Sunday, April 25, 2010

Chocolate mousse bombes

These little cute deserts were made after an idea of chocolate bombes. I thought it was an awesome idea and when you have an idea, you have to try it out!
For the original idea you can look here: link
I tried this recipe though, and it did NOT work out! The first problem was getting the chocolate out of the shapes. Using a knife broke them, fingers made them melt; I even tried greasing but that gives an awkward effect and didnt work either! I have no idea how they made that part work.
Other than that, I thought ganache was going to make it a bit too rich and used a mousse that I had tried out before and turned out real delicious then. (though admitted the rest failed back then and the cake look crap!)
Anyway, let’s get to this recipe!

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Ingredients chocolate cups:
about 500 grams chocolate
(use any you prefer or you think will fit your decoration or taste best)


1. Double-boil the chocolate untill everything is melted.
2. Use a brush to brush the inside of a SILICONE cupcaketray or so. You can try a non-silicone one. But be prepared to loose some chocolate! Anyway, make sure to coat them thoroughly, maybe even do a second layer and leave them to cool for about an hour.

Ingredients mousse:
4 sheets or 2 teaspoons gelatine
400 grams chocolate
4 large eggs
300 ml double cream


1. Start with soaking the gelatine in 2 tablespoons water, or when using sheets make sure they ‘drown’ in the water.
2. Leave the gelatine for a while and start double-boiling the chocolate. Put it to the side and leave it to cool a little.
3. Seperate the eggs and beat the egg yolks into the chocolate mixture. You might want to beat them a little before pooring them in and then mix well.
4. In a seperate bowl whisk the egg whites until they form soft and fluffy peaks.
5. Add the gelatine to the chocolate and mix it in. Make sure to drain out the water when you’re using gelatine sheets.
6. At last, start with adding one spoon of the whisked eggwhites to the chocolate and mix. Then add the rest in a few additions.
7. Poor it into the chocolate cups you made before and leave it to chill over night. If you want to eat it that same day, you still need a few hours. I cant tell how much.
8. When chilled and done, flip them over and out of the silicone onto plates and decorate them!

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Tips/suggestions for this recipe:
- use fruit in it! Bleuberries through the mousse made it a lot fresher and it was delicious!
- If you don’t like a hard chocolate cover, why not poor the mousse into pretty desert glasses and add an umbrella to it and some nice decoration. Your guests will be having delicious mousse-in-glass deserts! I can see this idea being served in restaurants!
- The original idea for the moussa was to put it between a chocolate cake. So go ahead, make a chocolate cake, cut it in half, poor the mousse over, leave it to chill for 30 minutes, put the other half on top, chill it a bit more and voilá mousse cake! Works best when you use milk chocolate cake and white chocolate mousse. For the effect you know?

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Dont you think the little the deserts look cute? I think they’re so cute! They look kinda steampunkish. I can’t help it! Little cog-like thinggies! Next time I wont do the chocolate cover anymore though. I really didn’t like having to poke through this hard cover of chocolate. It tasted great, but I want it a bit more edible! I don’t want to have a war with my food before it’s edible!

I should be posting more of my "older" recipes soon. I've been far and faaarr behind with posting, but Ive got a new package with ingredients so Im going to have even more to write about! This time it's going to be making my own fondant, and decorate cakes with it! Something I got interested in quite a lot some time ago. I've got two of the most awesome books about it as well! I'll make sure to post more soon!

Filled puff pastries

Here’s an ovenproof recipe I made for a friend of mine. It’s really easy so even he cant go wrong on this! I tried to explain every single detail I could think of in the recipe. Which is also the exact reason why the recipe is so long, for something so simple!
Apart from the fact that this recipe is very easy, you can also variate in so many ways. You can replace the meat with anything vegetarian if you’d like. You can add cheese inside or on top, any kind of vegetables: mushrooms would be really nice. You can vary the cream in many ways, though it’s not advisable to take something with a sweeter taste.
I think these pastries are a kind of sidedish, or for lunch or as snack. But if it’s summer and you feel like having a light meal. Here ya go!

Ingredients:
about 150 gram cream cheese (I choose Philadelphia Basilicum Light)
1 egg
few slices ham (or bacon, or anything else really)
Puff pastry


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1. Start with seperating the egg yellow from the egg white. You do this by cracking it and opening it the right way up. So the egg yolk will float in one half of the eggshell. Now you poor it over into the other, loosing more egg white on the way. Do this until barely any egg white is left. It’s okay if there is some egg white left. The idea is to get at least most of it out.
2. Mix the egg yolk with the cream cheese and add the ham, after you sliced this in little pieces.

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(hurray for bad lighting! I still need to work on some pics!)

3. Take little squares of the puff pastry, or cut them first, and fill the middle with the mixture you just made. You can shape it into a triangle on one side, but make sure to stay about 1 cm away from each side. Then fold it and press the sides together.
4. At this point you can brush some egg whtie over the puff pastry, so you’ll get a shiney and crispy effect later on.
5. Repeat the steps 3-4 untill you have the amount of filled puff pastry you want! Put the pastries on greaseproof paper in the oven tray or at least make sure to butter the tray very well. Otherwise the pastries will stick to your tray and it’ll be real hard to get off and to clean!

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5. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. When the oven is preheated insert the oven tray and leave it for about 20 minutes. Make sure to keep checking every once in a while and stop the oven when the pastries are golden brown, or start burning. That’s when they’re right or too right!
6. Be careful when you take them out of the oven. Don’t burn yourself and such! If it’s for a party you can serve them on seperate plates. Or if you’re making them for yourself, dump them all on one plate and start eating when they’re cool enough to eat!

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Some tips/suggestion for this recipe:
- Poor a bit of lemonjuice in the mixture to add some extra taste!
- Precook any vegetables that take more than some short baking! Make sure to let any oil, water or butter leak from them, before you add them to the mixture. It’ll make the mixture run more.
- The thickness of the mixture doesn't matter that much. Thicker mixture are maybe easier to work with. Make sure the mixture is not too runny though, it'll make more of a mess really!
- You can sprinkle some grated cheese, sesame seeds, basilicum or any other herbs, seeds or spices over the top.
- You can vary the pastries in sizes, and even make little balls with an opening at the top. This would make a very cute and delicious party snack!
- If it doesnt work the first time, or you dont like the taste, don’t give up just yet! There are so many variations to it, there is bound to be something you like.
If there are any problems, just tell me and I’ll help! I hope you enjoy trying this recipe out!

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Meringue frosting on a Swirly Sacher Torte

I really didn’t bother with making any pie this time, and since we still had a package of add-water-and-done!-cake I decided to make this Sacher Torte out of a package. The cake turned out just as planned and it tasted really nice. I love the smell of Sacher Torte! But, I wouldn’t be posting without a recipe and to make this Torte a bit more of a challenge I made a new type of frosting: Meringue frosting. I thought it couldn’t go wrong in any way, and it didn’t. Like most frostings this is a really easy one that anyone can make!

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Ingredients:
2 egg whites
1 cup of icing cugar (110 gram)
2/3 cup of butter (150 gr)


1. Let’s start off with seperate thing egg yolk from the whites! In a small bowl, whisk the whites till they form soft peaks when you lift your electric mixer and it doesnt fall back immediately.
2. Sif the icing sugar (if needed, I tend to skip it sometimes) and add it bit by bit to the whisked eggwhites. Make sure to start off with just a little bit, and not add too much at a time, you dont want the bubbles to get splatted and fall back!
3. Whisk the butter in a seperate bowl until light and fluffy. Then add the egg-sugar mixture in a few additions and mix well inbetween.
And voilà, a very easy meringue frosting that tastes very nice with almost everything! You can even add some colouring or essence if you like! They come dead last if you were wondering.

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On the picture you can see the top cut off, as well as the cake being slices in half. The texture looks good doesn't it? You can use the left-over cake for bonbons like in the Valentine's bonbons I posted earlier.

The cake looked kinda cute, and I tried a new technique I’ve wanted to try for a while. Make a swirl and then ‘web’ it by stroking a toothpick through. That didn’t work out unfortunately! I used plain chocolate, which hardened almost immeditaely which made it impossible to give it the webbed effect. Half of the cake looks good at least! And the taste made up for it!
Defenitely something that’s good for parties. Perhaps next time I should try a real sacher torte and not ready-from-package-type!

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The Swirl Sacher Torte cake! Don't you just wanna take a bite?
- and another one? and another one? and just eat the whole thing altogether!!??

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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Classic brownies with coconut icing

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, but that doesnt mean I haven’t been baking! I’ve done and made quite a lot in the meanwhile, even some nice stuff for easter! Anyway, this was even before that! I really have been slacking, but I’ll try to catch up again.
Some time ago I was ordered to make some treats for the guests my parent’s would have that night. I didn’t have anything planned, so why not? Everyones loves chocolate, everyone loves brownies and time to try out a cream I thought would be nice. Perfect timing for another creation!

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Ingredients (classic brownies):
100 gram (dark) chocolate
125 gram unsalted butter, softened
275 gram sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 large eggs
85 gram flour
2 tablespoons cacao powder
75 gram chocolate chips


1. Double-boil the chocolate in a small pan and when all is melted, leave it to cool.
2. In a seperate bowl, mix the butter until soft and fluffy. This doesn’t take long (we’re thinking less than a minute).
3. Add the sugar to the butter and mix again. I always like to do this in a few additions, but it’s not needed. Add the vanilla essence as well and mix again.
4. Beat the eggs lightly in a small bowl and add it to the buttermixture in a few additions, mixing well between each addition. Then add the chocolate mixture in a few additions and mix this, again!
5. Sift the flour with the cacao powder and add it to the butter-chocolate mixture. This is also the time to add your chocolate chips or nuts, cranberries or anything else you want to add.
6. Poor the batter in a greased or greaseproof paper-lined brownietin and leave it in a pre-heated over of 180 degrees Celcius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20-25 minutes.
7. Voila! You’ve just made yourself some brownies that’ll be delicious to eat warm as well as cold and will fit about any occasion!!

Personally, I’ve had better brownies. These still have a soft inside, that I think is just too soft. Then again, I got a lot of compliments about it, so I guess it was a succes anyway! Of course I can’t leave out the icing I put on top! So here’s the recipe for that!

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Ingrdients (coconut butter icing):
6 tablespoons butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
1 teaspoon coconut essence (or any other)
2 teaspoons milk

1. Start of with mixing the butter untill it is soft and fluffy. Then sift the icing sugar and add it in a few additions.
2. Then add the essence and the milk and mix again. Ready!
Now it's time to spread it over the brownies, and sprinkle some coconut pieces on it, or anything else you want of course! Cooking is all about being creative!

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I didnt bother with levelling the brownies first, before putting the icing on. That’s something I should do next time. I don’t think I even realised I could do that, and it would look a whole lot better that way. So, here’s a tip for you:
With a skewed knife, cut off all the parts sticking up from the top so the top has an equal surface. Then turn the brownies around, and use the bottom as your top to spread the icing over.
I tried it with a different cake today, and it worked really well! I’ll post that recipe up soon as well! It’s a Sacher Torte with Meringue Frosting and a chocolate swirl! Sounds good huh?