Risotto Cakes and Orange Chocolate Igloo Cake -- Barefoot Bloggers

Today we have TWO special Barefoot Bloggers bonus recipes! The first one was chosen by Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, who referred the most members last month to the Barefoot Bloggers site. Deb picked a savory treat from Ina's new cookbook, Back to Basics -- Chive Risotto Cakes. Doesn't the name just let you know you will love these? I didn't have chives to just went with plain risotto cakes, and yes, I loved them! The risotto mixture consists of boiled risotto, fontina cheese, an egg (recipe calls for two but me being the anti-egg had to drop it down to one), and is dredged in panko breadcrumbs before being pan fried to give it a super crispy outside texture with a cheesy rich middle. The risotto mixture is supposed to rest in the fridge for a couple hours or overnight but I did not have time, and ended up adding abot 1/4 cup all purpose flour to thicken the mixture up. Perfect! I did end up using just a few grinds of sea salt in the risotto mixture, after boiling the risotto in salted water I did not want my cakes to be too salty so erred on the side of caution, figuring you can always add more salt but you can't really take too much away. Here is a link to the recipe if you want to try it for yourself -- Chive Risotto Cakes.


I just had to have Ina's new book which also has the recipe, with photo :)


Ina's book mentions how Danish Fontina is inferior to Italian Fontina, something I had no idea about, I usually buy Italian Fontina but last Sam's Club trip I saw imported Swedish Fontina and wanted to give that a try. I much prefer the imported Swedish Fontina to my usual Italian import, it had so much more flavor but was also less creamy -- since I mostly shred the cheese I did not mind the 'uncreaminess' :) I wonder how Swedish Fontina and the apparently not so great Danish Fontina compare? Hmmm, I see a cheese tasting in the future.


The second bonus recipe this month was chosen by Lisa from Lime in the Coconut for creating our new group avatar, she chose Ina's Mini Orange Chocolate Chunk Cakes. I had read that lot of people used that recipe in a bundt and really wanted to try out my new igloo bundt, perfect! This cake was wonderful, I love the chocolate orange combination, but of course my husband didn't like it. "Too chocolatey, too orangey," he said, and handed the rest of his piece to our three year old who was happy to finish it for Daddy. Here is a link to the recipe: Mini Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake -- from Barefoot Contessa Parties, page 206. Changes I made were to use mini chocolate chips instead of chunks, and to leave off the chocolate glaze and replace it with powdered sugar.


After baking we drenched the cake in a simple orange syrup -- yum!

I couldn't get a good photo showing the detailing of the bundt but it did turn out really cute.

Yum!

I am happy to have had a chance to tackle both bonus recipes this month with the Barefoot Bloggers group. We do have one more recipe to be posted on Thanksgiving -- a yummy sounding Mexican soup -- which will be lunch or dinner sometime later this week. Speaking of Thanksgiving can you believe it's only one week away?!?