Korena in the Kitchen

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. Check out the challenge details and all the other Daring Bakers’ interpretations of it at the Daring Kitchen.

Last week Nate and I agreed that we’d been eating like crap lately – too much sugary junk, not enough vegetables – and we made a pact to eat better. Then the next day I started making this Daring Bakers Challenge, which is definitely sugary and doesn’t contain any vegetables, unless you count cocoa or tequila as a vegetable.

They were both vegetables/plants, once upon a time, right? Right?!

Oh well. Our fridge is overflowing with lettuce right now, so we’ll make up for it in salads

This is a complicated looking dessert that is actually fairly straight forward, once you get your ducks in a row. The original recipe comes from a restaurant in Seattle, and the yield was for 18 servings!! Thank you Audax Artifex for cutting it down to a more reasonable 6 servings – although this could have easily made 8 servings. It was so rich that only Nate and I managed to clean our plates – everyone else tapped out, so next time I’ll definitely serve smaller portions!What you’re doing here is making a flavoured chocolate ganache and mixing it with whipped cream and whipped egg yolks tempered with sugar syrup. You then freeze this magical concoction to make a frozen chocolate pudding-mousse. You cut it into slices, coat it in cocoa powder, and serve it in a semi-frozen state on top of torched meringue (like the topping on a lemon meringue pie) with caramel sauce and spiced almonds.

I stayed true to the original flavoring of tequila in the chocolate marquise and caramel, but I used chipotle powder instead of cayenne because I thought the slightly smoky flavour would compliment both the dark chocolate and the tequila. Next time I might add a bit of cinnamon to round out the Mexican flavours. I can also see how this would be amazing with coffee flavouring or Kahlua for a mocha marquise, and maybe a dark chocolate porter beer in the caramel. Or maybe hazelnut or Frangelico… So many delicious possibilities!

I took a lesson from my last Daring Bakers Challenge and did this over several days: I made and froze the marquise a few days before, and then on the day I was serving it, I made the caramel, nuts, and meringue. Much, much better than trying to cram it all into one day! (Which would be really hard to do anyway, because the marquise needs 6-8 hours to freeze.) Also, there is a LOT of whisking that goes into this recipe. I used my KitchenAid stand mixer, but you could manage just fine with a handheld mixer if you had someone else around to hold it while you do other things. Hats off to the brave Daring Bakers out there who made this whole thing with a hand whisk!

This recipe went off without a hitch, except for the spiced almonds: I must have over-beaten the egg white because I ended up with more of a spiced-almond-meringue-brittle. Thirty minutes was also too long in the oven, and the nuts around the edges got a little burnt, but I just broke them off and chopped the rest up to sprinkle on the plates. So in the end, success! Continue reading →

Tags: baking, caramel, chipotle, chocolate, Daring Bakers Challenge, dessert, eggs, food, meringue, nuts, recipe, tequila