Molten chocolate cake and seville-orange mascarpone sorbet

February 5, 2007, 11:59 PM

Molten chocolate cake and seville-orange mascarpone sorbet

When I received an order for some fresh California-grown yuzu a few weeks ago, I had this grand ambition of making a yuzu mascarpone sorbet, much like one I tasted in Osaka a couple years ago. It turns out that I immediately sold almost all of the yuzu to some local restaurants and a supermarket, and I really only had two or three usable yuzu for myself. The big California freeze happened and I had little prayer of getting any more yuzu, so my carefuly laid plans never quite had a chance to materialize... I made nabe instead, and froze some of the peel for later use.

Well, it turns out that Seville oranges are in season, too, and readily available in Seattle. So I juiced about four oranges and chopped the peel finely, cooking the peel in a syrup of sugar and honey for a couple of hours until the peel had broken down a bit. I occasionally added more water to keep the mass from becoming candy. When the orange peel was soft, I let the "marmelade" cool down to room temperature, and added some mascarpone and the juice I had previously set aside.

Tonight I took it a step further and made a little chocolate cake, full of molten chocolate goodness. I actually used honey instead of sugar, and not much of that, so it's a really intense chocolate flavor. It's made with a combination of grated dark chocolate and cocoa powder. Even though I only made a small cake, I could only manage to eat half tonight, but it was the perfect thing to go along with the Seville orange sorbet.