Monday, September 19, 2011

The Chocolate Pudding Caper, part I

This week, I've been reading Ideas in Food. Finally, I've found people as crazy as me.

I've roasted pasta...I've pre-soaked it in tomato water...The book is gloriously experimental, with a ton of interesting ideas. This morning, I decided to make their Crispy Chocolate Mousse.

My mother has a recipe from the 1960s built on the idea of a meringue/cookie hybrid, and it makes the most fabulous cookies ever. However, she hates to cook, and periodically loses said recipe. I haven't seen it in fifteen years, so I decided to try baking these in the hopes they'd be similar. They actually take five hours to bake, so I'm not sure how they are yet. (And in the process of writing this, I've realized I forgot to add the vanilla) But if noshing the leftover pudding-like batter directly out of the bowl is any indication, they're kind of awesome.


That said, it's the first recipe I've made in months that makes me remember why people hate to cook. It's a meringue and not a meringue at the same time, so lots of finicky egg pampering is required. Because egg whites require an absolutely clean bowl for proper whipping, and because the yolks are mixed with something hot, a minimum of three large bowls are required. And that's all before you have to scoop the whole mess into a pastry bag/ziploc for piping. The process of transferring between bowls has left me with a variety of delicious leftover chocolate goos to surreptitiously sample, but there's a lot of waste. And I'm covered in chocolate byproducts and feel about five.

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