Chocolate Cakes with Red Beet Ice Cream and Toasted Walnut Sauce

When my brother and I were little, we spent many a Saturday night with our grandparents or our grandmother and inevitably, as we'd take a break from playing cards with them or putting together a jigsaw puzzle, we'd eat ice cream with pretzels on the side. Sometimes it was chocolate ice cream, sometimes cherry... and every so often, we'd have peach ice cream, which is a miracle unto itself. But what made it taste so good was the preztel. There's just something about breaking off a piece of pretzel and scraping a bite of ice cream onto it. The combination of those tastes and textures that I loved back then I still crave today. Whether it's eating ice cream in a pretzel cone, or having a dish of pretzels nearby, I need that combination. I tried a variation with peanuts and Marcona almonds once, and it wasn't the same. Ice cream and pretzels -- now that's magic.

I knew I'd love this dish because on paper it looked like a fantastic combination of crunch and salt and sweet and creamy all on one plate. Anything made with bittersweet chocolate I knew I'd love, but beet ice cream? How could you not love that? I'm starting to drool and I don't want to short out my Mac, so let me get to the goods here, folks. I've kept you waiting long enough, I know.

The first thing I did was prepare the ice cream. The French Laundry Cookbook instructs the user to put a few beets through a juicer and proceed accordingly. I borrowed a friend's juicer for this dish, and when I plugged it in, it popped and sparked and promptly died. Luckily, I already had a bottle of beet juice in the pantry, so I used that instead, and thus skipped the whole adding of the pulp section later in the directions. Here's how I made the ice cream: I reduced 2 cups of beet juice over low heat until I had about a quarter-cup left. I removed it from the heat, covered it, and put it in the refrigerator. Next, I combined the milk and cream in a saucepan with a splash of beet juice (instead of pulp), brought it to a simmer, covered it, turned off the burner, and let it sit for 30 minutes.

I then strained the liquid, measured three cups of it (pitched the rest), and put it back in the saucepan. I added some sugar, and brought it up to a simmmer, dissolving the sugar by stirring as it was cooking.


In a separate bowl, I whisked 8 egg yolks (I thought about using 6 instead, but went with the full 8 and I'm glad I did) with the rest of the sugar. I then spooned in some of the hot milky beety mixture to temper the yolks and sugar, then poured the yolk mixture back into the saucepan where I kept it over low heat, stirring until it had thickened a bit more.

I poured the mixture through a strainer into a bowl sitting in an ice bath. I let the mixture come to room temperature before putting it in the refrigerator overnight, along with the beet juice reduction.


The next morning, I poured the beet reduction into the custard mixture, stirred to incorporate it and put it in my ice cream maker for about 25 minutes until it was ready to be scooped into a container and put in the freezer for a few hours:


You guys, this ice cream is soooooooo good. I'd be content to eat it on its own, so I'm glad this recipe made enough for me to have leftovers.

The next thing I did was make the walnut syrup and candied walnuts. I roasted the walnuts in the oven for about 15 minutes:


Then, I rubbed off their skins, which I found a strangely satisfying task. I had already made the poaching liquid (to see how that is made, click here), so I brought it to a boil, then added the walnuts and let them cook until the liquid had reduced:


I poured the walnuts and syrup through a strainer and put the syrup in the refrigerator for plating later. I placed the poached walnuts on a parchment-lined baking sheet, salted them liberally, and toasted them in the oven for about 35 minutes. When they were crunchy, I took them out of the oven and let them cool, then put them in a container to save them for plating:


Next, it was time to make the chocolate cakes, since they needed about two hours to cool after baking and I was on a deadline. The oven was already preheated from making the walnuts, so I prepped 10 4oz. souffle molds by spraying them with some nonstick cooking spray. You'll see in one of the later photos that my souffle molds were really more of a custard mold. I couldn't justify spending the money on buying more equipment when I already had something I thought would work just as well.

To start, I melted 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate and 8T butter in a bowl over a pot of hot water. I removed the bowl from the heat and let it come to room temperature. In the meantime, I whisked 3 eggs with some sugar over that same pot of hot water, then placed the bowl on my mixer stand and whipped it until the eggs had cooled and tripled in volume:


I folded in the melted chocolate/butter mixture as well as a quarter-cup of heavy cream, which I'd whisked until it had soft peaks. I spooned this mixture into the ten molds and put them in a roasting pan in a warm water bath:


These guys went into a 350-degree oven for about 10 minutes, after which time I laid a sheet of aluminum foil over top and let them back for another 20-25 minutes, until the tops were shiny and the cakes set. I took them out of the oven and out of the waterbath and let them cool in their molds on a baking rack for about two hours.

We're in the homestretch, and the only thing I had left to do was make the beet chips. I love beet chips, and I keep forgetting how easy it is to make them at home, and I'm happy to be reminded of it through this dish.

I took three small-ish beets, peeled them, and sliced them thin with my mandoline:


I dusted each one with flour and put them in batches of about 20 into a pot of 275-degree canola oil. Each batch took about 5-7 minutes to cook until they stopped bubbling and were crisp.


I drained them on paper towels (still the ugly floral ones, which is why there is no photo of them), salted them, and got the dishes ready for plating.

Here's the final dish: a spoonful of walnut syrup, topped with the chocolate cake, which sits next to a scoop of beet ice cream and some candied walnuts, topped with a little bit of confectioners sugar, then topped with beet chips.


I can hear you asking, "Carol, that looks delicious, but, dude, why is there potting soil on the plate?" Yeah. The cakes completely fell apart and I had to dig them out of the molds with a spoon to get them on the plate. Pastry is not my forté, as you are clearly learning if you've been a longtime reader of this blog. I need some pastry lessons - STAT! But let's talk about how this tasted... there are no words. Well, that's not entirely true; I could use words like delicious. Sumptuous. Magnificent. Beet-tastic. Salty. Sweet. Crispy. Creamy. Magical.

I love when a dessert mixes textures, tastes and temperatures successfully and blows you away. What I also love about this dessert is that I could have served any of these elements separately and they could've stood alone and been delicious. But when you mix them, they are more powerful and make you linger at the table a little longer to see if anyone doesn't finish theirs so you can swoop in and clean that plate yourself.

I'd make this dessert again in a heartbeat. And, now that I have some extra beet ice cream in the freezer, I'm heading out to the market in a few minutes to pick up some pretzels to go with it. Anybody up for cards?

Up Next: Braised Breast of Veal with Yellow Corn Polenta Cakes, Glazed Vegetables, and Sweet Garlic

Resources:
Beets from Glenville Hollow Farms
Organic Valley cream and milk
Eggs from Smith Meadows Farm
Walnuts from TPSS Co-op
Bogle Chardonnay
Scharffen Berger chocolate
365 organic butter
Biotta beet juice

Music to Cook By: This is almost embarassing to admit, but -- Stephanie Mills: Greatest Hits. I can totally hear you laughing at me. Shutty! "I Feel Good" and "Feel the Fire" (her duet with Teddy Pendergrass) are just awesome. And "Home"? Love it. It reminds me of college, but I'm not sure why. I know I went through a bigtime Anita Baker phase back in the day, and I recall listening to Stephanie Mills on WPGC here in DC, but I can't tell you why I started downloading her stuff and listening to her again. I'm glad I did, though.