Saturday, 20 August 2016

Hooked on cooking – Dessert design - a vertical split

 … with a twist

Sorry, couldn't resist an Olympics idea – this sounds like some sort of fancy dive with a degree of difficulty to make your eyes water.

Instant dessert or may be a treat for the cheflets to assemble themselves, this is a variation of a banana split but built vertically in your trusted picnic plastic – the smoothie cups would be ideal.

For 4 cheflets

4 bananas – peeled and sliced when
ready to assemble
4 scoops of vanilla ice cream
4 tbsp of chocolate sauce (see below)
2 tbsp of flaked almonds or chopped
pistachios
glacé cherries to decorate

Sticky Toffee Sauce

4oz unsalted butter
8oz soft brown sugar
10 fl oz double cream (or whipping cream)

Heat together the butter and sugar. When dissolved add the cream.

Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring.

When cooled decant into two squeezy bottles – 1 per 2 cheflets.

Squeeze a blob of sticky toffee sauce into the base of your Smoothie Cup or other picnic plastic of choice.

You have options with regard to your chocolate sauce. You can cheat and buy it but if you'd like the cheflets to have a go, make some ganache. You can make ganache to suit your recipe, see below. I would opt for the option underlined to create a more sundae effect in the cup but it is purely a matter of taste.

On that basis heat 250ml of double cream on a medium heat, bring just to the boil and then pour over 250g of dark chocolate chips – minimum 50% cocoa solids - whisk until smooth. Allow to cool. If you are not using chocolate chips, then chop your chocolate as finely as possible.


Ganache

There are 3 options :

Equal parts chocolate and cream. While still warm this ganache is pourable and can be used to drizzle chocolate ribbons or glaze cookies or cakes. It can also be used as a cake filling. As it starts to cool it thickens and takes on a more spreadable consistency.

Two parts chocolate to one part cream.

Increasing the percentage of chocolate makes for a thicker ganache. This ratio is used for truffles. Can also be used as a glaze or piped frosting.

Two parts cream to one part chocolate.

A ganache with more cream than chocolate is runny – warm and mousse like at room temp. When warm it can be poured over a cake to give a glaze.

The ganache and the sticky toffee sauce are easy elements with some supervision and could be done at the hob together i.e. 2 cheflets making the ganache and 2 the sticky toffee sauce.

You can use a shop bought vanilla ice cream or get the cheflets to make a batch ahead of the game from the recipe on the blog.

The cheflets can now build their vertical split, sticky toffee sauce, layer of bananas, blob of ice cream, large blob of ganache, repeat and finish off with a theatrical drizzle of sticky toffee sauce and chopped nuts.

I hope the idea of a vertical banana split might amuse - you can add anything you like, the cheflets are making a ganache and a sticky toffee sauce, not to mention the vanilla ice cream if so inclined!

The split should be decorated with a glacé cherry – do not forget the cherry!

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