Week19: Pomegranate, White Chocolate, and Cashew, Oatmeal Cookies

Is there any fruit more beautiful than the Pomegranate? I don't think so. When I found a recipe that included the arils (the name of the seed fruit from a pomegranate) I knew I had my next week's idea. The original called for dark chocolate, but I knew cashews (my second favorite nut after macadamias) and white chocolate would pair perfectly with this power fruit. 

Even whole, a pomegranate is beautiful.

Crack it open though, and the real beauty emerges. Look at those juicy ripe arils.

Getting them all out whole takes time and patience.

The key ingredients: roasted salted cashews, pomegranate arils, and white chocolate chips. This is a cup of each, but each delivery is a half cup of each. That's a lot of delicious!

Now to start on the dough. White and brown sugars,

Plus butter,

and an egg, equals

A very gooey dough start.

Mmmmm, oats.

Here I've added the oats, flour, rising agents and salt to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.

If you work with dough often, you have to get these. A silicon mat, and a flour shaker. This saves so much cleanup time, and the flour shaker helps put a light dusting of flour on your surface. Using your hand makes it much too thick.

Here is the raw dough without the special ingredients. This could be baked up into a delightful plain oatmeal cookie.

I mix in the white chocolate first, since it's the most durable.

Cashews next.

Arils last, and I try to be very delicate so as not to pop too many of them.

Rolled out and cut, ready for baking.

In the oven... mmmmm they smelled so good while baking.

Done and cooling. The secret to chewy cookies is to find just the right baking time, and to transfer them immediately to a cooling rack. A cookie sheet maintains a bit of heat and continues to cook the bottom of the cookie if you leave the cookies on the tray.

Once cooled I love seeing them all piled up.

In the package, look at how tempting the bright red flecks and white chocolate chunks peeking out are.

The vanilla and white chocolate start, moves to cashew flavor, and with bites of pomegranate tang, all inside the chewy sweet oatmeal cookie.

Week18: Chocolate Cake

Ahhh, chocolate... my weakness and favorite thing. When it comes to something as simple as a chocolate cake, I knew I had to bring my "A" game to impress after the recent highly complex items like the S'mores cookies and Apple Pear Cake.  I feel confident everyone who tries this cake will find it just as delicious as the past items.

However, with something so special, I needed to be sure of my batter recipe, and I had two that are quite good, so I decided to make both, with the same icing, and ask several friends, both Icelandic and foreigners to taste test. Everyone agreed it was hard to choose, but one got several more votes than the other. Hang in to the end to see which. 

The first recipe calls for Beets! Yes Beets!  The reddish root vegetable. When simmered for about an hour, they become very mild with a sweetish flavor and provide texture for the cake. Most people won't even notice that there is something other than flour and chocolate in the cake.

Peel,

Chop,

Simmer,

Smells great! Fork tender and the water is all boiled off.

Beet pure, just what is needed for the batter.

So is dark chocolate! I use 56% and always melt in a double boiler to prevent burning.

Mmmm, You know you have a good double boiler and good chocolate when the chips don't even change shape, they just get shiny to show they are melted. I used a spatula to swirl it into a glob for the photo.

Now the more traditional ingredients, eggs, sugar, and oil. Butter cakes are tasty, but nothing has the structure and moistness of an oil cake. When done right, it won't taste oily at all, but will have a perfect moist sponginess. 

Added to the bowl, I love how symmetrical it is. :-)

Cocoa powder, flour, salt, baking powder and soda.

I add the melted chocolate and the beet pure to the oil/sugar/egg mixture.

Notice the red tinge? That is from the beet pure.

Next I add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

See how the red is almost gone and it has a more traditional chocolate color?

Bake bake bake.  While this is in the oven I'll work on the 2nd batter.

Another mixture of flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, baking powder and soda.

A full cup of strong coffee, courtesy of Litli Bondabærinn. This is organic coffee and I swear by it. My recipes that call for coffee are noticeably better with this compared to instant or filter from home.

Again with the oil, both batters are oil cakes.

Whereas the first batter used the beet pure and melted chocolate as the liquid, this one uses coffee, and buttermilk.

The beet chocolate cake after baking.

The coffee chocolate cake after baking.

Both cakes are going to be iced with a dark chocolate ganache, but with a twist!  First I start with 70% dark chocolate, and heavy cream.

Heat the cream to almost boiling.

Pour hot cream over dark chocolate,

And mix till combined. This is an ordinary ganache, it dries to be gel like, it has a nice dark color, and a very smooth texture.

But! if instead of pouring over your dessert, you place the bowl of ganache inside a larger bowl full of ice-water, and whip as the temperature of the cream comes down, the cream will whip like normal, giving you a beautiful...

Whipped ganache! All the flavor of ganache, dark, smooth, but now with a creamier and fluffier texture. This allows you to both pile it on thicker, since it doesn't "run" like normal ganache, but also give a texture to the top rather than a smooth glass like finish of un-whipped ganache.

Both cakes iced.

Beet chocolate cake with a slice cut out.

Coffee chocolate cake with a slice cut out.

The two cake slices. They are very similar in texture and color. The coffee chocolate cake looks denser, but the thinner dough actually ended up making it much more airy and spongy. The beet cake has a firmer texture, from the beet fibers, but is still very moist and fluffy.

So, taking a bit! Which was better? I had seven people try them both, without mentioning which was which first. A british baker, myself, and five icelanders, two women and three men. Everyone loved both, but 6 of us chose the coffee based cake, myself included, as the best. The beet cake has a great structure, with a complex flavor, but it doesn't have the strength and fullness of the coffee based cake. I believe it's mostly because of the coffee, as well as the buttermilk, that gives the coffee based cake such a strong and full flavor. The ganache really paired well with both, making the beet cake more chocolate like, and pairing well with the coffee cake's slight bitterness with it's own sweetness.

This experiment was so much fun! I love chocolate cake.