Valentine's Day Goat Cheese Icing • West Coast City Girl

As most know, yesterday was Valentine’s Day and the world exploded with chocolate, cinnamon hearts, and red and pink coloured everything. As a corporate event planner, I am very spoiled on days like this – I got cookies, candy, you name it, from vendors and venues. All shared with my office mates and thoroughly enjoyed. My Valentine’s gift was the wonderful treat of having Sean home on a special day. Sometimes it doesn’t happen because of work schedules, so I was so happy he had the night off. It was our five year “together” anniversary on the 13th and we did a combo celebration on the 14th with a dinner of perfectly seared (courtesy of Sean) ahi tuna burgers and a decadent flourless chocolate cake – also made last year. Might be a new tradition… 🙂

The burgers are something for another post (particularly since I’ve finally perfected my red pepper relish and am so excited to share the recipe) – ahi tuna deserves to be mentioned on it’s own – but the new addition to the flourless chocolate cake was a to-die-for goat cheese (!) icing, or frosting, courtesy of Saveur Magazine. (Saveur is a wonderful actual and online magazine that has tons of recipes that I love poring over when the email land in my inbox. I highly recommend subscribing! The icing is from a recipe that was posted with intriguing chocolate cupcakes made with coffee. Haven’t tried those yet, but it’s officially on the list!)

Now, if you know me, you know I love food. Love, love love. I appreciate a good meal and it’s ingredients, individual and combined. If you have eaten at our house or know me super well, you know that I LOVE goat cheese. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. And so how fitting that I made this AMAZING icing on Valentine’s Day.

When I Instagramed the amazingness, I got quite the response from friends, so for my first blog post in quite some time, I re-introduce everyone to flourless chocolate cake and introduce goat cheese icing. YUM. (Sean actually put more icing on his piece.)

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Goat Cheese Icing

Servings: 6-8
Time: 45 min
Difficulty: Easy
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INGREDIENTS:

Cake:

4 ounces fine-quality bittersweet/semi-sweet dark chocolate (equates to 4 squares of Bakers chocolate)
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter (I have to admit that I don’t always have unsalted butter on hand and the cake turns out just fine)
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder plus additional for sprinkling

Icing: Adapted from Saveur.com

4oz cream cheese (I use light cream cheese)
3oz plain goat cheese
1.5 cups of icing/confectioners sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Food colouring (optional)

METHOD:

Cake:

Preheat oven to 375°F and butter an 8-inch round baking pan. (Optional: Line bottom with a round of wax paper and butter paper.)
Chop chocolate into small pieces.
In a double boiler or metal bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water melt chocolate with butter, stirring, until smooth.
Remove top of double boiler or bowl from heat and whisk sugar into chocolate mixture.
Add eggs and whisk well.
Sift (or be a rebel like me and just pour it in) 1/2 cup cocoa powder over chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined.
Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven 25 minutes, or until top has formed a thin crust.
While cake is in the oven, make your icing. See below.
Cool cake in pan on a rack 5 minutes and invert onto a serving plate.

Icing:

Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the cream cheese and goat cheese together until fluffy.
Add the confectioners sugar, 1/2 cup at a time, beating until a creamy consistency is reached. Add vanilla, mix at low speed.
If desired, add food colouring until to create your ideal shade of icing.
Chill in refrigerator until ready to use.
Drizzle, spread, heap – apply as little or as much icing as you want to the cake. Cut, and enjoy the wonderful decadence!

This icing is very rich and very different in texture than buttercream frosting. But equally as good, if not better.

Cake keeps, after being cooled, completely, in an airtight container, 1 week.

We were given an abundance of wine over the Christmas holidays and the one we chose to open last night for Valentine’s Day dinner was a Stag’s Hollow 2009 The Heritage Black red blend from the Okanagan that my cousin, Jason, gave us. it was divine. And with this dessert, it was just beyond. I need to look up where I can buy a case.