chocolate

Posted a little bit later than intended, but its out there now, my mid-week bake, another attempt at a Honey WholeWheat and a Chocolate Sour Cherry loaves.

I am trying to achieve that lovely soft wholewheat texture you find in American breads – think gourmet WholeFoods and delis type, not the horrible Subway kind that squashes in your hand.

I am quite please with that I got at the end, probably a bit more room to play with the recipe – it didn’t spring in the oven as much as I hoped, but the flavour is very close to what I have in mind.

The other one, Chocolate Sour one was a spur of the moment thing, really. I am not really into chocolate breads, especially not the ones that use cocoa powder, I find them too sweet and not chocolaty enough. I found some lovely Valrhona chocolate in my sweets box and some dried sour cherries in the pantry – why not? Sounds like they go together, lets give it a go.

I do like the chocolate in it, especially after you’ve toasted it and the chocolate goes all soft and melty. Could do with more sour cherries, as the cherry flavour isn’t particularly strong, I just didn’t have any more at hand.

I will be trying both of these recipes again, that’s for sure

Full recipes and more photos on my blog

Find more recipes on my blog Dessert Before Dinner

• 2 packs active yeast
• 1 pinch sugar
• ½ cup warm water
• 2 cups water
• 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• ¼ cup dark molasses
• ¼ cup cider vinegar
• 2 oz (1/2 cup) whole wheat flour
• 2 ¼ oz (1 cup) wheat bran
• 13 oz (3 cups) bread flour
• 11.25 oz (3 cups) rye flour
• 2 Tbsp caraway seeds
• ½ tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tbsp minced shallots
• 1 tbsp ground dark roast coffee
• ¼ cup cornmeal
• 1 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1 tsp caraway seeds

1. Heat 2 cups water, butter, chocolate, molasses, coffee grounds and vinegar on stove until butter and chocolate are melted. Set in refrigerator to cool. Too hot liquids will damage the yeast.Proof yeast with ½ cup water and pinch of sugar
2. Sift together flours and bran.
3. In separate bowl, add fennel, shallots, caraway and 2 cups of the mixed flours. Add chocolate mixture and yeast to the flour. Continue adding flour half a cup at a time until the mixture pulls away from the mixing bowl.
4. Knead until mixture is springy yet dense. Place in oiled bowl and let proof until doubled in size (about a hour and a half).
5. Remove dough from bowl and divide into two pieces. Shape pieces into boules and dust tops with cornmeal, flour and caraway mixture. Let rest for 45 minutes
   
6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Just before baking, slash tops of loaves. Bake for 45 minutes or until dark.

I know this is the Fresh Loaf and this isn't a bread, but I just want to share this recipe with you.

The souffle, one of the world's most feared desserts.

You'll need:

Rhubarb compote:

• 100g of rhubarbs (frozen are great), cut into centimetre chunks.
• 25g sugar
• A splash of water

• 100g of good quality white chocolate
• 2 eggs, seperated yolks from whites
• 60g sugar

• Unsalted butter
• Sugar

Butter the inside of your ramekin and refrigerate it.

Make the rhubarb compote: Put the ingredients into a pot, heat it up and let it simmer until it get a somewhat smooth consistency, don't worry if it has a few chunks. Set it to cool.

Melt the chocolate in a water bath, get some water boiling in a pot and place a bowl on top of the pot and place the chocolate in the bowl and wait for it to melt completely. Take the bowl off and let it cool a little.

Whisk the eggwhites with the sugar until they become somewhat stiff, not really stiff, but certainly full of air.

Add the eggyolks and rhubarb compote to the melted chocolate. Make sure the chocolate isn't too hot, so the yolks cook.

By this time you should butter your ramekin again, so it has two layers of butter. Put it back in the fridge.

Carefully mix the eggwhites with the chocolate/rhubarb mix. Gently turn the whites in without knocking any air out of the mixture, little by little.

When all has come together, take out your cool ramekin and pour some sugar into the bowl and pour all the excess sugar out.

Gently spoon the souffle dough into the bowl, make sure not to get any dough on the edges or knocking any air out. Fill up the bowl all the way up and use a knife to make the surface completely even. Use the tip of your thumb to clean the edges of the bowl, so the souffle has no resistance at all when rising.

Your oven should at this point be at exactly 200 degrees celcius. Place the souffle on a low rack. It is very delicate, so keep an eye on it at all times, it should take about 6-8 minutes for the souffle to rise to it's desirable glory. Watch it.

By the time it's finished it should have risen 1-1½ centimetres over the top of the ramekin and still have a gooey centre.

Bon appetit!

I was inspired by JMonkey's bread from 2008 & from another bread I tried from Mike Avery's blog.  This bread was absolutely delicious.  I used my usual recipe for my sourdough boules with a 7-grain soaker so I wouldn't feel so guilty feeding it to my family.  I added 50 grams of Dutch cocoa, 100g of dried cranberries, and chocolate chips, folding it in the way JMOnkey showed so the chocolate wouldn't burn.  Worked fantastic. 

If you enjoy my blog, please check out the original at leighbakes.wordpress.com!

Thanks for reading!

Read the original blog post here!

On Valentine's Day, I rediscovered a heart-shaped cake pan in the back of my pantry and knew I had to put it to use. Since it was my first cake attempt, I wanted to use another fairly simple recipe, so I found this recipe for dark chocolate cake on allrecipes.com: Dark Chocolate Cake. It got some pretty excellent reviews from the site's readers, including one person who wrote, "I am a pastry chef, and this is the only chocolate cake that I will make from now on." Awfully high praise! When I pictured the finished cake, I couldn't get the image of a glossy chocolate ganache-covered heart cake out of my mind...so I dug up a recipe for red wine chocolate ganache I'd seen on cupcakeproject.com. What could be more sexy and romantic than dark chocolate cake with red wine ganache for Valentine's Day? Okay, here's something you should know about me (if you haven't already noticed): I'm a chocoholic. This means that I often don't consider a dessert worth eating unless it contains a fair amount of chocolate. This also means that I'll need you guys to urge me to try recipes that aren't all about chocolate. I'd gladly welcome any non-chocolate recipe suggestions any time! I didn't really run into any problems mixing the batter, although it did take a long time to prepare the chocolate mixture, sift all the dry ingredients, and beat everything together. I tend to be a slow worker, but I also lack some of the tools that would make all this a lot easier, like a freestanding mixer. The cake came out looking good, though I found those big cracks down the middle distracting. Is that normal for a cake? Maybe I filled the pan too high. Because I wanted to cover this cake with poured ganache instead of frosting, I knew I had to flip it over to hide those cracks. I did, and it looked pretty great. Because I had a lot of extra batter (the recipe fills three cake pans, which I don't have), I made some extra cupcakes. These looked nicer than my last ones, but just like last time, one oozed in the oven. Seriously, why does that happen? Of course, the oozy cupcake became my taste test. I liked this cake a lot, and I can see why it got good reviews: it had a delicate texture and a nice chocolate flavor. It wasn't as moist as my last batch of cupcakes, though, so I think I'll stick with that other recipe the next time I make chocolate cupcakes. But if you're looking for a classy dark chocolate cake, this is a lovely one. More on those cupcakes later! Back to the cake... The ganache was a breeze to make. I liked the way it tasted, though it's not for the faint of heart--that stuff is rich. The very thin layer I poured over the cake turned out to be plenty; if I'd spread it on, it might have been overwhelming. As for the pouring process, it went well except for two snags. Because the cake was so rounded on the bottom, it cracked a little when I flipped it over, which showed through the ganache. Second, it was difficult to coat the sides of the cake as thickly and neatly as I'd have liked. If I were to do it again, I'd make a little more ganache for that purpose. Here's a photo of the cake covered in ganache, plus an ill-advised decoration attempt. I've learned my lesson: ganache and edible red gel do not look good together. I wanted to make a border of gel hearts, but they barely showed up on the dark background. Should've known better. As you can see, I ended up with more of a broken-heart cake than a heart cake...which seemed a little more cynical than what I was going for. I decided to cover up my bad decoration and the crack down the middle with a design using pecans. It was very experimental, but I'm pleased with the outcome. The result was a tasty cake with just the right amount of tasty ganache. The pecans didn't hurt a bit, either. My mom, who loves all things rich and chocolatey, was in love. This was the first thing I'd baked entirely from scratch that I was truly proud of! I'll save my stories about frosting those cupcakes for my next post. As always, thanks for reading and thanks for commenting! It's great to have supportive readers to keep an eye out for me as I stumble through this self-taught baking course.

Read more...