melissa makes bread

Chocolate & Banana

I was flipping through the pages of Pierre Herme's Desserts cookbook when I came across the recipe for this tart. This cookbook was written by Dorie Greenspan, and I love anything that she writes. She has a keen eye for observation when baking, and her writing reflects that.

The tart was a hit at home, and one that I'll enjoy tweaking later on. The tart shell is a blind baked pate sucree made with all-purpose and almond flours. The banana slices are sauteed in butter and then caramelized with a little sugar. So you end up with soft banana inside and crunchy caramel coating the oustside. The slices are placed on the bottom of the tart shell. Rum macerated golden raisins are layered on top of the banana slices. The chocolate filling is prepared by melting butter and chocolate separately. The melted chocolate is gently whisked into some beaten eggs and sugar. Then the butter is slowly whisked in to create an emulsion. The filling is poured over the bananas and raisins and then gently baked for a short time. The resulting confection is awesome - satisfying, warm, and not too sweet.

Cacao Nib Ice Cream

Cacao nibs are interesting to me.  They are roasted, shelled cacao beans and can be thought of as the precursor to chocolate bars and cocoa powder.  They are not sweet, but exceptionally flavorful and aromatic. 

When chocolate is manufactured, the cacao beans are removed from their pods, fermented, dried, and then cleaned.  The beans are then roasted and cracked open to remove the hard outer shell.  The shell is discarded and what remains are the nibs.  The nibs are ground into a paste, and the paste is processed diferently according to the desired product, be it cocoa powder, unsweetened chocolate bars for baking, bittersweet or semisweet chocolate. 

Sharffenberger chocolate makers have packaged cacao nibs for retail sale, and they are fairly easy to find.  Recently I happened to find them both at Williams-Sonoma and Whole Foods. 

I came across an interesting recipe from Sharffenberger for cacao nib ice cream that I wanted to try.  And the photo of the ice cream, above, is my version of their recipe.  To make the ice cream, I infused the cacao nibs and a vanilla bean in the milk and cream for a good half hour.  Then I proceded to make the ice cream base.  After churning the base in an ice cream maker I swirled in caramelized cacao nibs (think 'cacao nib britttle'), and then placed the ice cream in the freezer to finish setting up.  The result was wonderful.  The flavor reminded me of a really, really good chocolate brownie.  And the crunchy bits of nibs provided an interesting texture, in addition to adding to the intensity of the flavor.