Always love Chocolate- Five of my best chocolate desserts!
Baking, baking and pastry books, Chocolate, Desserts
Always love Chocolate- Five of my best chocolate desserts!
In ancient history chocolate was thought to be the food of gods when served in a drink to the early Mayan kings. Still enjoyed around the world as a luxuries delight, chocolate can be made into any number of desserts. Here are some ideas for how to use chocolate in desserts.
Ok I have to admit it, I am a Chocoholic. Now that I’ve confessed- allow me to share some images of my past chocolate desserts that we served in our student-run restaurant “Scallions” at Ozarks Technical Community College. These are Swiss Chalet, Chocolate bourbon deep dish pecan pie, Chocolate cherry bread pudding, Baileys Irish Cream mousse torte, and Chocolate mousse with a chocolate dipped cookie comb.
Deep dish chocolate bourbon pecan pie baked in a pate sucree crust. Topped with a chocolate ganache.
By using the best quality ingredients and understanding how to use foundational basic techniques and recipes many great desserts can be made with chocolate. These ideas in this post are meant to spark your creativity so that you too can make unique desserts with chocolate.
Chocolate Cherry Bread Pudding is a simple dessert made with dried bread and cherries soaked with a vanilla custard flan mix, then mixed with chocolate pieces prior to baking it in ramekins in a water bath (Bain Marie). I garnished it with crisp baked phyllo sheet brushed with butter and dusted with coco powder. To see how to make it check out this video produced by Johnson County Community College at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xboZsYRZCI
Milk chocolate Baileys Irish Cream Mousse Torte. One of my award winning desserts.
Chocolate mousse served with a chocolate cookie dipped in dark chocolate garnished with whipped cream and shaved chocolate. This is a simple mousse made in three steps. Swiss meringue, fold with melted chocolate and then folded with whipped cream.
Shaped like a Swiss Chalet this dessert is made with a chocolate genoise, layered with whipped chocolate ganache lighted with a small amount of butter cream. It is then cut into strips and then cut corner to corner. The triangles are turned onto their sides and then pushed together making a triangle shape. The newly formed large triangle is then coated with more ganache before being enrobed in liquid coating ganache. Sliced and served with raspberry sauce and cream Anglaise for a striking presentation of delicious pleasure.
Tips for using Chocolate
- Use high quality chocolate- look for Couverture which contains hi amounts of Cocoa butter and Cocoa solids and is very fluid -for a good description go to: https://www.thespruceeats.com/couverture-chocolate-520352
- Melt chocolate very gently over simmering water in a stainless-steel bowl or in a microwave at half power. Stir often with a plastic spatula smearing the chocolate on the sides of the bowl (like a window wiper) to smooth out lumps.
- Make sure chocolate is mixed well and smooth with no lumps prior to using
- Tempering (crystalizing) chocolate is not necessary when mixing into other ingredients such as meringue or whipped cream (mousse), whipped butter/sugar (butter cream) or cake batters (brownies).
- Some good brands of chocolate couverture that I recommend are Callebaut, Valrhona, Felchlin, Guittard.
- Be wary of chocolate chips many of which contain other ingredients – don’t use chips for mousse or ganache- use couverture.
Foundational techniques and sub recipes for these desserts can be found in my book Pastry & Dessert Techniques available at Amazon.
