Chocolate and Champagne

Happy Mother's Day!

As most of the petit fours from the other day were taken to work, and as I wanted to try again with different "materials" I made a batch of chocolate petit fours.  Yesterday I made the sour cream chocolate cake recipe and did a few things differently.

1. I lined 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper and spread out the batter in those.  It made 2 thinner cakes, I used one for each type of petit four.  Pros:  the cake layers were thinner.  Cons: the resulting cake is the wrong texture, the parchment stuck too much and broke the cake, and they baked unevenly in my fragile oven, so there were thicker and thinner parts and there were parts that were more done than others.

2. The layers were chilled before I started to work with them.  Pros: easier to work with. Cons: really, none.

3. One batch had Dulce de Leche in between the layers, the other had raspberry.  Pros:  Dulce de leche.  Cons:  the raspberry ones had violets as decorations, not raspberries.  Had I been more prepared I might have managed a sugar glaze to preserve raspberries for the top.  I didn't have that kind of time.

4. I made a batch of dark chocolate ganache, 10 oz. of chocolate and 10 fl. oz. of cream.  This poured perfectly.  I used this batch for the raspberry ones, which were then topped with the last of my candied violets.

5. Since I needed more ganache, I made another batch with another 10 oz. of dark chocolate.  I didn't have enough heavy cream, only about 6 fl. oz. so I topped that off with half and half.  It completely changed the consistency of the ganache so it didn't set up as well.  Even with chilling the petit fours after pouring the ganache.  Also, as the dulce de leche ones were all jagged on the top, the ganache didn't even out the surface.  I topped these with chocolate covered espresso beans.  Lesson here:  don't skimp on the cream.

Overall, they came out reasonably attractive and certainly tasty.  Richer than the white cake ones.  The white cake ones are more typical of petit fours.  Lessons:  stick with the white cake and, if we're going to keep doing this, invest in the correct little pans.

As I was having my parents over for brunch, I made a champagne vinaigrette with the champagne vinegar I made.  It was light and sweet.  Here's the recipe:

Champagne vinaigrette

1/4 c. champagne vinegar

1/2 c. olive oil

2 T. lemon juice

2 T. brown mustard

garlic

2 T. honey

salt and pepper

This was whisked up in the blender.  It needed more pepper, and maybe could do with a little spice.  Still, it was a nice use of some of that champagne vinegar I made.

I hope all the mothers out there have a wonderful day!