MINI CHOCOLATE BURGERS

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It was a dreadful car ride. I had that feeling- the kind where you know there is doom at the end of the journey. But it had to be done. If not now, it would be too late.

So there I was standing outside the place. I stepped inside- my feet almost ready to run away. But, like I said, it had to be done. So I was there, waiting…waiting with knots in my stomach.

He called me in. He was dressed in white like an angel- but I knew he had the tools of the devil hidden away. He made me lie down. Asked me my name. Did a litle small talk – yeah! like that would ease my nerves!

Then it started. That blinding, in-your-face light. That dreadful noise- the noise that send shivers down your spine. Oh! how I hate that drill and oh! how I hate these dentist visits!

***Update***
Voting at Kitchen Corners is now open! Please go vote for these if you like the recipe!

Well I have not blogged for a while. It’s not that I haven’t been cooking. On the contrary, I have been cooking a lot. But, because of the much hated dentist visits (the very long sittings there and the trauma that goes with them), and cooking for the party my parents had at their house, I have been too busy to blog.

Now, for the above mentioned party I had made “chocolate fondant cake”. It was a disaster. It was nothing like what Raymond Blanc described them to be- and I ended up with mini chocolate cakelets, which I paired with a chocolate sauce and a scoop of ice cream topped with nuts- and thankfully everybody loved it- phew! Saved!

I had some chocolate sauce left from the “chocolate fondant” episode. I was going through my daily serving of tastespotting and saw a burger and the idea of chocolate burger came in my mind. (This is inspite of my dentist repeatedly telling me to stay away from chocolate- I can’t help it, dear dentist, I try but chocolate and I share a bond that just can’t end like that).

I thought for a while and thought cookie would be a perfect idea to sandwich a chocolate ganache to look like a burger.

I thought of entering this for KC April Cook off- the theme – crazy chocolate creations. To make the cookie “bun” completely chocolatey, I used white chocolate- not as chips or chunks but completely melted in the cookie dough batter. So, for the “bun”, I decided to use wheat flour and replaced the oil, milk and sugar (that generally goes in a cookie dough batter) with white chocolate- well isn’t that what white chocolate is made of ! (White chocolate is primarily cocoa butter, sugar, milk and vanilla) Of course I was a little worried about the ratio of the three ingredients in the chocolate compared to what  generally comprises a cookie dough batter and it might change the result of the desired cookie. But they turned out great. I used cinnamon but feel fennel seeds powder or cardamom powder would go better with the white chocolate.

For the “burger” I used the chocolate sauce, that had been kept in the fridge (it solidified a bit in the fridge and was more like a refrigerated ganache). And on top, to replicate sesame seeds, I used some finely chopped cashew.

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Bailey’s & Dulce de leche Mocha Cookie & Cream Ice Cream

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If you are like me, then the mention of cookies, alcohol, and ice cream in the same breath would make your eyes brighten up and your mouth drool! That is if the long name doesn’t scare you away!

The idea behind this crazy sounding name came the other day while I was thinking of  how to incorporate the cookies left from the time I made the Mocha Chocolate chip cookies.

Now, during the visit to my grandparents’ place, somebody had invited us for dinner and I had the most amazingly creamy strawberry ice cream- which was homemade and completely eggless. The aunty told it was a fairly simple eggless recipe with equal proportions of milk, cream and milk powder and she adds strawberry crusher which lends the sweetness and flavour to the ice cream. But, I wanted to add the cookies, so I thought I would replace the strawberry crusher with crumbled cookies.

The Bailey’s was something I remember from one of David Lebovitz “no ice cream machine” ice cream. Just before leaving US for my India vacation I got my copy of Room for Dessert and I remember seeing David’s chocolate and banana ice cream that requires no ice cream maker.

Now the thing is I think I am allergic to banana. I think  so because everytime I eat a banana I get this horrible-horrible pain in my stomach. This allergy was never there before. I experienced it for the first time when I was at some one’s place and had taken my banana bread for them. I ate it at night. The next day I had severe pain. Since we had eaten out I thought it was a result of that. But it remained for quite a few days, because I was still eating bananas. Anyway, our home stock of bananas finished and so did the pain. Still it did not strike me. After few days again the same thing and the same happened when my in-laws were there. The only food that was common all these times was banana. So well, I guess I am allergic to it, which kind of sucks because I love banana bread!

So with these two recipes and a little help to get it all together from  here I set out to make my jacked up mocha cookies, dulce de leche ice cream!

Dulce de leche (pronounced DOOL-say day LAY-chay) is Spanish for “milk candy”. It tastes quite like caramel but with the additional taste of cooked milk. (Technically, dulce de leche is a type of caramel.) It’s often used in liquid form as a sauce for ice cream, cakes, cookies, just about anything that needs a sweet topping. In solid form, it is most often eaten as a tasty candy.

The ice cream turned out more like mocha cake batter ice cream.-probably because of the soggy cookies that I had used. Anyway, that wasn’t a problem. Only problem that I had was that it was melting too soon. Homemade ice creams are generally more soft than store bought- they have the soft serve consistency. But this one was melting way too fast. It is really hot here but still not so much that a ice cream can’t behave itself for a few minutes. I guess it could be the alcohol level that did not allow the ice cream to freeze too much. The person, whose original recipe I used, does not add alcohol and has a very creamy ice cream thanks to the milk powder in the recipe. And since I added alcohol, as well as the milk powder, it might have changed the science behind freezing the ice cream. I, actually like my ice cream melted. So I wasn’t complaining, but my mom likes her ice cream “ice cream consistency” (which she couldn’t get because the tub had been out for quite a while as I was busy clicking some photographs). She loved the taste though.

The melted ice cream did make a darn good adult cookie and cream shake! But next time I would skip the cognac and see how that works.

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