Life, Darkness, Randomness, Chocolate ... Apple Shortcake with Chocolate Chip Cream

I made it to the weekend again. Pah ... what's the use of it, nothing is ever going to happen. Fine, yes, fine, you are right ... then you have to make it happen yourself ... and so I did. The evening had already advanced a bit and so I took my bike for a right around town ... village ... hamlet ... whatever. You can imagine that would be quite some fun ... darkness ... winter ... bicycle-tour ... idiot me! First I went down the way past the office and after that unknown territory when it comes to the bicycle. Luckily I had my cap and gloves along. On the minus side I didn't bother to take my glasses along. Not seeing where you are going with the bike can give you some kicks of adrenaline from time to time. Anyway, the route went up and down, the little dog wasn't hit by a bicycle and the fact that I am writing things here right now proves that things didn't go that bad after all.
I reckon, even stupid exercise at night would entitle me for a sweet treat today ...
Ah, I need something anyway ... 

Besides all that I already had planned to join two lovely blog challenges this month ... Random Recipes and We Should Cocoa. In fact they have morphed into one challenge kind of for this very month of February. You will see ...

If you are familiar with random recipes, it is all about randomly picking a cookbook and then a recipe from it and then ... go for it.
Today my lucky or unlucky number is 31. Well, since we are only going for chocolate recipes, how can you possibly get unlucky. Fine, you could completely make a mess in your kitchen and toil for hours on end and get only mediocre results.
The number 31 lead me to this nice chap ...

Can we go wrong here? We will see. Do you believe this book has 31 chocolate recipes in it? Nah, it hasn't. There are 7: bread pudding and chocolate-beer sauce (sounds tempting), chicken mole (I had too much mole left, when I tried it last time), chocolate chip cream, chocolate mole tart (if I remember right, that tasted totally delicious and had some chilli in it as well), chocolate rocky road (I had set my eyes on that one already a couple of times, but didn't follow through), hot! choccy and churros (I had hoped for this one), and sweet tamales 'n' chocolate (no ideas about that now).
Guess which one I ended up with? Ah, stupid question! If you have read the title of the blog post you know it was the chocolate chip cream. In reality, though, the recipe I had to choose was called Peach Shortcake and the chocolate  chip cream was a part of it.

I couldn't get my hands on some fresh peaches today, so I had a go using apples instead. I'd say it had been better, if I had actually got my hands on some fresh peaches. Never mind, I had to do what I could and along the same line I had to make a few other adjustments.

With 175 g flour, 50 g cornmeal, 1 tbsp. baking powder, a pinch of salt, 100 g sugar, zest of two oranges, 100 g butter and 200 ml of cream I made the dough for the shortcake in a similar way as you would do shortbread ... with the addition of cream.
That one went for baking to the oven for 20 minutes at 180 °C. After cooling it got some icing sugar on it. 
The pieces of apple (or other lovely fruit you have available ... maybe at some other time of the year some freshly picked berries ... ah sounds lovely) where mixed with some sugar, mint leaves and the juice from the oranges.
For the chocolate chip cream I used mascarpone instead of double cream, since I wanted to used that mascarpone up. I took 250 g and mixed it with a bit of sugar and vanilla sugar and a little bit of cream and ... ah ... yes, of course chocolate. I used 50 g of dark chocolate.
The looks of the chocolate chip cream reminded me of one of my favourite ice cream, stracciatella ice cream. Usually I get one ball of it when going to an ice cream parlour.
Not only looked the chocolate chip cream like that ice cream, but it also tasted very delicious. Maybe partly that can be contributed to the mascarpone, too ... oh, oh ... maybe I should go for another bike tour tonight.

Whatsoever, I spread the chocolate chip cream onto a plate, placed a slice of the shortcake on it and added the fruits. Maybe some extra pieces of chocolate on top and ... indulge ... maybe a cuppa alongside and life is good once more.

Well, that goes to the joined Random Recipes and We Should Cocoa for this month. It's such a delicious idea ... he he he ...

So, what are you doing for the weekend then? Enjoy it! We see us soon ... that is of course, if I don't end up in doing even more stupid things ... aaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh

Oh, are you still out there? I just found another lovely photo, this time some orange fillets together with the short cake. That tastes even better ...

What do you think of the orange version?

Today, June 22nd 2014, I have to update this post even further as I send it over to Bloggers Around the World - World Cup 2014 Brazil as I have filed this post under USA, which are playing this very day in the World Cup.