Rosemary and Pinenut Ice Cream Bar with a Goat Cheese and Balsamic Truffle

This past Sunday was Mother’s Day and to me Mother’s Day suggests breakfast in bed and chocolates. Since there was really no way to provide the first, I designed a dessert around the second; however, because chocolate is a staple of desserts, I wanted to make the flavors unusual or at least interesting. I started with the idea that I wanted to make an ice cream candy bar and then chose a rosemary, buttermilk ice cream for its earthy, herbal attitude and tangy-ness. After that was decided the rest of the flavors and textures fell into place.

The construction of candy bars is very important. The textures need to go from the softest on the top to the hardest on the bottom. Why? The most important reason is that, if they don’t, then the middle will squirt out when you bite into the bar.  A second reason is that there needs to be something at the bottom stiff enough to keep the bar from bending in the middle. Following this principle, the bottom layer of this candy bar was a flaky, crumbly, shortbread cookie. Stacked on this base was a caramel and toasted pinenut crunch and the buttermilk, rosemary ice cream. This stack was topped with a deep, dark, salted chocolate ganache.

The truffle that accompanied this candy bar was a luscious mixture of milk chocolate, barn-yardy goat cheese and balsamic glaze that was coated in white chocolate and topped with just a little bit of strawberry powder. The swirl on the plate is a whiskey caramel. Which I liked the idea of because whiskey can be nutty and earthy which seemed like a good combination with a dark caramel but I think it may have been a little too potent.

I’m sorry that the picture of this dish is from a birds eye view, I think most of the beauty of this dish is getting to see the layers but I hope you can see the point. Overall, the dish appeared to be well received and perhaps in the near future a version of it will make the regular dining menu.