Well, my first of three bakes for the day is in the oven!

Number One is a 6" flourless chocolate cake. The normal flourless chocolate cake is in an 8" pan, this one is in a 6" pan because I'm reducing the recipe to 40% of the normal proportions! I needed a narrower and shorter cake for Bake 3. And to make it a little easier, I partially converted the recipe to metric. Instead of 16 ounces of chocolate, 182 grams. 1 tablespoon of sugar becomes 5 grams. 5 eggs and 10 tablespoons of butter require no conversion: just crack two eggs and use four tablespoons of butter and the cutting guide is pre-printed on the butter wrapper!

The nasty bit was reducing a quarter teaspoon of Cream of Tartar: my scale can't measure 0.42 grams! So I grabbed my 1/8th teaspoon and put in just a wee bit. The whites whipped well, so I think everything is OK.

What was really convenient was the water bath: I used an 8" round cake pan! I accidentally put in too much water, causing the 6" pan to float because of the lower density of the chocolate cake vs the density of water, a spoon and a little bailing soon took care of that.

After this is done baking and cooling for a bit, it'll go in to the fridge to chill for four hours or so.


Bake #2 is eggnog cookies! I've never done this before, should be fun. I'm looking forward to the result. Even though eggnog has been available for several weeks now, I waited until last weekend to pick some up. And I couldn't find the Southern Comfort nog! So I bought a brand that I thought that I could trust, and it was terrible. THEN I found the SC, dumped the previous brand down the drain, and got the bug to make cookies.


Bake #3 is the peece du resisterance. After the cake has cooled, I'm making a chocolate mousse. Then the cake goes in to the center of a chocolate Oreo cookie crust, and the mousse is applied on top. Unfortunately it will require another 3-4 hours of fridge time to set. If my wife is a good girl and gets some work on the first quarter science schedule done like she's supposed to, then we might go see Coco, and the final product should be done when we get home....


My one concern is the bake on the cake. Normally it requires a 30 minute bake, but I'm dealing with 40% of the mass of the cake! The normal recipe and 30 minute bake, the top is solid but soft and jiggles when you wiggle it. I checked it at the 20 minute mark and the top had not yet baked, so I'll check it again at 5 minute intervals. I'm very concerned about over-baking it, but perhaps the water bath makes that not a concern?

Well, that was a lot of work!

But I was expecting it. I just finished the chocolate mousse, assembled the chocolate mousse/flourless chocolate cake pie and now it's in the fridge, setting.

Problems encountered: most significantly, the eggnog cookie recipe had the bake at 300 degrees! I've never seen a bake at such a low temperature. And it was supposed to be at 13-15 minutes, IIRC. The first batch of a dozen came out grossly underdone. Cranked up the temperature to 325, gave the first batch an additional 10 minutes, and they were OK. Subsequent batches got 19 minutes, turned at the half-way mark, and were fine. The total mix made about 5 dozen cookies.

On top of that, the recipe was poorly structured, so I rewrote the instructions to a much more sensible mode. Simple enough cookies: ten ingredients, came together really fast. It just took some time to work out time/temperature, and that sucked up my afternoon.

The cookies are pretty good, though I'd like a little more eggnog flavor. The problem is that if you increase the amount of eggnog, you radically throw off the wet/dry ratio, so it'll take some planning and experimentation, or find another recipe to try that might have more eggnog!And I do have a second recipe in the bullpen proverbially warming up: chocolate eggnog cookies! That'll be something to try next weekend.

The flourless chocolate cake mix, when put in the pan, was much taller than I wanted, but it collapsed to about an inch thick, which was EXACTLY what I wanted! When I put it in the Oreo pie crust and added the mousse, the height was absolutely perfect. I'm really looking forward to cutting in to it tomorrow. I expect to cut it in to 16ths like I did the cake in Phoenix.

One problem encountered with the cake: suction. Couldn't get it out of the pan! I partially filled the 8" pan with hot water, put the 6" pan in it and let it sit. Standard technique. Pretty soon I could spin the cake in the pan, and figured I could flip it right out. Boy, did I figure wrong! We ended up using a fish spatula! The end of it is pointy and bendy, and my wife was able to lever it under the cake and break the surface tension/suction that was holding it in. I flipped it on to the back of a plate (large flat surface area, then placed it in to the Oreo pie crust.

NEXT TIME I'm putting parchment paper in the bottom of the cake pan. (I don't have any wax paper, just aluminum foil, parchment paper, and cling wrap)

A lot of work, but I knew it would be. Tomorrow shall be the proof in the eating of the pudding, or pie, as this case is. I'll hold back a dozen or so cookie for us, and on Monday take the rest to work. My wife complains that I'm trying to make her a diabetic, yet she doesn't walk away from what I bake. :-)

Now I get to clean up the kitchen and un/re-load the dishwasher.