Chocolate Ingots

Do any of you watch “How I met your Mother”? We just finished catching up on old episodes tonight, and while watching the episode from two weeks ago, I recognized a particular cake on the back of a book on the shelf at Victoria’s bakery. I got up and walked to the other room, and my husband said, “Where are you going?” and paused the show. When I came back, I pointed at the screen, which had the camera on Ted and the bookshelf in the background, and I held up my copy of Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, and said “Hey, look! I knew I recognized it!” Someone in the crew has good taste in baking books. 🙂

This week, I baked the last of the ingots, since I’ve already made angel food cake. It’s my second-to-last recipe from the baby cakes chapter, since I’ve made all of the various cupcakes numerous times (just haven’t blogged about those recipes individually).

For this recipe, you start by caramelizing cocoa nibs. Luckily, when I’d ordered vanilla beans from the vanilla food company, I picked up some cocoa nibs, too, because they sounded interesting. I haven’t really had reason to pull them out until now, though.

I can’t really say I ended up with what I would call caramelized cocoa nibs. It was more some caramelized sugar and toasted cocoa nibs. For some reason the sugar didn’t seem to want to stick to the cocoa. I’m not really sure if that made much difference.

Next was the batter, which is primarily an almond meal batter, with beurre noisette slowly beaten into the mix. Then mix in a few teaspoons of the cocoa nibs, and distribute the batter in your chosen vessel. I’m still confused as to whether you’re expected to let this batter rest for an hour, because the wording in the recipe’s a bit odd, but I stashed it in the fridge anyway. After sprinkling on more cocoa nibs, you’re ready to bake.

These came out of the oven looking really weird, and I’m not sure why. My theory is either the butter wasn’t properly emulsified, and kinda sank out of the batter, or the bits of caramelized sugar that came with the nibs did something weird. My ingots were all crater-y.

I think I’ve finally figured out, now that I’ve baked all of the ingot recipes, that I’m just not a big fan. They’re almost too buttery for me. The first time I made one of these recipes, I thought it was just due to the tiny size I’d made them, and figured that the ratio of surface area to batter made my baking spray make them all greasy, which is why I decided to make them in a larger size this time. As it turns out, they’re just really full of butter. Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice and moist, and the tops are kind of a neat texture, but the flavour’s underwhelming. I guess I was just expecting a bit more of a chocolate punch with these.

By the way, I’m probably going to be sitting out the next two weeks. I might bake and write something up next weekend for the 17th, but the weekend after, we’re going to be in Jasper, Alberta, for our fifth anniversary! We leave from Toronto by train next Tuesday. 🙂