Daring Bakers Challenge - Chocolate Valentino Cake

It's the end of another month, and you know what that means...time for another Daring Baker's Challenge. When I first saw the challenge I read "chocolate" and "ice cream", and I immediately knew I was going to love this challenge.

The February 2009 challenge was hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef who 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.

We were given an incredible amount of freedom with this challenge. We were able to choose the type of chocolate used for the cake (dark, milk, white, etc.), and we could choose whatever ice cream recipe our little heart desired. I decided to use milk chocolate for the cake, and I made a delicious coffee ice cream.

Where to begin...well let's get started off with the cake recipe:

Chocolate Valentino

Preparation Time: 20 minutes
16 ounces of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons 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 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 (I used a 9in. cake pan and then cut smaller cakes out of it)
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.
Once my cake was done, I cut out 2 inch circles and squares. I stacked two pieces of cake together and decorated it with chocolate. I either painted on melted chocolate to create a hard chocolate shell, or I used thick chocolate shavings. Add a little powdered sugar, and Oh Yum!
I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ice Cream! Coffee ice cream to be exact. The recipe I used was from Simply Recipes. Check out the recipe here. The cup that is holding the ice cream is made of chocolate too! Since this post is already getting lengthy, check back next week for a post on how to make them.

Remember that this is a "Chocolate Valentine", so I gave my parents and my sister and brother-in-law these yummy cakes for a Valentine treat. I think if I hadn't given away some of the cakes I could have eaten them all! They really were incredibly rich, delicious and down-right decadent!