Tuesdays With Dorie 7: Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte

Oh dear... it seems that all of my post titles contain the words "Tuesdays With Dorie" lately!  Between Tuesdays with Dorie and Daring Bakers I don't find much time (or reason) to bake any more than that.  I promise though, I will try my best to add a few of my own things here as much as I can!  

Anyway, this week's recipe was chosen by Amy of Food, Family, and Fun.  Well, when I saw this recipe was chosen I was ecstatic!  I flip through Baking: from my home to yours, quite frequently, and this is something I always drool over.  For some reason I thought it would be on the difficult side to make, but in reality it is very simple (just time consuming).  I love the visual impact of this dessert too and also the endless possibilities of flavour creations!  When Summer comes around I'm sure I'll be making this all the time.

As always, I decided to go with mini sized ice cream tortes.  It would be fine to make the full size torte as you can just slice off pieces as you need them, but mini desserts are just so damn cute.  I also planned to make them for friends coming to dinner, so the individual portions seemed appropriate (even if the minis were still too much for one person; us girls went halves in one, while the boys almost exploded trying to finish their individual tortes!).  

At first I was going to use Dorie's Burnt Sugar Ice Cream, but I wasn't sure if our guests would like the taste (we personally love it), so I went with the original recipe suggested and made Raspberry Ice Cream.  I left out the raspberry liqueur though.  Next time, if I made raspberry again (so many flavours, so little time) I would probably omit the raspberry seeds.  S said they added to the texture but I prefer my ice cream to be as smooth as possible.  I would just make up a raspberry compote and discard the seeds. 

The chocolate truffle layer was so delicious!  I was initially concerned with the recipe but got over that pretty quick once I tasted it.  Yum!  We were saying we would even just like to eat it like chocolate custard.  The only annoying thing with the chocolate truffle cream was that it melted so quickly!  It was hard to get the base of the springform cake tin off the bottom of the truffle cream whilst still keeping it in tact.  Maybe it would work better if the ice cream was on the bottom... wouldn't look as good though!

To get really smooth layers with no bubbles I think the ice cream and the truffle cream need to be quite soft when layering them.  I was worried about melting my ice cream too much as I didn't want it to go icy.  So it was hard to make each layer really smooth.  Dorie suggests you leave at least 30 minutes in the freezer between doing each layer, but because I was quite busy the day I made it, I just kept adding layers when I got home/had time.  So don't feel you need to do it all at once!

Wish I had got an inside shot of the torte but the truffle cream melted too quickly for the slices to look decent.

Might I just add that it was also the first time I have ever used my hairdryer as a kitchen appliance (worked a treat though).