Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Insanity Cake #2

Ok so I realize that this is my second post in a row about a truly insane birthday cake that if you have any sense at all you'll never make. But it's my blog and I can, so I will. Backstory: N's birthday was on Friday. When I asked what kind of cake he wanted, he suggested chocolate (duh) chevre cheesecake with rum and raisins. Which is incredibly sweet - the chevre part was for my benefit, since goat's milk is way kinder to my system than cow's milk - but also kind of weird. So I considered for a while and came up with this monstrosity. I'd been wanting to make him the amazing Raw Brownies from My New Roots, because they're amazing and chocolate (duh). I'd also been wanting to make the chocolate tart from my Payard cookbook, even though that got shot down as an idea in the initial round of cake planning. And he did say cheesecake. So... a layer of cheesecake? Under a layer of tart? With the raw brownies as a shell? Chocolate (duh), flavored with rum and cinnamon. Anything else?

I called my sister, who is a far better baker/far more insane than me. The two layers, she said, need some differentiation - just cinnamon up the bottom. And why make the bottom layer chocolate cheesecake when it could be marbled? It occurred to me that the whole thing was going to be a pile of very creamy textures; some crackle and crunch would be nice. Chopped almonds? Bruleed top? Both! I ordered a creme brulee torch on Amazon. I googled cheesecake recipes. I got the torch, realized my existing tin of lighter fluid wouldn't fill it, and not one of the drug stores in New Haven carries butane (really?!?), and ordered that on Amazon too. I de-milkified the whole thing to the extent possible, added graham crackers to the crust because cheesecake, went shopping, and baked for a total of about six hours. Mark Bittman, in his How to Cook Everything, says that replacing the cream cheese in his recipe with ricotta is just fine, so I figured replacing half of mine with goat cheese wouldn't be a disaster. Halfway through baking I realized - after ripping apart my pantry to find it - that my block of good chocolate had been finished in an earlier project, and ran out to get more, only to discover that my options were milk, white, or unsweetened, no bittersweet to be found. So I bought milk chocolate and finished my cocoa powder compensating (don't do that). And on Friday I snuck into N's apartment while he was in rehearsal, bruleed the top, drizzled the whole thing in melted chocolate, lit a candle, and surprised him. And it was fantastic. Totally over the top, rich, decadent, insane, and delicious. And totally worth it. Happy birthday.



Some notes: I've given instructions below for both low- and high-lactose versions. I used goat cheese and almond milk, but go ahead and use all cream cheese and heavy cream. I flavored with cinnamon and rum, but you could leave one out, leave them both out, replace the cinnamon with orange zest or the rum with creme de menthe or or the almonds with hazelnut or whatever flavor combination strikes you. Also, while the marbling of the cheesecake was cool, it all ended up kind of mixing together so you could skip a step and just make it all chocolate or plain. Your call. The original recipes list baking times as rather shorter than what I found necessary, so keep an eye out and check for doneness with a toothpick early and often.



Bruleed Chocolate Marble Cheesecake Tart Brownie Cake with Cinnamon and Rum Because Why the Hell Not.

Brownie crust (Adapted from My New Roots):
2 cups walnuts
1 cup almonds
5 cinnamon graham crackers (Omit if you want it gluten-free, or for Passover, or whatever)
2 ½ cups pitted dates
1 cup cocoa powder
2 tbsp coconut oil
¼ tsp. salt
(This will make extra. Enjoy the rest sprinkled over ice cream, eaten with a spoon, or pressed into another pan to make the originally-intended brownies.)

1) Make the crust: Whizz nuts in the food processor until well ground. Add graham crackers, and whizz again. Add remaining ingredients and blend until it starts to look kind of like garden soil and sticks together when you squeeze it. If it's not sticky enough, add more dates. Be sure to get the pits out first if you want any of this to work.

1) Dates. 2) Nuts & Grahams. 3) Ready to go. 4) Finished consistency.

2) Grease a 10x10 pyrex dish (I used coconut oil). Press the dough into the pan to form a layer a quarter-inch thick over the bottom and sides.



Marble Cheesecake (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup heavy cream/coconut creamer
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely
1/2 cup (goat) yogurt
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
4 oz of the mildest goat chevre you can find (or another half package cream cheese)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
cinnamon
rum

3) Make the caramel. Yes, this is nuts, but as the original recipe points out, it's also not hard and very delicious. Put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed pan (I used my cast iron) over medium-low heat, and stir fairly constantly. First it will clump up, then melt into a clear pale puddle. Keep going til it hits a nice golden brown. Pour in the cream or coconut creamer. It will bubble and get all steamy and the sugar will harden up again. Keep stirring. Let the sugar re-melt. Be careful when you can't resist dripping a bit on your pinkie to taste; this stuff's hot. Pour half out into another pan and set that aside over low heat.

1) Sugar starting to melt. 2) Post-cream. 3) Re-melted with cream. 4) Plus chocolate & yogurt.


4) Stir the chopped chocolate into the caramel still in one pan and stir til everything melts. Still over low heat, stir in the yogurt. you should end up with something nice and creamy. (If you want a firmer cheesecake, use slightly less yogurt, down to a quarter cup total/eighth of a cup per half-batch.) Turn off the heat.

5) Stir another quarter cup of yogurt into the caramel in the second pan. You should now have one pan of chocolate caramel and one of plain. (Or do these sequentially, washing the pan in between. Just realize that the second batch of caramel will be hard by the time you finish the first, and you can re-melt it in the microwave but use about 60% power and beware that it gets hot fast.)

Whipped cheeses.

6) Use a mixer to whip half of the cream cheese and half of the goat cheese til fluffy. Beat in the chocolate caramel at low speed. Beat in one egg, 1/2 tsp vanilla, a tablespoon or so of rum, and a good shake of cinnamon.

7) Repeat step 4 with the non-chocolate caramel in a separate bowl. At this point you've got one bowl of plain cheesecake filling, one bowl of chocolate, and a lot of dirty dishes.




Payard Chocolate Tart
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1 cup cream or coconut creamer
1/4 cup milk or almond milk

1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp rum

8) Put the chopped chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Pour the milk and cream into a small pot and bring to a simmer. Pour over the chopped chocolate and stir til melted. Let cool 10 min.

9) Whisk in the beaten egg, vanilla, and rum. Stick in the fridge.

Etc.
Raw or turbinado sugar
Chopped almonds
Melted chocolate

10) Preheat oven to 350. Pour some of the plain cheesecake into the crust, then some chocolate, then some more plain, etc, til you've poured it all in. Use a chopstick or the handle of a butterknife to swirl it around til it's all marbled. Bake about 35 min.


11) Pull the cheesecake out the the oven. Sprinkle with some chopped almonds and extra clumps of crust mixture and pour the chocolate tart mixture over. It'll still be a bit goopy and you won't  get nicely defined layers that's ok. Return to oven. Start checking for doneness after 15 minutes. The middle should be a little wiggly and the edges a bit cracked. This might take another half hour, so keep checking with a toothpick and don't despair. Pull out and let cool a bit.

A done cake.

12) Brulee: Cover any exposed crust with tin foil. (I didn't; that's why mine got singed.) Sprinkle an even layer of sugar over the top of the cake. Go to with the blow torch. I found this worked best if I went over an area once lightly so it got little beads of melted sugar, than again to melt most of it, then a third time to get any spots I'd missed. Once you get the sugar bobbling you can lay off with the flame; it will melt the bits around it and fill most little holes itself, and that way you avoid burning the sugar. If you do catch a bit on fire, blow it out, pull it off, fill the gap with more sugar, and re-brulee. 



13) Drizzle melted chocolate over everything. Scatter chopped nuts over the melted chocolate. Stick a candle in the middle. Yell 'Surprise!'. Enjoy.