Daring Bakers Chocolate Valentino!!

I joined The Daring Bakers and this month 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.



***You are not going to believe this!!! Just as I was trying to load the pictures of my Chocolate Valentino with vanilla ice cream and blackberry sauce (yum!) my stupid camera decided to just not do anything! I poked, probed, looked, examined, took things out, put things back in, not knowing at all what I was doing of course, but the damn thing just didn't want to work. So unfortunately, I have no pictures of my delicious dessert. I have posted the pictures from Wendy's and Dharm's blogs so you can see their amazing work.

Dharm's

Wendy's

Don't they look fantastic???

I could not believe how easy this cake was to make and how great it tasted! I also made vanilla ice cream by hand! Yes people by hand, with no ice cream maker and that was incredibly easy as well as delicious! Unbelievable.

I baked a round cake and then cut out hearts and served them with the ice cream and a blackberry sauce that I prepared. It was fantastic! I love this recipe and will definitely be doing it again along with the ice cream!



Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

You can find the ice cream recipe and instructions that I used from David Lebovitz right here.

Please check out Wendy's and Dharm's blogs to get specifics on the recipe and any other information I may have missed on this post.

Also, don't forget to head over to The Daring Bakers Blogroll