Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Daring Bakers' Challenge May 2011: Chocolate Marquise on Meringue

I've spent the past two months trying to come up with just the perfect way to start up this blog. I've got so many projects and ideas to share that it's been hard to choose! Thankfully, I am forced by this month's Daring Bakers' Challenge to blurt out these first few lines and get this freakin' show on the road already. Woohoo! Here goes..

First off, I feel that I should probably explain just what the heck a Daring Bakers' Challenge IS. Well, it's a monthly baking challenge assigned to Daring Bakers of The Daring Kitchen. The Daring Kitchen is an online community of professional, student, or home bakers and cooks who want to try and share new baking and cooking projects with one another. At the beginning (for bakers) and middle (for cooks) of each month, a Daring Baker and a Daring Cook are chosen to host a top-secret challenge for their respective culinary realms. Everyone then has one month to complete their challenge (or challenges, if you happen to be both a Daring Baker AND Cook). After a specified date, they upload pictures and post about their completed projects, either on the Daring Kitchen website or in their blog, if they have one that is registered with the site to use (like this one is).

So that's that.. Sweet! Well, now that all those explanationings are taken care of, I'd say it's high time to commence the talking about food and drooling over sexy food porn! Yay! (This is already my favorite part, hehehe..)

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle. This is -awesome special thing- MY VERY FIRST Daring Bakers' Challenge! Weeehee! And I had such a very excellently fun and delicious time completing it. =]

The recipe is pretty darned long and includes four different components (marquise, meringue, nuts, and caramel), so instead of copy/pasting the whole thing, I'm just going to highly recommend that you check it out here. I used the half-recipe and still came out with tons of extra marquise, which is waiting in my freezer to be enjoyed sometime this month. (So you should come visit me! ;]) Additionally, I substituted the all the tequila for rum because it sounded like a way happier thing to have to finish up a bottle of. (Again, we should hang out, yeah?)

I had originally intended to photograph the entire process, but once I got started, I was so anxious to keep going, going, going, that I never ventured to search for the camera and start snapping shots until the end. Buuut I'm pretty sure these yummy little pics will more than make up for that (at least, I hope so):











As you can see, I got a little bit enthusiastic about experimenting with different ways of plating. Plating is something that I wish was covered more in the SRJC's Baking and Pastry Certificate courses. Supposedly, in Production Baking there will be some emphasis on it, which I am looking forward to. But I think the "savory side" (as we call the cooking realm at school) has a whole course devoted to it. I might have to take that class if I get the chance because I absolutely love plating, at least as much (and, admittedly, maybe sometimes more than?) tasting food. The thrill of making a pretty dish is -aughf!- I love it! It's like painting -with colours AND flavours. I'm finally an artist. My artistic medium just happens to be food. I could go on about this for several more pages, but I digress. Anyway, I've got this whole swell new blog for future baking-obsessed rants!

If you ever happen to make this (and, if you enjoy chocolate desserts and making fancy delicious things in the kitchen, you probably should), there are a few things I learned today about making Chocolate Marquise on Meringue that you might want to think about. I will post them in list format because it's one minute away from being two in the morning, my brain is getting tired of organizing sentences into neatly organized but interesting paragraphs, and sleep actually sounds pretty great (If you know me well, you will appreciate the small miracle-ness of that statement. If you don't, it's a small miracle because I have ADD and generally way too much curiosity-driven awake in me.):

1. MAKE THE CHOCOLATE BASE FIRST. I clearly remember figuring this out the first time I read the recipe a month ago. I'm quite certain I must've remind myself twice or thrice in the following weeks that this was probably a very smart order in which to execute the process. And yet. IIIIIIIIIIII... Forgot. =( Fortunately, everything was not ruined. Everything actually turned out fine. It just caused me to have to run frantically around the kitchen trying to make up the base in time, while the mixer whirred on for about half an hour (or more?) and slightly deflated my egg-sugar syrup mixture. I added an extra egg white, and that fluffed it right back up fine.

2. Don't cook the caramel sauce for too long after adding the heavy cream. While it's cooking, it seems like it's going to be way too thin, and you may be tempted to continue cooking it until it gets thick enough so that you can imagine drizzling it over a plate. I did this, and after an hour of cooling and waiting for the marquise to freeze (rhyming, yay!), the caramel had set up so much that I had to warm it in a bain marie to loosen it up again and stir in an extra dash of rum. Again, everything turned out fine and delicious. -I'm just not going to cook the caramel for as long next time!

3. If you blanch your own almonds, absolutely do not let them soak for too long, AND when they're done soaking, drain and dry them very, very well. Otherwise you will have a soupy almond sugar-spice mixture, to which you will have to add more sugar and spices to dry it up some.. and then you might realize that that actually doesn't work too well and have to instead strain your almonds before baking them. Yeah. I did that.

4. Don't make up more meringue than you're going to serve. Seriously, do some calculating before you whip up too many whites. After making the marquise you'll have plenty, but unless you're serving a lot of people, you reeeeeally won't need them all. -Or probably even close to all. A little goes a long way. I'm pretty sure there's a note about this somewhere in the recipe at the Daring Kitchen website that I probably read several times.

5. This recipe might sound incredibly long and daunting before you start out on it, but it's really not as scary as it sounds. It certainly sounded daunting to me, which is (aside from trying to gather ingredients on an unemployed and mostly broke budget) the reason I managed to put it off until the very last minute. I found that it's really not nearly as difficult as it sounds, is actually quite fun and rewarding (Mmmm!!), AND I managed to finish it in an hour less than the eight hours the recipe suggests it will take.

Taste-wise, the dessert turned out absolutely delicious. As Jenny of PurpleHouseDirt described in her challenge post, it is a very interesting combination of unlikely flavours and contrasting textures. The marquise is richly chocolate, yet so soft and light in texture that it doesn't overwhelm in the least. The cayenne and black pepper paired with the chocolate is odd but surprisingly tasty. It ties in amusingly with the sticky sweet/sour taste of the apple cider meringue (which, I must add, was super fun to toast). The caramel is -mmm!- I loved the rum flavouring. And, of course, the spicy roasted almonds and cocoa nibs add an essential crunch factor that really completes the dish.

Overall, I'm very happy with my results. I feel like I did a great job on time, taste, and plating. I definitely did at least as well as I'd ideally hoped to before starting, I learned a few things on the way, and I even came out with leftovers -a definite bonus!


Daring Bakers' Challenge May 2011 = Success! ^_^