It’s Daring Bakers time again and this month brings another sweet treat that I had yet to try making myself: flourless chocolate cake.

To add to the challenge, our DB hosts also asked us to make our own ice cream as an accompaniment – and what goes great with chocolate? Raspberry sorbet, of course.

Since I am an Alternative Daring Baker, baking vegan, I would be following alternate recipes. For the cake, I turned to what promised to be a great recipe from Hannah’s Bittersweet Blog. You can find Hannah’s original recipe for the cake here. I made one substitution, using adzuki beans in place of black-eyed peas. I’ve always wanted to bake with adzuki beans and this recipe afforded me the perfect opportunity. I also cooked my cake for an additional 20 minutes as it was super moist – my adzuki beans probably contained more moisture than the black-eyed peas called for in the original recipe.

The batter tasted so good I almost didn’t want to put it in the oven – you could eat it like pudding. The baked result is an incredibly rich, thick, dense, fudgey, chocolate lover’s dream. The edges were my favourite part to be sure – crispy and chewy – I had to fight my husband for the corners. And this rich decadent dessert is not only dairy and egg-free, but gluten free as well, so bring on the indulgence.

For the raspberry sorbet I winged it. I read an article by Mark Bittman in the NY Times not too long ago about mixing a bag of frozen fruit with yogurt. He doesn’t specify amounts but I got the gist of what he was suggesting. So I grabbed a large container of plain unsweetened soy yogurt and a bag of frozen raspberries and added them to my food processor. As Bittman suggests, you can eat it right away as soon as it’s blended, but I opted to put the mixture into my ice cream maker in an effort to give it more body.

It’s probably the best homemade sorbet I’ve made so far. Sweet, tangy, incredibly refreshing – the perfect foil to the fudgey richness of that oh so chocolatey cake.

Thanks to this month’s hosts for picking something fabulous! Be sure to check out the awesomeness that is the Daring Bakers Blogroll for inspired examples of this month’s challenge.

Our hosts ask that we share this message:

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.