Project Ramekin.

This is an idea we came up with recently. And no it doesn't need any participation from anyone. We happen to be the only participants in this project ;) We're just two people and we are suckers for desserts. When we come across recipes on various sources, they invariably ask for cups of flour, lot of eggs, cream, sugar, so on and so forth. Initially, in order to learn baking and to feel more confident about ourselves, we followed the recipes to the T. Sometimes we ended up with some great stuff, but in huge amounts for just two people! And I personally think that desserts are at their best when consumed fresh. The longer they stay in the refrigerator, the less delectable they become. For instance, the hazelnut flour cake we tried came out great, but it was a LOT for just the two of us. And we're not Ina Garten to host parties almost every single day ;) So we end up consuming most, if not all of the goodies! So we decided to start scaling down recipes. This serves several purposes.

1) Less stuff to eat (or discard, if it doesn't succeed ;))
2) Is it really possible to scale down certain recipes? (Consider meringues and so on)
3) While scaling down, can we add or subtract some of the 'rich' ingredients and still retain the flavor of the dish? If the answer is yes, then it rocks! If not, then we're eating less of it anyway. So its a win-win situation ;)
3) Portion control. This is a key if you're on a diet and still want to indulge in small amounts. Also, sometimes its really cool to serve individualized desserts when you're hosting a few people.

With this in mind, the geek in me came up with Project Ramekin. That is to scale down and experiment with all the good desserts until I can get them into a ramekin...or 2 at the most ;)

The first successful recipe that we're posting is that of a chocolate hazelnut torte. Its different from a muffin as it doesn't necessarily require flour so you get a nice, dense chocolate flavor. Or as I like to say: "more bang for your buck' ;)

Here's the original recipe I followed. As you can see, it needs a ton of stuff. 1 cup (equals 2 sticks!) of butter, so on and so forth. Lot of fats, to be honest ;) And note that it prepares four servings according to them.

I scaled down the recipe to use just one egg. So here's mine:

1 large egg
2tbsp butter
1/8 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1/5 cup toasted, de-skinned hazelnuts (I used about 6 individual nuts)
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed (this is less than their prescribed amount)
1/2 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour

When you're baking at 10 PM in the night, you really don't have patience to take out that hand beater and use it and clean it. So, in a small blender (called mixi in India :D), pulse the butter and sugar. Scrape the sides and add the nuts. Pulse a few times. Add the chocolate chips and pulse a few more times. Finally, add the egg, cocoa powder and the flour and pulse it a couple of times. The idea is not to overbeat the eggs.

Pour it in the ramekin and bake it at 350 F until a skewer comes clean, about 23 mins. in my case.

The amount of batter was actually less than 1 ramekin but I didn't fill up to the brim, the whole ramekin because I feared that the rising will cause things to overflow. So I filled about 2/3rd of the ramekin and was left with a tbsp or two of batter which I ended up discarding. So their 4 servings would actually amount to five of our servings...something that worked to our advantage ;)

I've never baked a torte before so I chose to add a little bit of flour to be on the safer side. I guess I might try to make a flourless one in future :) But this came out really well! At first, it looked a touch crusty on the outside. But when we dug into it, we could clearly see (and taste) the dense, rich chocolatey goodness inside :D We devoured this in a couple of minutes :)

What do you think of this project? We plan to post frequently on experiments in our kitchen. These are not dishes no one's tried before, or very unique or tough dishes. They are 'our' experiments in 'our' kitchen. So, it could be a success or like a lot of times, failure! Let us know!