Maple Mousse in an Edible Chocolate Container, A Daring Bakers Challenge

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at  http://thedaringkitchen.com

So I made these today. On the day we had to post them. The actual recipe called for maple mousse in ham containers... and since I don't eat ham and to be honest found the meat/maple taste mixture a bit odd, I opted to make edible chocolate containers.

I had seen a technique for this in one of my many cookbooks and decided to recreate it with some variations of my own.

For the edible chocolate container:


200g milk chocolate (I used Van Houten's baking chocolate)

Turn small glass bowls upside down and place on a tray.
Scrunch up some baking paper and form it over the upside down bowls.
Melt the milk chocolate on a double boiler and leave to cool for five minutes.
Pour the melted chocolate over the bowl covered with baking paper. Use a spatula to evenly coat the bowl with the chocolate. Leave to set for half an hour and then place in a fridge for two-three hours to completely form.

For the maple mousse:

Ingredients: 

1 cup (240 ml/ 8 fluid oz.) pure maple syrup (not maple-flavoured syrup)

4 large egg yolks
1 package (7g/1 tbsp.) unflavoured gelatine
1 1/2 cups (360 ml. g/12 fluid oz) whipping cream (35% fat content)

  

Directions:

1. Bring maple syrup to a boil then remove from heat.
2. In a large bowl, whisk egg yolks and pour a little bit of the maple syrup in while whisking (this is to
temper your egg yolks so they don’t curdle).
3. Add warmed egg yolks to hot maple syrup until well mixed.
4. Measure 1/4 cup of whipping cream in a bowl and sprinkle it with the gelatine. Let it rest for 5
minutes. Place the bowl in a microwave for 45 seconds (microwave for 10 seconds at a time and
check it in between) or place the bowl in a pan of barely simmering water, stir to ensure the
gelatine has completely dissolved.
5. Whisk the gelatine/whipping cream mixture into the maple syrup mixture and set aside.
6. Whisk occasionally for approximately an hour or until the mixture has the consistency of an unbeaten
raw egg white.
7. Whip the remaining cream. Stir 1/4 of the whipped cream into the maple syrup mixture. Fold in the
remaining cream and refrigerate for at least an hour.
8. Remove from the fridge and divide equally among your edible containers.

The maple mousse was heavenly. I don't think I've had anything moussey apart from chocolate or lemon mousse and this just gave me the idea that I can make tons of different types of mousse! And all sorts of flavours! The more cream I added, the lighter the color became, but the taste stayed wonderful.

Here are some pictures, which I'm not too happy with.. they took me a total of 3 minutes to snap. I'm still horribly jet-lagged and just wasn't bothered to spend lots of time taking photos. But enjoy.

OH! And the edible containers? Yeah, make sure you pop them back in the fridge after each attempt to peel the paper off. Chocolate bits kept on breaking off and the entire thing was starting to melt in my hands, so I put them in the fridge after every attempt to peel and eventually peeled the whole thing off while it was all still the fridge.. I was half in the fridge as well...

Forever Nigella: Ciao Italia

Nigella's shows are extremely fun to watch. And up until today, I didn't know how extremely fun it would be to make her recipes..

I'm taking part in Maison Cupcake's Monthy Blog Challenge called "Forever Nigella". The theme for this month was "Ciao Italia" - to make anything Italianish from Nigella's recipes.

I found this love one called "Italian Chicken and Pasta" at Nigella.com and decided to use that. Partly because apparently the it had all the colours of the Italian flag. And since, Italy's 150th birthday was a few days ago, why not celebrate one's patriotism. (No I'm not Italian no matter how much I'd like to be). It also reminded me of a triple layer sandwich that we make at home.. which reminds me of the Italian flag.

I changed some things around from the original recipe. Here's my version:

Boil 150g of pasta.

Fry half a red capsicum, and half a green capsicum in olive oil.

Add tomato pasta sauce (as much as you'd like!) and stir well. Allow for the mixture to boil.

Toss in some whole black olives.

Add the pasta and stir well with a handful (yes!) of chilli flakes.

Garnish with chopped coriander and mozzarella cheese and serve!

I didn't use any chicken because I thought I had some boiled chicken leftover from lunch.. which I didn't.. And instead of bechamel sauce I used tomato pasta sauce because I'm trying to be healthier.

It tasted really good and was very, very light.

Think Pink Blog Challenge: Glacé Cherries with Raspberries and Rose Milk

I came across this month's Monthly Mingle challenge at Maison Cupcake's blog- who was hosting it. The theme was wonderful: it was make anything with a pinkish ingredient! (Check out the rhubarb, raspberry and white chocolate pavlova on Maison Cupcake here.)

I LOVE pink. It's kind of a rekindled love as of late. At five, it obviously was my favourite colour. My room was pink. My clothes were pink. My Barbie dolls' dresses were pink. But at around 10 I grew out of it and went on a yellow/orange/red phase. Now, ten years later, I'm back at pink. And pink food is just so pretty. Pink cakes, cupcakes, macarons, biscuits, icing, frosting, fruits, sugarcraft flowers, you name it! Oh, and pink napkins, candles, and plates....

I chose to make two items for the blog challenge. The first was a rose syrup drink.

I have memories of this since ever. It's a drink that we usually make during Ramadan- our month of fasting. After a day of no food and water, this drink is especially refreshing. It's extremely simple to make. This rose syrup is like a cordial. You add four-five parts milk to one part rose syrup. And make sure to stir really well. Recently, we've taken a twist on this and started adding water to the rose syrup. If I'm not mistaken, rose syrup is a South Asian/Persian ingredient and is drunk primarily countries around that region.

The second thing I chose to make was a cherry cake. I've made this cake only once before- and to amazing reviews!

Ingredients:

210g glace cherries

30g plain flour

90g unsalted butter, softened

160g caster sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla essence

125g self raising flour

80ml milk

A handful of raspberries

-Icing: 125g icing sugar

20g unsalted butter

pink food colouring

Procedure:

Preheat oven to moderate 180C. Grease a 20cm ring cake tin. Dust with flour and shake off any excess. Rinse and dry the glace cherries and cut each in half. Toss them in a little of the flour.

Cream the butter and sugar in a small bowl with electric beaters until light and fluffy. Add the eggs gradually, beating thoroughly after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Transfer to a large bowl. Using a large metal spoon, fold in the sifted flours alternately with the milk. Stir in the cherries. Spoon the tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into centre of cake. Leave in tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto wire rack to cool.

For the icing, combine the sifted icing sugar, butter, and 1-2 tablespoons water in a small heatproof bowl. Stand the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, ensuring the base doesn't touch the water. Stir the mixture until the butter has melted and the icing is glossy and smooth. Stir in a couple of drops of food colouring. Drizzle over the cake. Fill the centre of cake with raspberries. Serve with toffee syrup, if desired.

Random Recipe: Pea and Potato Pakora

At 5PM this afternoon, I was browsing through food blogs and came across Belleau Kitchen. Specifically, I came across this post in Belleau Kitchen. It was a blog challenge with a closing date of.. TODAY. I had never taken part in a blog challenge and I immediately thought that I should participate in this- especially since I loved the theme.

Often, when I am bored and do not know what to make for dinner.. I close my eyes, pick up a random cookbook, blindly flip through it, and then open my eyes to see what I'll be having for dinner that night. This blog challenge called for exactly that. I rushed over to my bookshelf and since I didn't want to "take all your cook books off the shelf and shuffle them" as the challenge called for, I closed my eyes and picked out around six cookbooks at random. If I were to take all my neatly organized cookbooks off the shelf, the perfectionist OCD in me would throw a fit....

Anyways, the book I ended up picking (by further closed eyes) was one called 500 Appetizers by Susannah Blake. The recipe that the book opened up to was "pea and potato pakora with yogurt".

Very ironic. I'm half Pakistani and have never made pakora.. something of a staple in a South Asian's diet. I have eaten it though.. a lot. Apparently pakoras are perfect for when it's raining- as I'm told so often.

(I sent some of these over to my aunt for her to try and she said that these actually aren't PAKORAS.. they're something called batata wara... sounds funny, I know. Sounds like Hakuna Matata. The batter for these is the same batter used in pakora.. only difference is that this contains potato.. hence batata wara and not pakora....)

Anyways, back to the pakoras. I usually try to avoid making anything deep fried... because of the high oil content... but I made these because obviously that was the spirit of the blog challenge.. randomness and spontaneity... and who better to indulge in spontaneity than The Spontaneous Euphoria herself? Hmm.

These were exceptionally easy to make (and fun!). I loved swirling the pakoras around in the oil as they fried....

Here's the recipe.. I added double to triple the amount of chili powder and fresh green chillies though.. also, don't forget to SEASON it!

Ingredients

450g potatoes, boiled and mashed

125g frozen peas, thawed

2-3 fresh green chillies, seeded and finely chopped

4 spring onions, finely sliced

2tsp ground cumin

1tsp ground coriander

3tbsp chopped fresh coriander leaves

115g gram flour

1/2tsp chilli powder

1tsp turmeric

1tsp baking powder

200ml cold water

Sunflower oil for deep frying

Salt

Procedure

Mix the potatoes, peas, chillies, spring onions, cumin, ground and fresh coriander. Season with salt and stir to combine. Shape into 16 walnut-sized balls, place on a platter and chill for at least 30 minutes, until firm.

Mix the gram flour, chilli, turmeric, and baking powder in a bowl. Using a fork, stir in a quarter of the water to make a thick, smooth paste. Stir in the remaining water smoothly.

Heat oil for frying to 180C. Dip the balls in the batter and fry for about 2 minutes, until golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Keep hot until all are ready.