Gourmet Survivor 2004: The Fourth Challenge, Vegetables for Dessert

I approached the grocery store checkstand with many of the ingredients necessary for dessert-making: baker's chocolate, brown sugar, butter, cream, more cream, tomatoes, yams...

"What are you making?" asks the cheery grocery store checker.
"You don't want to know, really," I reply.
"Oh! That yummy and bad for you, eh?"
"Tomato devil's food cake and yam ice cream."
"Uhhh... that does sound... interesting....."
"It's for this cooking challenge thing I'm in," I tell her, because, well, I have to shop here again and I don't want her thinking I'm some kind of nutcase or something.
"Oh! Like Iron Chef!" She continues on about FoodTV and something about broccoli then wishes me luck as she gives me the groceries.

And so it begins...

The tomato devil's food cake is everything you would expect a devil's food cake to be. Plus tomato. Two whole tomatoes, peeled and seeded, then pureed.

 

The cake batter itself is pretty simple. Melt 4oz sweet chocolate with 1 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup milk and an egg yolk. In a small bowl, sift together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1/4 tsp salt. In a large bowl cream together 1 stick of butter, 1 cup of granulated sugar, 2 egg yolks, 1 tsp vanilla.

 

To the creamed butter, add the tomato puree. Yick. There is certainly a reason there is no "Tomato Devil's Food Cake Mix" sitting between "Devil's Food" and "Rich Milk Chocolate" in your local grocery store. There are no words to describe how nasty this looks, and I'm not even sure the photo can do it justice.



After the tomato is added, the chocolate mixture gets mixed in. The flour mixture, of course, follows.



Whip together two of the remaining egg whites to soft peaks and fold into the batter. The egg whites were surprisingly easy to whip. Usually I have difficulty with this. Anyway, mixed together, the batter looks almost normal. Chocolate with a slight tinge of pink.

Pour the batter into two 9" cake pans and bake for 30 minutes at 350F. It is at this point that I notice that I only own one cake pan. I guess that gives me plenty of time to make the frosting. And, oh yeah, the ice cream.



What's cake without ice cream? While the cake baked, I boiled 1lb of yams.



Into the blender go the softened yams, an egg yolk, a cup of milk, a cup of sugar, some vanilla, some dark rum. Whiiiiir.

At half-time, here's where the cooking stands-
My kitchen: A disaster area. Every sort of appliance and dirty bowl scattered around.
My oven: Baking a cake that can only be described as "pink-tinged chocolate".
My blender: Full of YAM MILKSHAKE!!#$@#$#$%#

Okay, the ice cream. Whisk together the yam milkshake and 3 cups of cream. In opening a pint of cream, I manage to drop it. Cream splatters everywhere: the floor, the cabinets, my shoes, my pants. My kittens come running at top speed to help clean up the mess. Luckily, it wasn't all that much cream. On the counter, yam mixture goes into the ice cream maker. More whirring.

 

The icing for the cake is Tomato Buttercream. If I take one lesson away from this whole tomato cake experience it is this: No matter how hard you try, tomato and butter do NOT blend. Adding tomato to any butter mixture is just not a good idea, no matter what the recipe says. Seriously, it ends up looking like orangish butter jello. The addition of confectioner's sugar manages to turn it into frosting, I guess. The addition of confectioner's sugar turns almost anything to frosting.



The finished product looks pretty normal. The cake is obviously chocolate. The frosting, slightly orange - pretty close to the color of the ice cream. The ice cream looks exactly like orange sherbet. Now, wouldn't THAT be a good prank?



As for the taste... my husband called the dessert "remarkably good... I feel like I'm eating a salad, but I'm not." I think the salad comment had to do with the garnish, but maybe not. The ice cream is decidedly yammy. This is not unexpected. I'm not so sure if it's good or not. It's certainly interesting. The tomato devil's food cake tastes just like a normal chocolate cake. It's incredibly moist. You'd never know that there's three tomatoes lurking in the cake and the frosting. Maybe next time, I'll go with a different less-buttery frosting. Assuming there is a next time.