Remember the pate a choux I’ve frozen last Saturday? Well, I used it today! My first intention was to make Napoleons using this quick puff pastry recipe that I have been wanting to try for a while. But, since there is not a habit of labeling the flours in our house, I accidentally used a low gluten, whole-wheat flour, and the puff pastry didn’t puff. And I had already prepared pastry cream to make Napoleons. So, I used my frozen pate a choux and made cream puffs!

And to make things more interesting, I topped the puffs with orange chocolate and sprinkled peppermint candy! The recipe was a success, seriously everybody loved these puffs! And because of that, I suggest you to always freeze half of every dough you prepare, just in case..

Chocolate Peppermint Cream Puffs

makes 40 cream puffs

For pate a choux:

- Use the recipe here. Omit sugar pearls.

Ingredients:

For pastry cream:

• 500 ml milk
• 2 eggs
• 150 gr sugar (5.3 oz.)
• 75 gr (2.65 oz.) cornstarch

For topping:

• 80 gr dark chocolate with orange, melted
• 3-4 peppermint candies, crushed
• 1-2 tablespoons milk, hot

Directions:

Heat the milk. In a separate bowl, mix all the other ingredients. When the milk is boiled, pour 3 tablespoons of it to the egg mixture and whisk quickly, so you don’t get cooked egg clumps in your cream! Then, pour this egg mixture to boiled milk and stir for one minute and take the cream off heat.

When the pastry cream and choux puffs are completely cooled, cut the puffs into half and fill them with pastry cream.

Mix the melted chocolate and milk. Pour this over the choux puffs. Sprinkle with crushed peppermint candies.

Oh, and don’t forget the Insatgram photos:

Oh, no! Chocolate and orange cake again????? I know, but I think they’re the best couple ever.. Whenever I make something with chocolate and ask myself “What else can I add?”, the mantra repeats 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, and I just can’t resist them!

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.

No, I don’t like jellies. And no, I didn’t like this one too. But the difference of this jelly is; it has agar agar in it rather than gelatine. Agar agar is a gelatinous “thing” made from seaweed, and commonly used in Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. I first saw them in Luxirare as jello shots. So just for curiosity, I ordered some agar agar from the internet and tried to make something with it. Well, I’m not going to give the recipe, because I don’t like jellies! Simply, it has some water, brown sugar, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and some black pepper seeds in it. And I also put some diced oranges and clementines, as seen in the photos (The orange things at the bottom!).

At least they look good.. OK, they don’t even look good… But I’m still working on making better tasting jellies!

You’re probably thinking right now that I’m obsessed with chocolate and orange. Well, that’s true, but in this case I used these two ingredients just because I had to. I wanted to make a cake, and searched the kitchen. There were only oranges in the fruit case, and I found some bittersweet chocolate, all-purpose flour, and one egg. I took a risk to make a cake with just one egg, but I thought the chocolate would do the same job as eggs and hold the cake. The cake was delicious, although it falls apart easily because of the lack of eggs. I think, you can get the best results by using two eggs, but I haven’t tried it.

Why hypnotic? Because there is something strange with this cake that you cannot stop eating it. It is probably because of the melted chocolate, but I named it “hypnotic” anyway!

Chocolate Orange Cake

makes 16 pieces

Ingredients:

• 1 egg (2 eggs is better for holding the cake, but I did’t try it)
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (I haven’t any left. But, use whole-wheat please!!)
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ½ cup olive oil
• 50 gr (1.75 oz) bittersweet chocolate, melted
• juice and zest of 1 orange
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 teaspoons baking powder or baking soda
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together egg, oil, sugar, melted chocolate and orange juice.

Stir in vanilla, flour, salt and orange zest, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda (powder) into the mixture and stir.

Pour the mixture into a cake mold and bake for 40 minutes, or until cooked.

Decorate the cakes by spreading melted white chocolate (with orange zest) on tops.

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/chocolate-orange-cake/feed/ 0 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/chocolate-truffles-with-orange-and-earl-grey-tea/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/chocolate-truffles-with-orange-and-earl-grey-tea/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:42:36 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=134

My artisan chocolate making attempts are continued! I really liked the Earl Grey taste in my previous hand-dipped chocolates, so I used tea again in these truffles. I also added orange zest to strengthen the orangey flavor. Unfortunately, I messed up the kitchen again, but I am happy now eating my truffles and drinking my holy Early Grey tea!

Truffles with Orange and Early Grey Tea

adapted from Making Artisan Chocolates

makes 20 truffles

Ingredients:

For ganache:

• 100 gr (3.5 oz.) 60-70% bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 100 gr (3.5 oz.) heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons Earl Grey tea
• 1 orange’s zest

For dipping:

• 100 gr (3.5 oz) milk chocolate, melted
• cocoa powder

Directions:

In a saucepan, mix heavy cream and tea, and cook until it gets to medium-heat. Wait for 5 minutes to allow tea give its flavor.

Stir the mixture through a strainer into a bowl with chopped bittersweet chocolate and the orange zest, and mix until you get a smooth ganache.

Freeze the mixture for 30 minutes, or until hardened.

Using a spoon, take small pieces of ganache, and form 20 ganache-balls using your hands. Freeze for another 30 minutes.

By using a fork, dip each truffle in melted chocolate, then in cocoa and be sure all parts of the truffles are covered with cocoa. Place the truffles onto a parchment paper, and keep them in a cool place.

I spent my whole Friday trying to make some flavored white-chocolate ganache. I made chocolate macarons using David Lebovitz’s recipe, and used fig and orange flavored white ganache to assemble the macarons (I simply added 1 orange’s zest orange flavored one, and 2 mashed fresh figs for the fig flavored one).

And as usual, there was some leftover ganache, and I made these mini raspberry cakes to use it. I also flavored the ganache with ground cinnamon. I liked the results, the cakes were delish and they also look good, huh?

Heart-Shaped Raspberry Cakes with White Chocolate & Cinnamon Ganache

makes 2 cakes

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups raspberries (I used frozen)
• 4 teaspoons baking soda
• a pinch of salt

For the ganache:

• 80 gr. (2.8 oz.) white chocolate
• 40 ml. (1/5 cup) heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl. Add vanilla extract, flour, salt and baking soda and mix well.

Process the raspberries in a food processor, and add into the bowl.

Pour the mixture into a mid-size pan (Don’t worry at this stage that the mixture is not enough. It will rise). You can pour the mixture into heart-shaped molds (I cooked them first, and cut them in heart-shapes).

Bake for 40 minutes, or until it well cooked.

To make white-chocolate ganache, heat the cream until slightly hot. Remove the pot from heat. Add white chocolate, which are divided into small pieces. Make sure that the chocolate is totally melted, by stirring. After that, add the cinnamon. Mix well, and let cool in the refrigerator until hardened enough.

Assemble the two pieces of cake with ganache.