the German chocolate cake born, a coconut and pecan and chocolate melange that is not the most attractive, but one of the more delicious.
German cake≠German.  Confusing, I know.
(This information is from The Baker Chocolate Company: A Sweet History by Anthony M. Sammarco, googlebook accessed via Wikipedia.)
 
This dessert has the added benefit of being completely vegan.  
 
I’m thinking of using a version of this for my presentation, because it would be incredibly easy to make gluten-free, thus making it almost entirely allergy-free (it does have coconut and pecan… those are kind of unavoidable) and a good dessert to share with many people who may have various allergies.
I plated it two ways because I couldn’t get a quenelle to smooth out the first go-round and I ended up disliking the chocolate flecks on the first few plates.
 
(P.S. remember how I was so pumped about my quenelles a few WISE posts back?  
Yeah, those darned footballs are coming back to bite me in the butt.  It took me a good 5 minutes to get the quenelle you see perfectly smooth.  My family keeps recycling the containers I use for my ice cream, so that’s not helping…)
 
*Note to my father:  Can you please, please, please stop recycling the date containers that I diligently wash out and save?  You’re making my quenelles ten times more difficult than they need to be.  Thank you.  Loveyameanit.*
German
chocolate cake
salted caramel
bittersweet ganache
candied pecans
coconut ice cream
Mile 12.5.  Eating a gu and feeling güd.
 Mile 20.  The longest uphill slog of the course; it was gradual, but felt never ending. 
 
Mile 25; back on the streets.
Don’t let the smile fool you; I could barely remain standing long enough to rip off my water belt and iPod in order to take this photo.
 
“German”
 
for the cake:
ingredients:
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
4 teaspoons extra dark cocoa powder
rounded 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons coconut oil, measured then melted
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup water
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray a six inch cake pan with baking spray.
Stir the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together.
Add the coconut oil and vinegar, then the water, and stir it all together, gently.
Once it is just barely homogeneous, pour into the pan.
Bake for 20-25 minutes until the cake is springy to the touch and a tester comes out clean.
 
for the ganache:
ingredients:
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped finely
2 ounces sugar
2 ounces coconut milk, light or full-fat
1 tablespoon coconut oil
pinch kosher salt
directions:
Place the chocolate, oil, and salt in a bowl.
Heat the milk and sugar up together until boiling, then pour over the chocolate.
Allow to sit for 3 minutes, then stir together.
Blend with an immersion blender to emulsify.
 
for the caramel:
ingredients:
1/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons coconut milk, light or full-fat
1 tablespoon coconut oil
liberal pinch kosher salt
directions:
Heat the sugar up in a heavy saucepan with tall sides until deep amber, about 7 minutes.
Once the sugar reaches the proper color, remove from heat and add the milk and oil.  
Mixture will bubble and sizzle violently.
Whisk until smooth, then add in the salt.  
If caramel gets a skin before use, just gently heat and stir to return it to proper consistency.
 
for the candied pecans:
ingredients:
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup loosely packed brown sugar
pinch kosher salt
1/4 cup (you could go up to almost 1/2 cup with this amount of glaze; you’ll have extra if you use 1/4 cup) pecan halves
directions:
Toast the pecans lightly in a skillet, about 2 minutes.
In another saucepan, heat the oil, vinegar, sugar, and salt until bubbling.
Remove from heat and stir in pecans.
Pour mixture onto a sheet pan lined with silpat.
Allow to cool until glaze sets.
 
for the ice cream:
ingredients:
1 can (14 ounces) light coconut milk
1 tablespoon coconut oil
pinch salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
directions:
Bring everything to a boil, whisking constantly.
Transfer to a blender canister and allow to sit for 4 minutes to cool.
Blend, being careful to vent the blender and cover with a towel to protect yourself from hot splashes, until frothy and homogeneous.
Allow to cool to room temperature, then freeze in your ice cream machine.
Store in freezer until use.
 
to assemble:
toasted coconut
directions:
Plate the caramel sauce and the ganache first; either smear them both across the plate or use a fork’s tines to splatter the chocolate onto the plate.
Arrange cake crumbles on one end of the smears; follow with candied pecans.
Carefully place coconut where desired.
Finish with a scoop or quenelle of coconut ice cream.
by Rachel Sally

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Short and sweet today, y’all.
(I have a nap penciled in in about 15 minutes.  I’m very busy.  Island time.  It happens.)
This is a cake I made a few months back, to celebrate (mourn?) the end of my basketball season.
Yes, it’s taken me that long to get around to writing this post.  I’m a little slow on the uptake.
  
It was pretty ridiculous, ridiculously indulgent, and indulgently delicious.  
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like the combination of chocolate and orange.
Seriously.  One of my favorite things in the entire world, ever, is those chocolate-orange things.  You know, the chocolates which look like oranges and have orange in them and separate into little orange wedges?
Chocolate and cheesecake, a match made in heaven, is only made better by the addition of orange.
But I didn’t stop there.  I have no self-control, remember?  
Nay, I kept going.  “What else can I add into this cake?”
Well, nutella… 
Ugh.  Dead.  I’m dead.  That’s it.  There’s no going back; my tastebuds will no longer accept anything but this.
Here’s a secret, just between you and me:
These photos were taken the night before our last practice, meaning that I cut a slice out of the cake just to take photos- not the most, erhm, proper behavior in the world.
How rude!  I do de-clay-uh.
So, I took the photos, and slid it back in place.
Spackled the frosting back together, strategically placed some chocolate curls over the evidence, and served it the next day.
No one noticed.  
Victory!
 
Can you tell how badly I want to be a southern belle?  
(The font I always use, for the record, is Georgia.)

Mouthful (Chocolate-Nutella-Orange-Cheesecake) Cake
For the cheesecake layer:
(from Piece of Cake via RecipeGirl)
ingredients:
16 ounces of cream cheese, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. 
Place a large roasting pan on the lower third rack of the oven. 
Place a kettle of water on the stove to boil. 
Spray a 9-inch springform pan with nonstick spray and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper. 
Wrap a double layer of foil around the bottom and up the sides of the pan (you want to seal it so the water from the water bath doesn’t seep into the pan). 
In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to mix the cream cheese- blend until it is nice and smooth and creamy. 
Mix in sugar and salt and blend for 2 minutes, scraping down sides of the bowl as needed. 
Add eggs, one at a time, blending after each addition. 
Finally, mix in sour cream, whipping cream and vanilla. 
Mix until smooth. 
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. 
Set the pan into the roasting pan in the pre-heated oven. 
Carefully pour the hot water from your kettle into the roasting pan (it will fill the pan surrounding the cheesecake). 
Pour enough water so that there is about an inch of water coming up the foil along the sides of the cheesecake pan. 
Bake the cheesecake for 45 minutes. 
It should be set to the touch and not jiggly. 
Remove the cheesecake from the roasting pan and let it cool on a wire rack for at least an hour. 
When it has cooled, place the pan into the freezer and let the cheesecake freeze completely. 

For the cake layers:
adapted from Gourmet via epicurious
ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup cornstarch (you can also use 2 3/4 cups cake flour, omitting the cornstarch and AP flour)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 large whole eggs
zest of one entire orange
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/3 cup orange juice, freshly squeezed
1/3 cup sour cream or buttermilk
1/3 cup milk
handful of mini chocolate chips; enough for a healthy sprinkling on two 9 inch layers
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans.
Rub the sugar and zest together with your fingers until very fragrant.
Beat the butter until softened, then add in the orange sugar.
Cream together until very fluffy and light, about 3 minutes.
Beat in eggs one at a time, scraping after each addition, then add in the vanilla.
Stir the sour cream, juice, and milk together.
Stir the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt together.
Either alternate adding the wet and dry or slowly dump them in at the same time (my preferred method… Just go slow so the flour doesn’t go all over).
Mix just until homogeneous, then pour into prepared pans.
Sprinkle the mini chocolate chips over the batter, and bake until golden and springy to the touch, about 20-25 minutes.  A cake tester should come out nearly clean, with perhaps just a few crumbs sticking on.
Allow to cool completely before assembling the cake.
For the frosting:
ingredients:
2 sticks butter
1 3/4- 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
big pinch salt
3/4 cup Ovaltine
1/2 cup nutella
splash vanilla extract
splash cream, if needed
directions:
Beat butter until soft, about 2 minutes.
Add in the ovaltine, nutella, salt, and vanilla, and beat to combine.
Slowly add in the powdered sugar, tasting to check the sweetness. (If you need more powdered sugar to thicken the consistency, be sure to add in a pinch more salt; you can also add in some more ovaltine for thickening.)
Play with the amount of powdered sugar to thicken the frosting; environments differ and really affect the thickness/pipeability.  If you need it to really thicken, don’t add too much more sugar or ovaltine, instead, stick it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up.
If your frosting is too thick, add a splash of cream, about 2 teaspoons at a time, to thin it out a bit.  Don’t add too much, and wait between additions, because if it becomes soupy, there’s no going back.
To assemble:
Apply a thin layer of icing on the chocolate chip side of the first layer.
Place the frozen cheesecake layer on top, and spread another thin layer on top of that.
Place the second cake layer, chocolate chip side up, on top of the cheesecake.
Crumb-coat the whole cake in a thin layer of frosting, then chill it, either in the freezer or fridge, for 10-15 minutes in the freezer or 15-20 in the fridge.
Take the cake out and generously frost it with the remaining icing.
To smooth out the sides, dip an offset spatula in hot water, wipe it off, and gently run it on the outside of the cake.

Top with chocolate curls, if desired.

by Rachel Sally

Ex Uno Plures

Out of one, many.
 
I’ve posted about butter cookies a few times now, but somehow I have managed to not share my personal recipe.
Upon request (sorry that it took so long!) I made some cookies to share with y’all.
Here’s the thing: this dough is so forgiving, so easy to work with and to remember, that it’s a real shame it’s taken me so long to post about.
 
It’s incredibly versatile and can be shaped into many different cookies 
(though one must be aware of baking times… My little meltaways that you see here were over baked and accordingly crunchy, which is not the most unpleasant thing in the world, but certainly not what I was going for… sigh.)
All of the ingredients are probably in your pantry, and if you have an oven and some sort of mixer and can count to 3 forwards and back, you can make some lovely cookies for yourself.
 
This recipe is my go-to when I’m making decorated cookies; it’s a great roll-out dough, but it can also be shaped into thumbprints or really whatever you’d like.
 
Flour, butter, sugar, egg, sea salt, vanilla.
3 cups, 2 sticks, 1 cup, 1 egg, 2 teaspoons, 3 splashes.
3-2-1-1-2-3
!!!
The cookies with the bicycles are just roll-out cookies with a stamped marshmallow fondant round affixed to them with royal icing.  (If you’d like to try these, I really recommend working with store bought fondant first, just to get the feel and texture of it right.  It can be a bit hard to work with, and making your own only adds to the difficulty.)
 
The streusel-topped cookies were inspired by Dorie Greenspan’s “jammers,” cookies of which I had only heard word and for which I had not seen a recipe.  
I improvised, and was rewarded with lovely little cookies-dressed-in-tarts’-clothing.  
(By improvise, I mean I made small depressions in the center of each cookie, filled them with jam, and topped them with this brown butter crumb.)
 
The meltaways are simply small balls of dough tossed in powdered sugar before and after baking.
 
The little stars sandwich a firm bittersweet chocolate ganache (3 parts bittersweet chocolate to 2 parts cream, with a pinch of salt, microwaved until 2/3 of the way melted, then stirred together until shiny and smooth.)
 
The thumbprints house a dollop of slow-cooked, sweet and salty confiture de lait: dulce de leche’s sultry French cousin.
I’m in love with these little green bicycles. They’re so… springy!
They make me so happy. 
 La la la loveee!
1-2-3 Cookies
ingredients:
3 cups of flour
2 sticks of butter
1 cup of sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons kosher or other coarse salt
3 splashes vanilla extract
directions:
Beat butter and sugar together until softened and pale yellow.  
Add in the egg and beat until super fluffy and shiny and not gritty, about 3 minutes.
Add in the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 20 seconds.
Add in all the flour and stir slowly, mixing until a homogeneous dough forms.  
It should not be overly sticky, nor should it be very crumbly.
You can now form it into small balls to make into thumbprints or meltaways, or roll it out to 1/4 inch thickness and cut it into shapes.
Refrigerate or, even better, freeze, for at least 30 minutes while you preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes, until golden and easily lifted from the sheet. Bake the thumbprints and meltaways for only 7 minutes. Better that they’re a little soft than super crunchy. Wah.
Decorate and/or fill as desired! (See above for some suggestions)
by Rachel Sally

Asisium

Somehow, coming round in a full circle can be both comforting and disconcerting.
 
One encounters things familiar, even soothing, yes, but with this familiarity often comes a sense of stagnation, of dejà-vu.
 
Il faut qu’on se demande pourquoi on y est arrivé encore une fois: par mégarde ou délibérément?
One must ask oneself why one has arrived there yet again: by accident or on purpose?
As I breezed through these photos, tweaking the too-bright exposure and blue tints that were the result of reflections off of the snow the day that I shot them, I had a strange sense of already having edited them.
The coloring, and, in truth, the plating, of this dessert were similar to those of the first one I ever attempted.
I was struck by it.  
I asked myself, is your project becoming prosaic?  Are your desserts becoming less and less distinctive?
(Sounds like I’m doubting myself a lot in these WISE posts, don’t it?)
I realize that the desserts are different; in fact, I cringe looking back on my first dessert.  
Nowadays I can (usually) bear to look through the photos.
 
I say usually because there are times when I look down at a plate and hate it.
 There are times where I redo said plate, look down, and hate it even more.
There are plates that are messy, cluttered, ugly.
There are ice creams that become soup in the time it takes me to lift up my camera.
There are mousses that don’t set and there are mealy caviar.
There are desserts that are contrived from their very conception.
Before I made the dessert that you see here, I had a failed experiment which involved nearly all of those situations.
The flavors (olive oil, orange, almond, and dark chocolate) paired beautifully, but the ways I chose to present them just didn’t click.
The burnt-orange ice cream recipe, which I got from Gourmet, was quite tasty, but didn’t set when I spun it in my ice cream maker.
It didn’t set when I tried to freeze it solid.
So, I whipped some cream and folded it into the base to make a mousse.
And hey! look! it froze!
And hey! look! it melted upon first contact with ambient temperature!
And hey! look! I made soup!
Needless to say, that dessert was a messy, soupy disaster.
I was unhappy with the photographs and unhappy with the presentation.
I felt I used too many components and didn’t put enough thought into the plating beforehand.
(I had a meltdown… Get it?!)
 
I set out to make a new dessert, with ideas of clean, simple plating floating around my brain.
In light of the new Argentinian pope, I decided to utilize a very popular Latin American flavor combination: chocolate and passion fruit.  (Also happens to be one of my personal favorite flavor combinations).
 
(Don’t ask me where these weird ideas come from. There is a small, wizened, and mostly blind old man somewhere in a dusty control room in the back of my brain pushing and prodding on the decidedly wrong buttons and these are the thoughts that result.)
 
Ah.  Anyways.  Latin American.  Yes.
I decided I wanted to bring some Italian influence into the dessert.
(The pope chose an Italian saint’s name… It all makes sense.)
I had just bought a gigantic bulk bag of hazelnuts, so hazelnuts it was going to be.
(Apparently hazelnuts equate Italian.  I don’t know.)
 
In using this so-called “Italian” influence, I now get to use fancy names for things… 
Nocciola gelato?  Hazelnut ice cream (with a lower fat content but, whatever, get over it.  Gelato and ice cream are just short of identical when homemade.)
Gianduja? Nutella.
 
Vive le pape!
Asisium:
gianduja ganache
passion fruit crème
roasted milk and white chocolate mousse
dark chocolate and passion fruit bonbons
nocciola gelato
Why Asisium?  It’s Italian for Assisi, as in St. Francis of Assisi, as in Pope Francis’ namesake. Plus, it sounds grand.  Can’t you just hear Pavarotti singing it in the background?


Asisium:
for the roasted milk and white chocolate mousse:
ingredients:
100 g milk and white chocolate; I went almost exactly halfsies
1 egg yolk
110 g cream
12 g sugar
1/8 tsp gelatin bloomed in 1 teaspoon cream
directions:
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.
Place chopped chocolate in a baking pan and bake, stirring vigorously with a spatula every 15 minutes, until extremely fragrant, about 40 minutes.
The chocolate will have caramelized; you won’t see much of a color change because there is milk chocolate in addition to the white chocolate, but if you taste it, you will notice a distinctly more complex flavor.
Pour into a bowl; you should have about 85 g of chocolate. If you have more, eat it!
Heat cream, yolk, sugar until 175 d F.
Strain over chocolate.
Allow to sit until chocolate is melted.
Stir in bloomed gelatin and pour into molds.
Freeze until use; place on plate to temper at least 5 minutes before service.

for the nocciola gelato:
ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons sugar
Pinch salt
1/4 cup chopped, toasted hazelnuts
directions:
Heat the milk until simmering. Pour in hazelnuts and steep for at least 2 hours and up to a few days, in the fridge.
Strain and discard the hazelnuts.
Blend all ingredients together with an immersion or regular blender, then pour into a pot and heat gently, stirring constantly, until custard thickens and coats the back of a spoon.
Let cool completely, then spin in an ice cream maker.

for the dark chocolate bonbons:
adapted from Elizabeth LaBau
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, tempered
1 tablespoon cream
1 teaspoon glucose
1/3 cup passion fruit pulp (find it in the frozen section with other Goya products)
4.5 ounces white chocolate, chopped
directions:
Bring passion fruit purée, glucose, and cream to a boil.  
Place the white chocolate in a heat-safe bowl and pour the cream mixture over.  
Allow to sit for 2 minutes without touching, then stir gently until the ganache is smooth and homogeneous.  
Allow to cool.
Coat your molds with the tempered chocolate, then pipe in a little of the ganache.  
Seal with more chocolate and allow to harden.

for the passion fruit crème:
adapted from Milk Bar
ingredients:
65 g passion fruit puree
35 g sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon gelatin
6 tablespoons butter, cold
1 g kosher salt
directions:
Blend the puree and the sugar and egg together until the sugar granules have dissolved and the mixture is smooth.  
Pour into a pan; clean the blender.
Bloom the gelatin in 1 tablespoon cold water.
Heat the passion fruit curd over low heat, whisking constantly, until it comes to a boil.  
Remove from heat and add it to the cleaned blender.  
Add the gelatin, butter, and salt, and blend until the mixture is “thick, shiny, and super-smooth.”
Allow to cool completely.

for the gianduja:
ingredients:
roughly 1 2/3 cups hazelnuts
scant 1 1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
big pinch salt
1/3 cup milk powder (or more, to taste)
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
directions:
Prepare a baking sheet with a silpat.
Bring the sugar to a boil in a dry saucepan, and allow to cook until it reaches a golden-amber color.  
Immediately stir in the hazelnuts, working quickly.
Spread out the brittle onto the silpat as thinly and evenly as possible.
Allow to cool completely, then break into chunks.
Pulverize the praline with the grapeseed oil until liquidy and almost entirely smooth.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix to combine.
Taste and adjust for your preferences; I wanted this spread to be a deep, dark, chocolate, so I didn’t add much sugar, but I did add a nice big pinch of salt.
Can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 weeks (But it won’t last that long…)

to assemble:
Plate the gianduja first; use a chilled plate.
Pipe a few dots of passion fruit cream around the plate.
Place the bonbons where you would like, then follow with the mousse.
As soon as the mousse is out of the freezer/mold, work quickly, as it will melt.
Next, quenelle a scoop of the gelato and place in the center of the plate.


by Rachel Sally

Not Yo’ Momma’s

Everyone has an ideal chocolate chip cookie.
Either your momma or your nonna or whoever makes ’em just the way you like, and any other way simply will not do.  
Maybe you like them crispy and thin or fat and fluffy, as big as a frisbee or small like little jewels.  
Maybe you like them with dark chocolate, milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, chips, chunks, shards, or whatever.
Maybe you’re not a human and you don’t even like chocolate chip cookies. 
(Go back to your own planet!)
I’m not here to tell you I’ve a better cookie than your grandma.
No way am I straying into that territory; I’ll never measure up.
What I am here to tell you is that I have a very unorthodox and very delicious cookie recipe for you that happens to have chocolate chips and that you should make.
These cookies blur the lines between chocolate chip, spice, and sugar cookies.
They’re soft and fluffy, like sugar cookies.
They’re rolled in sugar, like spice.
They’ve got a rich, buttery flavor punctuated with gooey chocolate chips, like youknowwho.
 
Yet the whole, in this case, adds up to so much more than the parts.
Fresh out of the oven, these cookies smell like heaven.
They’re nutty from the browned butter, sweet and spicy from the cinnamon, and you can genuinely smell the chocolate as it roasts in the oven.
 
Fresh out of the oven, these cookies taste like heaven.
They’re crunchy on the outside, thanks to the pearl sugar, soft and pliable on the interior thanks to a severe underbaking, and they’re studded with still-melted chocolate chips.
 
I had two fresh and hot, thankyouverymuch.
The trick to getting the best cookies is the baking time.
In my experience, if you follow what cookbooks say, you’ll end up with rocks.
Or doorstops.
I always used to put the most delicious cookie dough in the oven and, 10-12 minutes or however long later, pull out cookies so crispy they could break your tooth.
Obviously, liberal milk was needed in those cases.
They still taste good, yes, but if you want to make irresistible cookies, you have to underbake them.
They should still be puffy when you pull them out of the oven.
Keep in mind that no matter how soft they are straight out of the oven, the next day they will be harder.  
That’s just the way life goes; there’s no easy way around it.
These cookies pack a punch.
A solid right hook, I’d say.
The cast of characters features a few of my all-time favorite ingredients ever in them.
Brown butter.
Mini chocolate chips.
Cinnamon.
Pearl sugar.
And now, golden syrup.  We’ve only just met and yet how I love you.  Oh how I do.
 
Moral of the story: I’m sure as heck not your momma, but I’ll make you some damn good cookies if you let me.
 
P.S. check out the real life situation in the picture right below.  Six cookie sheets stacked up nice and high and very unstably.  Welcome to my kitchen.
 
Not Yo’ Momma’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes 15 large cookies
ingredients:
8 tablespoons butter, softened
5 tablespoons butter, browned
1 very lightly packed cup of brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup golden syrup, like Lyle’s (can sub honey or molasses or agave, but flavor will change drastically and I can’t vouch for the texture.  Lyle’s is available in most supermarkets nowadays.)
big splash vanilla extract
2 pinches cinnamon
2 big, big pinches sea salt
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 scant cup mini chocolate chips
swedish pearl sugar, for rolling (you could also use turbinado sugar, or alternately use none… but that’s boring, isn’t it?)
directions:
Beat the first measure of butter on high speed until smooth.  
Add in the brown sugar and beat for 2 minutes, until the grit is starting to disappear and the mixture is becoming fluffy.  
Scrape the sides of the bowl and add in the egg.  
Beat for 1 minute on low until egg is incorporated.
Scrape the sides of the bowl and add in the golden syrup.
Beat on medium high for 4 minutes, until the mixture is extremely fluffy and shiny, and very pale.
Add in the vanilla, cinnamon, and salt and mix until combined.
Scrape the sides of the bowl.  
Add baking soda and part of flour (1/4 cup increments).
Mix on low to combine, while slowly adding flour.
Mix only until homogeneous.  Add in the chocolate chips, stirring only to combine.
Scoop into rounds using an ice cream scoop.  
Roll into even balls and roll in sugar.
Place on a baking sheet at least 1 1/2 inches apart from each other, then flatten slightly and evenly until they look like mini hockey pucks.
Chill well.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Bake cookies for 16-17 minutes, until the edges are golden brown but the interior still looks slightly puffy and pale (see photo below).
Enjoy one or two warm… You won’t regret it!

 
Brown on the edges, golden in the center.  Still kinda puffy and jiggly.
by Rachel Sally

Call Me Sally

So, I’m Irish.
Actually, I’m Korirish.
Korean on my mother’s side, and Irish on my father’s.
Bit of a strange mix, to be sure.
The one thing my family has figured that the two have in common is a love of cabbage.

This love has distilled into my passion for cruciferous vegetables.
Cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts (I’m eating some right now, actually, with apples and goat cheese), broccoli, bok choy, kale; pretty much a comprehensive list of my favorite vegetables.
Love me some Brassica.
Um, not that I’m here to tell you about vegetables.
That’s not really my shtick, at least not on this here blog.
 
Oh! What the Koreans and the Irish also both love is beer.
(Cabbage+beer sounds like the most terrible and smelly hangover in the world waiting to happen.)
So due to the fact that St. Patrick’s Day is on Sunday and my Korean grandmother is visiting, I made cake.  With beer.  
Beer cake.
With homemade Bailey’s cream sandwiched between each layer.
 
Yeah, it is as much of a good thing as it sounds like.
Trust me on this one. 

Now, it’s not the most traditional of Irish confections… But I’m certain it would be met with a hearty seal of approval in Ireland.
There’s browned Kerrygold butter, extra rich and nutty thanks to the higher fat content.
There’s Guinness, deep and dark, which adds a noticeable complexity to the cake.
There’s milk chocolate and coffee whipped cream, with a hefty dose of Bushmills whiskey.
There’s meringue, which actually is a well-loved Irish dessert.
Whether my ancestors are rolling in their graves, I know not.
Some fun facts about my Irish side:
“Sally,” actually, saileach, means willow in Gaelic.
There’s a barren field in Ireland called the Sally Gap- real talk, I’ve even been there.
It’s full of tumbleweeds and not much else.
Super. Exciting.
In 1908, John Sally, my great-great-grandfather, and his family immigrated to America.
Yadda yadda yadda.
Sally Gap Cake:
for the cake:
adapted from Nigella
ingredients:
1/2 cup Guinness
5 tablespoons Kerrygold butter (or other European butter)
3 tablespoons extra dark cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons sour cream
1 egg
big honking splash vanilla extract (about 2 teaspoons)
1 cup AP flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease and flour two 6-inch pans (I suspect 1 shallow 9- or 10- inch would work as well, but I’m not promising anything).
Brown the butter in a large saucepot.  
Once it is fragrant and nutty, stir in the Guinness.  
Allow to cook for 30 seconds, then remove from heat.  
Stir in the sugar and cocoa powder.  
Add the sour cream and vanilla and whisk well; add in the egg while whisking.  
Dump the flour and baking soda on top of the wet ingredients (flour first), then whisk them in until a smooth batter forms.  
Pour into prepared pans; bake for 35-38 minutes, until risen and firm to the touch; a toothpick should come out CLEAN (this is an extremely moist cake and if underbaked will be gooey).
for the mock Bailey’s cream filling:
ingredients:
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon gelatin
1 small bar (I used regular ole Hershey’s) milk chocolate, melted
1 teaspoon espresso powder
pinch salt
2 splashes Irish whiskey
directions:
Sprinkle the gelatin over the cream and allow to sit for 1 minute.
Mix the cream with the espresso powder and salt, and whip to stiff peaks.
Add in the whiskey and milk chocolate and mix until fluffy and homogeneous. 
for the chocolate frosting:
ingredients:
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
2 sticks of butter
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
pinch salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 cup cream
directions:
Put everything in a food processor and pulse until homogeneous.
for the Swiss meringue:
ingredients:
1 egg white
1/4 cup sugar
directions:
Put the white and sugar in a metal mixing bowl and place over a pan of simmering water.
Heat, whisking all the while, until mixture reaches 160 degrees F.
Remove from heat and whip on high until a stiff meringue forms, about 5 minutes.
Use immediately, as meringue will harden sooner than later.
Torch after decorating, if desired. 
to assemble:
Torte the two layers; fill each with 1/3 of the bailey’s cream.
Frost the outside of the cake with the chocolate frosting; to smooth, use a warmed knife.
Mound the meringue in the center and torch it.
For the cleanest cuts, chill the cake slightly before cutting.
 
by Rachel Sally

Lover, Lover

Allow me to officially welcome you into National Peanut Month!
Today, the first, is National Peanut Butter Lovers Day!
(Fun fact: National Peanut Butter Day is January 24th, and National Peanut Lovers Day is March 15th.  
Also, National Peanut Butter Lovers Month is November.  
There are also peanut -brittle, -cluster, -and Jelly Sandwich, -butter cookie, -festival, -butter fudge, and chocolate-covered peanuts days.
Apparently there are distinctions between them all… Let the PB lovers live their lives.)
 
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My dad loves peanut butter.
I’m talking PB&J every day for lunch for the rest of his life without ever getting tired of it.
Which is pretty much what he does.
The man loves PB&J… Genes that were not passed down to yours truly.
(And he prefers grape jelly… Yuck.)
He might be the greatest peanut butter lover on the planet.
(Although, to be honest, he could give two clucks about national whosamawhatsitpeanutbutter day.)
 
The only person being threatening his title is my pup, Ginger.  (Nyawww mon bébé!)
SHE could eat a scraped out peanut butter jar every ten minutes for the rest of her life and never get tired of it.
Sometimes, when she’s lucky, after my dad makes a peanut butter sandwich, she gets to lick the knife.  And even better, once we reach the end of a jar, she gets to lick the inside clean.
 
Ain’t she dainty?
Anyways, I like peanut butter alright.  I mean, it’s fatty, salty, nutty, slightly sweet; it hits me in all the right places and everything, but I just don’t lalalalove it.
However, I will use any excuse to write up an impromptu blog post/bake something stupidly decadent, and thus was born this cheesecake.
 
Peanut butter, creamy and sweet, buttery, caramelized Ritz crackers, and a deeply bittersweet ganache (with some peanut butter thrown in, for good measure).
There is a wonderfully decadent interplay of flavors going on in my belly here.
 
It’s kind of like a Reese’s cup, but creamier, chocolatier, crunchier, fresher, and, most importantly, you can have more of it, not two wimpy little nuggets in a orange coat.
Hmph.
Make it for the peanut butter lover in your life.
You will thank me after they sell you their soul.
 
(A note: follow the general instructions to get perfect cheesecakes every time, no cracks, no splits, no canyons.  Not guaranteed, but I pretty much promise kinda mostly.)
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So, I had to shoot these photos twice.  My camera misfired while importing or something, and none were transferred to my computer, but all were erased from my memory card.  
Not a happy camper.
Actually, a really angry camper.
 
*kicks tent down and walks away*
 
 
Peanut Butter Cheesecake

cheesecake, crust, and ganache adapted from Brown Eyed Baker, Milk Bar, and Sky High, respectively

ingredients:
24 ounces cream cheese
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 eggs
 
165 g Ritz Crackers (~1 1/2 sleeves)
150 g sugar (~3/4 cup)
30 g milk powder (~3/8 of a cup=6 tablespoons)
150 g (14 tablespoons) butter, melted
 
8 ounces chocolate (I used about 7 ounces bittersweet and 1 ounce milk chocolate)
3 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tablespoons glucose (or light corn syrup)
1/2 cup half-and-half
 
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Crush the Ritz crackers into cornflake-sized bits.  
Stir in the milk powder and sugar, then stir in the butter.  
Press into a greased 9-inch springform pan wrapped with two layers of aluminum foil to prevent leakage.
Bake for 12 minutes, until fragrant.
Meanwhile, prepare the filling.  First, put a kettle on to boil.
While beating the cream cheese at medium high speed, slowly add in the sugar.  Beat for at least 2 full minutes, until fluffy and completely smooth- no grit.
Scrape the sides of the bowl, then beat in the peanut butter, vanilla, and salt.
Scrape the bowl again, thoroughly, then, while beating at medium low speed, add in the eggs one at a time, beating between eggs.
Pour over the crust, and smooth the top with the back of a spoon.
Place into a roasting pan, then pour the boiling water around it (careful!) until it reaches about 3/4 of an inch of the way up the sides.
Bake for about 1 hour, until the cheesecake is mostly set, but still jiggles in the center.
As soon as it gets out of the oven, run a sharp knife around the edges to unmold them from the pan; this will prevent most cracks.
Now either let it cool to room temperature and then chill, or chill it right away.  It’s about 30 degrees out right now, and I just stick my cheesecakes straight out into my sun room.
For the ganache, put the chopped chocolate, peanut butter, and glucose in a bowl, and heat the half-and-half up until simmering.
Pour over the chopped chocolate, and let sit for 2 minutes, undisturbed.  
Whisk until the ganache comes together, shiny and smooth. 
(Can be made ahead, just reheat gently in the microwave until flowing before use.)
Unmold the cheesecake from the pan, place on a serving plate, and pour the ganache over top.  Allow to cool and set before serving.

*[Nerdy] Update on the photos: 
Was shooting in RAW mode, not RAW plus jpg like I normally do.  
Forgot that Windows Live doesn’t automatically download .CR2 files; instead, for God knows what reason, they were automatically routed to the recycle bin (that’s the misfire part).  
Found all photos in said bin.  
Kicked myself repeatedly.  
Downloaded Canon software.  
Spent 30 minutes converting all .CR2 files to jpegs for editing.  
Then spent 30 more minutes editing due to noise due to the necessary high ISO used while shooting due to the fact that I decided to shoot at 10:00 pm.
Long story short, I hate .CR2s.  
Also, sorry for the grain, especially on that second gif.  
Woof.
by Rachel Sally

Doux-Amer

Sometimes, you see something you really, really wish you hadn’t.

A text or a phone call, an email or a photograph, numbers on a scale or old pants, a person, a place, a thing: a reminder of days gone by.  

The kind of thing that instantly feels like a little stone in the pit of your stomach.
The feeling that makes the tips of your ears red and the ends of your fingers cold. 
That dead weight right in the middle of your body that is the exact opposite of butterflies.

You know what I’m talking about.
We’ve all been there.

It happens.  We see it.
And it sucks.  
The mildest form of it is like a buzzing gnat of regret, purely annoying and easily swattable; the worst, a punch in the gut.
 
It’s the things you could have gone your whole life without seeing, the ones that tug the hardest on your heartstrings or stab the deepest into the recesses of your mind, that produce the most confounding emotions (of course).
 
The tears that come, inevitably, are the saddest and the sweetest- and the saltiest- of all.
There are no bad memories or experiences without good ones preceding.
 
It’s off the good which we measure the bad.
It’s not easy to let bygones be bygones.  
However, it is true that at some point, you will be rudely reminded of an unsatisfactory or tender moment of your past, and it will hurt, and you will have to let it go; you will have to accept it for exactly what is was, and exactly what it wasn’t.
 
We cannot change the past, which is a sad and terrifying reality which few can easily come to terms with; the rest of us have to simply put up with our own mortal inclinations and wishes. 
Such is life.
 
We spend our lives wishing, hoping, working to change the past or future; we must never forget, in the instantaneous moment of the present, that our attempts may be in vain, and to appreciate the fact that that lost effort is okay.  
It’s human. 
We have to embrace the mistakes in the past and those to come, and in doing so, accept the profound emotions which accompany them.
 
La mélancolie et le bonheur… Les emotions douces-amères.
 
Bittersweet.
What you see here is a matcha cake with tangy cream cheese frosting.  
The green tea imparts just a slight herbaceous and umami quality; it’s fragrant and well offset by a sweet, sticky icing.
 
I made it ombré by varying the amount of tea and adding a touch of green food coloring. 
I actually grind my own matcha powder out of loose leaf in a coffee grinder.  (If you want to do the same, make sure your grinder is 100% clean by grinding some plain rice into powder in it before adding the tea.  Coffee will distort the flavor and color of the matcha.) 
The white chocolate roses that I made out of homemade modelling chocolate were just the right finishing touch, I think.  
The cake is, appropriately, aigre-doux: bittersweet.
Yeah, I saw it.  
I felt bad for a minute or two.  I might even have had a short, ugly, and relieving cry.  
Then I had a piece of cake.  And you know what?  
It was delicious.
 
Ombré Matcha Cake
ingredients:
4 ounces unsalted butter, softened
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons sugar
3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
1 scanttablespoon, 1 ½ teaspoons, and ¾ teaspoon matcha powder, divided
a tiny bit of leaf green gel food coloring
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  
Butter and flour as many 6- or 8- inch pans as you have; you will end up with four layers, so if you have 2 pans, just bake two of the layers, cool and clean the pans, and bake the second two layers.  
Cream together the butter and sugar for about 2 minutes, until very fluffy and pale yellow; beat in the vanilla and egg whites until combined.  
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.  
Add to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk; start and finish with the dry.  
Divide your batter in half as evenly as possible (I weigh mine out), then divide those in half, too.  
Pour one quarter of the batter into a pan as is.  
Add 1 scant tablespoon of matcha and 2 drops green food coloring to one bowl, in another, add 1 ½ teaspoons matcha plus 1 drop green food coloring, and in the third, add only ¾ teaspoon matcha.  
Stir each well, and pour into prepared pans.  
Bake for 15-17 minutes.  
Allow to cool for 15 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely.
 
For the [tangy] frosting:
ingredients:
4 ounces sour cream (a heaping ½ cup)
8 ounces cream cheese
4 ounces butter, softened
3 cups powdered sugar, sifted
pinch salt and dash vanilla extract
directions:
Beat the butter and cream cheese together until fluffy and pale.  
Add in the sour cream, vanilla, salt, and sugar, and beat on low speed until combined.
 
To assemble the cake:
Torte (level) your layers if need be, then layer them, starting with the darkest.  
Don’t add too much frosting between the layers, because the ombré effect will be slightly less cool.  
Frost the outside of the cake as desired!  
[Note: this frosting is not pipeable.  Instead, go for homestyle swirls, homeboy.]