My colleague "Stuie" had invited a few work colleagues around to his for lunch at his nice little place in Old Trafford, Manchester. The food was delightful, home made stuffed breads and "zucchini" bakes etc... but he had also challenged me to make a dessert using two things you wouldn't usually associate with each other.
His white chocolate and basil base with strawberries and balsamic vinegar dressing looked great and was divine to eat. Now it was my turn. The below picture shows how my first and only attempt looked the night before. Last minute as usual! No recipe either, but it felt right... silly boy.
Lovely looking isn't it? It is a rosemary chocolate base with a cremé de cassis icing. ...the not too sweet topping really helped the not sweet at all base and together they tasted divine. All you nee to do is warm some double cream with some crushed rosemary, then after removing the rosemary just dump in some dark chocolate. At this point saner people than I would be thinking this would make a great pie filling... too easy I lament!
The topping is made from golden icing sugar (regular readers would know how much the golden sugar has messed me about in the past!) with a few tablespoons 0f water and cremé de cassis (blackcurrant liqueur).
This is where it all goes wrong! Because the golden sugar made the icing a dirty cream colour I had to put more blackcurrent liqueur in to turn it pink/blackcurranty. This meant it was never going to bl**dy set properly, and would mean it spread out on-top on the choccy (see pic). In The next morning it had separated a bit too. No worries, I'll just roll it, to make it a) easier to roll , and b) easier to eat.
I could b1tch about why it went wrong, but suffice to say it took me longer than planned to get to said lunch and consequently my dessert had melted into each other. The rescue plan was then to be able to spread it onto digestive biscuits, but since I'd tried to rescue it by putting it into the fridge it was too cool to spread... so (if this were a film Leslie Nielsen would be playing me) to soften it I put it in a oven that was cooling down after being used... it only needed a few seconds...
The chocolate fondue was nice ( :'-( ) but was blown out of the water by the strawberries and white choc... oh well, live and learn!!!
Food, glorious food... done my way. Pretence of perfection
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7 comments:
Thank you for your comments. Your chocolate "disaster" turned into a divine fondue.....very decadent.
Okay now wait.. explain to me please.
The base was just chocolate & rosemary spread onto a sheet, yes? And then you frosted that with the creme de cassis icing, yes? And then you what? Put it in the fridge?
Okay.. here's my thoughts. This combo sound too incredibly good to not give it another shot.. what if you used a different sugar - say icing sugar? and then poured it over the chocolate, chilled for a while and then rolled it up and cut into pinwheels? Holy crap that just sounds divine to me. hehee
I think it was a valiant effort and very creative with those ingredients! Well done, Mark!
xoxo
Lis, it was in fact icing suger (but some unrefined one). And I did end up rolling it so it formed a lovely spiral, from they I was going to slice it and serve it... but...
I'm redoing it in a pastry crust base tomorrow! :-D
mmm pie. you get lots of points for the tasty looking colour combo too :)
I think we can all agree with that thought! Mmm pieeeeeeeee
To me, this is proof that all things, especially when sugar is involved, can be saved in the end.
Love you as Leslie Nielsen!
It lost the blackcurrant taste though, and just made the rosemary chocolate sweeter...
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