Cucumber chocolate?
Can you combine cucumber and chocolate in desserts? If you check the Foodpairing tree of cucumber (click on the picture for the dynamic pop-up), you will find in the category of pastry/ chocolate (bottom left) ingredients like milk chocolate (lait) from Vanuatu.
Now, how do you get started?
First of all, select the ingredients looking at the cucumber Foodpairing tree. You will find also hazelnut, honey, almonds, lemon, black and green tea.
Next step is to make different textures with the ingredients;
With the lemon and almond, you can make a crumble;
175 g of flour, 100 g almond powder, 125 g butter, 225 g sugar, 3 lemon zeste, 100 g cocoa butter
Mix the first 4 ingredients till you obtain a sandy dough. Bake at 175°C till it’s golden brown. Let it cool down. Mix the crumble with the melted Belcolade Cocoa Butter. Pour the crumble in a circle of 14cm and freeze
With the honey and hazelnut, you can make a honey hazelnut biscuit;
500 g eggs, 200 g hazelnut powder, 175 almond powder, 175 g honey, 200 g icing sugar, 100 g flour, 330 g egg white, 50 g sugar
Whip everything together, spread out on a baking tray. Bake at 240°C for 5min.
The cucumber is transformed into a Cucumber jelly;
500 g cucumber juice, 80 g sugar, 40 g honey, 10 g gelatin
Make fresh cucumber juice and heat up the juice till 40°C together with the honey. Add the gelatin, pour in a Flexipan mould 14cm and freeze it.
The black tea can be combined with Vanuatu chocolate: Black tea creme;
450 g Cream 35%, milk QS, 20 g black tea, 570 g Vanuatu 44 milk chocolate, 100 g butter
Boil the fresh cream and the black tea and let it infuse for 5 min. Pass through a sieve and add milk till you have your original weight of 450g again. Heat up again till 85°C and pour onto the Belcolade Origins Vanuatu 44. Mix to obtain a homogeneous filling. When the cremeux reaches a temperature of 35°C, add the butter and mix again. Pour the Black Tea Cremeux on top of the Crumble Lemon. Put on top of this a layer of the Hazelnut Honey Biscuit and freeze.
To finish chocolate mousse;
250 g milk, 250 g cream, 100 g egg yolk, 550 g milk chocolate Vanuatu 44, 6 g gelatin, 450 g cream
Boil the milk with the cream and pour this onto the egg yolks. Add the Belcolade Origin Vanuatu 44 and mix. Add the gelatin and mix again. Add the semi whipped fresh cream. Fill 1/3 of a circle with mousse. Take the insert and the Cucumber Jelly from the freezer. Place the Cucumber Jelly on top of the insert and put it in the circle upside down in the mousse. Freeze it.
You can compose all these layers into a pie like this Astroid by Michel Eyckerman
