Míša Dessert – Chocolate and Curd Cheese
·Prepare the baking tray
Prepare a baking tray, greased with fat and dusted with flour or breadcrumbs.
Tray or rings
If you're making the dessert as a slab, choose a deeper tray so there's plenty of room for the curd cheese filling and chocolate. If you'll be cutting rounds out of the sponge and assembling the desserts using stainless steel rings, a shallower tray will do.
Liquid mixture
Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until foamy. Add the melted margarine and milk.
Dry mixture
Mix together the cocoa, flour and baking powder, making sure there are no lumps. Add this dry mixture into the liquid one.
Fold in the egg whites and bake
Whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks. Carefully fold them into the batter. Mix until smooth, then pour into the tray and bake in an oven preheated to 170°C for about 20 minutes.
Let the sponge cool
Let the sponge cool completely. If you'd like lovely round desserts like mine, prepare ten stainless steel rings, about 8 cm in diameter – or more of them in a smaller size.
Cut out the rounds
Using the rings, cut rounds out of the cooled sponge and leave one in the bottom of each ring.
Curd cheese layer
Beat the curd cheese together with the sugar, cream and softened butter until smooth and fine. Spread this into the rings on top of the sponge and smooth out the surface.
A few chocolate glaze options
There are several variations to choose from – a crunchy chocolate layer, a more liquid chocolate topping, or an extra-chocolatey, thicker version.
Runnier version
If you'd like the chocolate a bit runnier, which I'd actually recommend, use 200 ml of cream and 100 g of chocolate.
Extra chocolatey version
Bring the cream to the boil, take it off the heat and add the broken-up chocolate. Let it sit for about five minutes without stirring. Then take a whisk and gently stir until you get a smooth, glossy chocolate mixture. Pour this over the prepared desserts.
Chill and remove the rings
Chill for several hours, ideally overnight, in the fridge. Before serving, carefully run a knife around the inside of each ring to loosen the dessert, then remove the ring.
Tip: use cling film
If you like, you can line the mould with cling film or semifreddo film before layering the dessert. This makes it much easier to lift the dessert out afterwards.