Christmassy Chocolate Bomb Ball

This one's after my bestie, Nikki Jae.

Wherever your real life work place is, look around the tech department, you might find Nikki there and realize once and for all that you underestimated the nerds. We are the naughtiest.

Which means you can have an intellectual conversation about technology, life, food and wine on OF while staring at the girl's rack, without having to go to HR's office immediately after.

Nikki's favorite food is Mexican. She is also a sucker for desserts, not much of a cook but is a huge fan of baking. Which is a challenge for me, because I'm not much of a baker or a confectioner.

But since I am here to push my boundaries, a perfect Christmas dessert comes to mind, one that I'd tried to make before and failed miserably.

I tried to make three of them this time, so that at least one would be successful. One failed, two succeeded.

It's a chocolate bomb ball, one you would see at show-off restaurants. It comes apart when you shower it with hot chocolate. Underneath the chocolate dome there are fudge dark chocolate brownies that I made in a slow cooker, and ice cream. I added berries and cranberries for it to look like a Christmas tree ornament. Once buried under the chocolate lava, the fruit adds a nice sour contrast to all the sweet ingredients.

Now for the recipe.

Ingredients:

Slow cooker fudge dark chocolate brownies:

✔️ 1 cup + 2 tbsp (135 gr) white flour

✔️ 1 cup + 2 tbsp (90 gr) cocoa powder

✔️ 1/4 tsp baking powder

✔️ 1/2 tsp salt

✔️ 40 gr melted butter

✔️ 3 large eggs

✔️ 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

✔️ 6 tbsp (90 gr) greek yogurt

✔️ 3/4 cup (180 ml) maple syrup

Chocolate bomb:

✔️ 2 glasses white chocolate chips

✔️ 1/2 glass dark or milk chocolate chips

✔️ 250 gr heavy cream

✔️ a scoop of ice cream of your choice

✔️ a handful of berries and blueberries

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt.

In a separate, bigger bowl, combine the melted butter, eggs and vanilla. Stir in the yogurt and then maple syrup.

Add the dry ingredients mixture to the bigger bowl and stir until you have a thick chocolaty mass.

Transfer it into a slow cooker, cover and cook on low for 2 hours. When it's done, let the brownies rest for a few more hours before you eat them. I know it's hard.

While the brownies are slowly cooking, prepare the chocolate dome. Melt white chocolate chips in a large bowl. Inflate a balloon just enough for the size you want your chocolate dome to be. Shove the balloon face first into the melted chocolate and roll it around to cover its surface. Try to achieve even surface coating. If you are not satisfied with the result, like I was, take a licker ad smear the chocolate by hand on the balloon. Place the chocolate-covered balloon in the fridge for at least an hour. When the chocolate is hardened, pop the balloon and you should have your chocolate dome intact.

Arrange two squares of brownies on a large plate and put a scoop of ice cream on top. Cover with the chocolate dome. Arrange the berries in a circle around the dome.

Melt chocolate chips and heavy cream in a bowl. Stir to make a nice liquid chocolate mixture that would be easy to pour.

Pour while hot on top of your chocolate dome. Try to cover all the surface of the dome like I did in the first video. In the second video the chocolate wasn't liquid enough and it didn't get everywhere, so two walls of white chocolate were left intact.

Here's a video of another successful try, but still not as good looking as the top one.

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