The Lady Grey Trio, or Death by Orange, Tea, and Chocolate

A few weeks ago, an old friend, who was one of my thesis advisors from my undergrad days, came by our department to give a talk, so afterwards, and after dinner, I had her over for dessert. This whole "coming over for dessert" arrangement was fantastic because I didn't have to worry about cooking dinner too and could focus my entire concentration and energy on preparing dessert, which is quite arguably the most important part of the meal anyways. (Arguably, I said.)

I actually agonized for several days over the perfect dessert to make.  I don't get the chance very often to do plated desserts, which can be great fun, so I wanted to really take my time in developing this one.  There were other constraints also, such as having everything made ahead of time, since I'd be in class and on campus the entire day.  I knew that I wanted the dessert to involve chocolate (because it was the one thing I was sure that Sharon liked), and I knew that I wanted to do something in triplicate.  Beyond that, though, I was clueless (and intimidated, after a mutual friend of ours had informed me that Sharon's a foodie).  Until, my mom showed up one day with a bag of beautiful, home-grown oranges from a friend's tree.  Then it hit:

Lady Grey tea.  If you haven't tried this more subtle version of Earl Grey tea yet, I highly, highly recommend it.  Basically, instead of the typical lemon accompaniment for Earl Grey tea, Lady Grey tea uses orange instead, which, to me, really enhances the fragrance of the bergamot extract (Twinings is the brand I recommend for Lady Grey, and, for you lucky folk in London, I know that the Twinings main store sells loose leaf Lady Grey).  Lady Grey and chocolate also go fabulously together, and so I present to you the Lady Grey Trio dessert:

The Lady Grey Trio

Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

Orange Creme Brulee

Chocolate Orbit Cake

with white chocolate Lady Grey creme anglaise

Now, I must warn you: this is not a dessert trio for the faint of heart.  First of all, it involves not one or two, but three different types of custards and creams.  (Meaning also, lots of subsequent meringue and macaron practice.)  Then, it also involves a lot of chocolate.  In fact, there's so much rich, creamy chocolate that the orange creme brulee actually acts sort of like a palate cleanser.  I'm not kidding.  Creme brulee as a palate cleanser.  Proceed at your own risk.  (Though, come to think of it, this entire dessert is gluten free, so that's one "healthy" thing going for it.)

That said, those of you who *are* willing to take the plunge won't regret it, because this dessert trio is an unabashed and shameless celebration of extreme decadence and love of chocolate.  The Earl Grey dark chocolate ice cream is made with dark chocolate and Dutch-processed cocoa powder, and there's also black cocoa powder thrown in for good measure.  Of course, I always use extra heavy manufacturing cream whenever possible.  *looks about innocently and whistles.*  The end result is some of the darkest and richest chocolate ice cream that I've ever had, with lingering flavors of the Earl Grey tea and bergamot at the very end.  (I refuse to go back to store bought ice cream these days.)

For a chocolate cake, I of course had to turn to David Lebovitz's chocolate orbit cake, which is basically, as I always put it, chocolate baked in the oven.  Because, quite literally, that's what it is.  It's an extremely moist and dense chocolate cake, and to lighten it up, I drowned it here in some white chocolate Lady Grey creme anglaise sauce.  "Lighten" is a relative term, okay?  The sauce went really well with the cake, with the flavors of tea and orange and white chocolate balancing out the robust, dark chocolate-ty richness underneath.

As for the orange creme brulee--well.  Thank goodness for the orange creme brulee.  The light creaminess of the baked custard and intense orange flavor from fresh orange zest and a dash of Grand Marnier was most definitely a welcome accompaniment to the indulgence of chocolate in the other parts of the dessert trio!  And, who doesn't enjoy cracking open the top of a creme brulee?  :-)

All in all, we had a wonderfully pleasant evening: Sharon brought over her violin and we, together with my roommate, played (well, I stumbled) our way through several Baroque and early Classical double violin and piano trios.  I have to say that I thought my dessert trio was the perfect complement to our musical evening--for some reason, the bergamot and orange tea and dark chocolate flavors reminded me faintly of ye olden Baroque times (highly romanticized by my imagination, I'm sure) when people would enjoy good food, company, conversation, and music post-dinner in their candlelit salons amidst stacks of musty old books and claw-footed sofas.  And, how much more fitting it was when my roommate remarked afterwards that "the Lady Grey Trio" would make a great name for a chamber music trio, too!

Anyways, time to wrap up this extraordinarily lengthy post and announce the winner of the black cocoa and photo print giveaway!  Selected at random (using random.org algorithm), congrats to entry #102 myblankpage!  You didn't leave a contact email, though, so please email me at s [at] shihbakes [dot] com to claim your prize!  You have one week before I pick someone new.

Thanks so much to everyone else for commenting in the giveaway.  As I said before, it was so much fun to visit your blogs and hear your ideas about what to do with black cocoa.  I now have a to-make list miles long.  Alas, though, after this Lady Grey Trio dessert and the past two posts, I think I might put this blog on a chocolate-free diet for a week or so.  I, at the very least, need the detox.  :-P


Read on for recipes...

Salted Black Cocoa Brownies, and the Eyjafjallajokull parfait

Oh, the power of persuasion.  I am so touched by everyone's incredible enthusiasm over the giveaway (BTW-- have you entered yet???)  Even though I haven't had the time to personally respond to all of your comments yet, I have been reading them all with great excitement!  I asked you all what you would do with black cocoa powder, and I've been loving the responses.  Man, you guys are creative--I mean, mole sauce with black cocoa?  Who would of thought of that!

An incredible number of you commented that you would make black cocoa brownies, and the more I read about black cocoa brownies, the more I started to really crave them.  Yes, the power of mob persuasion and mass suggestion at work.  So, the logical course of action was of course to whip up a batch of my own black cocoa brownies, just so you all know that it can be done.  And the results?  Fantastic.

Super chocolate-ty, super dense--nice and robust and dark.  Mm... this is what a brownie should be.  And, I am of the camp who believes that chocolate is greatly enhanced by a touch of salt, so the version I made here is salted black cocoa brownies.  I buttered the pan with salted butter (rubbing in a little bit of extra salt, just for good measure) and then topped the brownie batter with liberal sprinklings of coarse sea salt before baking.  The end result was a brownie that is so incredibly dangerous to have around the house, because it's so dark-chocolate-ty and yet not too sweet at all, hence you can just keep popping them into your mouth before you realize that you've devoured them all.  *looks about innocently*  I did manage to stay away from one pan of brownies (by wrapping them up in layers of saran wrap) long enough to take them into class today--at which point one person told me that she hesitated to even call these brownies because "brownie" did not seem worthy enough a name.  :-)

Of course, being me, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I present to you another use of these salted black cocoa brownies, if you manage to stop eating them long enough to make it to this point: the Eyjafjallajokull parfait.  Yes, you will ask--why in the world am I naming these parfaits after Iceland's recently-infamous volcano?  Well!  First of all, these parfaits are made with plain Icelandic skyr, which are the perfect base of smooth, creamy, thick, and tart goodness.  Then, layered underneath and on top are alternatively the season's first strawberries, macerated in lemon juice and vanilla sugar, and chopped up cubes of salted black cocoa brownies.  For some reason, the skyr made me think of Iceland, and then the strawberries and black cocoa brownies made me think of lava and volcanic rock, respectively, sitting on top of a rich mountain of skyr, and thus was borne the name "the Eyjafjallajokull parfait."  Or, if you don't want to try pronouncing that, you can just call it the "Strawberry, black brownie, and skyr parfait."

Oh man, did these make the perfect afternoon snack yesterday or what.  The bites of dark chocolate and chewy brownie were balanced out really well by the lightness of the strawberries and the creaminess of the skyr.  Mmmm... I should have made them in larger mugs.  :-P

Anyways, thank you guys all again for your wonderfully sweet and thoughtful and awesomely fun to read comments in the last post!  Here are a few answers to a couple of recurring questions, just so I don't forget to address them later:

1.  I made the chocolate trees on the cake out of dark chocolate couverture, mixing in black cocoa powder to make the color darker (which, by the way, is another great use of black cocoa powder, as base for dark food colorings).  Then, I piped the melted chocolate onto silpats/parchment paper in the shape of trees and let dry completely.  You can also do this with tempered chocolate, and it will probably be even sturdier, but chocolate couverture is a good quick-and-dirty cheat. :-)

2.  Yes! the walk through the forest totally reminded me of the video game Myst.  Actually, the original title for "Descent" was "Descent into Mystverse."  I am a geek, just like the rest of you.

3.  Someone mentioned self-saucing pudding cake.  I am *so* intrigued by this.  Can anyone point me in the direction of a recipe?

4.  For those of you who have asked if you can buy prints: I just showed my collection so I haven't had any time to think about prints beyond the limited edition ones of the collection.  I will look into this further (maybe via imagekind) and get back to everyone!  If you are interested in the limited edition prints from the entire collection, in their original intended sizes, please contact me individually at s "at" shihbakes "dot" com.

[P.S.  How awesome is the word macerated, by the way?]


Read on for recipe...

the Blackest Forest Gateau and a Giveaway!

OMG, I am giddy with excitement over this post, because I've been planning it for so long!  At last I can unveil it!

I'm the kind of person who really likes to share happy moments with others--I think this is probably why I enjoy food so much, because it's an experience that you're meant to share.  So I'm so excited to share the news that I had my first photography exhibit and showing of my first collection this past weekend, and, to celebrate, I'm doing my first giveaway EVER on this blog!  Read on for details...

"the Guardian"

My collection is called in Una Selva Luminosa and is a set of eight black and white photographs that I took last summer.  You can view the entire collection here.  The collection was really somewhat of a labor of love for me, since I also matted all of the custom-sized photographs myself--hence all of the tweets from a few weeks ago that my kitchen table had devolved into a framer's workshop!

"Descent"

The photographs were taken in Taiwan, though I really like the fact that they're sort of non-specific in their forest-ness.  I was just so incredibly lucky to be where I was at the right time, during the summer when the humid heat from the valleys met the cold mountain air and produced this amazing mist all around.  The collection is dedicated to my maternal grandmother, for whom the hike on which these photos were taken was her last.  A few short months after going on this climb, she suffered a debilitating stroke and now cannot speak or use the right side of her body.

"Light, with Dark"

For me, art should be a mulit-media experience, so naturally, I had the perfect dessert planned to go with my exhibit: "the Blackest Forest Gateau."

Made with black cocoa powder, this "Blackest Forest Gateau" has layers of deep and moist black chocolate cake, dark chocolate ganache, and sweet dark cherry filling, all wrapped up in generous mounds of light and airy mascarpone whipped cream.  This cake is a perfect transformation of my photography collection into dessert form, with the balance and interplay of light, frothy cream and rich, dense dark chocolate.

And, after tasting this cake, I have to say that it's hands-down one of the BEST chocolate cakes I have ever made.  I'm dead serious, and I absolutely do not say this lightly.  The black cocoa makes the chocolate cake layers so much richer and deeper in chocolate flavor--the cake is barely sweet at all and makes for a perfect counterpoint to the sweetness of the cherries and cream.  Then, just to up the chocolate ante a bit, I added a layer of dark chocolate ganache on top of each cake layer--you know, just because I can.  (and because hidden chocolate ganache seems to be a recurring theme of this blog.)  The dark cherries really help make the cake, adding a sweet hint of dark, rich berry goodness to offset the incredible chocolaty-ness that you would otherwise have.  Finally, I whipped up a whipped cream with mascarpone cheese, which really helped to make the cream more substantial and add more flavor (and, again, just because mascarpone cheese is awesome).  The outcome is ... well, it leaves me a bit speechless because I'm busy gobbling it all up.

"Ascent"

So, onto the giveaway!  The giveaway is now closed.  Thanks for participating!  I am giving away to one awesomely lucky winner two things: (1) an 8 x 12" professionally matted print from Aspen Creek Photo of one of the photos from my collection that I have featured here in this post (total-size = 12 x 16")--your choice, and (2) a 16-oz. bag of black cocoa powder from King Arthur Flour so that you can recreate this Blackest Forest Gateau at home!  I've been experimenting myself with black cocoa powder for some time now, and having made various cakes and ice creams with it, it is an incredibly versatile ingredient for really enhancing the dark chocolate flavor in your desserts.


[Disclaimer: This giveaway is by no way affiliated or sponsored by Aspen Creek Photo or King Arthur Flour.]


To enter this giveaway, all you have to do is leave a comment with your name, a way for me to get in touch with you, and answers to these two questions:

1. Tell me what you would make with black cocoa.
2. Tell me which one of the four photographs featured in this post from my collection ("the Guardian," "Ascent," "Light, with Dark," "Descent") you would like if you win!

I'll also give you an extra entry into the drawing if you tweet about this post, but in your tweet you must mention me (@shihbakes) and include a link to this giveaway (http://bit.ly/blackcocoa) so that I can track all of the entries.


You have until 23:59 PST next Monday, April 26, 2010 to enter!  I'll pick the winner at random that night and make the announcement in next Tuesday's post.  Because I am a poor graduate student and am running this contest with no sponsorship whatsoever, if you are not in the United States, you are only eligible to win the 16 oz. black cocoa, not the photograph.  That's the compromise that I must make so that everyone can enter--I hope you understand!  [EDIT: some of you have commented that you'd rather have a print, either for personal or country import law reasons, so if you are overseas and win, I will let you pick--cocoa or print!]

Oh man, I hope you are all as excited as I am.  Make this cake--you won't regret it, and don't forget to drop by and check out my entire collection HERE.


Read on for recipe...

We will return to regular programming soon...

As I hope most of you know, I really try to avoid doing posts like this very often--my last one was back in February, but unfortunately, my crazy schedule has caught up with me this week at last, and I don't have a post for y'all today!  But, I promise that I'll be back next week to regular programming with some really exciting things when things at my day job finally start to normalize and quiet down.  And, if you are in the area, don't forget to come and check out the SF Bay Area National Food Bloggers' Bakesale on Saturday at Omnivore Books in San Francisco from 12-3pm!  More information can be found in this post.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Raspberry Rose "Hidden" Chocolate Tart, and the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale!

These two weeks have been some of the busiest I've ever had in my life.  I'm not kidding.  It's sort of been one thing after another after another after another, my head is spinning so fast that I question whether or not I still have a spine, I've eaten all of two proper meals over the past ten days, and collectively over the past several days, I've probably gotten fewer hours of sleep than I can count on my fingers and toes.  But, it's not over yet!  Ah!  So, today I present you something from my archives taken a month or so ago, though I haven't gotten around to posting the recipe until now:  the raspberry rose "hidden" chocolate tart.

Now, by "hidden" chocolate, I mean that there's a soft, decadent layer of dark chocolate ganache hidden beneath all of that pastry cream and fruit.  It's the tart that you should eat when you don't want anyone to know that you're getting your daily chocolate fix.  :-)

While the pastry cream in this tart is just your good ol' pastry cream, the tart crust is actually where the interesting stuff is at, because it's filled with crushed dry rose buds and rose extract, letting out this amazing aroma of flowery goodness.  Then, I dare you to pile raspberries that have been tossed in warm raspberry-apricot jam as high as you possibly can on the tart!  Trust me, you won't regret this combination of rosy crust, bitterly dark chocolate, ultra-creamy filling, and tartly sweet delicate raspberries.  I wish I had one now.  Oh, that would just make life so much more bearable.  (Bonne maman has a great raspberry apricot jam that I used for this tart, if you can find it!)

Oh yeah, and then I suddenly ran out of raspberries when I realized I had piled too may on the big tart...  My bad!  But, blackberries in the same context taste just as good:

So! I wanted to tell everyone about how I'm going to end my crazy busy two weeks this weekend--with being part of the National Food Bloggers' Bake Sale in San Francisco!  That's right.  You've drooled over the pictures and recipes, and now those of you in the area can have a taste of the blog.

The bake sale is part of a big, national Great American Bake Sale to benefit Share Our Strength, which is dedicated to ending childhood hunger.  I'm so excited to be a part of this awesome event, so if you are in the area, please, please come out and help show your support, in addition to getting awesome baked goods:

Saturday, April 17, 2010

12-3 pm

Omnivore Books

3885 Cesar Chavez Street

San Francisco, CA 94131

I'll be making some of my special dark chocolate tarts, but I won't tell you ahead of time what flavors I'm making.  You'll just have to come to the bake sale to find out!  And, as extra icing on top of the cake, Rose Levy Beranbaum will be speaking at 3pm in Omnivore Books, so it's seriously like THE ultimate dessert afternoon.

I hope to see many of you on Saturday!  Also, as a heads-up, I'll be posting a super, super, SUPER special blog post coming up later this week that you will. not. want. to. miss.  So, stay tuned!  I've been working on this surprise for quite a while now, too.  *smiles smugly*


P.S. To all of you who have commented on my blog recently--Thank YOU!  I've been so busy that I've barely had time to keep up with email, let alone responding to the comments, so I'm sorry if you've asked a question or sent in a suggestion, and I have yet to respond.  I will--in due time!


Read on for recipe...

Vegan Banana Walnut Bread

It's one of those weeks.

You know, one of those crazy, hectic weeks when you have absolutely no time to even eat, let alone sleep?  Yes.  One of those.  The main reason that I've been running around like a chicken with all twenty of my heads cut off is the workshop that we're running this weekend at my "day" job.  It's been one thing after another (and not to mention being stuck in a broke-down car of my friend's for the entire afternoon yesterday! what a waste of time!).

Anyways, the reason I bring up this workshop is because we always have to have breakfast snacks at our workshops.  And, being me, I always insist on *making* the breakfast snacks, just because I think it's a nice touch for those traveling from afar not to have to suffer through store-bought, crap-tastic, overly-sweetened pastries first thing in the morning.  Blech.  One thing that I always make whenever we do these workshops is this vegan banana walnut bread because (1) it's vegan, in case there's anyone with dietary restrictions, (2) it's super easy for me to make, given the crazy weeks I usually have prior to these workshops, and mainly because (3) it's GOOD.

This banana bread recipe is actually the only one that I know.  Why?  Because a good family friend taught me how to make it this way years ago, and I liked it so much that I've never bothered to go looking for a new (even non-vegan) recipe.  It's a great bread recipe--much more bready than your usual overly oily banana "cake-which-passes-as-a-bread"; yet, this banana walnut bread doesn't taste dry at all.  It's also just sweet enough but not over-poweringly so.  And most people are none the wise that it's vegan, unless you tell them.

There isn't so much more to say about this bread.  It's good, it's banana-y, it's studded with roughly chopped walnuts.  For me, it's the perfect slice of breakfast that I'd want at a day-long, mind-boggling conference.  Nice and hearty.  Simple and healthy.  Really good with a tall glass of OJ or a hot mug of coffee or tea (because I'll NEED that caffeine!).

Oh yeah, and btw, check out how sheik my blog is today.  I mean, sailor stripes are so in this season, no?  :-P

I'll be back next week with elaborate and decadent desserts, I promise!

(P.S. Another breakfast item that I always make for these workshops is my meyer lemon lavender pound cake.  Also a slice of heaven in the morning!)

Read on for recipe....

Passionate Whoopie Pies, or Musings on Dinosaur Eggs

Sunday was Easter, so I thought that today, we should talk about eggs.

Or, rather, I thought that we should talk about things that remind us of eggs.  Like, passion fruit.  Which is what I thought about this Easter.

I mean, come on--do you blame me?  Passion fruits (when they're not completely shriveled up) totally look reminiscent of eggs.  In fact, in my family, we always joke that they're like alien dinosaur eggs because of how weird they look when you cut them open.

So, of course it was natural for me to be thinking about weird looking dinosaur eggs during Easter (yes, that's just how my messed-up brain works--Kids: this is your brain on graduate school. Take note.).

Anyways, I also associate a feeling of down home simplicity and nostalgia with Easter, and so I thought nothing would be more fitting for our Easter celebration than combining dinosaur/alien eggs with homey goodness in the form of passion fruit whoopie pies!

I have been meaning to make whoopie pies for quite a while now.  It falls into that family of frosting-sandwiched-in-between-baked-goodness that I love so much, along with the also-nostalgic sandwich cookie or the high-class, snobby French macaron.  Whoopie pies are basically what would happen if you took a cupcake and converted into a sandwich form, which, in my humble opinion, is a genius move.

For my whoopie pie cakes, I used an adaptation of the recipe published a while ago in the New York Times. One concern I had when embarking on making whoopie pies were that the cakes would be super dry, which is how some of the proprietary ones that I've had are like.  And there's really nothing I can't stand more than dry cake.  Ugh.  But, my worries were for naught, because these cakes turned out beautifully moist and dense.  They were sooooo, sooooo good.  Like, I-almost-skipped-the-frosting good.  To kick up the chocolate quotient even more, I used black cocoa powder in addition to regular cocoa powder, which made the batter awesomely dark.  The cakes turned out super chocolate-y and ever so subtly sweet, which were perfect for the sweet, fruity frosting that I had planned.

For the frosting, I adapted a vanilla frosting recipe found here with vanilla bean and folded in passion fruit curd.  The result was a tantalizing flavor combination of citrus-y, tangy, and sweet passion fruit frosting, with  dark and moist chocolate.  Um... yes!  To make the passion fruit curd, I used a syrupy passion fruit nectar that you can find bottled in Asian supermarkets so that the passion fruit flavor would really come out robustly through the chocolate cake, though fresh passion fruit juice should also work as well.

These "passionate" whoopie pies went over really well at Easter.  I credit their success to the combination of moist chocolate cake that isn't too sweet and the surprising punch of passion fruit frosting in the center.  And, all in convenient sandwich form, too!  I made some little, two-bite size whoopie pies (or one bite, depending on how big your mouth is ;-P) that my mom took with her to her office.  Apparently, people lamented to her about only having one bite-size whoopie pie per person, and, honestly, I feel for them--I can't just eat one either!

Anyhow, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend!  This week's going to be a super busy one for me: I'm running a workshop this coming weekend with many of the leading researchers in my field, which promises to be at once excellent fun but also crazy work leading up to it!  (Wish me luck surviving!)  But, I have some really, really exciting things in the works for the blog for next week.  Like, black cocoa.  Stay tuned for more about that in a few posts or so!

In the meantime, let's hear a "Whoopee!" for whoopie pies.  (and crazy, dinosaur-egg-looking passion fruits!)  :-D


Read on for recipe...

Strawberry Rhubarb (and Orange!) Crumble, or My First Rhubarb

I came to baking and food relatively later in life--okay, but I'm not that old, so it really is relative--so a lot of things are still new for me.  Like rhubarb, for instance.

I'd never even heard of the stuff until college, and it's taken me this long after college to even man up and try it.  I mean, I've heard the virtues of rhubarb extolled many times before, but it was really reminiscent to the unknowledgeable me of celery, which doesn't really scream "yummy dessert!" for me.  But, at last and finally, I have gotten down to trying the classic combination of strawberries and rhubarb.

I decided for my first experience with rhubarb, that I should go with something classic, so I chose the super-homey, tried-and-true strawberry rhubarb crumble.  Not to say that super-homey and tried-and-true is anything bad at all.  In fact, it was delicious.

Like any good academic, I of course did my homework first by researching rhubarb and how it's used in baked desserts.  For one, I discovered that you can't cook rhubarb in cast iron skillets, though, had you could, that would have made for one awesome photo.  Then, while reading up on rhubarb in Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit (wait, is rhubarb really a fruit?), I came across this little tidbit from the ever-wise Alice Waters: rhubarb goes lovely with oranges.  So, may I present to you, strawberry rhubarb crumble, flavored with orange zest.  And, by the way, Alice Waters was so right.  Orange is the perfect citrus accompaniment to the combination of strawberry and rhubarb.  It's just acidic enough to add that bit of tartness, but, unlike lemon, orange is also sweet, which compliments the rhubarb really well and adds just that extra depth of flavor to the whole dish.

Now, I may be new to rhubarb, but I'm not new to crusts, and I have to say that the crumb crust on this crumble *almost* outshines the strawberry rhubarb +orange filling inside.  The crumb, too, is spiked with orange zest, and the brown sugar and butter with just a hint of salt makes for a perfect contrast to the sweet, sticky insides of the crumble.  I layered the crumb topping on thick for a solid filling-to-crumb ratio so that you can get a good taste of everything in just one bite.

There is only one thing that could make this better....  Wait for it...

Yup.  Make sure to serve this baby with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or some sweetened heavy cream.  Not that it needs it, but it sure doesn't hurt!

Now, I hope you'll excuse me while I dig into what's left of my crumbles....

Oh, and by the way--I think I'm calling this one a success with rhubarb.  Now, what else can you do with this celery-like "fruit"?  Tell me your ideas in the comments!


Read on for recipe...