Frozen Brazo de Violeta

The neighborhood of a busy business district is calm and quiet; you can hear birds chirping and trees dangling against the wind. The skies are powder blue and the Sun is peachy. −It's a fine Sunday today, with all the time of this day I can afford to write my texts for this entry go to church and meet a long time friend and give good bye hugs.

You know I want-cha

Yesterday I have accomplished my next recipes for coming entries, meaning I'm pretty much on my schedule. Being a Master of Procrastination, this recipe like any other recipes in this blog, has been in my hard drive for 4 years now.

I would like to serve this dessert on a Sunday Family day- after church,  for a complete attendance type of dinner. I made some tweaks than my original which was a Vanilla Ice Cream, as per Brazo de Violeta, I made an Ube Ice Cream layer.

 FROZEN BRAZO DE VIOLETA

 I develop this dessert while preparing for a Cashew Plated Dessert in Kumbira 2010. Where I won Highest Gold through God's grace.. I did not competed with this recipe because it doesn't highlight the Cashew nut so much, but I realized that this dessert deserve its own spotlight on a family dinner table.

My personal history of creating this recipe: Brazo de Mercedez is my brother's favorite. A good friend of mine, RJ's favorite. At that time, Cashew desserts are very limited to Yema and Yema is associated with Brazo de Mercedez. While my favorite is Felicity's Frozen Brazo, I live 2 hours apart from Felicity now...so I therefore had to make one on my own.

I'm very happy with the end product. Frozen Brazo is little difficult to work with on summer, and it's a bright yellow summer now! The solution: Make my own Ice Cream.Not only that I have a better control of my Ice Cream versus store bought that will most likely be dripping off the pan or really deflating like a chilled froth, I've foreseen it as a dessert disaster.

There are dessert components that we can mix and match. Like jeans and tank top and tank top to short shorts and black stockings. The versatility of an ingredient and dessert method is infinite! For example is this very simple recipe.

Graham Crust- God knows how many dessert we can make out of Graham cookies. From refrigerated cakes to competition pieces, from rustic to sophisticate plates. You can Mango Float or Smores or Tiramisu.

Graham Crust:

100g Crushed Graham

100g Melted Butter

First layer: Press the graham crust on a 1/4 sheet pan. Set aside inside the freezer

Yema- What I like about this Filipino recipe is it varies from one person to another. Some Yema are too sticky, some are more of an Egg Custard, some are taffy like, and some are stiff enough for triangular parcels in Cellophane. I'd say play with your textures...if you will recreate this recipe, try folding chopped, roasted pili nuts or cashew nuts for added bite. 

Yema:

 100g Butter

10 pcs Egg yolks

300ml Condensed Milk

Combine all together and cook over low heat

Continuously stirring to avoid burning, cook until thickened

Yema love. Second layer: Pour the yema on your prepared crust and freeze

Ice Cream- You may use whatever flavor you like, you may layer Vanilla then slices of fresh mangoes, or Chocolate and generous spread of Peanut butter or Nutella? Nice right?

You may use store bought but make sure it's solid frozen

then thaw out and spread, about 400ml Ice Cream. Freeze immediately!

Baked Meringue- Soufflé like texture that melts in your mouth; every spoonful literally just disappears in your palate! You may lessen the sugar, but not less than half. I would also like to remind that this pillow-like cute little one shrinks!  It shrinks after it cooled down. Bake it separately on a bigger sheet tray or pan.

Egg Whites and Sugar

Baked Meringue:

120g Egg Whites

50g Sugar

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the proper Stiff Peaks. Thanks!  Thanks!

Pour on prepared tray lined with foil and brushed with melted butter and dusted with sugar

Spread mercifully and Steam bake at 180/180C for 10 minutes

Bake until lightly browned

Chef Johnny Iuzzini said "Sweetness is not a flavor" -Top Chef Just Desserts Season 2 and since most of baking enthusiast commonly fails in this virtue, my appeal is very simple.  Never be afraid to lessen the sugar in a recipe, or if the layers are too sweet why don’t you make one layer little bland or acidic for balance. Or why don’t you skip adding sugar and let the natural sweetness comes in.  Just saying :

Frozen Brazo de Violeta

Frozen Brazo de Violeta

Frozen Brazo de Violeta

Have a fun sunday!