Last week, I was in Italy and I bough a lot of chocolate from Torino after they told me that the city is famous for its chocolate and grissini. So to finish all the chocolates (about 400 grams (14 oz.)), I decided to use them for my mother’s birhday cake. However, some of these chocolates had red pepper in it, so I made a spicy cake.
The chocolate cake recipe was taken from a pstry chef, so I cannot give it, but it simply uses 6 eggs, some flour, corn starch, butter, and sugar, and it is very similar to a sponge cake. Anyway, you can use any chocolate cake you want. After layering the cake, I poured some milk to make it moist, and spreaded some special chocolate pastry cream.
For “crème patisserie”, I used this recipe, and I added 1 cup crushed spiced almonds. To make them, I simply mixed the almonds with red hot pepper, salt, cumin and black pepper.
Finally I decorated the cake with chocolate ganache I made from the Torino chocolates. To make the ganache, I heated 200 gr (7 oz.) heavy cream, and mixed it with 400 gr (14 oz.) mixed dark chocolate, and some of them had red pepper. To make the ganache lighter, I mixed it with some whipped cream, and decorated the cake with it.
Well, I know the eclairs in the photo do not look clean and tidy, but their taste is inversely proportional to how they look.. Really.. The reason for their bad appearance is due to a little accident. After I finished making my tiny eclairs, their plate fell off to the kitchen table and their chocolate glaze was destroyed.. I think I’m never going to make some good looking food..
In fact, nothing can make me sad about these eclairs, because it’s my third trial so far, and the first two were a complete disaster. I tried to play with the “choux” pastry recipe, put whole-wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, tried to change the amount of butter, and the dough didn’t rise. So, this time I didn’t take any risks and made my “pâte à choux” directly from here. The directions there were also very useful.
Anyway, after making my little choux pastries, I filled them with pastry cream. Well, I cannot give you the recipe, because I took it from a pastry chef, but you can use this recipe, which I used before. The tricky part is, when I was making the cream, I added 2 tablespoons of honey by decreasing the amount of sugar, and after the cream is chilled, I added 2 mashed bananas into it.
Finally, I poured chocolate glaze onto them. The glaze is very simple to make, melt the chocolate and add some melted butter (If you melt 2 units of chocolate, add 1 unit of melted butter).
There are some white and dark chocolates waiting to be used in the kitchen for about a month. Actually, it is a miracle that these chocolates can survive in the kitchen for a long time. In short, it was the time to use them. So, what I did was quite impromptu, I brushed my chocolate molds with white chocolate, and filled with some nice dark chocolate with almonds. But it was too “plain”. So what should I do to make these boring chocolates extraordinary? I simply added some red hot pepper on tops, and make these chocolates reaally hot!! Enjoy!
Hoooot Chocolates
makes 12 chocolates
Ingredients:
100 g (3.5 oz.) white chocolate
100 g (3.5 oz.) 70% dark chocolate (preferably Mexican)
100 g (3.5 oz.) heavy cream
powdered red hot pepper
chopped almonds (optional)
Directions:
In a pan, bring the heavy cream to boil, and remove it from heat. Add the dark chocolate and stir until it is completely melted.
Let the ganache cool in the refrigerator. Add almonds to the ganache if you want.
Brush the chocolate molds with white chocolate, and let it chill in the freezer for 3 minutes. Continue this process a couple of times. By the way, make sure that all sides of teh mold are covered with chocolate.
Fill in the molds with the dark chocolate ganache using a piping bag, while leaving some space at the top. Let the molds cool in the freezer for 15 minutes.
At the top of teh molds, pour white chocolate to complete the white chocolate cover. Flatten the molds with a palette knife. Let them cool for another 10 minutes in the freezer.
Finally, sprinkle the tops with powdered red hot pepper. Keep the chocolates in the refrigerator.
Oh, no! Chocolate and orange cake again????? But I think they are the best couple ever.. Whenever I make something with chocolate and ask myself “What else can I add?”, the mantra repeats itself in my mind like “orange, orange, orange, orange”. Well, I know it’s not creative at all, but there is a plenty of orange on the kitchen table at this time of the year.
This time, I tried a recipe from “The Essence of Chocolate” by John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg. It was supposed to be a “one-pot sour cream cake”, but I changed the recipe slightly, and the result was not a “moist” cake as described in the book, but a normal cake. I think if cooked it less, then I could get a moister cake. Anyways, here’s the recipe. Enjoy!
Chocolate Orange Cream Cake with Orange Sauce
adapted from The Essence of Chocolate
makes 1 big cake, 9 cupcakes
Ingredients:
- 1 egg
- 1 cup flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 100 g (7 oz.) butter
- 50 g (3.5 oz.) dark chocolate
- ½ cup orange juice (or juice of 1 orange)
- ¼ cup sour cream
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
For the sauce:
- ¾ cup heavy cream
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- zest of one lemon
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).
Melt the butter, chocolate and orange juice in a pan, and stir well.
Remove the pan from heat, add the sugar and whisk.
Add the dry ingredients and continue whisking.
Add the egg and sour cream, and mix well.
Pour the mixture into muffin cups or into a little pan.
Bake for 15 minutes for cupcakes, 20 minutes for the pan.
For the sauce, sinply mix all the ingredients in a food processor. This way, the orange zest will infuse better to the mixture.
Serve the cake with its sauce.
