Dark Chocolate Chambord Torte Recipe

Dark chocolate chambord torteChambord is delicious in cocktails, but it turns out it’s even better in chocolate. Used as flavoring for ganache, truffles, or even frosting it adds a subtle raspberry touch—without artificial flavors, seeds, or texture changes—plus you can drink your left overs. If you’ve never heard of Chambord, it looks like this:

chambord

A pretty little round bottle from France, Chambord is made from black raspberries, vanilla, and cognac. It’s a thick drink, sort of like a syrup almost. Don’t worry about the alcohol content either, as this recipe calls for adding near boiling cream to the chambord, what little was there cooks off.

Anyway, you likely aren’t on this page to learn about booze, chances are you wanted the dark chocolate Chambord torte recipe, so let’s get to that. This recipe is very simple and looks pretty professional if I do say so myself, minus when I was topping mine the nozzle on the drizzle bottle kept clogging (be sure your chocolate chips have melted entirely) so my pattern was all shakey. I’m sure your Chambord torte will look better, and I’d love to see your pictures too.

What do you need?

Ingredients:

Crust:

-Brownie mix (and the eggs, oil, etc needed to make it)

You can either make yours from scratch or use a box mix. I used a box and the recipe for brownie cookies so the crust would be a little more firm and easier to pick up.

Chambord Torte layer:

-1 3/4 cups cream
-16 oz dark chocolate
-1/3 cup Chambord

For a sweeter flavor you can use milk chocolate rather than dark, or a mix of half dark, half milk for a the middle ground.

Topping:

-Fresh raspberries
-1/4 cup heavy cream
-3 oz dark chocolate chips

I admit, I kind of eyeball this part as far as the chips. This is just about 1/3 your average chocolate glaze recipe. As you’re mixing this, you want it thick enough to drizzle. If you’re feeling really lazy, you can even buy pre-made chocolate drizzling sauce in the coffee isle.

How do you do this?

Instructions:

Begin by baking your brownie layer as directed in a 9-in spring form pan. You can turn the oven of afterwards, the rest of this recipe is no bake. Be sure to grease the bottom of the pan so your cake will release later. There’s no need to grease the sides higher than the crust.

While your crust is cooling. Heat the 1 3/4 cup heavy cream on medium heat until it has begun to bubble slightly, but is not boiling (just before boiling).

Remove from heat and pour on top of the 16 oz of chocolate. Stir until smooth. Add 1/3 cup Chambord. Stir until smooth again.

Pour on top of brownie crust.

Place the entire pan in the fridge overnight.

The next day, place your pan on a large can. Use a blow dryer to heat the full circle of the pan. You’ll see the torte releasing from the pan as you go. Once you’ve made it all the way around, just open the spring form pan and it’ll slide right off.

IMG_20151126_100156 IMG_20151126_100409

Decoratively arrange raspberries on top. You can also go for an all over layer like I did in this triple chocolate triple berry cheesecake. Just raspberries or even raspberries and black berries would be wonderful. With a full layer you may want to toss the berries in sugar and let them it a bit, it will make a fruit-juice topping.

Finally, heat ¼ cup heavy cream as instructed above for the filing, pour it atop the chocolate and stir until smooth. Fill a drizzle bottle and well, drizzle on the torte.

When removing this from the pan for plating, if the brownie sticks a bit, run a large flat spatula underneath.

dark chocolate chambord torte flourless

IMG_20151126_104646 IMG_20151126_104637 IMG_20151126_104616

Cheesecake Recipe: Triple Chocolate Triple Berry

Cheesecake—what could be better? Cheesecake with three kinds of chocolate and berries—triple chocolate triple berry cheesecake—that’s what. Generally, I’m a baker cheat, so even having made a dessert for like every event I’ve ever attended, I had never made cheesecake from scratch. I decided to take that plunge this Thanksgiving, but not just any old cheesecake recipe would do, I wanted an easy cheesecake recipe that also had some serious wow factor. I wanted people inventing adjectives for how much they liked it. So I read, oh, I dunno, 50+ cheesecake recipes and their reviews. I wanted to single out triple chocolate triple berry cheesecake recipeaspects that made a “good” cheesecake recipe and then squished them together. The result was nomulish (I thought I’d start the word making.)

So, what do you need for this triple chocolate triple berry cheesecake recipe?

Ingredients:

Crust:

You can do a basic Oreo-crumb crust, but my eldest is allergic, so I used crushed chocolate teddy grams. Alternately, I did a brownie crust on my other T-day treat, dark chocolate Chambord torte, and that would be a divine choice as well if you don’t what to mess with messy crumbs.

For the teddy gram route, my crust for a 9-in spring form pan was about ¾ a box, crushed, then mixed with melted butter until moist (about ¼ cup). Here is that mixed to give an idea of constancy, and then baked to show it gets prettier.

teddy gram cheesecake crust teddy gram crust 2

Filing:

-10 oz milk chocolate chips
-1 1/3 powdered sugar
-3 Tablespoons Cocoa powder (I prefer Ghirardelli)
-16 oz (2 boxes) Cream cheese softened
-4 Eggs (room temp)

Some prefer bittersweet chocolate nibs or dark chocolate. I used milk chocolate chips, because I had a huge bag on hand.

Berry layer:

-1 cup chopped strawberries
-1 cup raspberries
-1 cup black berries
-Granulated sugar
I used fresh. I have never tried this with frozen, if you do drop us a comment on how it worked.

Topping:

-3/4 Heavy cream
-8 oz. dark chocolate chips

How do you do this?

Instructions:

This is kind of a multi-step program.

First, make your crust. Simply combine the crushed bears with the butter and press into the bottom of your spring form pan. Bake at 350 degrees for roughly 9 minutes or have your alternate crust choice from above ready. Leave the oven at 350.

Next, combine all three berries in a bowl, toss them in sugar until fairly evenly coated. The pic below is to give you an idea of how much sugar. Set this aside at room temp, it’s going to make a juice as it sets.

Cheesecake recipe berries

Then, Melt the chocolate chips—or nibs or whatever you chose. I prefer do this in a double boiler on low heat, but I’m told you can use a microwave too. For the double boiler, be sure the water in the bottom pan doesn’t touch the top pan and stir frequently. Set this aside also at room temp to cool slightly (don’t delay the next steps, it will harden)

Cream your cream cheese, sugar, and cocoa powder together in a large bowl until smooth.

Mix in the eggs on a low speed setting.

Add the melted chocolate chips and mix on low until combined.

cheesecake filing before baked

Pour the mixture in your pan with the crust.

Fill a pan larger than your spring form with about an inch of water. Wrap the spring form with tinfoil, and place it in this pan. (This is called a water bath, it helps prevent cracking.)

Bake this in that preheated oven (350) until the top appears dry and set. Cook time may vary by oven, in mine it was about an hour.

baked chocolate cheesecake
I may have stolen a small nibble to taste it

Allow your cheesecake to cool and then place it in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Once nice and cold, you can start the next layer. Heat the heavy cream on medium heat until it begins to bubble, not boiling, but about to boil.

Remove from heat and pour over the dark chocolate chips.

Stir until smooth.

Place some of this topping in a drizzle bottle (about 1/4ish the pan)
Pour the rest on your cheesecake. If you prefer your ganache layer drip down the sides, you’ll want to remove the pan before pouring, if you want a clean edge, leave it on.

Cheesecake usually remove easily from the pan, but if you are super worried about sticking you can run a butter knife around the outer rim of the pan.

Pan on or off, once you pour the dark chocolate ganache layer, place the berries on top. Then drizzle the remaining dark chocolate over the berries.

triple chocolate triple berry cheesecake

Finally, refrigerate until the ganache is set (about an hour minimum, 24 hours works best.)

How did your turn out? Have suggestions to make this cheesecake recipe even better? We love to hear your thoughts.

IMG_20151126_104511 IMG_20151126_104423 triple chocolate triple berry cheesecake

Halloween Treats: Dark Chocolate Spider Cake

hallowen spider cakeAfter opting to use my cool new 3D skull cake pan to make meatloaf head, I still had to make cake for our Halloween party—because what’s a party without cake? I’m not gonna lie here, I may make a tasty cake, but they are often less than beautiful. I am not the artistic type, so I wanted to do something that looked cool, but required exceptionally little effort. I settled on a spider web design using dark chocolate ganache and white chocolate drizzle. The result was not only delicious, but looked deceivingly professional.

How can you fake your friends into thinking you got cake deco skills too?

First, bake a cake. This would look just as nice in rounds, I just used a 13 X 9 because it was a party with lots of cake lovers. My cake was my own brand of cheater. I used boxed Ghirardelli dark chocolate brownie mix and red velvet mix.

If you opt for this as well, first make the brownie mix as directed, but add 3 eggs rather than 2 and milk rather than water. In a separate bowl, mix the red velvet also with milk rather than water. Swirl the two mixes together in your pan and bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick comes out clean.

I used cheesecake pudding between my layers, but you could also do a cream cheese filing or homemade cheesecake if you have more time than this mom of 4.

While your cake cools heat 1 cup heavy cream over medium heat. Once bubbles begin to form (not quite boiling) pour over dark chocolate chips and stir until creamy before beating on high to fluff. Frost cake with this.

Repeat these steps with ½ cup heavy cream and white chocolate. Place into drizzle bottle and just sort of draw lines all over the place on the cake. Bam, webbing. Now just top with some plastic spiders.

halloween spider cake