Flourless seduction

Beautiful bite ...

I am cooking this months challenge from my mothers house. I came to Estonia for a week. Its snowy here and pleasently cold, not too much. Just a perfect environment to pamper our tastebuds with divine chocolate flavour.


New chocolate cake recipes are always welcome. This was my first time to try the flourless version. The amount of chocolate that goes in is a bit scary in first glimpse, but in the taste it transformes into true pleasure.


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.


Cake was unbelievably easy to make. I did ditched the ice cream making part and served it with store bought vanilla ice cream. The photograph that I am using is without the ice-cream though, for a simple reason that I prefered it without ice-cream. Just with a dash of powdered sugar and lingonberries from my mothers freezer.

Chocolate Valentino

454 grams of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
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.

2 in 1:Shrove Tuesday+Independence Day

Meal is served ...

Now this year's last Tuesday in February happens to be with double celebrations. Shrove Tuesday that travels every year to a different Tuesday, happens to be on a same day with Estonian Independence Day. I am not a big patriot of my country, but since it is a day off it gives an opportunity for a family to get together, cook, eat and relax together. And so it is in our family. I came traveled to Estonia for a week and my brother also came to my mothers house where we had a little festive lunch with simple and delicious foods.

For apperizers we baked some canapes on puff pastry. Filling them in with various fillings that we could find from the fridge, like: ham, salami, pickeld wild mushrooms, tomato, sundried tomato, mozzarella, blue cheese.

Finger food

Main dish came from my suggestion to make oven potatoes. Every family in Estonia is familiar with oven potatoes. Our grandmothers would make it in wooden ovens and this would give a special touch and crispiness, but even simple electric oven will do the job.

Simple pleasures

For desserts there was several suggestions, but mine and Karina's won. My suggestion was Tart with lingonberries and Karina's wish was traditional buns for Shrove Tuesday. Photos are talking for themselves.

Su-su-su-su-sushi!

Oh yes, I finally did it. Can you believe that it's so easy to make? It costs a fortune in Japanese restaurant. Why? I did it without big research, just looked one sushi making clip in youtube. Bought sushi rice, sushi mat, avocado, cucumber and smoked salmon.
Now I would like to do some more research and reading about it, what's the best seaweed to use or is there different variety at all etc. Joao found it a bit chewy, for me it seemed fine, but I suppose, it wouldne hurt to look into that and see if there are some better than the others.

Broa

Now, since the bread was finished this morning, I had to bake another one to keep my man's belly singing. Yes, it seems that I am one of those women who bakes her own bread. At least for now that I don't have kids hanging on my thighs while trying to manage in the kitchen. Who know, by the time I have 7 kids I feed them all sliced bread from plastic bags, because baking bread is at the end of my list and therefore I never get there. I do have to admit that I like baking, its not just the man's belly that I try to satisfy. I find in nice, to smell the baking in the house and overall challenge myself. So far, even if I use the same recipe, no beard comes the same, somehow its always different. Also, when coming to read the bag of those breads that we can buy in supermarket, I cant but wonder, why is it when I make a bread I only put flour, salt, water and yeast, but when they make it, they find loads of other crap to put in it. So, I make my own and it simple.
This time I went wild and decided to try new recipe. Google helped me out here. In Portugal they eat Cornbread and so far Portuguese that I have met, all like it alot. I borrowed the recipe from David Leite.

Unfortunately soup is fake, from a powder. But the bread came out delish.