July 2006 Archives
A couple months ago, my mom came to town and we took a baking class at the Institute of Culinary Education. A chocolate baking class. We made a ton of stuff, but the individual molten chocolate cakes were really out of this world. It's one of those desserts you only get when you're eating out, mostly because it seems so extravagant that you don't think of it as a make-at-home dessert. Well, let me tell you: it couldn't be easier. This was by far the most simple, and most chocolaty, thing we made in class. So simple, I wanted to share it with you so you could have a trick up your sleeve for your next dinner party. The original recipe calls for a vanilla sauce over the top, but I think it would go better with a little dollop of whip cream, some fresh raspberries, or even a small scoop of ice cream.
You can make this ahead of time and pour the batter into the molds, baking just before presentation. We brought home one from the class and heated it up the next day and it was still really good. It's a surprisingly resilient recipe.
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
10 T. unsalted butter
3 eggs
3 egg yolks
2/3 C. sugar
1/2 C. all-purpose flour
Seven 4-ounce aluminum foil molds (the cheapy ones you can buy at the store, or ramekins), buttered and floured. Don't flour too heavily or outside of cakes will be white.
Set the oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees.
Fill a saucepan with water and bring to a boil; turn off heat. Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and place over hot water. Stir occasionally until melted. (Melting with double boiler also okay.)
Whisk eggs and yolks together with electric mixer. Whisk in sugar, then butter and chocolate mixture. Mix for a minute on medium speed. Fold in flour.
Fill the molds to within a quarter inch of the top. Bake for 10-12 minutes, then unmold onto plates. You can test one if you're not sure at the end of the bake time. The outside should be cooked, but the middle all liquid yumminess.
UrbanHonking.com and Sweet Tomatoes Present...
Each month the world's greatest buffet restaurant, Sweet Tomatoes, offers a for-a-limited-time-only theme based on a particular ingredient. I don't eat a lot of Pineapple or Lemon, so in my two most recent visits I chose to only eat from these specialty items in order to determine which is the better food, Lemon or Pineapple?
Looking for the IFOCE coverage? We moved it from the food blog Digest to the sports blog True Fan.
You can find all the past entries on Digest here.
You can find all the future entries on True Fan here.
After just missing the wild card slot, Erik Denmark was finally able to make his dream come true of making it to the Nathan's table tomorrow, July 4th. He competed in three qualifiers before this one, held today before the Brooklyn Cyclone's game in Coney Island, and came determined to win. And win he did, with an impressive 22.5 HDBs. He competed against eating legends Jammin' Joe LaRue, Don "Moses" Lerman, and Krazy Kevin, but nothing was keeping this Seattlite from earning his place at the 2006 Nathan's competition. Helping him along were other Nathan's eaters, including Rich LeFevre, Pat Bertoletti, Hall Hunt, Bob Shoudt, and Crazy Legs (there as a guest judge), who were parked right up front and shouting encouraging words to all the eaters throughout.
Pics from the qualifier are here, along with some from the weigh-in held earlier in the day.
