I used to cook more when I had a 5 minute commute rather than a 45-minute one. Now, all that's left is industrial-scale cooking for special occasions, and occasional experiments. If I can find the scribbled-on and stained components, I'll post up my vegetarian Chinese meat buns (叉燒包) recipe later. I'm more proud of the process optimizations I've been able to do to recipes than any taste changes; despite living currently on cold cereal, raw fruit, tomato-lettuce-cheese sandwiches, beer, and takeout, cooking is not as hard as it looks, and if it can be made easier so that more people get up the will to do it, so much the better.
How To Really Make The
Wonkette Chocolate Icebox Thingy
This recipe looks hard to make, but it isn't. One Sunday morning at the end of November, I got a text from my brother as I was preparing to go out to the store that he was rescheduling his oft-postponed holiday do to 2pm that afternoon. This was at about 9 in the morning. In between cursing, I put together a list of ingredients, totalling nearly every fucking thing in the recipe, because I keep like no food in the fridge, and four hours later, the dessert was done chilling down in time to pack up and take over. If I had an electric eggbeater, or even a whisk, it might have gone even faster.
FOOD PARTS:
6 eggs
1 angel food cake (just buy it at the grocery while you're getting the whipping cream)
12 oz. chocolate chips
4 tbsp. of sugar
6 tbsp. of water
2 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
2 cups (16 fl.oz.) whipping cream
some rum if only adults are going to be eating this
GEAR:
double boiler
OR one saucepan and one small metal pot with a rounded bottom
9"x9" of 3-4"-deep cake pan, divide it however the hell you want
enough waxed paper to cover the bottom and sides of your cake pannage
sharp knife
electric eggbeater (trust me)
two largish mixing bowls
normal kitchen utensils (small bowls, forks, etc)
1. Make sure you have all the food parts and your gear in grabbing range. This is a speed-optimized recipe. Also, read it through so you know what's next. If your country doesn't use weird imperial units, look them up and do the conversions.
2. Put an inch or two of water in the saucepan/bottom part of the double boiler and put it on your stove on high heat. Dump the chocolate in the round pot/top part of the double boiler and set it in/on the saucepan/bottom part. This should result in a close but not necessarily perfect seal; the chocolate is going to get melted by indirect heat from the steam so it doesn't burn onto the bottom of the pot. Don't cover the top pot; you're going to want to watch this and stir occasionally so that the chocolate bits that were originally on top melt too.
3. While the chocolate is getting up heat/melting, line your cake pan/pans, whatever you have, with your waxed paper, and then chunk out the angelfoodcake with the knife. Make chunks in weird shapes about 2" square-ish, don't rip it up with your hands like a barbarian or use that spatula shit, it doesn't work. Put these in the cake pan(s).
3a. If you are putting rum in this, pour it over the raw cake chunks as soon as the pan(s) are full/you run out of raw cake. This gives it time to soak in while you do the rest.
4. Break your eggs and separate the whites and the yolks. These get added at different stages, so yes, it does matter. Beat the yolks smooth with a fork, the eggbeater is for something else.
5. By the time this is done, unless there is something wrong with your stove's output, the chocolate should be melted. Take it off the heat and mix in the sugar, water, and
yolks. You can probably still do this in the small pot/boiler top at this point. Let this cool down while you do the next step.
6. Whip the cream until it reaches your personal definition of "whipped" consistency. This is where you use the goddamned eggbeater, so that you don't spend three episodes of Dragon Ball whipping it by hand with a fork until it reaches "goddamnit, this needs to be deliverable in 90 minutes, this is whipped enough" consistency.
7. When the chocolate mix is cooled down, but while it's still fluid enough to stir, pour/wedge it into your other large mixing bowl (the one that does not have whipped cream in it) and add the vanilla, salt and egg whites. Mix thoroughly and mix the whipped cream in. Mix this until it's uniformly light-brown rather than marbled.
8. Pour/slather (dependent largely on what consistency you beat the whipping cream to) the chocolate-cream mix over the cake that has been sitting on the counter, potentially soaking its rum in, this whole time. Allow this to settle so that eventually, all the cake bits are covered and/or you run out of topping mix.
9a. If your idiot brother wants you to have this concoction at his place in an hour and a half, put the cake pan(s) in the freezer and crank it to maximum cooling. It's not going to stay in there long enough to get damaged as opposed to just setting up faster.
9b. If you made this on adequate notice, you can put it in the fridge to set up like normal.
One to four hours later, depending on how you cooled it, this chocolate thingy is done and ready to impress people with, especially if you tell them you used a double boiler in its construction, because apparently indirect steam heat is wicked complicated. Probably it's just that people don't have home ec in school any more and don't know wtf it is.
--K
