Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and today we are making a special chocolate
box dessert for Valentine's Day or you could make it any day.
Pour on the strawberry sauce and you melted my heart.
To make the ice cream you need milk, skim milk powder, egg yolks, vanilla, sugar and
cream.
I'll put all the recipe quantities on the howtocookthat.net website for you, and there
is a to that link below.
Add the skim milk powder to the milk and stir that over high heat until the milk powder
is dissolved.
In a bowl add the egg yolks and the sugar and whisk those together and continue whisking
as you pour in most of the hot milk.
Return it to the heat and then add in the egg yolk and sugar and milk mixture and stir
that until it is just heated through.
Then pour it through a sieve into a bowl and then add in the vanilla and your cream.
Now we want to place that mixture into the fridge to chill.
For the base you need egg yolks, pistachios or any nut you like, powdered sugar, flour,
baking powder and egg whites and you'll also need a little water
Place the yolks, nuts, and icing sugar into a processor and process them until they're
smooth.
Then add a couple of tablespoons of water and the flour and mix those together.
Whip up the egg whites to make soft peaks just like this and then fold those egg whites
into the flour mixture.
Just keep folding it until you can't see any more traces of the egg whites.
Then pour that into a baking tray and spread it out thinly.
You want to bake that in the oven for around 7 minutes or until it's golden and firm to
the touch.
Once it has cooled use a ruler to cut a piece that is the size of the bottom of your container
and place that down into the base.
Now grab your ice cream machine and pour the mixture that we made in and let it churn for
about 15 minutes.
Instead of making your own ice cream you can just buy ice cream from the store and leave
it on the counter to soften.
Once it is nice and thick spread out a layer of that over the base.
Then add the raspberries in rows going across the dessert and these will look pretty once
we slice it.
Add the remaining ice cream on top and spread that out to level it on the top.
Then place on top of that more of our pistachio cake and then place that in the freezer overnight
for it to really firm up.
For the strawberry glaze you need strawberries, cream, glucose syrup, sugar, gelatine and
white chocolate.
Add the gelatine to the cream and stir that together well.
In the saucepan add the sugar and the glucose syrup or you can use corn syrup here, they
just help make it shiny.
Heat those until the sugar has dissolved.
Slice your strawberries and then add them to the hot sugar mixture and those will strawberries
will soften right up and almost collapse.
Add in the gelatine and cream mixture and stir those through until it is dissolved.
Then pour that mixture over the white chocolate and just let it melt that chocolate.Strawberries
and cream are always a good combination.
Stir it all together and if you want it a little pinker then add in some red food colouring
at this point.
Now to make it smooth push it through a fine sieve just using the back of a spoon so that
all those little strawberry seeds are left behind.
Get the ice cream out of the freezer and if you are using a silicone mould just loosen
up all the sides.
If you are using a firm container just place the edges of it in warm water so that it releases
it from the edges.
Tip it out form the container.
And mine has sloping sides so I'm just going to use a knife to straighten them up.
The rapsberries look so pretty once it's cut.
Pour the strawberry glaze over the top.
And I have had lots of requests for a 'favourite books' video.
I did your favourite apps on the iPad cake, your favourite YouTubers on cupcakes ... and
you can vote for your favourite book or book series by writing it in the comments below.
Return that to the freezer to set.
And now we want to make the chocolate box.
For that pour some tempered chocolate onto some acetate and spread it out fairly thinly.
As you know my valentine for many years Dave has been super hard at work writing a novel.
And yes, he is one of those cool people who goes to a cafe to write.
He has been loving all of your input into the story.
The movie playing in at the cinemas as requested by you is going to be preview for Casablanca
followed by a re-run of King Kong so if you suggested either of those well done, your
name will be in the back of the book.
And for Miki's style there were lots of good suggestions, even some great drawings and
several of those descriptions have been incorporated into the book.
It is nearly at the proof reading stage so it's getting very exciting.
Give the acetate a shake to smooth out the chocolate and get rid of any air bubbles.
And once the chocolate is just starting to set use a knife to cut the shapes shown on
the template, and I'll put that on the website for you too.
I am making these serves fairly big so they're big enough to share with two people.
If you want to make individual ones just reduce the size.
Then take some circle cutters and cut holes in the sides and you can do them in all different
sizes.
It's just so we can see the pretty dessert inside.
Then using a heart shaped cutter cut a heart from the centre of the lid.
If you don't have a cutter no problem you can just use a knife to draw the shape.
Place a sheet of baking paper over the top and a cutting board or something heavy on
top to weigh it down so it doesn't curl.
Once that is set spread some more chocolate out really thinly.
Smooth it out then add the lid with the heart cut out on top - I've made one out of white
to make it easier for you to see here.
And then you're just going to cut around the edge of that.
Lay out your sides and use a warmed baking tray to melt the edges and join them together.
Adding each side one at a time.
And just adjusting it to make sure it is straight.
Then use some of the melted chocolate off the tray to add the lid into place.
Cut a square of the ice cream dessert, centre it on the plate and then add a chocolate box
over the top.
Mix the leftover glaze with some water to thin it and warm that up and pour it over
the top to show your hidden love heart.
You could of course do this with any letter or any shape that you like.
Subscribe to How To Cook That for more Cakes, Chocolates and Desserts.
Click here for the recipe Here for more of my dessert videos
and here for the YouTube channel.
Make it a great week and I'll see you all on Friday.