In which I attempt to make an ice cream torte

Sorry, I must take a deep breath and sigh before I write this.

Sigh.......

This was not one of my finer moments in the kitchen. When I first read the recipe it really seemed like it wasn't going to be too difficult, but alas, for me, the amateur, it was. When I made this on Sunday, at every step of the way, something happened to reinforce that fact that I am still, very much, but a learner. Again, sigh.......

It turned out to be surprisingly good in the end, but ugh, what an ordeal. I really think I made this much more difficult by a.)not following the recipe to the letter and (and this pains me to admit, because I know better!) b.)not reading through the recipe carefully beforehand. I read it, but apparently (duh!), I didn't really pay attention. You know how that sometimes happens, you're reading a book and then suddenly your a page farther but have no idea what you just read, right - please tell me this happens to other people too.

Anyhoo, on Saturday morning, (nothing like waiting til the last minute) I was still trying to decide what to mix into the ice cream when my dear friend Christy suggested cherries - great idea, huh, I mean chocolate and cherries, yum! So I decided to macerate said cherries in brandy because the recipe in the book listed liqueur as an option. This part went just fine, started them the night before and they were good to go the next morning. So far, so good.

This, however, was the end of my good fortune.

I don't have much photo-documentation from this point on, because I was to d*mn frustrated too take any pictures and I thought there wasn't any way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks I was going to post this disaster. My second friggin recipe from the book, UGH!

Here's a quick recap of the problems with making the Chocolate Banded Ice Cream Torte (really, it shouldn't have been this difficult and I'm sure there are lots of TWD bakers out there who handled this with nary a problem. The blogroll is here and the recipe is here):

• Realized the recipe called for 8 inch springform pan - don't own one so used a 9" and knew the torte would be thin


• Didn't feel comfortable using raw eggs in the ganache because the kids were going to have some - doubled the chocolate and used a combo of 2 parts butter and one part vegetable oil and substituted corn syrup for the sugar - all in an effort to prevent the ganache from becoming brittle. This only sorta-kinda worked. Actually all melty, it looked awfully pretty in the bowl - nice, shiny, beautiful chocolate brown.

• Tried to put all the ice cream and cherries in my too stinkin small food processor (yes, I know, I should have learned my lesson by now, but no.) and found out, yes it's still too small a bowl for that much liquid. Put in blender - this worked but the color was not very attractive - sort of mauvey gray. Oh yes, and by now my ice cream had become quite the consistency of a milk shake - an ugly, mauvey gray milk shake. On the bright side - ugly as it was, it did taste pretty good.


• Realized after the second layer of ice cream that I had erroneously divided the ice cream into thirds when there were only supposed to be two ice cream layers. Now my already too thin torte was going to be that much thinner. grrrrrrrrr.

We still ate it for dessert and everyone said it was good, but the kids ended up eating all the ice cream and leaving most of the chocolate. I think if I had used semi-sweet chocolate and/or added more sugar or corn-syrup, they would have liked it more. It was also hard to eat. Not completely brittle, but still hard to dig into with a spoon.

Bottom line: don't think I'll make this again, but I'm looking at this as a learning experience. On tap for next week: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters. Cookies, I can definitely handle - should be a piece of cake (famous last words?). Stay tuned!

Oh yeah, and I couldn't resist this one:

I wondered where that saying came from and looked it up online - apparently it was a song from the 1930's. I liked it so I thought I'd share:

Life is just a bowl of cherries;

Don't make it serious;

Life's too mysterious.

You work, you save, you worry so,

But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.

So keep repeating it's the berries;

The strongest oak must fall.

The sweet things in life

To you were just loaned,

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

Life is just a bowl of cherries,

So live and laugh at it all.

"Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" was the title of a song by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson, sung by Ethel Merman in Scandals (1931).

In the end, it's all good :-)