Chocolate Cake Saves the Day

I have a little Monster at my apartment for the summer. He likes to play with squeaking toys and one of his favorite is a purple disk. It lets out a wimpy squeak when you press a particular spot. The toy is losing its yarn at the back, and I'm pretty sure it is losing its squeak once all the air leak out. I wish Monster can lose its energy too! He whines like a puppy when I put him back in his cage. Once I let him out, he dashes around the house like he's never been let out before. It's only being a week since my little guest arrived, and already I'm baking a chocolate cake to calm nerve.

When the little one calms down and settles with his toy, it's nice to relax on the couch with a cup of milk and a piece of chocolate cake. It doesn't need frosting because it is rich on its own. The center is dense and moist. The sides crumble apart when I dig in with my fingers. Who need a fork when you have a loaf of steaming cake from the oven? The flavor comes solely from Valrhona's cocoa powder. Best of all you only need one bowl, yes just one.

I actually made this chocolate cake twice. On the first loaf I skimped out on sugar, so the body was a tad dry. The dark color made it look moist, but it was just too crumbly on the tongue. I was determined to adapt the recipe, knowing the problem to the first cake. Moreover, Monster was potty trained. I needed to reward myself with the ultimate moist chocolate cake. Adding half a cup more sugar on the second try yielded a much much more satisfying cake. I must thank Debra from Smitten Kitchen for sharing her Everyday Chocolate Cake that cured my craving.

Now that Monster has settled in and I let him crawl at my feet in bed, we are really getting along. I am not losing sleep when he cries and cries in his cage, and I don't need to fret about stepping on wet carpet. It's not bad having a company at the apartment after Evelyn moved out. I like to think it's the magic of chocolate cake. It made everything p-e-r-f-e-c-t.

    

   

   

Note on the recipe, if you don't have buttermilk like me, simply squeeze half a lemon into a cup of milk and let the acid react with the milk for five minutes before using! The original recipe called for 325F and 1 hour baking time, but my cake took an hour and twenty minutes at that temperature. So I cranked the temperature up to 350F and checked that the cake was done in forty minutes. Remember to adjust your oven and baking time accordingly.

Classic Eclair with a Vanilla Filling Coated with Dark Chocolate

Creamy desserts like eclair, mousse, parfait aren't my favorite. Sure I wouldn't mind a small glass of dark chocolate mousse, but among other things on a menu, I would rather pick sorbet (if it has to be a soft dessert). I usually skimp out on the whip cream in a hot chocolate and the frosting on a cupcake. I much prefer a naked cupcake--just the crumbly buttery cake alone is enough.

But eclair is my roommate's favorite, to die for, dessert. If tomorrow is the end of the world, she would devour as much eclair as possible and die on a happy stomach. I can already picture her laying on her back with her tummy bulging out, cheeks smeared with chocolate ganache, and holding two more eclairs in her hands.

Freshly glazed eclair on the rack

Eclair isn't hard to make. It takes up a lot of kitchen space and uses up a few pots, bowls, pipping bags, and pipping tips. The Pate a choux takes up one pot, and the pastry cream another. I used a small cast iron frying pan to melt some chocolate for the ganache, so there goes another pot. If you don't have a lot of spare pots like me, then prepare the pate a choux, pastry cream, and ganache separately. 

I would recommend making pastry cream first. When you're ready to assemble your eclair, make the pate a choux. While you're waiting for the cream puff to cool, prepare your pipping bag, tip, and chocolate ganache. That way the cream puff would stay crispy. I stored my pre-filled cream puffs in a ziplock bag and they got a little moist in the fridge. Before filling them I re-heated them in the oven at 350F for 5 minutes. To avoid the trouble of reviving their crispness, just make the pate a choux on the day you want to serve eclairs.

Make your eclairs in the sequence of these recipes:

Recipe 3: For the chocolate ganache, heat 1 cup milk in a saucepan till you get bubbles around the side. On a shallow bowl, place 4 oz of chocolate chunks, pour the hot milk over. Let the chocolate melt for 3 minutes before mixing them together. You should get a thick chocolate sauce. 

What you do first is fill the cream puff with pastry cream. The best pipping tip for this step is a bismarck tip. It leaves a tiny hole on the cream puff. For me I used a small 1/4 in round tip, and I try to find air holes on the cream puff or anywhere i feel it's easy to stick my tip into. I have large holes with creams pipping out. Or you can cut the cream puff in half; almost through but not all the way, so you have a 'lid' to fold over the pastry cream. 

Big holes on the side without a bismarck tip, but just look at the other side :)

After filling the cream puffs, make the chocolate ganache. Either brush or dip each cream puff about half way into the ganache. Let cool on a rack.

This time I took some pictures while I'm making the cream puff. That way before you start making your own puffs and cream, you can visualize the process, and know how the end result should look like.

First off is the cream puff. Picture 1, melt the butter and sugar in water. Heat till the water boils. To the right, mix in your flour all at once. The bottom picture is how your dough should look like. Notice how it's a rough looking bowl and the sides don't stick onto the side.

Here's how my pastry cream looked like before I sieved it. I think my paste was a little too thick. If you overheated your pastry cream, before you pipe your pastry cream, just whisk the cream a little to loosen the stiffness.

Chocolate Tartlet

This is my first attempt at making tarts. I have to say tart doughs are very similar to pie doughs. Some common ingredients are cold butter and cold water. I usually make pie dough by hand, crumbling the butter and flour together between my fingers. For this tart, I used a hand-held mixer to get the butter and flour into pea consistency before holding them together into a dough.

When you want to fold a pie dough into a baking dish, you can either roll it onto the rolling pin or fold it into quarters. I wanted to do something similar after I rolled out the tart dough, but it was so fragile. I had to use less force rolling out the tart because it was cracking up in the middle. I tried to fold the rolled out dough in half, but it teared in the middle. I had to "patch" it up with left over dough. The good thing is the patch is completely covered by the chocolate sauce. I hope with practice I don't need much patching in the future.

To give my chocolate tart more flavor profile, I blended a handful of hazel nuts and smoothed the hazel nut meals into the chocolate sauce. The result is a not so sweet chocolate tart with a hint of nutty flavor. On a second thought, this tart reminds me of Rocher Ferrero chocolate: crunchy coat with chocolate engulfed hazel nut. My tart, however, has a stronger chocolate taste :)

This yields four 4-in tarts or 1 9-in tart

First make the tart shell with no fear. Who cares if the tart falls apart when you're transferring it into a tart pan. I patched it up and it looked perfect after baking. The most important thing is to keep the butter cold and use cold water. The chilling part is essential too because it makes the dough easier to handle.

When the dough is chilling in the freezer, start blending the hazel nuts (if you're using it). You don't need to boil the milk until the tart is baking in the oven. It takes less than 5 minutes for one cup of milk to boil.

After you take the tart shells from the oven, start heating up the milk and measuring the chocolate. Set chocolate in a medium-sized bowl. When the milk is ready, pour the milk into the chocolate bowl. Next, wait for five minutes, so the milk has enough time to melt the chocolate. Gently stir the milk mixture with a spatula until you get a creamy consistency. At this stage you can add the chocolate cream into the blender and mix well with hazel nut meal or simply pour the chocolate cream into the cooling tart shell.

The only time you need your oven is for the tart shell. If you need to entertain guests and plan some dishes that required baking, you can serve this chocolate tart to free up oven space. The tart shells can be made four days in advance and bring to room temperature before pouring the chocolate cream into it. At the end, garnish with a hazel nut or some gold paper. A dash of powdered sugar would look lovely too.

 

 

                                 

Ugly Chocolate Bread

Soft and spongy chocolate layer bread

I saw these gorgeous chocolate breads on a Taiwanese blog. They remind me of a squared bread I loooooved as a child. In between the bread are layers of chocolate. Thinking back...the bread didn't have a chocolate taste. I guess anything brown and found in a bakery would be mistaken as 'chocolate'. Or chocolate was too expensive an ingredient so they skimmed on the chocolate and used less cocoa powder and replaced the rest with powdered milk. Too bad I couldn't find a picture to  tried to find the recipe on Yahoo Taiwan, but it seems like chocolate layer cake and crepes are more popular than my childhood favorite.

Another unfortunate thing is I failed at replicating my childhood memory. It turned out to be...really ugly. I couldn't get the bread to contain its shape when I put them in the oven. So on my second batch, I cut the dough into nine pieces and baked them in a brownie pan. They retained their shape! And they have a softer texture than the ones baked individually.

Was intended on making 'squared' bread

For the recipe, I used the tang zhong dough I shared previously on my blog. Follow the link and follow the recipe until after the first rise. Then follow the recipe below to make the chocolate block.

To make chocolate layers, you will be folding the dough and chocolate block together like you would be doing to make croissants. So what you do first is roll out the bread dough into a rectangle, place the chocolate block in the middle, then take 1/3 of the dough and fold over the chocolate. Take the left side of the dough and fold over to the right. Now it looks like a book--one where you would flip the page from right to left. Rotate the dough 90 degree South, so the book opening is facing you.

Use the rolling pin to flatten the dough, and repeat the folding process.

After giving the dough two folds, you can either cut them up into squares and place them in a brownie pan OR follow this blog for more twistful ideas.

Last bake the bread in the oven for 15-20 minute, and enjoy!

Mocha Almond Cake

Bitter sweet almond cake

Chocolate and espresso go so well together in desserts. Bitter sweet chocolate gives the right amount of sugary flavor that lightens espresso's bitterness. There is no need to use cups and cups of sugar to flavor your treat. The two star ingredient have enough kick already.

A few weeks back I shared a recipe on Almond Honey Cake. This recipe is an adaptation of it. I added some chocolate chips and dissolved two tablespoons of honey in half a cup of espresso. The result is a unsweetened mocha cake! If you prefer a sugary dessert then double the honey amount or substitute honey with half a cup of sugar.

Here is the adapted recipe for the almond cake:

Adapt the amount of sweetness you want by adding more honey or use 1/2 cup of sugar

Chunks of almond and chocolate chip

Moist Flourless Chocolate Cake for All Occasions

Vibrant daisies from Carlsbad's Flower Fields

Traveling is a tiresome activity. You need energy to laugh, to keep up a good spirit. The best cure for a tired body is warm chocolate cake and a book in bed--the add on would be bathing beneath the warm spring time sunlight as you enjoy yourself in a timeless manner. How I love lazy days.

We don't have that many laid back days to so we should never take "free" time for granted. After all, there is no free lunch.

Layer cake batter with a chocolate ganache inside to create the lava texture

My day comes with a 30 minute preparation, and it will stay in the fridge for up to three days. When you bake it right away you get oozing chocolate lava cake, and the leftovers become flourless chocolate cake. They can then be blended in moose or cookies as sub ingredients. There is too many reasons to stay in a lazy mood and just indulge in chocolate.