Saturday, February 28, 2009
Daring Bakers Challenge: Chocolate Valentino Cake
The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.
Since I had already made ice cream for last month's challenge, and we were given the option of using whipped cream, I used vanilla whipped cream on my Valentino instead of the vanilla ice cream. Also, since I knew Lent was right around the corner, I didn't want to have vanilla ice cream in our freezer getting more and more icy. I'll have to do it again with homemade vanilla ice cream.
I really wanted to make this with a chocolate that had chile in it. Though I thought that would be an interesting flavor combination, I knew that Rich only tolerated chiles in chocolate, and this was supposed to be for both of us. I ended up using all bittersweet chocolate, which I really liked with the sweetened cream and raspberries, but Rich thought it could have used a touch of semi-sweet for the sugar.
Initially I wanted to use candied rose petals to decorate our cakes, but was unable to find either unsprayed roses at this time of year or packaged candied rose petals. These are raspberries we froze last summer and they were a perfect foil to the cream and bittersweet chocolate.
Thank you Dharm and Wendy! This is the first challenge I've done that had no complications or difficulties. I make a flourless chocolate cake for my birthday about every other year, so I really have the method down on this. It was a slightly different recipe than what I use, but wasn't too dissimilar in technique. We already owned the heart cake pans, so I didn't even have to buy any equipment for this.
Labels: Daring Bakers, Tales from the Kitchen
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Congratulations on completing the challenge. I used bittersweet too, about 54%, and could have done with less. I even sprinkled a few tbsp of sugar into the melted chocolate. But I think I will be trying it again!
My chocolate choice was too dark. I hope you get to try the chili combo sometime, because that sounds amazing.
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