Yes, I am a chocolate addict. Many people claim to be addicts, but do they eat it at least once a day? I don’t think so. It’s gotten to the point where it just gives me that little edge I need during the day. So once again, I was intrigued by a chocolate recipe, and once again, it was by dearest Deb from smitten kitchen. This one called for a chocolate soufflé in cupcake form with dreamy white chocolate mint cream: chocolate soufflé cupcakes with mint cream. I happened to have some leftover Kahlua from the cappuccino cheesecake, so I decided that a touch of that in the white chocolate cream would be just the small kick I wanted.

I’ve just really begun to delve into the baking world, and thus my baking specific supplies included baking sheets, a hand mixer (that I got for almost 70% off the regular price because it was incorrectly marked… lucky deal!), mixing bowls, measuring cups/spoons, and some smattering of whisks, spatulas, etc. Anyway, a pretty basic kitchen. I bought a springform pan for the last recipe because I had a real urge for some cheesecake. This was no different, although I was fortunate enough to receive a wonderful cast iron skillet and a kitchen scale (!) as a belated birthday present. I guess it’s a trend… lacking the main baking utensil. So once again, I had to hit the pavement and search for utensils.

Recently, I was informed of a nice restaurant supply store near Porter Square in Cambridge that I had yet to check out, and I decided that the need for a muffin tin would be a great excuse to go check it out. The store, China Fair, actually was pretty well organized. It had a good range of high volume baking/cooking supplies, as well as some home kitchen supplies. Most items were hit or miss, but at the price they were selling at, it was hard to complain. I found an aluminum muffin tin, some glass mixing/display bowls, and some muffin cups. It was about $25 for all of the above, which really makes it a go to for any situations that come up that will require kitchen supplies. At the rate I’m going… I’ll be heading over again when another recipe takes my fancy…

my brand new muffin tin!

new mixing bowls from the restaurant supply store

Onto the recipe! White chocolate cream base to begin, since it was slated to take 2 hours to chill. Originally, 3 ounces of whipping cream was utilized, but as I had some left over from the cheesecake, I used 4.6 ounces, or about 1.5 times the amount of ingredients. I simply adjusted the other amounts to even it out.

4.6 ounces of delicious

Chopped chocolate seems to be the ideal method for utilizing chocolate in recipes, doesn’t it? I did some more chopping with my santoku knife this time around as well, although I was chopping a white chocolate bar instead of dark chocolate. True to the adjusting amounts for the recipe, I added 3 ounces of white chocolate instead of 2. And then a dash or so of Kahlua for a bit of a flavor.

3 ounces of chopped white chocolate

measuring things out

All of this was happening while the cream simmered on the side; it was poured over the chocolate after it was done simmering, and off to the freezer it went. I chilled for about an hour and a half or so in the freezer, but you could chill in the refrigerator too. However, I personally liked the chill from the freezer.

white chocolate and cream melted together

all lined up and ready to go!

With that squared away, I went onto some soufflé magic. 170 grams of chocolate goodness, 3/4 stick of butter, and some espresso beans created the base for the soufflé.

170 grams of chocolatey goodness

melting the mixture

While the chocolate buttery goodness was melting on the stove, I tackled some separated eggs. Separated eggs are a new thing for me. It actually went pretty well, given that it was my first shot. One yolk broke a little bit in the process, but some egg whites never hurt anyone.

separated eggs, ready to go! on the first try too…

Next was the foamy mixture of egg yolks and sugar. I cut the sugar by 25% or so; 80 grams total instead of 97 grams. Feedback from the cappuccino cheesecake prompted me to attempt less sugar here. Half of the sugar was to be in this fluffy mix, thus the 40 grams.

egg yolks and 40 grams of sugar

fluffy yolks with the sugar… beaten to a nice, foamy consistency

The chocolate was pretty well mixed melted, so I whisked it a bit and transferred to a mixing bowl. All that was left was mixing some egg whites and sugar… except that I was most uncertain during this part of the recipe. I never know what speed to whisk on, or what to do to get the egg whites to mix well with the sugar. The recipe originally called for the egg whites to be mixed themselves; after about 10 minutes of whisking the egg whites to achieve “soft peaks”, I gave up and just added the sugar and salt. I was getting discouraged after another 10 or so minutes of whisking this, until I decided to up the speed on my 7 speed hand mixer to 5 instead of 1 or 2. This made all the difference. Whisking at this speed got me the consistency of medium peaks that I was looking for, and got a nice, fluffy texture that I could fold into the chocolate.

whipped egg white and sugar peaks… took forever!

mix of chocolate and whipped egg whites

After folding in 3 batches, I was ready for the pan. It was a little bit messy, but as it’s my first attempt at pouring cupcakes, I think 2 or so mistakes are forgiveable, don’t you?

poured goodness… with only a few overflows

ready for the close up

Into the oven they went for 16 minutes (and probably could have been longer than that, but I was worried about the quick heat transfer from the aluminum to the cupcakes). After coming out of the oven, the cupcakes almost immediately started deflating… perfect.

straight out of the oven… and deflation begins

onto the plate

While these were cooling, some whipping took place…

whipped cream… SO MUCH BETTER chilled

… and we came out with a delicious masterpiece!

the finale

This came out a lot nicer (with less effort) than the cheesecake. My tips from this recipe:

1. Don’t give up on whipping the egg whites… just keep whipping! And whip at a high speed…
2. If you’re using aluminum bakeware, don’t be worried about the time.. just follow the recipe and leave it in for however you normally would
3. Don’t leave the white chocolate/heavy cream mix in the refrigerator for more than a day… the white chocolate will start to get grainy, and that isn’t that fun in cream . But still delicious!

Somehow, these will have to keep until Father’s Day… true test coming up!

It’s a lovely Friday afternoon in May, the Friday before a three day weekend (YES.), and for some reason, it occurs to me that I want to make something. Something delicious. And celebratory. Because my birthday is this weekend. And for some reason, getting older is still a celebration? Not sure about that one.

Anyway, I headed over to smitten kitchen in order to look for some recipes. And I stumbled upon this lovely recipe: cappuccino cheesecake. Mouthwatering, to say the least. I began looking through the ingredients. The recipe calls for the usual flour, sugar, butter, vanilla extract, and chocolate, plus the addition of some liqueur/liquor, rum, coffee beans, and chocolate wafer cookies. Lovely Deb has a good recipe for homemade chocolate wafers, but I decided that I was being ambitious enough with just the cheesecake. Then off I went to Whole Foods.

I have a love/hate relationship with Whole Foods. I love the fact that it has so many unique ingredients that I can try, and that I can get everything I want or need for a week of cooking there. Trader Joe’s is awesome for frozen foods, dried fruits, cheese, and bread, but it’s always so difficult for me to find something new and fresh to cook. But then Whole Foods has some pretty ridiculous prices on specialty items that really should not be marked up so high. I chose Whole Foods anyway, as it has a grinder right in store! Perfect for getting some ground espresso beans.

I nabbed most of my ingredients, but for some reason, communicating my “chocolate wafer cookies” just wasn’t working out for me. I must have tried speaking to 5 different people about the cookies, but apparently Whole Foods had nothing like them. It was time for me to make my own cookies too (oh boy, add on another hour of work…). Not that I should complain; I got to make cookies the way I wanted them to be, and had some leftovers as well for a snack .

One quick note… I have never used a food processor for any recipe I’ve undertaken in my kitchen. My nice little hand mixer has a doo-dad that does “blending” as well. I decided that this would make less of a mess and give me more consistency, although I had to put some pressure on each of my mixes and it took longer. It was quite the workout! I don’t know if the process would have been significantly smoother with a food processor (I’ll bet it would have been), but I survived without one.

First up, cookies. These are known as icebox cookies, which are cookies made from dough that is refrigerated/frozen (doesn’t really matter which) and usually come in a log, so you can slice them before putting them on a baking sheet. There are no eggs in this specific cookie recipe too, so it’s just a bunch of flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt, and baking soda for dry ingredients, then some butter, milk, and vanilla extract to give that dough-like consistency.

readying for some cookies!

the doughy mix preceding icebox deliciousness

Making the log was probably some of the most fun I had. Kneading dough is very therapeutic, as is mixing with a hand blender. The recipe was pretty simple… dry ingredients, then wet ingredients, and then mix together. I actually cooled the log in the refrigerator for an hour, as opposed to the half hour. A friend of mine, Janice Wang, suggested using the freezer next time. Next time, for sure.

While waiting for the dough to settle into its log, I decided that I would start making the filling for the cheesecake. Wonderful cream cheese, notes of delicious espresso grinds, perfection. The recipe calls for adding eggs one at a time, and I guess this helps with the consistency of the cake not being too runny, but I didn’t worry too much about it. Blend it well, blend it quickly, and it should come out just fine.

fine grinds are okay, but I do like the visibility of the coarse grinds

The ganache needed the same kind of quick blending/whisking, but it came out quite beautifully. The tad bit of Kahlua is a nice little flavor addition also . The filling went into the refrigerator while I made the crust, and the ganache was ready when the crust was ready.

The crust was a whole other story. After cutting the logs, cooking for 16 minutes (switching racks halfway), and letting settle, the cookies came out quite well! Hard to mess up, like I said. But then… I didn’t have a kitchen scale. I know, this is probably one of the few items I SHOULD invest in, but I haven’t gotten there yet! Soon, especially after attempting the crust… Since I didn’t have the equipment, I may have guessed what 9 ounces looks like in cookies… and I definitely guessed wrong the first time around. The mixture was too buttery, too wet.

first guess at cookie volume… you can see how wet it is from the liquidy chocolate along the bowl

It should have tipped me off, but it took until I tried putting it into my springform pan that I realized that I needed more cookies. So more cookies went in. About 60-70% of the dough that I made. The second round was much more successful, if I do say so myself .

crust being patted into the pan… a little thick, but a little extra crust never hurt

After the crust was settled, then the ganache was whisked, poured in, and put into the freezer to cool down. The recipe calls for an hour, I extended this to about 75 minutes and was happier with the turnout. This trend held true for the rest of the recipe.

into the freezer we go

I poured the filling in, then baked for 85 minutes before I was happy with the turnout.

filled up to the edge of the crust!

two layers baked, one to go

The brown edge of my cheesecake hadn’t cracked, but I liked the color, so I took it out. I did some quick whisking of sour cream, sugar and vanilla, and topped it all off. Almost didn’t fill the entire cake, but it was just enough to give my cake a nice little top level. I baked it for about 20 minutes, then decided that it was bedtime and in to the freezer it went!

time to sit in the freezer

The next morning, I woke up to find that there had been some cracking! Apparently very typical with cheesecakes, although mine cracked along the crust… This is probably due to the fact that I just fell asleep after putting it in the freezer, not waiting the hour to release it from the springform. Ah well, it tastes just as delicious!

the cake is finished, but the edges cracked away

a finished cheesecake!

I think some notes for next time I bake this (or for anyone who’s thinking of baking it):
1. Get a scale! Eyeing the weight of something is very tricky unless you’ve been doing it for a while…
2. Make sure to release the cheesecake from the springform after an hour of chilling! This will help prevent the cheesecake from cracking along the edge.
3. Be sure to leave enough time for the ENTIRE recipe, including cooling times. That means leaving about 7-8 hours, at the pace I was going, but I think you can probably cut that down to 5 or 6 with appropriate planning.

Now… back to my delicious cheesecake!