Week 6 (Baking) - Chocolate Stemware Cakes with Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

The theme for week six was elegant. Much like the previous weeks, I started the week off with good intentions, but as the daily stresses of my life weighed upon me, I found myself pressed for time and with even less patience. In addition to the problems that plagued my week, I couldn't find my digital camera so I got to take all of my photos with my tablet. I explain this as a slight off-handed apology for the lackluster quality of most of the pictures. But hey, at least there are pictures.

My original plan was to make beautiful individually portioned chocolate souffles. I found a suitable recipe, bought all of the ingredients, ... and dropped the ball. Perhaps sometime in the not too distant future I will get around to those and post my results accordingly, but for now I will offer up what I do have; chocolate ~~mug~~ stemware cakes.

Everything served in a any stemware is fancy.
True Story.

Mug cakes have always intrigued me, but I've never gotten around to attempting one; baking in the microwaves seemed a bit crude, for lack of a better term. But, I had gotten myself into a jam and wound up at 4pm on Sunday wondering how the hell I was going to make a souffle, pudim de coco, and get dinner on the table. I had a mini-breakdown followed by a moment of genius. Just because the challenge needed to be elegant didn't mean it had to be time consuming, and really, what's fancier than stemware? Thankfully I had whipped up a batch of homemade mint chocolate ice cream earlier this week to satiate a craving the BF had been having. I figured I could justify having baked my weekly submission in the microwave if I doused it in creamy delicious goodness. It worked.

Mint Chocolate Ice Cream

1 cups skim milk
3 cups heavy cream
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1.5-2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp peppermint extract
1 1/4 c dark chocolate & mint baking chips

Recipe courtesy of Darryn Briggs from allrecipes.com

The original recipe called for 2 cups 2% milk and 2 cups heavy cream. I had plenty of heavy cream on hand that I needed to use up and we only skim milk in the fridge. So I changed things up to account for the lack of fats from the skim and to use up the last of the heavy cream. The first night while the ice cream was particularly soft, it tasted like a bowl of thick, minty whipped cream. A bit overwhelming for the BF, but I was more than happy to help down his share. However, after the ice cream set up overnight I think the texture was divine, perfectly silky and smooth with a rich minty finish.

As far as directions go, this one is fairly self explanatory provided you're using an ice cream maker; put all of the ingredients into the basin of your ice cream machine and follow the directions from there. My machine took about 40 minutes to whip this up, but it was a better consistency after sitting in the freezer overnight. No real surprises there as my machine is just the bare-bones essential to stir and chill the mixture. I have no real experience making ice cream by hand so YMMV if you go that route. If you do make ice creams by hand, I'd love to hear your results; successes and failures alike.

Chocolate ~~Mug~~ Stemware Cake

4 tbsp flour (cake flour if available)
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder
Pinch salt
Pinch baking powder
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp oil
Few drops of vanilla extract
Extra chocolate for drizzling (optional)

Yum.

Mix it all together in a mug or small bowl. Seriously, I didn't even bother to separate wets & drys; when baking in the microwave, I think all formal baking techniques are out the window.
Divide the mix between two wine glasses.
This part is important. I originally thought that I would be making just one serving of mug cake (in case it didn't turn out so great) but the recipe had other plans. I didn't realize just how much this cake would expand while "baking" so about 40 seconds in I had to stop the microwave and divide the mixture into two glasses and finish cooking. This made the results a little less attractive than I would have liked, but there was no way around it, the cake was hitting the top of the microwave - which thankfully I had just cleaned, otherwise, ewww.

40 seconds in the cake was HUGE!

Also make sure the wine glasses fit in your microwave before you begin, mine just barely squeezed in there because I didn't think to check that first.
"Bake" on normal power for 1:30. Cakes should be springy and cooked all the way through.
Allow to stand for one minute before removing from the microwave. Stemware gets hot!
Scoop ice cream on top of cakes.
Put chocolate (chips), - I used the leftovers from the mint chocolate ice cream - in the microwave on medium/defrost mode at 30 second increments, stirring after each round, until melted. Use a fork or spoon to drizzle across the the top of the ice cream.

Drizzling is messy work, do it over a paper towel to save yourself the cleanup heartache.
Grab spoons and enjoy.
If you're anything like us, it will be pre-dinner since I didn't know if this was going to be a success. Dessert can precede dinner when you're a grownup.

This dessert was totally worth the effort. All 3 minutes of it.