Dessert Labors of Labor Day Weekend

It was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, with company in from out of town, and I wanted to put together a special dessert for dinner that night. I had two recipes that I'd wanted to try out, and they promised a certain complimentary flair, so I tackled the time-consuming preparation of them both for much of the afternoon (and into the evening!). After a great dinner of pan-seared pork medallions in a ginger-shiitake-soy cream sauce, this was sort of a heavy dessert: an intensely chocolate-y layer cake with some homemade salty caramel ice cream on the side:

But it was not a particularly successful endeavor. Well, it was partially successful. Here's the deal.

Both of these items involved making caramel by melting down sugar. For the ice cream, that worked out reasonably well (although as you'll see below, I think it was an insufficient amount of sugar). The caramelizing of the sugar for the cake was in order to create a thick but spreadable layer of caramel to go between each of the cake layers...but even though I thought I watched it carefully, it ended up with a nasty burned taste. I discarded that caramel filling and doubled the rich deep chocolate frosting and used it as filling and as icing. That proved to be an excellent accommodation: this is about the most intense chocolate cake I've ever made, incredibly moist and flavorful. You probably don't want a regular sized piece of it, frankly. It has the potential to overwhelm you.

As for that ice cream...I have a small collection of recently-obtained ice cream recipes that I've wanted to work my way through. The first of those was fantastic: the red velvet ice cream with cream cheese swirl. The second one was reasonably well-received by that evening's company but I didn't think it was worth repeating: coffee toffee ice cream.

So the next one I tried out was for salty caramel ice cream, last Saturday night. I've become quite fond of salty caramel ice creams and gelatos. I've also enjoyed discovering the caramel version of Liberté yogurt. I was pretty pumped to try this out at home.

But where is the sweetness?! This is an incredibly blah ice cream. I expect some of it will get eaten, just because it's here, but I'll not be surprised if I throw out what's left. I realize kitchen life is full of its ups and downs, but man-o-man I hate to put in that many hours and come out with a double-dose of disappointment.

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"Chocolate-Caramel Layer Cake," by Lan Lam. In Cook's Illustrated, Number 136, September & October 2015, p. 20-22.

"Salty Caramel Ice Cream," a not-at-all-good ice cream, I'm afraid. Yuck. Try it if you want to. But I would discourage you. Totally. Adapted from Jeni Britton Bauer and originally published in Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. Found online at cookingchanneltv.com.