Hot Chocolate Ice Cream Cake

Chef Wilson and Sandria discussing the finer points of plating. ;-)

Hot Chocolate Ice Cream Cake

I was really looking forward to this week in plated desserts because our focus was on frozen desserts. A student activity period prevented us from plating some of the things Chef had planned for us (sure hope we can plate that margarita granita next week!), but we did manage to produce an interesting dessert - the hot chocolate ice cream cake.

The dessert featured a hot chocolate gelato sandwiched between two layers of dark chocolate cake, all of which was glazed with a gelatin-based chocolate glaze and garnished with dulce de leche, whipped cream, chili threads and a tuile cookie. The cake itself was a moist, dense dark chocolate cake that was pretty tasty even to me, a non-chocoholic. The "hot" chocolate gelato got its heat from an infusion of ancho chilies and cayenne pepper. When I first tasted the ice cream it was just normal, creamy chocolate gelato. A few seconds later, though, the gentle heat of the peppers kicked in and it was surprising - and surprisingly good. The dulce de leche gave a nice, sweet dimension to offset the spicy kick of the peppers, but for some reason the DDL came out grainy and didn't have a good mouth feel. The one thing I did NOT enjoy was the chili threads. While they added visual interest to the plate, it was like eating hair. Yuck!

As for the plating, I liked the way all the elements came together. The stripes in the DDL mirrored the layers in the ice cream cake; the tuile gave height, visual interest, and flow; and the chili threads, well, I could have done without those. :-) Overall, the dish was a nice combination of flavor, texture, temperature, and contrast - the four cornerstones of plated desserts.