The Lady Grey Trio, or Death by Orange, Tea, and Chocolate

A few weeks ago, an old friend, who was one of my thesis advisors from my undergrad days, came by our department to give a talk, so afterwards, and after dinner, I had her over for dessert. This whole "coming over for dessert" arrangement was fantastic because I didn't have to worry about cooking dinner too and could focus my entire concentration and energy on preparing dessert, which is quite arguably the most important part of the meal anyways. (Arguably, I said.)

I actually agonized for several days over the perfect dessert to make.  I don't get the chance very often to do plated desserts, which can be great fun, so I wanted to really take my time in developing this one.  There were other constraints also, such as having everything made ahead of time, since I'd be in class and on campus the entire day.  I knew that I wanted the dessert to involve chocolate (because it was the one thing I was sure that Sharon liked), and I knew that I wanted to do something in triplicate.  Beyond that, though, I was clueless (and intimidated, after a mutual friend of ours had informed me that Sharon's a foodie).  Until, my mom showed up one day with a bag of beautiful, home-grown oranges from a friend's tree.  Then it hit:

Lady Grey tea.  If you haven't tried this more subtle version of Earl Grey tea yet, I highly, highly recommend it.  Basically, instead of the typical lemon accompaniment for Earl Grey tea, Lady Grey tea uses orange instead, which, to me, really enhances the fragrance of the bergamot extract (Twinings is the brand I recommend for Lady Grey, and, for you lucky folk in London, I know that the Twinings main store sells loose leaf Lady Grey).  Lady Grey and chocolate also go fabulously together, and so I present to you the Lady Grey Trio dessert:

The Lady Grey Trio

Earl Grey Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

Orange Creme Brulee

Chocolate Orbit Cake

with white chocolate Lady Grey creme anglaise

Now, I must warn you: this is not a dessert trio for the faint of heart.  First of all, it involves not one or two, but three different types of custards and creams.  (Meaning also, lots of subsequent meringue and macaron practice.)  Then, it also involves a lot of chocolate.  In fact, there's so much rich, creamy chocolate that the orange creme brulee actually acts sort of like a palate cleanser.  I'm not kidding.  Creme brulee as a palate cleanser.  Proceed at your own risk.  (Though, come to think of it, this entire dessert is gluten free, so that's one "healthy" thing going for it.)

That said, those of you who *are* willing to take the plunge won't regret it, because this dessert trio is an unabashed and shameless celebration of extreme decadence and love of chocolate.  The Earl Grey dark chocolate ice cream is made with dark chocolate and Dutch-processed cocoa powder, and there's also black cocoa powder thrown in for good measure.  Of course, I always use extra heavy manufacturing cream whenever possible.  *looks about innocently and whistles.*  The end result is some of the darkest and richest chocolate ice cream that I've ever had, with lingering flavors of the Earl Grey tea and bergamot at the very end.  (I refuse to go back to store bought ice cream these days.)

For a chocolate cake, I of course had to turn to David Lebovitz's chocolate orbit cake, which is basically, as I always put it, chocolate baked in the oven.  Because, quite literally, that's what it is.  It's an extremely moist and dense chocolate cake, and to lighten it up, I drowned it here in some white chocolate Lady Grey creme anglaise sauce.  "Lighten" is a relative term, okay?  The sauce went really well with the cake, with the flavors of tea and orange and white chocolate balancing out the robust, dark chocolate-ty richness underneath.

As for the orange creme brulee--well.  Thank goodness for the orange creme brulee.  The light creaminess of the baked custard and intense orange flavor from fresh orange zest and a dash of Grand Marnier was most definitely a welcome accompaniment to the indulgence of chocolate in the other parts of the dessert trio!  And, who doesn't enjoy cracking open the top of a creme brulee?  :-)

All in all, we had a wonderfully pleasant evening: Sharon brought over her violin and we, together with my roommate, played (well, I stumbled) our way through several Baroque and early Classical double violin and piano trios.  I have to say that I thought my dessert trio was the perfect complement to our musical evening--for some reason, the bergamot and orange tea and dark chocolate flavors reminded me faintly of ye olden Baroque times (highly romanticized by my imagination, I'm sure) when people would enjoy good food, company, conversation, and music post-dinner in their candlelit salons amidst stacks of musty old books and claw-footed sofas.  And, how much more fitting it was when my roommate remarked afterwards that "the Lady Grey Trio" would make a great name for a chamber music trio, too!

Anyways, time to wrap up this extraordinarily lengthy post and announce the winner of the black cocoa and photo print giveaway!  Selected at random (using random.org algorithm), congrats to entry #102 myblankpage!  You didn't leave a contact email, though, so please email me at s [at] shihbakes [dot] com to claim your prize!  You have one week before I pick someone new.

Thanks so much to everyone else for commenting in the giveaway.  As I said before, it was so much fun to visit your blogs and hear your ideas about what to do with black cocoa.  I now have a to-make list miles long.  Alas, though, after this Lady Grey Trio dessert and the past two posts, I think I might put this blog on a chocolate-free diet for a week or so.  I, at the very least, need the detox.  :-P


Read on for recipes...

Salted Black Cocoa Brownies, and the Eyjafjallajokull parfait

Oh, the power of persuasion.  I am so touched by everyone's incredible enthusiasm over the giveaway (BTW-- have you entered yet???)  Even though I haven't had the time to personally respond to all of your comments yet, I have been reading them all with great excitement!  I asked you all what you would do with black cocoa powder, and I've been loving the responses.  Man, you guys are creative--I mean, mole sauce with black cocoa?  Who would of thought of that!

An incredible number of you commented that you would make black cocoa brownies, and the more I read about black cocoa brownies, the more I started to really crave them.  Yes, the power of mob persuasion and mass suggestion at work.  So, the logical course of action was of course to whip up a batch of my own black cocoa brownies, just so you all know that it can be done.  And the results?  Fantastic.

Super chocolate-ty, super dense--nice and robust and dark.  Mm... this is what a brownie should be.  And, I am of the camp who believes that chocolate is greatly enhanced by a touch of salt, so the version I made here is salted black cocoa brownies.  I buttered the pan with salted butter (rubbing in a little bit of extra salt, just for good measure) and then topped the brownie batter with liberal sprinklings of coarse sea salt before baking.  The end result was a brownie that is so incredibly dangerous to have around the house, because it's so dark-chocolate-ty and yet not too sweet at all, hence you can just keep popping them into your mouth before you realize that you've devoured them all.  *looks about innocently*  I did manage to stay away from one pan of brownies (by wrapping them up in layers of saran wrap) long enough to take them into class today--at which point one person told me that she hesitated to even call these brownies because "brownie" did not seem worthy enough a name.  :-)

Of course, being me, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I present to you another use of these salted black cocoa brownies, if you manage to stop eating them long enough to make it to this point: the Eyjafjallajokull parfait.  Yes, you will ask--why in the world am I naming these parfaits after Iceland's recently-infamous volcano?  Well!  First of all, these parfaits are made with plain Icelandic skyr, which are the perfect base of smooth, creamy, thick, and tart goodness.  Then, layered underneath and on top are alternatively the season's first strawberries, macerated in lemon juice and vanilla sugar, and chopped up cubes of salted black cocoa brownies.  For some reason, the skyr made me think of Iceland, and then the strawberries and black cocoa brownies made me think of lava and volcanic rock, respectively, sitting on top of a rich mountain of skyr, and thus was borne the name "the Eyjafjallajokull parfait."  Or, if you don't want to try pronouncing that, you can just call it the "Strawberry, black brownie, and skyr parfait."

Oh man, did these make the perfect afternoon snack yesterday or what.  The bites of dark chocolate and chewy brownie were balanced out really well by the lightness of the strawberries and the creaminess of the skyr.  Mmmm... I should have made them in larger mugs.  :-P

Anyways, thank you guys all again for your wonderfully sweet and thoughtful and awesomely fun to read comments in the last post!  Here are a few answers to a couple of recurring questions, just so I don't forget to address them later:

1.  I made the chocolate trees on the cake out of dark chocolate couverture, mixing in black cocoa powder to make the color darker (which, by the way, is another great use of black cocoa powder, as base for dark food colorings).  Then, I piped the melted chocolate onto silpats/parchment paper in the shape of trees and let dry completely.  You can also do this with tempered chocolate, and it will probably be even sturdier, but chocolate couverture is a good quick-and-dirty cheat. :-)

2.  Yes! the walk through the forest totally reminded me of the video game Myst.  Actually, the original title for "Descent" was "Descent into Mystverse."  I am a geek, just like the rest of you.

3.  Someone mentioned self-saucing pudding cake.  I am *so* intrigued by this.  Can anyone point me in the direction of a recipe?

4.  For those of you who have asked if you can buy prints: I just showed my collection so I haven't had any time to think about prints beyond the limited edition ones of the collection.  I will look into this further (maybe via imagekind) and get back to everyone!  If you are interested in the limited edition prints from the entire collection, in their original intended sizes, please contact me individually at s "at" shihbakes "dot" com.

[P.S.  How awesome is the word macerated, by the way?]


Read on for recipe...