Cassata

 Recently, it was my friend Vanda's birthday, and a group of us went to her place for a birthday feast.  Vanda's family are of Italian origin, so I wanted to make an Italian dessert.  For ages, I had wanted to make cassata.  Someone else was bringing a cake, so I decided to make the icecream version of cassata. For the uninitiated, cassata is an icecream dessert comprising three layers, one of which is chocolate, and one which is flavoured with candied fruits and nuts.

There are many different recipes for cassata, and the more traditional ones I suspect are those that contain ricotta and marscapone.  However, I chose a recipe by the Australian Womens Weekly, which uses only cream.  The recipe refers to using a round tin, but the photo accompanying the recipe features a loaf tin, so that is what I used.  The only adaptation that I had to make is to make the layers in reverse order.

I think it turned out beautifully, and Vanda loved it:

To make your own cassata, you will need:

Almond layer

2 eggs, separated

1/2 cup icing sugar

125ml pouring cream

1/2 teaspoon almond essence

Chocolate layer 

2 eggs, separated

1/2 cup icing sugar

125ml pouring cream

60g melted dark chocolate

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 1/2 tablespoons water

Fruit layer

250ml pouring cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg white, lightly beaten

1/3 cup icing sugar

2 tablespoons red glace cherries, chopped finely

3-4 tablespoons candied fruit of your choice, finely chopped

(I used candied clementines, pear and figs)

30g roasted flaked almonds (I just used roasted chopped almonds) 

Line a loaf pan with cling wrap, as smoothly as possible.

For the fruit layer, beat the cream and vanilla extract together until firm peaks form.  In a small separate bowl, beat the egg white to soft peak stage, then gradually beat in the icing sugar.  Fold the egg whites into the cream, then fold through the fruit and nuts.

Spread the mixture into the bottom of the lined loaf tin and smooth the top.  Freeze until firm (~1-2 hours).

For the chocolate layer, beat the egg whites together until firm peaks form.  Gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar.

In a separate bowl, beat the cream to soft peak stage, then fold the cream into the egg white mixture.  

In a cup, blend together the cocoa and water.  In a small bowl mix the melted chocolate and egg yolks together.  Stir the cocoa mixture through the chocolate mixture, then fold the chocolate mixture into the cream mixture.  Spread the chocolate mixture evenly over the top of the fruit layer in the loaf tin, and freeze until firm (~ 1-2 hours).

For the almond layer, beat the egg whites together in a small bowl to firm peak stage, then beat in the sifted icing sugar.   Lightly beat the egg yolks and fold them through the egg whites.  

In a separate bowl, beat together the cream and almond essence until soft peaks form.  Fold the cream through the egg mixture, then spread the almond mixture over the top of the chocolate layer in the loaf pan and smooth the top.  Freeze the cassata for a further 1-2 hours until firm.

To serve, unmould the cassata, fruit side up, onto a serving platter, and carefully remove the cling film.  Cut into slices, and enjoy!

 

Nigella’s Brownies and Icecream Pudding for Xmas in July

December in Australia is generally too hot and humid for most people to enjoy traditional Christmas fare like roast turkey with all the trimmings and Christmas pudding.  Most would prepare seafood or a backyard barbecue to the traditionally heavy, hot Christmas dinner served in the Northern hemisphere.

However, that does not mean that Australians do not enjoy traditional Christmas fare, so to ensure we don't miss out on the fun, we celebrate Christmas in July.  It is basically an opportunity to eat a traditional Christmas dinner in the winter months, when it is cooler and more conducive to such fare.

On the weekend, I hosted my own Christmas in July with some friends.  It was my first dinner party at my new flat, so it doubled as a kind of house warming.

For starters, I served an assortment of nuts, cheeses, dips, crackers and dates stuffed with gorgonzola:   

Dinner comprised a pork loin roast with gravy, roasted potatoes and carrots, and Adam Liaw's roasted broccoli with chilli and parmesan.

Then onto the best part - dessert.  After consulting with one of my friends and being inspired by an episode of Nigella's Feast, I made brownies (using gluten free flour for my friend):

This recipe is from Nigella Lawson's Feast.  It was originally a "snow flecked" brownie with white chocolate chips, but I left out the snow.  After all, I am not a fan of white chocolate and it doesn't snow where I live.  These are fudgy brownies of the kind that Nigella describes as "damp".

To make these brownies, you will need:

375g butter
375g dark chocolate
6 eggs
350g sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
225g plain flour

Preheat your oven to 180C and line a 33 x 23 x 5cm rectangular tin with baking paper.

Melt the butter and dark chocolate together in heavy based saucepan over a low heat and allow to cool.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract, the fold into the chocolate mixture.

Finally, fold in the flour and scrape the mixture into the prepared tin.  Bake for 25 minutes or until set on top and not wobbly in the middle.  Cool in the tin before dusting with icing sugar and slicing into squares.

The other dessert that I made was a festive Icecream Pudding from Kitchen Classics - Celebration:

To make it, you will need:

50g chopped toasted almonds
205g dried mixed fruit
80ml rum
105g glace cherries, quartered 
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 litre each of chocolate icecream and vanilla icecream, softened
Ice Magic and extra glace cherries, to decorate

Put the dried fruit, almonds and rum into a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to soak overnight.

Line a pudding basin with cling film and chill it in the freezer overnight.

In a large bowl, combine the vanilla icecream with the glace cherries, and press around the sides of the pudding basin, leaving a hollow in the middle.  Freeze for a couple of hours.

Combine the chocolate icecream with the spice, fruit and nuts and use it to fill the hollow in the vanilla icecream, evening off the top.  Freeze overnight. Turn the pudding out onto a serving plate and decorate with Ice Magic and glace cherries before cutting into wedges to serve.

Happy Christmas in July!

FFwD - Olive Oil Icecream

This week's French Friday with Dorie recipe is a delight that I recommend you try at least once  - Olive Oil Icecream.  To me, the sound of olive oil in icecream didn't sound that attractive, but I am now converted. 

This is the best icecream that I have ever tasted, apart from Baskin Robbins Pralines 'n' Cream.  It is smooth, creamy and oh so delicious - even in wintery weather.  It would be the perfect accompaniment to any dessert, because it doesn't have a strong flavour, but it is also very good on its own.

To see what the othe FFwD participants thought of this recipe, visit the FFwD website.

TWD - Puffed Double Plum Tart and Unbelievably Good Chocolate Blueberry Icecream

This week's last Tuesdays with Dorie double-header is Puffed Double Plum Tart and Unbelieveably Good Chocolate Blueberry Icecream.


The Puffed Double Plum Tart was chosen by Julie of Someone's in the Kitchen.  As the name suggests, it contains two types of plums - dried plums (prunes) and fresh plums (or, in my case, canned plums).  The prunes are stepped in a spiced wine mixture, while the fresh plums are painted with the same mixture thickened into a syrup while atop the tart.

The fruit is arranged on a buttery, sugary bed of puff pastry, and the edge of that pastry is brushed with cream or milk and sugar.

The cooled tart is served with the thickened spiced wine:

This is a truly delicious tart, and would be perfect to warm a wintry kitchen.

Our next recipe was chosen by our founder, Laurie, of Slush - she picked Unbelievably Good Chocolate Blueberry Icecream:

Believe the hype - this stuff is crack candy.  I am not a huge fan of icecream, and certainly not chocolate icecream, but I could eat this until I turned into a blueberry like Violet Beauregarde.  This icecream is deeply, richly chocolate in flavour, and is subtly flavoured with blueberry jam.

Thanks to Laurie and Julie for this week's picks.  They will have the recipes on their sites, or buy the book.  To see what the other TWD people thought of these recipes, visit the LYL section of the TWD website for this week.

Next week is a rewind (own pick) week, and our very last TWD recipe ever is Dorie's pick - kid's thumbprints.  The end is tantalisingly near ...

TWD - Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet

On Saturday afternoon, Seven Two rescreened the last ever episode of the seventies British sitcom, Man About the House.  Although my family are fans of this show, having seen endless reruns over the years, I had never previously seen the final episode, in which one of the female housemates, Chrissy, gets married - thereby destroying the premise of the show of two girls and one guy flatting together.

I enjoy watching this show as much for the fashions of a now-bygone era as the nudge, nudge, wink, wink repartee.    When Chrissy married Norman, the older brother of "the man about the house", Robin, the day had a mostly chocolate flavour about the fashions.  Chrissy wore a cream floral peasant blouse with a cream and brown skirt; Robin wore a cream suit with a dark chocolate waistcoat; and the groom wore a dark chocolate brown three piece ensemble.   These items of clothing would be the stuff of children's dress-up boxes today, but back then (circa 1976), I assume they were the height of fashion.

This brings me onto this week's choice from Steph of A Whisk and A Spoon for Tuesday with Dorie - namely, Creamy Dark Chocolate Sorbet, of a hue the same colour as Norman's suit in the final episode of Man About the House.

I wasn't sure what to make of this recipe - a chocolate ice confection with no cream and minimal milk, and added water?  At first, it seemed grainy in the pan, and the words "uh oh" went through my head, but ultimately, this came good, and it turned into a rather tasty treat.  I prefer creamy chocolate icecream hands down, but if you want something that is a little less naughty nutritionally (but not much less - there is a lot of chocolate in this), then Dorie's chocolate sorbet may be the treat for you.

I served a scoop of sorbet in a gorgeous Cornishware  egg cup - I have been eager to use an egg cup ever since I bought a set of them, and now was my chance.  Even though it is quite cold here, it took no time at all for the sorbet to start to melt, but I thought the drips down the side of the egg cup looked rather artistic. The lighting is bad because it gets dark very early on here, but I had no other time to take a photo, and the lighting is generally pretty poor in my rented flat - but you get the idea of the deep chocolate colour of this sorbet, which is indicative of its flavour.

Thanks to our host this week, Steph - she will have the recipe, or get your hands on Dorie's book, Baking From My Home to Yours.  To check out what the other Doristas thought of this sorbet, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Vanilla Ice Cream Tart

It is coming into winter here, and many of my fellow TWD bakers are living in places where it is snowing in spring.  However, being the troopers and ice cream connoisseurs that we are, for this week's Tuesday with Dorie,  we made Dorie's Coffee Ice Cream Tart, chosen by Jessica of Domestic Deep Thought.

This tart comprises a nutty pastry crust that is conveniently pressed into the pan rather than rolled, then is lined with chocolate and filled with coffee, chocolate or vanilla icecream that has been additionally flavoured with almond paste and almond extract, then finally decorated with abstract streaks of chocolate on top.

I used low fat vanilla icecream, and used the tines of a fork to drizzle the chocolate on top (as it was way too late at night to be making up a piping bag).

I made 2 x 5" tarts.  In fact, I only meant to make one, but I had so much dough left over that I thought it would be a crime to throw it all away.

As the other TWD members noted in the forum, this tart hardens so that it is very hard to cut, and when it softens up enough to cut, the icecream starts to melt.  It tastes OK, though I am not a huge fan of the almond flavour through the icecream, which was slightly medicinal (because I used almond essence).

This tart was OK taste-wise, and the beauty of it is that I have stashed the tarts away for another day, and they will be fine in the freezer for a couple of months.

Thanks to our host, Jessica, who will post the recipe.  To see what the other TWD members thought of this start, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Daring Bakers - Baked Alaska

When I was at Uni, I used to love Northern Exposure - you know, the show about Dr Joel Fleischman, who much to his dismay, had to practice in Cicely, Alaska as a condition of his medical school scholarship. My friend Jen was so hooked on it that she refused to take phone calls while it was on (she was a med student, after all). I thought Fleischman was kinda cute, and that Maggie was mad not to just fall head over heels for him. I was so caught up with Fleischman that I didn't take much notice of the delightful John Corbett, who these days is much more my cup of tea (check him out in Sex and the City or The United States of Tara and you'll see why). I never did understand Ed, or why Marilyn had such a babyish voice - those are mysteries that will remain unsolved.


The Alaskan theme segues nicely into this month's Daring Bakers challenge:


The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.


I made the Baked Alaska - primarily because I am still rather time poor and I could make one huge Baked Alaska rather than numerous cute but fiddly petit fours. Besides, I've always wanted to make a Baked Alaska - it intrigues me how icecream can go into the oven and survive without melting into oblivion. The trick is to freeze it until it is very hard.


The browned butter pound cake smelled amazing and tasted good on its own the first day, but it was little hard and tasteless in the Baked Alaska, and didn't taste like much the next day. I also feel that I should have halved the cake for use as a base for the Baked Alaska, because you have to admit, it looks a little out of proportion here:




I made David Lebovitz's vanilla icecream as per Elissa's instructions - simply because I love it. Like I said last month, this is the best icecream I've ever tasted (even better than Baskin Robbins Toffee Praline, which is pretty damn fine).


I then piped meringue all over the hardened icecream/cake combination until it looked like a jester's hat, and baked it in the oven - and voila, we have a Baked Alaska that did not, to my relief, end up as a puddle on the floor of my oven.


Here is a peek inside:



Delicious, yeah? Unfortunately, that cake did not do it for me - but with all that yummy icecream and meringue, who cares?


Thanks to Elissa for hosting us this month. You can check out a veritable parade of Baked Alaskas and petit fours by visting The Daring Kitchen.

TWD - Chocolate ganache icecream

I have never been much of a chocolate icecream fan - I am the one who eats the strawberry and vanilla flavours out of the Neopolitan icecream and leaves the chocolate. Accordingly, I am not a reliable judge of this week's TWD recipe, chosen by Katrina of Baking and Boys, being Chocolate Ganache Icecream.

Love chocolate - check. Love dessert - check. Love icecream - check. Just not chocolate icecream.

This icecream tastes OK - it is very rich, and if you are a chocolate icecream fan, you'd probably love this.

I had fun making it, and I think it looks cute in my Coney Island icecream cups. It looks a little soft as I chose to photograph straight after being churned, because once it goes hard in the freezer, I just don't have the patience to wait for it to be scoopable.

Thanks to Katrina for hosting us this week. You can check out the recipe in Dorie's book or at Katrina's site, and you can see what the other TWD bakers thought of it at the TWD website.

Daring Bakers - Swiss Swirl Icecream Cake

I am typing this at the airport while waiting for my flight home, having spent the weekend with my interstate-based family. A visit home is especially poignant at the moment, as both my mother and the family dog have in the last three months had operations to deal with the same dreaded disease. Mum is also enduring some ongoing treatment, which has knocked her about a fair bit in recent weeks, so it was lovely to see her and touch her in person. The dog is behaving as though nothing ever happened, despite the large gash on his back sewn up with stitches that make him look like a Tatty Teddy. He is lively and frisky, and doesn't seem at all bothered by his recent operation. His stitches come out tomorrow.


Because I had heavy commitments with the writing project I have mentioned previously, and I knew that I was having a weekend totally away from it all, I was ultra-organised with Daring Bakers this month, and got it done early on. However, it came at a price, Ugarte - I was so engrossed in the final assembly that I didn't notice that the washing machine drain pipe had managed to work its way out with vibration, and by the time I noticed, I had a stream flowing in my carpeted living room. Needless to say, this was not cheap to fix, and as it happened on a Saturday morning, I was lucky indeed to get hold of a carpet technician who was able to squeeze me in and sop up (or suck up!) the water. The offending hose pipe has now been taped into place with PVC tape, as this is an exercise that I do not want to repeat.

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

Sunita gave us some leeway with this challenge, in that provided we made each component (swiss roll, roll filling, two icecreams and an icecream sauce) from scratch, we did not have to use the recipes she provided.

I decided, in a rare departure, to make everything using my own recipes. I made a vanilla swiss roll from The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, a raspberry cream cheese filling, David Lebovitz's vanilla bean icecream and raspberry (in my case, mixed berry) icecream, and a mixed berry sauce inspired by Steve Manfredi.

Here is my vanilla swiss roll spread with the raspberry cream cheese filling:

Here is a far more flattering perspective after it has been rolled up, showing the pretty pink filling:

Margaret Fulton's recipe, which makes one swiss roll, is as follows:

1/2 cup self raising flour
pinch of salt
3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon hot water
extra sugar for dredging

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees Celsius. Spray a 30cm x 25cm swiss roll pan with cooking oil, and line with baking paper.

Sprinkle a flattened out tea towel with sugar ready for turning out the baked cake.

Sift the flour and salt together. In a separate heat-proof bowl standing over a saucepan of gently simmering water, whisk the eggs and sugar together until thick and creamy.

Remove the bowl from the heat and continue to whisk the mixture until cool. Fold in the flour, then the hot water. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread out evenly.

Bake the swiss roll for 7-10 minutes, until pale golden and springy.

Turn the cake out immediately onto the sugared tea towel, peel off the paper lining (carefully - the cake is fragile!), and cut off the crisp edges of the cake with a knife. Roll the hot cake up in the sugared tea towel, from one short end towards the other, and allow the cake to cool in the tea towel.

Once the cake is cool, unroll it and spread it with the raspberry cream cheese filling. The filling is comprised of 65g cream cheese, 1/4 cup icing sugar, and 2 tablespoons raspberry jam, blended together until smooth.

Stage two in the assembly process is to line a mould with glad wrap and slices of swiss roll, then freeze it for at least an hour:

Here is my vanilla bean icecream being churned - the recipe is here (I only made half):

This is my favourite icecream ever - it is delicious!!! When this icecream is softened, it is spread in a layer over the cake before freezing again:

Next, I made a mixed berry sauce from this recipe, and mixed berry icecream using this David Lebovitz recipe:

Doesn't this sauce look great!

A layer of sauce is spread over the vanilla icecream layer, then the dessert is frozen for an hour or so before the rest of the cavity is filled with softened berry icecream:

I also closed off my bombe with more slices of swiss roll.

After freezing for around 4 hours, the completed bombe is turned out:

The next photograph clearly shows all layers - and how delicious this is:

Thanks to Sunita for hosting us this month. You can check out the original recipe at her site, and check out all the wonderful variations on the bombe at The Daring Bakers blogroll.

TWD - Banana Coconut Icecream Pie

This week's Tuesday with Dorie is an unusual selection by Spike of Spike Bakes - a Banana Coconut Icecream Pie.


Basically, this pie consists of a crust made of toasted coconut and biscuit crumbs, which is topped with banana slices, then filled with a mixture of icecream and pureed banana flavoured with rum and lemon juice. The whole thing is then frozen for around 4 hours before serving.




I used vanilla icecream instead of the suggested chocolate, because I had vanilla icecream already and I am not a chocolate icecream fan. I also only made a half size pie.


I was a sceptic about the crust, as there is very little butter to bind the dry ingredients together, but it works - perhaps because it is frozen for half an hour before being filled.


Not being a huge banana dessert fan, this was never going to be a winner for me. However, I took it to work, and my colleagues really enjoyed it - which was a relief!


To get the recipe, visit Spike, and to see other versions of this pie, visit the TWD blogroll.

TWD - Burnt Sugar Icecream

This week's Tuesday with Dorie is a little different in that instead of baking, we were required to make icecream. Our host, Becky of Project Domestication, chose Dorie's Burnt Sugar Icecream for our challenge this week.


This icecream was easy enough to make - it uses the amber caramel base used in many of Dorie's recipes, onto which milk and cream are poured to form a custard, albeit a seething, angry one at the start, before the addition of egg yolks and sugar. The mixture is then chilled and churned, then frozen to form icecream.


I have to say that I wasn't a huge fan of this icecream, despite its gorgeous caramel colour - it really did taste kind of burnt to me. The taste was almost, but not quite, bitter, and as a real sweet tooth, this did not appeal to me. I only made a half batch, as I hadn't a hope of using the whole batch.


Thanks to Becky for hosting us this week and introducing me to something new. Becky will have the recipe on her site. To see what the other TWD members thought of this recipe, visit the TWD blogroll.

TWD - Vanilla Icecream

For a change of pace this week, the Tuesdays with Dorie group are making Vanilla Icecream at the selection of this week's host, Lynne of Cafe Lynnylu.

Previously, I had wondered why anyone would make their own vanilla icecream when you can readily buy quality icecream in this flavour. However, this icecream recipe informed me why - it is truly one of the most delicious, creamy icecreams that I have ever tasted. I only made a half batch but wished I had made the full batch - I enjoyed this, and ate it all very quickly.

Thanks to our host, Lynne, for broadening my mind on the icecream making front. To see what the other TWD members thought of this icecream, check out the TWD blogroll.

Lime Sorbet for Dinner and a Movie - Shirley Valentine

I've fallen in love with the idea of living.

Shirley Valentine (Pauline Collins) in Shirley Valentine

It's May Dinner and a Movie time (created by Marc of No Recipes and Susan of Stickey Gooey Creamy Chewy), and our host this month is Susan. She has selected Shirley Valentine as the movie from which to seek inspiration this month. I had never previously seen this movie, which was released when I was still in high school. Although it is a relative oldie, this movie is a goodie, and demonstrates some universal truths that are never likely to change.

In brief, the main protagonist in Shirley Valentine is the story of a 42 year old housewife and mother of two grown children called, you guessed it, Shirley Valentine. Shirley is rather bored with her life as it has become, and she wonders wistfully what happened to the daring, rebellious girl of her youth. Shirley's fairy godmother arrives in the guise of her friend Jane, who invites Shirley along on a trip for two to Greece that she won in a radio competition. Although she is initially reluctant to go because she feels that she can't get away/her husband wouldn't approve etc, Shirley's mind is made up when her husband, Joe, behaves disgracefully one evening when she makes chips and egg for tea on a Thursday instead instead of the steak he was expecting.

On the island of Mykonos, Shirley rediscovers herself outside of her role of wife and mother, much to the disapproval of Jane and the other British tourists staying there. A brief holiday fling with a handsome Greek man is part of this journey, but is certainly not the beginning or the end of Shirley's transformation. Shirley rediscovers her joie de vivre, and the closing scenes lead me to hope that she will be able to transfer some of her new outlook on life to her husband.

Despite having a very different life to Shirley, I can certainly relate to her dilemmas; however, having recently read Thirty Something and Over It by Kasey Edwards, I know that neither Shirley nor I are alone in our quest to rediscover the spark in our lives.

As Shirley's adventures centre on her experiences in the Greek Islands, I am naturally inspired to make a Greek-style recipe for this event. During the film, Shirley Valentine rediscovers her zest for life. Together, these elements led me to make a Lime and Yoghurt Sorbet from The Press Club - Modern Greek Cookery by George Calombaris, an executive director of and head chef at The Press Club restaurant in Melbourne. Why? It's a Greek-style recipe and its zesty, uplifting flavour mirrors Shirley's new-found zest for life.

Sorbets have traditionally been palate cleansers, and this one is no exception. The lime juice gives a mouth-puckering edge to the sorbet which is wonderfully refreshing. I think this quality would make this sorbet the perfect palate cleanser or dessert with a rich Greek dish such as moussaka, as it would cut through that richness and leave your mouth feeling Colgate-clean.

To make The Press Club's Lime and Yoghurt Sorbet, you will need:

2/3 cup skimmed milk
40g white sugar
Juice of 2 limes
Zest of 1 lime
25g liquid glucose
250g Greek yoghurt

Heat the milk, sugar, glucose syrup and lime zest in a saucepan over medium heat until it reaches a gentle simmer, then remove from the heat and cover the top of the pan with clingwrap. Leave the mixture to cool to room temperature.

Once the syrup mixture has cooled, whisk in the yoghurt and lime juice, then pour the mixture into an icecream maker and churn in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. Place the mixture in a container to freeze.

Remove the sorbet from the freezer before serving and allow it to thaw for around 15 minutes on the bench so that it becomes soft enough to scoop.

If you are keen to escape to a sunny Greek Island, even if just for a few minutes, do go and check out the roundup of terrific Shirley Valentine inspired recipes at Sticky Gooey Creamy Chewy.

Daring Bakers - Chocolate Valentino Cake with Baci Icecream

Ahhh, February - the month of romance and love, culminating in Valentine's Day on 14 February. To coincide with this, our Daring Bakers challenge this month was to make a Chocolate Valentino Cake (a heart-shaped flourless chocolate cake) and icecream to accompany it. You didn't have to make your cake heart-shaped, and you didn't have to use the icecream recipes given by our hosts, Dharm and Wendy (to whose blogs I have linked at the foot of this post, if you would like the cake recipe).

I chose to make one large heart shaped cake with 8 mini cakes:

The cake recipe uses a large quantity (454g) of chocolate. I chose Cadbury's Old Gold original dark chocolate for my cake.

The end result is a fudgy, dense, chocolate packed punch of a cake, with a crispy, brownie-like top:

I paired my Valentino cakes with Baci icecream (which I thought was very appropriate for Valentine's Day, given that "baci" means "kisses" in Italian) that I made especially for this challenge, and some strawberry icecream that I made some time ago for visual contrast:

The Baci icecream recipe is by Vera Kuznetsova, and can be found on page 120 of Issue 6 of Desserts Magazine. This stuff is addictive - it is silky smooth and super soft, and the taste is heaven itself. However, given its ingredients (including half and half, full cream, hazelnut spread and hazelnut meal), I can only imagine how highly calorific it is, so I will be urging my colleagues to share this with me.

I have previously posted the recipe for the strawberry icecream, by Nigella Lawson, here. Although it tastes fine, it is not a patch in my view on the chocolate hazelnut variety.

To check out all the other wonderful chocolate cakes and icecream varieties from the other Daring Bakers, visit the Daring Bakers blogroll. Thanks to our hosts, Dharm and Wendy, for hosting this month's challenge.

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.

Daring Bakers - Buche plaisirs sucres (French Yule Log)

This post features the last Daring Bakers Challenge for this year, which officially means that I have been a Daring Baker for 12 months - and what an exciting year it has been!

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux. They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

Now this challenge looked like a very high mountain to climb, as it is comprised of six separate elements (entrements) which had to be assembled into what looked like a very complex frozen dessert. These elements are a dacquoise, a mousse, a creme brulee, a ganache, a feuillete (crisp) and a chocolate glaze. Whew! The other challenging thing was that there were numerous different flavour combinations provided in the recipe, so you had to plan which combinations you wanted to make. I made an almond dacquoise, a mango mousse, a coconut-vanilla creme brulee, a caramel (white chocolate) ganache, a coconut crisp and a white chocolate icing. I even invested in a half pipe pan to make this dessert so that it had the lovely, rounded dome of the traditional version. To top it off, I decorated my completed log with crushed pecan nuts.

The outcome was superb - this delicious, frozen treat looked and tasted impressive. I served it to my guests at a Christmas drinks afternoon that I hosted, and they enjoyed it too.

The crisp layer could be made using gavottes, a traditional French lace crepe, or cornflakes or rice crisps. Although I ended up using rice crisps, because their white colour blended in with the white on white colour that I was trying to achieve with my log, I also made the gavottes:



Here is the dacquoise, which I baked for twice as long as recommended in the recipe because I was looking for a golden cake, when in fact it is a type of meringue:

This is the log mid-assembly, showing the mould lined with overhead transparency plastic:

This is the log after the addition of the ganache layer:

And finally, this is a shot of the finished log assembly, with the dacquoise base on top:

Once the log has been frozen for a number of hours, it is unmoulded:

And here is the finished product, with the white chocolate icing and crushed pecans on top:

Although I was initially terrified of this challenge, I was pleased with the end result, and could hardly believe that I made this. Thanks to Hilda and Marion for choosing such a delicious and creative challenge. It was a fun way to round out my first year as a Daring Baker.

You can check out the Yule Logs made by the other Daring Bakers over the course of the next three days by checking out the Daring Bakers blogroll.