Chocolate . . . Ice Cream . . . Raspberries . . . Bliss . . .

"Failures are a normal part of life. They are not disasters."
~author unknown

Welcome to Tuesdays With Dorie, the August 26, 2008 edition, the one day a week I get to play with a wonderful Dorie Greenspan recipe along with a bazillion other baking kooks the world over. Yes folks, this is the one day a week all us baking nutters bake the same recipe, from her gorgeous book, "Baking, from my home to yours," and then post our successes and failures on the world wide web for all to see and enjoy! Quite obviously there are a heck of a lot more successes than failures and any failures are usually down to the engineer of the project, not the book.



You may be wondering why I am speaking about failure here. I am wondering the same thing. What you see before you is my interpretation of this weeks recipe . . . Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte on pages 288-289, as chosen by , Amy of Food, Family and Fun . What a lovely choice Amy, and a project that I really enjoyed, but that didn't actually turn out the way I had envisioned from the onset.



I wanted to do something a little bit different and more exciting to look at than just a plain torte in an ordinary spring form pan. I had this picture in my mind of lovely little oval shaped tortes with a raspberry ripple ice cream and delicious bands of chocolate running through the middle . . . all sitting in a pool of raspberry coulis with some lovely frozen raspberries on the side.

The only oval shaped receptacle I could find was my friand pan, but no worries, I would just line it with plastic cling film and then the finished babies would pop right out . . . easy peasy, lemon squeasy! Right???

I looked high and low for frozen raspberries in syrup here, but could only find frozen raspberries, period . . . end of . . . no syrup. So I had to make my own syrup and raspberries, which were then not frozen, but more like a coulis, which is what I wanted in the end anyways to sit the little tortes on. I swirled some of the coulis into the vanilla ice cream and got the exact effect that I wanted which was a lovely rippled ice cream. Oh, how pretty that was going to look!!!



The little friand pan was very easy to line and get ready. Nothing too hard or difficult about that. I used a separate piece of cling film for each one.

There was some concern voiced about the use of raw eggs in the chocolate ganache, but I decided if I used the freshest eggs possible that should be a problem. The ganache was lovely and thick and glossy when I was finished and began to fill the pans. Only one problem now and that was that I could see that there was not going to be any room for a band of chocolate through the middle. Oh well . . . we would just have to live without a band in the middle for I was a woman on a mission now and I am so stubborn that having envisioned little oval tortes there was no way I was going back to a round one!!!



I decided they just would NOT have a band in the middle. Into the freezer the pan went with the first layer of chocolate ganache and I popped up to the shower. I am not the most patient person in the world and if I had not busied myself with doing something else, I would have been peeking in the freezer every five minutes to see if they had set up yet. (I know, me bad)

Once I had finished my morning ablutions I came down and took my ice cream out of the freezer to soften for a bit before I continued. Once I checked the friand pan and saw that the chocolate ganache was indeed solid I went on and topped it with a couple of lovely spoonfuls of my ice cream and then a final layer of the ganache went on top. Back into the freezer it went.



Tick Tock, Tick Tock . . . Tick Tock. I passed the hours by doing a bit of this and a bit of that, but mostly editing my cookbook. (That takes a lot of time you know! I hadn't realized how much before. I have to make sure that all the recipes start and end in proper places so that it flows easily and that the pictures are in the right places, that all the font matches, any spelling mistakes are corrected, etc. I am about halfway done!) I did a few sketches for my chapter pages, just some doodles and Tick Tock, Tick Tock . . . Tick Tock . . . finally the time came that I could have a peek at my finished labours!

You know that idea of plastic cling film making it easier for them to pop out???? WRONG! They did not easily pop out. I had to place the pan in some hot water to loosen them and then they came out, but then the bottom layer of ganache was starting to melt, so back into the freezer they went for it to solidify again . . .

Then . . . once they were sufficiently hardened, I couldn't get the plastic cling film off!!! It came off in little bits, not like a full sheet as I had envisioned beforehand. Never mind . . . in the end it did come off. I couldn't find my squirt bottle to put the coulis onto the plate decoratively . . . *grumble *grumble . . . and so I ended up having to use a spoon and it ended up less than perfect, again not what I had envisioned . . . and horror of all horrors . . . my lovely little oval shaped tortes were full of wrinkles from the plastic cling film . . . grrrrrr . . .

Not only that . . . but you couldn't really see the raspberry ripples in the ice cream, oh . . . woe . . . is . . . me!



Oh well, rant over, I ran my finger tips over the top of the torte for a few minutes to smooth out the top wrinkles anyways and I popped it onto the coulis, downside up (because the topside looked like crap to be blunt! haha) and I spooned a few extra raspberries on the side and then I snapped the pictures you see here, which didn't turn out all that badly, but not exactly what I had wanted either, but what the hey . . . they tasted delicious anyways and went down a treat!

"If your life is free of failures, you're not taking enough risks!"
~author unknown

Next time I make it, I'll do it Dorie's way, and it will probably be a lot more esthetically pleasing, but in the meantime, it was a delicious little mouthful and we did smack our lips in pleasure! It wasn't such a failure after all, even if it wasn't how I had envisioned it to be from the start . . .



If you'd like the recipe hop on over to Amy's page now, (my goodness but hers turned out to be a beauty! Well done Amy!), and be sure to check out the blog roll to see some of the other tasty entries for today. I am sure there are some more really lovely ones, much nicer than mine!

Next week's recipe is going to be Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters on page 73, as chosen by Stefany of Proceed with Caution ! Ohhh Y-U-M-M-O!!!
Me and Peanut Butter = Best Friends!