Porcini and Crimini mushroom Risotto + Raspberry Ricotta Chocolate Cake

This weekend's kitchen adventure called for something italian. We originally planned to make panna cotta, but since our decision to venture out into the kitchen was spontaneous (and panna cotta is an overnight recipe), we decided to try some cake.

The cake called for a combination of 2 eggs, milk, sugar, ricotta cheese, raspberries + flour, baking powder, cocoa powder (hersheys) and a bit of salt. Easily done by mixing dry ingredients (flour + baking powder + hersheys + salt) separately from everything else and whisking everything together to create some thick chocolatey batter.

Upon realizing we didn't have a cake pan, we improvised with the muffin tin...

The original recipe from flipboard called for a baking time of 40 minutes. Maybe it was our oven, but we cut this down to 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees, after the trusty old toothpick test. 

The result! With a side of strawberries

Risotto was cooked simultaneously. Had a mini grocery adventure trying to find the right mushrooms and ended up purchasing dried gourmet porcini mushrooms and fresh crimini mushrooms as an experiment. We originally planned to put asparagus in it, but would have ended up buying too much. The solution? More mushrooms!!! 

Here's a rough guideline of the amounts we used:

1.5 cups of arborio rice

1/2 cup of white wine (we may or may not have added more hehe........)

1-2 cups of mushrooms

1 cup of parmagiano reggiano (again...we may or may not have added more teehee)

1 small onion

4-5 cups chicken stock

1 cup water

Butter

Dried porcini mushrooms were soaked in chicken broth and then sauteed with onions and the crimini mushrooms and then set aside. Arborio rice was cooked slowly with chicken broth and white wine (we used an argentinian sauvignon blanc) while mixing (non-stop), which by the way, needs a lot of upper body strength. Then seasoned with salt + black pepper. Mushrooms were added with some grated parmagiano reggiano (not seen in picture). Our only regret? Could have made do with some semi-crispy prosciutto on top. 

In go the mushrooms and the cheese!

And okay, we admit, we had some more of that wine after!