All About Chocolate - Part 2

Yesterday I wrote all about where chocolate comes from, how it is made and the differences between bittersweet chocolate and semi sweet chocolate. I also look at dark chocolate, white chocolate and ask, “Does chocolate really taste sweet?” - See All About Chocolate

Chocolaty Examples

Here are two brownie recipes. The first uses 8 oz. of unsweetened chocolate. Look at all of the sugar that is used to balance that! The second calls for semisweet chocolate. The difference between the two recipes is pretty clear.

Brownies made with unsweetened chocolate (100% chocolate)

Ingredients:

• 8- 1 ounce squares of unsweetened chocolate
• 1 cup butter
• 5 eggs
• 3 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 and 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt

Brownies made with semisweet chocolate

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate
• 1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup all-purpose flour

Note that, even though both recipes call for 8 ounces of chocolate, there is a full 2 and 1/4 cup reduction in sugar in the recipe that calls for semisweet chocolate! The semisweet recipe also halves the butter and reduces the number of eggs. This is most likely because there is more cocoa butter in the unsweetened chocolate than there is in the semi-sweet chocolate.

Since the semisweet chocolate also contains less chocolate (maybe as much as 65% less, depending on the semisweet chocolate used), not as many eggs are needed to balance out the drying effect of the cocoa solids contained in the chocolate.

How To Make These Brownies

To make either version of the brownies, melt together the chocolate and butter. Stir until smooth and then cool. Whisk in the sugar by hand, followed by the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the vanilla and then the flour. You can add toasted nuts as well, if you’d like. Pour into a greased and lined pan (8” x 8” for thicker brownies and 9”x 13” for thinner brownies) and bake at 325F until done.

To Temper or Not to Temper

There is no need to temper chocolate that is going to be used in a recipe. Melting it is sufficient. The goal of tempering is to get the cocoa butter to crystallize in its most stable form, and, since it melts at body temperature anyway, tempering would be a waste of time in a batter that will go in the oven at temperatures well in excess of 98F!

The time to temper is when you want the chocolate to stand on its own—either as a coating for truffles or molded candies or for decoration. Tempering is not difficult, but it can be a little fussy. There are many excellent resources on the web that can walk you through the process.

If you want to make candy but do not want to go through the trouble of tempering the chocolate, you can use chocolate coatings. These can be found in craft stores or grocery stores. In my opinion, these products do not taste very good, partly because of the substitution of other fats for cocoa butter.

You can make your own, good tasting coating chocolate using this simple formula: chocolate and a neutral oil together in a 10 to 1 ratio. So, for ten ounces of chocolate, you’ll need 1 ounce of vegetable oil. For 5 ounces, you’ll need ½ ounce (1 tablespoon). The addition of the vegetable fat will allow the chocolate to firm up and maintain a sheen without needing to be tempered.

Related Topics

All About Chocolate

Chocolate Truffles

How To Make One Sweet Cherry Cobbler

As many of you know, I recently started building Squidoo lenses. Squidoo is a website where anyone can go and build a page, called a lens, about anything that interests them. Squidoo is easy to use, and I have had a lot of fun with my Romantic Valentine’s Day Dinner, Best of the Wurst, Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Coq au Vin lenses. I plan on building more lenses in the future because, as anyone who uses Squidoo can tell you, it can be more than a little addictive!

One of the best aspects of Squidoo is the community of people who use it. I have met many wonderful, helpful and supportive people on Squidoo. One of my favorite new Squidoo friends is Chef Achim Thiemermann, or “Chef Keem.”

Chef Keem has been a lensmaster for a little over a year and already has published over 100 lenses! Apart from that, he also sells amazing candies and has a line of flavored agave nectar that he sells on ebay and in Whole Foods in TX, CO, OK and LA. As if all that weren’t enough, he is also the Executive Chef for the Driftwood Lodge in SE Alaska. The man is a dynamo!

I have been fortunate enough to try some of Chef Keem’s products. His Espresso Sea Salt Caramel Truffles are a wonderful treat, but I think the Agasweet, his flavored agave nectar, is so tasty and so versatile that I was inspired to create a recipe with it. This is based on his wife’s recipe for peach cobbler, and I have modified it to work with cherries. So, this one is for my new friend, Squidoo Lensmaster Chef Keem.

Squidoo Cherry Cobbler

For the fruit:

• About 4 cups of Bing cherries, pitted
• 1 tablespoon flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon butter
• ¼ cup Agasweet Almond
• ¼ cup Agasweet Vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon mace or nutmeg

Toss cherries with flour. Combine cherries and the rest of the ingredients in a sauce pan. Heat until it just comes to a boil. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Melt ½ stick of butter, and pour into a 9X13” baking pan. Preheat oven to 325°F.

For the batter:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon mace or nutmeg
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/3 cup Agasweet Almond
• 1/3 cup Agasweet Vanilla
• 2 oz. butter, melted and cooled
• 2 oz. vegetable oil

For the optional Streusel:

Mix together until crumbly:

• 4 oz. butter
• 2.5 oz. sugar
• 2 oz. brown sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
• 6 oz. all purpose flour
• 2 oz. toasted and ground almonds

Whisk dry ingredients together very well. Whisk wet ingredients together. Whisk the wet into the dry until you have a relatively smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth it out. Evenly pour the fruit mixture on top of the batter, juice and all.

Sprinkle on the optional streusel. Use as much or as little as you’d like. Any leftover streusel mix can be frozen for another time.

Bake in the center of the pre-heated oven until the filling is bubbling and the batter is deep golden brown and set.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

And that is it—my tribute to Chef Keem. I do hope you will try his flavored Agasweet. You can use them to sweeten tea or coffee, but they are also wonderful when used in savory cooking. When you order, Chef Keem will even send you a list of ideas of how to use this great, healthy ingredient.

Valentine’s Day Dessert

When I think of a romantic dessert to round out our perfect Valentine’s Day meal, my mind goes in two different directions. First, there is red fruit—raspberries and strawberries. Strawberries are an especially romantic fruit because, when you slice them, they kind of look like little hearts. Also, they go very well with champagne.

Of course, there’s always chocolate. Studies have shown that eating a bit of chocolate actually releases endorphins, those feel-good chemicals in the brain. What better way to end up your Valentine’s Day dinner than with both of you feeling good, right?

Also, I know you’ve been busy preparing all the courses for this dinner. So, dessert will be a simple affair—minimal preparation with maximum impact. We’re going to combine strawberries and chocolate. You just can’t go wrong with this combination.

The first idea is to make a lovely chocolate fondue for dipping. Crocks of dark chocolate fondue are available in specialty stores and on the Internet. All you have to do is heat them up and then dip strawberries or cubes of pound cake for a no-fuss, luscious and romantic dessert. Here’s a good brand you can find at Amazon.com called Fondue au Chocolate. Just heat it up in a microwave or in a double boiler and you are ready to go.

Chocolate Fondue

Here’s how to make your own chocolate fondue at home. This sauce can be made up to a week in advance. All you’ll have to do is heat it up.

Ingredients:

• 2 oz. butter
• 4 oz. sugar
• 1 cup heavy cream
• ½ cup corn syrup
• ¼ cup whole milk
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1 tablespoon rum
• ½ teaspoon vanilla
• 4 oz. best quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

How to Make at Home:

1) Whisk together cocoa powder, water and rum into a paste. Place in a bowl with the chopped chocolate and the vanilla.

2) In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine the butter, sugar, cream, corn syrup milk and salt. Bring to a boil and keep at a slow boil until the mixture is a light caramel color, about 15 minutes.

3) Strain the cream mixture into the chocolate mixture and whisk well until smooth. Pour into fondue pot to keep warm. Serve with cubed pound cake, marshmallows, fruit, or frozen cubes of cheesecake.

Variations: Add ½ teaspoon (or to taste) of orange extract or peppermint extract. Boil a cinnamon stick in with the dairy mixture.

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

For a dessert a little less messy but just as decadent, try hand dipping strawberries in chocolate. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about tempering chocolate. Adding just a bit of vegetable oil to melted chocolate chips will give you a great coating chocolate that will set up with a nice shine.

Ingredients:

• One 12 oz. bag of semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• Fresh whole strawberries (get the nicest, reddest ones you can find. For those of you in the south, this will be pretty easy. Florida grows very nice winter strawberries).

How to Make at Home:

1) Cover a baking sheet with a sheet of parchment paper or wax paper.

2) In a large metal bowl set over a pan of simmering—not boiling—water, melt the chocolate chips. Stir frequently, and make sure that the water in the pan does not touch the bottom of the bowl.

3) Thoroughly stir in the vegetable oil. Stir well, but try not to make any bubbles in the chocolate. You want it to be as smooth as possible so your dipped strawberries look perfect.

4) Cool the chocolate to room temperature, stirring frequently. Right before you are ready to dip the strawberries, rinse them off in cold water and dry them gently but thoroughly. Make sure the berries are dry before dipping.

5) Holding a strawberry by its green top and dip the strawberry in the chocolate so only a little of the red is showing. Swirl the strawberry in the chocolate to make sure it is well coated. You might have to use a spoon to drizzle the chocolate over the berries when you start to run low on chocolate.

6) Lift the berry up and let some of the excess chocolate drip back into the bowl. Set the dipped strawberry on its side on the paper-lined cookie sheet. Continue dipping until you either run out of strawberries or chocolate. This recipe will probably make about 30 dipped strawberries, depending on the size, so you will have plenty.

7) Once all the berries are dipped, put the tray in the refrigerator until you are ready for dessert.

Serve with champagne, or for a nice and unexpected change of pace, try a rich ruby port or maybe Rosa Regale, a light pink Italian sparkling wine produced by Banfi. Rosa Regale tastes of red berries and roses and pairs remarkably well with dark chocolate.

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