Daring Baker's Flourless Chocolate Cake.

First, The Required Bit:
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.

Okay. So. I can never get these up on time. This month was flourless chocolate cake. 'Twas recommended that we use a heart-shaped pan. But I think that would be the most ridiculous thing. Who even celebrates Valentine's Day still? It's just a corporate holiday. I don't se it as anything special. If you want to give me chocolates, give me chocolates. But don't do it because society tells you to. Morons. Anyway. I used my nifty new eight-and-a-half-inch springform pan. It works fine.

The cake was pretty good. All it is is chocolate, eggs, and butter. It was neat. I baked mine perfectly. Which I didn't like. It was good, yes. But completely baked through, I didn't like it so much. I would have fancied it a bit more underbaked because, well, I like things underbaked. Brownies. Cookies. Cinnamon rolls. Yep. Oh well. We still ate the whole thing.

We were also required to make an ice cream to go with it. So I made strawberry ice cream. I decided to do half the recipe. It calls for five ounceds of egg yolks. Heh... Which, as it turns out, is about eight egg yolks. 'Twas a lot. My second ice cream (because I had leftover heavy cream) was a caramel ice cream with some cooked apples. I went searching for a "caramel apple ice cream." And I realised as I typed it in, that what I wanted was a caramel ice cream with some apples sauteed in butter, sugar, cinnamona and other such good things. Which isn't really what you think of when thinking of "caramel apples." But I actually found something that matched what I wanted anyway. Next time, though, I think I'll leave the apples out. Something about what I added to the apples, though, prevented the ice cream from freezing solid. The base was in my bowl churning, it was almost done... I added the apples... and it suddenly started to liquefy. So I gave up on it freezing up again, and just scraped it in a container and put it in the freezer. I thought, "Great, I'm going to have frozen ice cream." The next day, when I went to get a spoonful, it was incredibly soft. And has remained so.

Oh. And whereas the caramel apple ice cream is very soft.. it also melts incredibly quickly. The strawberry ice cream... it's not quite solid, but it is rather firm. But it melts veeeeery slowly. So that was neat.

Chocolate Valentino
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.
2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.
3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).
5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.
6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}
8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C
9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.
10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.