TWD: Chocolate Banded Ice Cream Torte

I was so excited when I saw that this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was another ice cream treat, but not for the reason you may think. Yes, this Chocolate Banded Ice Cream Torte is decadent and delicious, not to mention gorgeous. And yes, I do consider ice cream and chocolate to be two of the major food groups. But, the main reason I was so happy about this recipe was because it didn't require any baking whatsoever.

You see, baking is a bit of a problem for me this week, because my oven just up and died on me the other day. Yup, it's dead, dead, dead. Can you believe the audacity? So until I figure out a) what's wrong with it; and b) whether it is worth the money to fix it, I won't be doing any baking around here!

Our recipe for this week was chosen by Amy of Food, Family and Fun, and I've got to say, it is a doozy! Dorie calls it her version of a "grown-up ice cream cake". There isn't any actual cake in the dish, but there are two layers of creamy, boozy, fruit-swirled ice cream sandwiched between three layers of astonishingly rich bittersweet chocolate ganache. This ganache is not for lightweights, my friends. It contains over a half pound of chocolate and eight, yes count 'em, eight whole eggs! Before I'd even let anyone taste this torte, I made sure I had 911 on speed dial!

Dorie's original recipe calls for vanilla ice cream which is mixed together with frozen raspberries in syrup. Would you believe that after checking three different supermarkets, I couldn't find those raspberries? All I could find were the plain frozen berries. So, I cheated a little out of necessity. Instead of buying plain vanilla ice cream and making a raspberry syrup from scratch, I bought some Raspberry Chip Royale ice cream that I was able to find. It was a mixture of vanilla and raspberry ice creams with little chocolate chips mixed in. To that, I added some wild raspberry dessert sauce that I happened to have in my fridge. I think it worked just as well.

When I was a child, my favorite ice cream cakes in the world were from Carvel. Remember Carvel? That was some great ice cream! Their cakes had these wonderful chocolate crunchies in between each layer. Those crunchies were the best part! So, I decided to make my own chocolate crunchies and spread them on top of each ice cream layer. To make them, I crushed up half a package of chocolate wafer cookies and mixed the cookie bits with some chocolate Magic Shell ice cream topping. Magic Shell freezes in seconds when you pour it on ice cream, and hardens into a candy-coated "shell".

Since this torte was pretty messy to work with, I needed to find some way to decorate it that wouldn't require too much "touching". I decided to swirl some shimmery rose pink pearl dust on the top. Not only did the pearl dust give off a lovely, glimmering sheen, it also hid a few flaws and little air bubbles that had made their way to the top.

I was very pleased with the way my torte turned out. It looked really pretty and it tasted great. That said, there was a little too much chocolate ganache for me. I love the stuff, but a little goes a long way, and this just went too far. I think that this torte would make an impressive presentation at a party or other special event, but it's just too much for an everyday dessert. I really wish I had halved the recipe and made minis. I still have three quarters of the torte in the freezer and no hope of finishing it all. Ice cream is kind of hard to give away, because it melts so fast. I think I'll probably palm some off give some away to our neighbors!

If you'd like to see some other great variations of this torte, click on over to the Tuesdays with Dorie web site. If you'd like the recipe to try it for yourself, visit Amy's site. And remember, all of our great TWD recipes can be found in Dorie Greenspan's, Baking: From My Home to Yours.