CipherLock said:
When are we going to meet Jack?
Jack Daniels Truffle Tort
Original Recipe Stolen From Rose Levy B.'s Cake Bible, which you you should own if you are into baking some fantastic stuff. Her recipes are broken down by volume measure (american style) and by weight (euro and professional style, which makes life SO much easier, not to mention that my brother did some of her books photos, so its good to support the home front.)
Ingredients:
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1 lb bittersweet chocolate (no, milk chocolate wont do, and candybars dont count, they often have crap in them like guar gum, parafin, etc that just wont fly)
1/2 lb unsalted butter
6 whole eggs
JD to taste
crust: a basic graham crust, but use oreo crumbs
1 1/2 cups oreo crumbs
Two fat Tbs of unsalted butter
1/2 cup Fine ground tsted pecans
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Read this whole recipe over, get your tools and ingredients measured out into little bowls/coffee cups etc and clean up. THEN lets party:
Tools and set up (mise en place, or Mess In Place
):
Preheat your oven to 425F, with a suitable water bath pan that will fit a good no stick 9" pan or aluminum-waterproofed springform pan. Get a kettle of water on the stove and bring it to a boil, lower to low temp to just keep it hot: a cold water bath will ruin your day. You will need a pot on your stove top with an inch or so of water in bottom to use as the heat end of a double boiler. Do you have a kitchen aid? you should if you dont. indispensible thing a kitchen aid is. You will need a good wire wisk, a rubber spatula, a good large glass or metal mixing bowl.
Prepare the pan: no stick means ALMOST no stick, so rub with butter please. Margarine? you are in the wrong thread.
Ok, I might have missed something, but we will work it out as we go, In a hurry here:
Chocolate Appareil: Chop and melt the chocolate with the butter, either pulse for 15 sec then stir method in the microwave or gently over the hot water, dont let is sit over boiling water, please? Stir in an ounce or so of Jack Set the melted chocolate/butter/jack mixture asside to let cool a bit, but not to room temp. It should remain fluid, but not hot.
Crust: mix the nuts, crumbs and butter until the consistency of moist sand, press into the bottom of the buttered pan and a wee bit up the sides, you know the deal.
Eggs: here is where your kitchen aid will come in handy. Six eggs in the mixing bowl, bowl over the water bath, constantly whisking to froth it while it gets HOT to the touch. This is a little tricky: too hot, you get an omlette, too cool, you wont get enough loft to your eggs. It should just get hot, then immediately transfer the bowl to the kitchen aid at medium high with the whisk attachement. Whisk it until it gets cool, it will tripple in volume and start to deflate slightly, and appear light yellow and shiny. Kind of like a soft peak merrigue, yellow.
Now, lets review. You have:
1. A hot oven.
2. A pan in the oven to use as a water bath
3. A cake pan with your crust in the bottom.
4. A warm choco mixture that tastes like Jack
5. A funky whole egg merrigue that is prolly starting to fall!! Hurry up!!
Fold one third of the eggs into the chocolate, you can be pretty rough here, dont worry. When its mostly folded in, add the next third of the eggs, fold those in a bit more gently, when those are still pretty streaky, add the rest of the eggs. GENLTLY, with love. Scraping up from the bottom, and folding over.
You now have this lighter color and consistency choco mixure, pour it into the pan with the crust, pan goes into the oven into the pan for the water bath, pour the water GENTLY from the kettle into the bigger pan, if you pour too fast you will get water into your cake: BAD.
Close the door and Imediately lower the temp to 385F. you now have five minutes to tear a piece of aluminum foil and rub one side with butter. After five minutes, open the oven and gently lay the butterside down aluminum foil on top of your water bath set up, you really want to avoid having it touch the cake, but just protect it from direct heat from here out. Just make it fast, you dont want to leave the oven open too long and lose all your heat.
10 More minutes is all it takes. Now comes the hard part: get the fucker out of the oven without A) Dropping it, B)burning the crap out of yourself, then dropping it, or C) Dropping it into the water bath, burning the crap out of yourself.
here is my trick: I use two thick DRY dish towels to gently move the water bath onto the open oven door. I pinch the rim of the pan with a good set of kitchen tongs and slip a sturdy metal grill spatula under the cake pan and lift it up and out right onto the range top (not the hot part
) then you can take the bath and pour it out, and do as you must to clean up.
Resting:
This cake must cool to room temp THEN be refridgerated for at least 4 hours. No kidding.
Getting this thing out of the pan:
Loosen with a hot knife around the edges, and I take a dish rag in very hot water and lay it on the counter. Set the pan on the hot towel, it will losen up the bottom nicely. Take a large flat plate or serving platter and cover it with plastic wrap, turn the cake out upside down onto the plastic wrap, then put a plate on the bottom of the cake and gently flip the whole thing over. Can you picture what I mean? When its right side up, remove the serving platter and gently peel off the plastic wrap. Voila.
Serving:
I like rich chocolate things at room temp, but you make the call as to chilled or not. You will need to cut this thing with hot knife, serve LITTLE slices with maple or cinamon whipped cream, or some double vanilla anglaise and fresh berries are nice.
Questions? ASK BEFORE YOU START. I wrote this version in a big hurry, deadline on friday you know, but I couldn't leave EFers hangin'
cheers
Chef
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