There's No Fool Like an April Fool... Unless it's a Rhubarb Fool

There is no better time for "foolin" around in the kitchen than April Fools Day.  Especially when one is foolin around with a Rhubarb Fool.  Granted the traditional Fool is made with gooseberries, but they aren't available yet.  Thus, I have turned to my favorite vegetable instead. (Yes, Rhubarb is a vegetable, not a fruit)

Fool, is an extremely simple British dessert of cream and fruit.  It's similar to the French parfait (perfect), though a parfait contains equal amounts of whipped cream and beaten egg whites which are them spooned on top of, or layered with, stewed fruit or chocolate.  That is, unless you ordered a Peanut Buster Parfait from the Dairy Queen, in which you are consuming Chocolate Syrup, Peanuts, Ice Cream and Whipped cream all layered together. (yeah, not really a parfait, but I guess they thought the name was cool)

A Fool, on the other hand, is simply stewed fruit folded loosely into Whipped Cream.  I say "loosely folded" because you don't want everything completely dispersed.  Streaks are encouraged in this case.  In fact, the more streaky, the better.  It lends visual appeal to the dessert.

But enough jabber, lets get to foolin around with the Fool.

Rhubarb Fool

1 pound (454 g) Frozen Rhubarb cut into ~ 1 inch pieces
1/3 cup (75 ml) Orange Blossom Honey
a Pinch or 2 of Cinnamon
Zest and Juice of one Orange, Tangerine or Mineola (tangelo)
1 TB Gran Marnier
1 cup (235 ml) Heavy Cream
4 TB Crème Fraîche or 4 TB of Heavy Cream
2 TB Confectioners' Sugar

So take 1 lb of gloriously red Rhubarb,

Cut into 1 inch pieces a place it in a medium saucepan over medium flame.

Add the Zest of an Orange, Tangerine or Mineola (tangelo) as well as the juice.

Then drizzle the Orange Blossom Honey all over it.

Then sprinkle with just a touch of cinnamon (about 1/16th of a tsp)

Bring to a simmer, then reduce the flame to medium-low.

After about 15 -20 minutes, you should have a nice salmon pink mass of deliciousness with all the chunks completely broken down.

Remove from the flame and pour into a bowl, letting the sauce cool to room temperature.

Once cooled, stir in the Gran Marnier.

Then cover and chill for at least 2 hours.

At this point, you may forgo the "fool" and simply pour this "stewed" fruit over your ice cream, but it would be foolish to fool around with a potentially great Fool, so keep going....

In a chilled medium bowl, combine Heavy Cream, Crème Fraîche and Confectioners' Sugar.

Whisk until just past soft peaks form - I call it firm peaks (as opposed to stiff, fully beaten cream)

Remove the rhubarb sauce from the refrigerator and fold it into the cream in 2 additions. (Don't worry about streaks)

Spoon carefully into some fancy tulip glasses or cocktail glasses.

Cover each one with plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour.

Serve with a garnish of your choice. (I think mint is over done sometimes, so I use cleaned fern tops)

Mangia!!
~~

Decadent Deflated Dessert - Fallen Chocolate Soufflé Cake

I was watching Laura Calder the other day and she made this decadent looking chocolate cake for one of her friends, along with these delicious looking Aubergine Charlottes which I REALLY want to try.  She has become one of my favorite chefs on the Cooking Channel.  I love her no-fuss approach to "French" cooking.  After all, not everyone in France eats "haute cuisine" all the time.   I mean let's get real here.

I was intrigued by her interpretation of "flourless chocolate cake".  I have tried several recipes in the past and attempted to choke them down in multiple restaurants as well.  Each time I have been terribly disappointed. Darn good thing I am not gluten intolerant, or I would forever be denied a decent chocolate cake.

Well, I tried her "Craggy Chocolate Cake" recipe and I am forever in love.  It's like a soufflé, yet like a brownie, yet like the most rich an decadent chocolate cake you ever tasted.  Completely and totally divine.  My only suggestion, for those wishing to try this recipe, is to forgo the Whipped Cream and invest in a little Crème Fraîche;  SO much more luscious, especially with a little orange zest.  YUM!

Though she calls it a "Craggy Chocolate Cake", I really like to think of this as an intentionally failed soufflé, for it is, at it's basic level, a soufflé recipe; minus an egg white or two.  Collapsed though it may be, I find this to be genius, for if I had known that a fallen chocolate soufflé would be this awesome, I would have been practicing purposeful deflation a long time ago.  I mean, talk about making a purse out of a sows ear!  Utterly Brilliant!

The recipe is SO simple too, especially due to the lack of a couple egg whites.  All you have to remember is 200.  200 grams of this and 200 grams of that.  I know, I know, we don't normally measure eggs by grams, especially when you have to separate them.  But 4 large whole eggs averages 200 grams, without the shells of course, cause that would add a decidedly unpleasant "crunch" to the soufflé.

Laura Calder's Craggy Chocolate Cake

(Fallen Soufflé Cake)

200 g 70% Bitter Chocolate, chopped (about 7 oz)
4 eggs Large Eggs, separated
200 g Cultured Butter
200 g Granulated Sugar, divided (this is about 1 cup minus 1 tsp)
Pinch of Kosher Salt (my own addition)

For Serving:

8 oz Crème Fraîche
3 TB Confectioners' Sugar
Zest of 1/2 Orange
1 tsp Cointreau or Gran Marnier
Orange Zest Strips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (on my oven 350 degrees worked better); line an 8-inch springform pan with parchment then grease and flour the pan.

Chop the chocolate,

and separate the eggs.

Place chopped chocolate in a saute pan, over low heat and allow to melt.

Once melted, add the butter and stir until smooth, then remove from the heat and set aside.

 Combine Egg Yolks and 1/2 cup (100 g) of the sugar in a small bowl.

Beat the Yolks and Sugar until they reach the ribbon stage (when the beaters are lifted, a wide ribbon of yoll falls into the bowl)

Add a spoon of the warm chocolate mixture to the yolks and whisk it in (this will help to condition the yolks and prevent scrambled eggs)

Once the yolk mixture has been warmed, go ahead and add the remaining melted chocolate and whisk until thick and delicious looking. ;)

In a large bowl (I prefer copper) whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt (cause it helps denature the proteins and provides balance to the flavor)

Once you reach soft peaks, begin sprinkling in the remaining 1/2 cup (100g) of sugar and whip until a lovely glossy French Meringue is formed. (this is stiff peaks)

Add about 1/2 cup of the Meringue to the chocolate mixture and stir it in, this will lighten it a little and make the remaining folding a little easier.

Add the now lightened chocolate mixture to the remaining Meringue and fold until well blended.

Pour the batter into the prepared spring-form pan.

Bake for 50-55 minutes.

Remove from the oven and set on a cooling rack.

Use a small icing spatula or a knife to release the edge of the cake from the pan, allowing it to contract and crack.

Allow to cool and enjoy the show as the souffle sinks and cracks like a volcanic landscape.

As far as serving goes, you can serve with whipped cream if you like, but I decided that since I always talk about how wonderful Crème Fraîche is, I should probably blog a little about it.

Ya see, Crème Fraîchee, unlike American Sour Cream or Mexican Crema, will actually whip, just like heavy cream.  Granted, it won't be quite as light as whipped cream, but it's just SO delicious! Sooooooooo....

Place Crème Fraîche, Orange Zest, Confectioners' Sugar and Cointreau in a small bowl.

Put the spurs to it!  (whisk or beat until it becomes fluffy)

It's that easy....

Now add a healthy spoonful to the top of a slice of this delicious cake....  YUM!

Mangia!!
~~

P.S.  Please note the new "Print Friendly" button at the bottom of this post.  This will allow you to print just the text of this post alleviating the need for me to create a "site" link to a separate location for a print friendly recipe. 

Let Them Eat Dirt... Cake - Dirt Cake/Triffle

Every once in awhile, I become the victim of my own "cleverness".

Case in point.....

Our Family reunion was this weekend and I was asked to make dessert. Pies are a given, but I wanted something special for the little ones. When I was younger, we use to love Dirt Cake (though it's not so much a cake, as it is a trifle). For anyone who has never had Dirt "Cake", it is simply ground up Oreo or Hydrox which is layered, with a instant vanilla pudding that has been fortified with butter and cream cheese which then has Cool-Whip folded into it. It's actually pretty darned tasty. BUT

There is that big "but" again.. ;)

If you read the instant pudding ingredients you will find a lot of junk that really is unnecessary. I mean, Vanilla pudding is white, so why does it contain artificial coloring. Evidently it's the wrong shade of white.... Which is insane, considering that vanilla pods and the caviar contained therein are brown. Apparently, "egg shell white" is not as appetizing as "ecru". LOL
Be that as it may, I come from a chocolate loving family. So the issue of the vanilla pudding color was kind of a mute point, since we always used chocolate pudding anyway. However, it is also artificially colored and flavored these days.

That being said, I decided that I was simply going to make the "chocolate pudding" from scratch. Then, somewhere in the twisted depths of my mind I suddenly decided that a simple chocolate pudding wasn't good enough for my nieces & nephews. That was how the mousse came about. And while I now have a Dirt Cake that is blessedly free of foreign contaminates and fairly low in sugar, it is extremely high in fat... I used a quart of whipping cream. This was an issue that I did not foresee.

Pudding is made with milk, mousse is made with whipping cream (and raw beaten egg whites, but I left those out) The original Dirt Cake then has whipping cream (Cool Whip) folded into the pudding, thus I had to fold MORE whipping cream into my already whipped cream laced mousse. Not my most brilliant of endeavors, but it was REALLY good. :)

Oh, and I hunted down Newman's Own, Chocolate sandwich cookies. Not so much because they are Organic, but because they lack High-Fructose Corn Syrup and Hydrogenated oils. That was another one of those "things" that I climb on my soapbox about. Cool Whip is nothing more than sweetened whipped hydrogenated shortening (Crisco) so I avoid it like the plague. But the filling in Oreo & Hydrox cookies is also sweetened shortening. This along with the artificial colors, flavors, & preservative chemicals.... It was clear that I needed a less "deadly" cookie.

Don't get me wrong... I love Oreo & Hydrox, but I'm an adult and I am fully aware of the consequences when I introduce "counter-productive" foods into my system. Children are not, thus it is our responsibility to protect and educate them, so when they grow up they can make informed bad food choices too. LOL

OK, That is enough of my insane babble. Let's get this Mousse on the road!

Dirt Cake

Chocolate Mousse
16 oz Bittersweet Chocolate (at least 62%)
3 oz Espresso
1 TB Cointreau
1 1/4 tsp Gelatin
2 1/4 cup Light Whipping Cream; Divided

Cream Cheese mixture
4 oz Butter
8 oz Cream Cheese
1 cup Confectioners' Sugar

To Complete the cake
1 3/4 cups Light Whipping Cream
a small bag of Gummy worms
24 oz Newman's Own Sandwich Cookies
1 Clean plastic flower pot (run it through the dishwasher on the top rack)
1-2 bunches of silk flowers (wash the stems with soap and water; you can insert a straw and slide flowers down the tube, but I had a "bunch" and it was too big in fit in the straw)

Makin' Mousse...
Begin melting Bittersweet chocolate in the top of a double boiler.

Add Espresso and Cointreau.

Stirring until smooth. (you can add a pinch of cayenne as well, if you like)

Remove from heat and let cool a little.

Place 1/4 cup of the Whipping Cream in a small heatproof cup and sprinkle with gelatin, allowing it to bloom.

Melt Gelatin over low heat (I use a small Corningware dish filled with water over low heat)

Pour the melted Gelatin into the cooled melted chocolate and stir to combine.

Move the mixture to a large shallow bowl and let it continue cooling (this will make folding easier)


NOTE: Normally, if I were only making this as a mousse, I would have whipped the 2 cups of light cream, folded it in and spooned it into old fashioned champagne glasses and chilled it for at least 1 hour and up to 4 without covering. But since I was making the dirt cake I had to switch it up a little bit.

Place Butter, Cream Cheese and Confectioners' Sugar in a medium bowl.

Beat them until they are light and fluffy.

Fold in the cream cheese mixture into the gelatin laced chocolate in 2 additions.

Now, whip 2 cups of Light Cream until light and fluffy (do not add sugar to the whipping cream)

Fold the whipped cream into the chocolate in 3 additions.

Cover with plastic wrap on the surface, and chill.

Final Assembly:
Remove the chocolate/cream cheese mixture from the refrigerator and let it warm up a little bit.
Take your Newman's O's and toss them in a food processor (24 oz is 1 1/2 packages, which leaves 1/2 a package for you to enjoy with a big glass of milk)

Pulse them until you have fairly fine crumbs.

Place 1 3/4 cups light whipping cream in a bowl and whip until firm. (Again, don't add any sugar)

Fold the whipping cream into the Chocolate mousse in 3 additions, to further lighten it.

Grab the flower pot (make sure you ran it through the dishwasher)

Sprinkle the bottom with 1/3 of the cookie crumbs.

Spoon 1/2 of the Chocolate Cream Cheese Mousse into the pot.

Sprinkle with 1/2 of the remaining cookie crumbs.

Add some gummy worms.

Spoon the remaining Chocolate Mousse into the pot and cover the worms.

Add a few more worms.

Sprinkle the remaining cookie crumbs over those worms, making sure that a couple of them are peaking out of the top.

Cover with plastic and chill for 8 hours.

Before serving, grab a bunch of silk flowers and wash the stems and insert into the "dirt" and set it on the table as a center piece.

Serve with a washable plastic trowel for the ultimate effect. The kids were a little suspicious at first, but once they realized there were gummy worms in it, they were ALL over it. LOL

Mangia!!
~~