I fully intended to participate in this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie‘s recipe: Blueberry Sour Cream Ice Cream. However, I didn’t get it done it time, so I’m posting quite late. But it still counts!

Quebec grows some pretty fantastic blueberries, and they’re right in season now. Tiny, and bursting with flavour, these tiny berries are the ultimate in flavour. Of course I would want to make an ice cream out of them.

And what an ice cream it is. It reminds me of a frozen yogurt, but it still retains a wonderful creaminess. The sour cream is fantastic, and takes away from the over-sweetness that so many ice creams carry with them (though being an ice cream addict, I have no problem with any ice cream, ever, overly sweet or not). It didn’t taste like cheesecake to me, but a yogurt, and it was utterly fantastic. Little blueberry bits trapped in a blueberry-flavoured cream? Yes, please!

Even though I didn’t post on time, I will stay true to TWD fashion; find the recipe here. For me, the recipe was perfect; I wouldn’t change the amounts given. It’s definitely worth making, and next time, I’m going to drizzle some melted chocolate in the mix. Chocolate makes everything better, after all.

After a VERY long hiatus from Tuesdays With Dorie, I decided to make a comeback with this Tuesday’s recipe, French Chocolate Brownies. And wow! Am I ever glad I did!

These brownies are something special. They are one type of dessert fresh out of the oven, and something completely different the next day. I definitely like both, but I prefer them the next day.

Right out of the oven, they are very cake-like and fluffy. The taste is rather simple – very chocolately and not much else going on. Still good, but nothing different from your average chocolate cake. However, the next day, these brownies morph into something even more delicious and much more brownie-like: denser, richer, with a light crust on the top and a moist, sweet centre. Absolutely fantastic!

The recipe asks for rum-soaked raisins that are then flambeed…I didn’t have any rum, but I have rum syrup left over from the rum-drenched banana cake, so I heated that up and soaked them in that. The raisins don’t make much difference to the brownies – I didn’t notice them unless I ate one my itself. The brownies would still be great without them.

Other changes? I didn’t have 6oz of bittersweet chocolate, so I used what I had, which was 2oz unsweetened chocolate, 3 oz semisweet, and 1 oz of Nutella. I couldn’t really taste the Nutella – the overall taste of the brownies was simply chocolate. The cinnamon was barely distinguishable, but there. It’s good to know that these brownies are so versatile; you can pretty much use any chocolate you have available to you.

We topped the brownies with some vanilla ice cream and some salted butter, French vanilla caramel from Chloe’s (this caramel is extraordinary – heaven in your mouth).

A great dessert – fast, easy, and a nice, more adult version of the typical brownie.

French Chocolate Brownies
adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours

½ cup all purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 cup raisins
1 ½ tbs water
1 ½ tbs dark rum
6 oz finely chopped bittersweet chocolate (I used a combo of unsweetened and semisweet chocolate, as well as some Nutella)
1 ½ sticks (12 tbs) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 300°F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil, place the pan on a baking sheet, and set aside.

2. Whisk together the flour, salt and cinnamon, if you’re using it.

3. Put the raisins in a small saucepan with the water, bring to a boil over medium heat and cook until the water almost evaporates. Add the rum, let it warm for about 30 seconds, turn off the heat, stand back and ignite the rum. Allow the flames to die down, and set the raisins aside until needed.

4. Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Slowly and gently melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally. Remove the bowl from the saucepan and add the butter, stirring so that it melts. It’s important that the chocolate and butter not get very hot. However, if the butter is not melting, you can put the bowl back over the still-hot water for a minute. If you’ve got a couple of little bits of unmelted butter, leave them—it’s better to have a few bits than to overheat the whole. Set the chocolate aside for the moment.

5. Working with a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until they are thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Lower the mixer speed and pour in the chocolate-butter, mixing only until it is incorporated—you’ll have a thick, creamy batter. Add the dry ingredients and mix at low speed for about 30 seconds—the dry ingredients won’t be completely incorporated and that’s fine. Finish folding in the dry ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula, then fold in the raisins along with any liquid remaining in the pan.

6. Scrape the batter into the pan and bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until the top is dry and crackled and a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and allow the brownies to cool to warm or room temperature.

7. Carefully lift the brownies out of the pan, using the foil edges as handles, and transfer to a cutting board. With a long-bladed knife, cut the brownies into 16 squares, each roughly 2 inches on a side, taking care not to cut through the foil.

The title says gooey, but gooey they are not.

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie‘s assignment was to make Gooey Chocolate Cakes, and Dorie’s description claims they are “small, dark and warm, with a lava-like runny center.” They were certainly small, dark and warm, but the centers were lacking the promised chocolate lava. I followed the recipe exactly, so I can’t guess at what the problem could’ve been.

Not that they weren’t tasty though! Fresh out of the oven, they are slightly underbaked, rich and packed with chocolate flavour. Perhaps too much so – I found the first bite to be great, but they quickly became too one-dimensional for me. If I decide to ever make them again, I’ll definitely add some flavour to them, like peppermint or orange extract. A fruit coulis would be nice as well – anything to add a bit of a kick to them.

They were nice and easy to make, so it’s nice to have a quick dessert recipe that can be whipped up anytime dessert is needed. Add a scoop of ice cream, a drizzle of raspberry coulis, and you’re all set.

Gooey Chocolate Cakes
adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours
Makes 6 cakes

1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon salt
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate,
4 ounces coarsely chopped,
1 ounce very finely chopped
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
6 tablespoons of sugar

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. butter (or spray – it’s easier) 6 cups of a regular-size muffin pan, preferably a disposable aluminum foil pan, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. Put the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

2. Sift the flour, cocoa and salt together.

3. Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, put the coarsely chopped chocolate and the butter in the bowl and stir occasionally over the simmering water just until they are melted – you don’t want them to get so hot that the butter separates. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

4. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until homogenous. Add the sugar and whisk until well blended, about 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and, still using the whisk, stir (don’t beat) them into the eggs. Little by little, and using a light hand, stir in the melted chocolate and butter. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and sprinkle the finely chopped chocolate over the batter.

5. Bake the cakes for 13 minutes. Transfer them, still on the baking sheet, to a rack to cool for 3 minutes. (There is no way to test that these cakes are properly baked, because the inside remains liquid.)

6. Line a cutting board with a silicone baking mat or parchment or wax paper, and, after the 3-minute rest, unmold the cakes onto the board. Use a wide metal spatula to lift the cakes onto dessert plates.

I have to admit it, I haven’t yet unmolded my flan, prepared just tonight for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie challenge, so stay tuned for the final results. But everything up until now has turned out wonderfully – it seemed to have baked up beautifully, it smells great and vanilla-y, and it was fun to make. I would’ve never made flan out of my own choice, but if this works out as well as it seems to, then this may be a new favourite.

EDIT!

I couldn’t wait, and popped it out before the 4-hour mark. It came out easily, with a flood of caramel. Still lukewarm, but absolutely delicious. Eggy, creamy, with a texture I love. It’s very rich – seems to me to be a perfect flan recipe.

Caramel-Topped Flan
adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours
makes one 8″x2″ flan

CARAMEL
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons water
squirt of fresh lemon juice

FLAN
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/4 cups whole milk
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line a roasting pan or 9″x13″ baking pan with a double thickness of paper towels. Fill a teakettle with water and put it on to boil; when the water boils, turn off heat.

2. Put a metal 8″x2″ round cake pan– not a nonstick one– in the oven to heat while you prepare the caramel. (If you are using individual molds or ramekins, then skip this step.)

CARAMEL
1. Stir the sugar, water and lemon juice together in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan. Put the pan over medium-high heat and cook until the sugar becomes an amber-colored caramel, about 5 minutes-remove the pan from the heat at the first whiff of smoke.

2. Remove the cake pan from the oven and, working with oven mitts, pour the caramel into the pan and immediately tilt the pan to spread the caramel evenly over the bottom; set the pan aside.

FLAN
1. Bring the milk and heavy cream just to a boil.

2. Meanwhile, in a 2-quart glass measuring cup or in a bowl, whisk together the eggs, yolks and sugar. Whisk vigorously for a minute or two, and then stir in the vanilla. Still whisking, drizzle in about one quarter of the hot liquid-this will temper, or warm, the eggs so they won’t curdle. Whisking all the while, slowly pour in the remainder of the hot cream and milk. Using a large spoon, skim off the bubbles and foam that you worked up.

3. Put the caramel-lined cake pan in the roasting pan. Pour the custard into the cake pan and slide the setup into the oven. Very carefully pour enough hot water from the kettle into the roasting pan to come halfway up the sides of the cake pan. (Don’t worry if this sets the cake pan afloat.) Bake the flan for about 35 minutes, or until the top puffs a bit and is golden here and there. A knife inserted into the center of the flan should come out clean. (Small, individual molds will take less time– start checking for doneness around the 25-minute mark).

4. Remove the roasting pan from the oven, transfer the cake pan to a cooking rack and run a knife between the flan and the sides of the pan to loosen it. Let the flan cool to room temperature on the rack, then loosely cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

5. When ready to serve, once more, run a knife between the flan and the pan. Choose a rimmed serving platter, place the platter over the cake pan, quickly flip the platter and pan over and remove the cake pan–the flan will shimmy out and the caramel sauce will coat the custard.