Daring Baker's February: For the love of Chocolate!!

Okayh, first of all, I apologize deeply for the lack of blogging here and not participating in the last two Daring Baker's challenge. After a glitch in the first one (French yule log) during the posting, I thought I could just wait another day to post it. Unfortunately, I never could get back to it (or even continuing blogging) due to some catastrophic events. It wasn't sudden. I could almost sense what I was getting myself into. And it wasn't continuously bothering me, but at the end of the day, I was so mentally drained, I could not bare looking at my blog or others'. For the last one and a half month, I'd open the internet, check through the emails and that's it. (sometimes I'd wander through some of Martha's site tho) But I digress. Hello? I thought this is suppose to be a Daring Baker's post? hahaha.

Our challenge for February is a flourless (and almost sugarless) moist chocolate cake.
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.


So, anyway!

wow, a Chef Wan recipe. I have always admired what he could do. Baking and cooking while throwing out mouthful of jokes and cooking tips at the audience. I had tried some of his recipe and it worked. And that's why when I say there will be no sugar in the recipe, I remained calm... ...okay, so I panicked a bit. the recipe was so simple with only three ingredients!! there were no sugar or flour in sight!! Usually, I'd pop cake/biscuits/tart in the oven and then walk away to do other things. But this time around, I was there in front of the oven, looking intently through the heat for it to rise and see if, at any moment, it's going to burst apart or crack open one hell of a mess! Hahaha. I can be so paranoid sometime. the cake was very good. My mom loves it (as it was not sweet at all) since I used bittersweet chocolate. And eating it with ice-cream was d~i~v~i~n~e!! Argh, Thank you Wendy and Dharm for this months challenge. Recipes for both cake and ice cream can be found at their site.


let's start with the ingredients. there were only three; Butter, Chocolate and Eggs

Melted butter and chocolate (I used Hershey's Bittersweet)

Egg white Meringue

Egg Yolks

Essentially, you mix everything together to get this mess, haha

Didn't want it to deflate too much, so I just leave it be at this stage.

For this recipe, it stated that a real chocolate Valentino is made either in a heart shape pan or a round cake cut into a heart. I was feeling a bit crafty (ouh-oh) at the time and bought these origami-heart-thingy for baking.


tada! but the drawback is, every single instruction was in Japanese!! I'm learning Japanese but to translate word by word using a dictionary would take me AGES!! So what did I do?? I just slap on the border onto the base with water. FREAKING WATER!! I don't know what I was thinking.


here's the 'mould' after I glued it with water. keep in mind that the paper were something like parchment paper (like hell the water would hold it!!) So after careful consideration (my brain seems to began functioning back at the time) I only poured half of the recipe into these mould while the other half was poured into a round tin. Just to be safe. :P



while it was in the oven, the cake rose beautifully! I could almost not believe the mould was working!! and then when I decided it was done (don't want to over bake it) took it out, and these is what I get.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!! the mould have lost it's shape in the proces and it now a freaking blob! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! I'm never trusting that damned paper again!!! (but there's still like 30 of them in the drawer!) aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-hahahaha!!



the round tin had better result, but it deflated after a while. Then it was devoured before I could say anything. It was that good! hehe.

Hot, off the oven, nice eh?

It deflated!! but it's still moist as ever!!

After a 3 minute of yelling and cursing, I sat down at the cake (the crooked one). took a blade and began carving out a heart by using the minimal-ist cut. the heart shape paper mould was about 3'' so imagine how small it would be if i just cut it normally. It would be TINY!! luckily, I was able to cut it without losing too much. hehe :)

Chocolate Valentino with Berry Ice Cream

Check out other daring baker's here. I can't wait for next month's misadventure! haha!!