Top 100

This weeks culinary endeavor was to recreate some Cinnamon-Chocolate Gelato. I attempted to make this dessert while keeping one eye on my pee-crazy puppy. Let me tell you, that is difficult. I don't know how you mom's out there cook with kids running around potentially sticking forks into electrical outlets or grinding play dough into the carpet.


When I was at the store picking up ingredients I looked at the solid bars of semi-sweet chocolate and then back at the chips. The bars? almost $4. The chips? less than $2. I went the inexpensive route, not realizing the hassle it would be to "finely chop" chocolate chips. It was a pain and a bad idea.






The first instruction was to whisk some dry ingredients and then slowly pour some milk it. Then I was supposed to "whisk until the cornstarch is dissolved." No offense to whoever wrote this, but it's a pretty poor instruction. How is one supposed to tell when cornstarch is dissolved? That's just silly.


Next, we heat it up and cook it for a while. Then, pull off heat and add the chopped chocolate. Clearly, I'm not the world's tidiest cook.








Then, you rig up this intricate cooling system. Not thinking clearly, I put my mixture into the most insulating bowls I own...stupid. I should have done with with metal bowls. Also, my physics teacher would have been very disappointed. I filled it with ice and water to the brim forgetting that water expands as it melts. I had a mini lake rushing all over my counter and down onto the floor at the end of the 30 minute cool down. Embarrassing for a girl who's taken 4 semesters of thermodynamics.








Then, it's poured into the ice cream machine for a churn and sent into the freezer for a sit. A few hours later, out comes a delicious treat. The Bon appetit picture has very fancy and sophisticated shaved chocolate as topping. Here, in my house, nothing beats the rainbow sprinkle.









So, while it didn't set up as firm as I would have liked, (probably because I am a little impatient) the flavor was exceptional.




Whoa! Clearly, this was written at the end of a long and confusing day at work. As has been pointed out, water contracts as it melts, taking up less volume than ice, so that isn't the reason that I had a little lake in my kitchen. Here is my new theory as to why it the water level went up: It didn't really go up. The gelato base in my bowl became much denser and thicker as it cooled, so it probably sank into the liquid more, displacing the fluid and making Lake Eerie on my kitchen floor.








Reminder: If you want to join the club feel free! This link has a list of all the different recipes from Bonappetit's top 100 dishes that we're going to try. Leave a comment with your suggestion for next week's dish on this post. Friday afternoons I post the recipe for the following week and I review them on Thursdays.