Oh Chocolate, Hallowed Be Thy Name

Chocolate!  It’s been a while since we had something chocolaty.  What can you make with chocolate that doesn’t involve baking?  Cookies?  Brownies?  Cake?  Nope, they all require turning on the oven, which is something I’d rather not do since I don’t have central air nor do I have an air conditioner in the kitchen.  After much thought, it was a tossup between fudgesicles and mousse.  Well, since I don’t have popsicle molds, I opted for mousse.  Not just regular mousse, though, rocky road mousse.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 pint heavy cream
14 oz. good dark chocolate
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 pinch salt
¾ cups almonds
¾ cups mini marshmallows

The first thing we need to do is melt the chocolate so that it can be cooling.  In order to do that, we have to chop it. 

That’s a lot of chocolate!  Now for the melting.  I like to use a double boiler for this quantity or chocolate, so move it to a glass bowl and sprinkle it with just a small pinch of salt.  Just put an inch or so of water in the bottom of a saucepan and place the bowl over the top of it.  Bring the water just barely to a simmer. 

 

Now just keep stirring.  Eventually, all of the chocolate will melt into a smooth, silky, pile of decadent deliciousness. 

Seriously, is there anything more beautiful than melted chocolate?  Ok, enough drooling.  So when it looks like this, remove the bowl from the heat and set it aside to cool.  It’ll probably take 30 minutes or so.  Just stir it every 10 minutes.  You’re looking for it to come back down to almost room temperature.  And in the meantime, you can work on chopping.  Chop the almonds pretty coarsely.  You don’t want whole almonds, but you don’t want crumbs either.  I used dry roasted, salted almonds in mine, I like the salt and chocolate thing, but you can use any variety you want.

After the almonds, come the marshmallows.  Sure you can leave them whole, but I wanted them smaller so I cut them all basically in half-ish. 

I also happened to have some meringues on hand. 

Thinking they might give a different texture but similar flavor to the marshmallows, I chopped up a few of them and substituted them for half of the marshmallows.  In the end, I couldn’t decide which I liked better, but since most people (me included) don’t usually have meringues sitting around, marshmallows are just fine. 

When the chocolate is cool, whip up the cream with a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla.  I just bought some vanilla bean paste and wanted to try it out, but either that or vanilla extract will be just fine. 

When you have stiff peaks, or rather, the cream has stiff peaks, throw a large dollop on top of the chocolate and whisk it in. 

Continue to add the cream in large dollops (4 or 5 parts), but from here on out, you’ll want to fold, being more careful with each addition.  Folding is easy.  Just press your spatula down in the center of the mixture,

then pull it toward you, scraping along the bottom and side of the bowl and fold it over the top.  Continue repeating those steps, turning the bowl with each fold.  Eventually you’ll have a nice, even mixture. 

Throw in the almonds and marshmallows (an meringues in my case) and fold them in carefully. 

 

I decided to pipe the mousse artfully into the dish, but I don’t have a piping bag yet, so I used a ziplock bag.  I just cut off the end, and squeezed it in a nice spiral pattern, into the dish. 

What I ended up with was a nice spiral pile of brown lumpy stuff that would have been more appropriately found on the back lawn.  Yeah, it was that bad.  The only thing missing was the steam.  So, although I had a good laugh, don’t follow my example.  Just dollop or something.  Or serve it in a champagne flute.  Luckily I was able to make mine look edible... tasty even. 

Even like this, though, its appearance doesn’t do it justice.  It is, without doubt, the most amazing chocolate mousse I’ve ever eaten.  And I’ve had way more chocolate mousse in my day than I will ever admit to. 

Update on Friday, August 5, 2011 at 3:37PM by Taneasha

If you refrigerate your mousse, like I did, it needs to come back to room temperature before being served.  When you first pull it out of the fridge, it will be almost crumbly, rather than smooth and creamy.  Give at least an hour, two if you have it, to warm up a little, and it will be perfect again. 

Black Forest... Cookies!?

Last week a coworker who knows I like to bake offered me a challenge. Black Forest Cake. In a cookie.

Chocolate, cherries, cream. Holy crap yes. So, I started searching. Initially I’d figured I’d make a chocolate sugar cookie and sandwich two together with something cherry-ish between them. Maybe top it with some kind of creamy glaze or icing… Seemed like a lot of steps, particularly if I was making some of it up as I went. And I’d have to present these to the people at work who come by my desk and say “Cookie?” Not something I want to do with a complicated recipe that I’ve never tried before.

And then I came across a thumbprint cookie that was freaking perfect. A minor adjustment to incorporate the cherries and I had it! And holy crap do they look fancy. And holy crap did people ever keep coming back to my desk looking for more. Too bad the recipe only makes 28. I definitely need to do a double batch next time.

Black Forest Cookies

What you need:

For the cookie part:

• ½  cup butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg, separated 
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder (regular, not dutch process)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup sugar, for coating the cookies

For the gooey filling:

• ½ c cream cheese
• 3 tbsp dried cherries, chopped (if you don’t have or can’t find dried, I suppose you could use some other kind but really, look for the dried ones, they’re awesome)
• ¼ c icing sugar

To make them look super fancy:

• ½ c semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

What you gotta do:

As usual, have all the ingredients waiting for you on the counter. It’s best if everything is the same temperature: room temperature. But don’t bother preheating the oven quite yet.

As with nearly all cookie recipes, you start by creaming the butter and sugar.

Separate the egg, set the white aside, and add the yolk to the butter/sugar along with the vanilla and milk.

Sift the flour and cocoa together. I use a sieve over a bowl.

I recommend a bowl wider than the sieve.

I just dumped all the dry stuff in with the wet and started stirring. And panicking. It looks really dry at first. Like way too dry.

But I kept stirring and eventually it all mixed in and formed a really soft dough.

That’s why I wrapped it up and put it in the fridge for an hour. I totally did the dishes while it chilled. Totally did. Okay, yeah, total bullshit. But I thought about doing them.

Once it firms up a little, roll it all into balls. Yup, do all of them first. (Actually, preheat the oven to 350 first).

You get a better idea of how many there are, get a chance to make sure they’re all about the same size, and you won’t be constantly wiping egg white off your hands to roll the next one.

Yup, egg white. Dip each ball in the egg white.

Actually, best to dip only half of it, then roll it in your palm to spread it around. A bit too much egg white isn’t terrible. It comes off looking and tasting kinda meringue-like, but if you’re aiming to make these look fancy, less egg white is better.

Roll the whited balls in sugar and place them on a cookie sheet. With your thumb, a bottle cap, or a half teaspoon measure, press the balls down and make a dent.

Bake about 10-12 minutes, and then while they’re taking a minute to cool on the pan, use that measuring spoon to refresh the dent in the middle. You could probably skip this step if the dent stays, or if you’re okay with a slightly shallower dent.

Put them all on a rack to cool completely. You can make the filling while they cool.

Combine the cream cheese, icing sugar and chopped cherries in a bowl, then transfer it to a sammich bag.

Cut the corner off the bag and squeeze a bit of the filling into each cookie.

Resist the urge to poke at them or eat them. They’re not done yet and yes they really need the last step.

(Note the white-ish meringuey coating. It's actually kinda crispy and tasty, but has a slightly different aesthetic.)

Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave on medium heat. Seriously, everything in the microwave should be done on medium heat unless it’s water you’re trying to boil. The radiation is just too intense; you’ll scorch the chocolate.

Once it’s all melted, put in into a sammich bag as well, and trim a tiny bit off the corner.

Back and forth across the top of the cookies and the decorating is done. They’ll need a minute or two in  the freezer to set before you can pack them into the magic cookie tin to take to work. Keep them in the fridge though, there's cream cheese in them.

So, there we go. Black Forest Cookies.

Alright folks, here's your chance. Challenge me.

What kind of cookie do you want me to make?