Bits ‘n Bites

From the folks who brought the Chocomap, free valentine e-cards, designed to let that person you really care, without the calories.

Check it out at: Send an e-card bonbon

Sometime in early December, as I was perusing the Daring Bakers website, I noticed an ad on the site for a chocolate competition hosted by Hotel Chocolat, a UK-based purveyor of fine chocolates. The deal was simple: Submit your favorite chocolate-based recipe and their panel would pick a winner.

My all-time favorite and most acclaimed recipe is for Santa Fe Brownies, an unctuous concoction of 12 ounces of chocolate (bittersweet and semi-sweet) and cream cheese. I can’t quite recall how I got hold of this recipe. I believe my mom gave it to me, but she can’t remember where she got it from. It took me all of 2 minutes to copy my recipe onto the site’s registration and to submit it. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded when I received an email, from the marketing company behind the contest, telling me I had won! :0

Shortly after Christmas, I received my prizes: a box of Pink Champagne Truffles and a copy of the 101 Best Loved  Chocolate Recipes Book. The truffles are to die for, and the book is chock-full of scrumptious recipes (chocolate pasta anyone?…). Thank you Hotel Chocolat! It was a very nice after-Christmas present.

I baked Santa Fe Brownies while at my mother’s over the holidays. Our guests at Christmas all got to take a slab home. That recipe is definitely a winner in everyone’s book. Here’s the recipe. It’s a little-time consuming, but well worth the effort.

Santa Fe Brownies
1 cup plus 1 teaspoon butter
6 squares (6 ounces) unsweetened chocolate coarsely chopped
6 squares (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 _ cups all-purpose flour
1 _ teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
1 _ cups firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 _ cups walnuts, broken into large pieces

Cream Cheese Mixture
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
6 tablespoons butter, softened (no substitutions)
1 _ teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs

Instructions :
1.Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a 13x 9 inch baking pan with foil.   Melt 1 teaspoon of the
butter and brush the bottom and sides of the pan with it.  Melt the unsweetened
chocolate, semisweet chocolate, and the remaining 1 cup of butter in top of a double
boiler over simmering water.  Set mixture aside and cool slightly.

2.  Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.  Beat the eggs in a
large mixing bowl at medium speed until just blended.  Add the brown sugar, granulated
sugar, and vanilla: beat just until smooth.  Beat in the chocolate mixture, then flour
mixture, at low speed just until combined.  Reserve 2 1/4 cups batter.  Stir the walnuts
into remaining batter in the mixing bowl.  Spread the batter in the prepared pan.

3.  For Cream Cheese Mixture, beat the cream cheese and butter in a clean mixing bowl
at medium speed until smooth.  Gradually beat in the vanilla and sugar until light and
fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and beat just until
smooth.  Spoon the mixture over the chocolate batter in prepared pan, spreading to
edges to the pan.

4.Stir reserved chocolate batter to soften.  Spoon the batter over the cream cheese
layer.  With a knife, cut through batters in a zigzag pattern to marbleize slightly.  Bake 1
hour 15 minutes , until toothpick inserted in center comes out barely clean.  (If the top
browns too quickly during baking, cover the pan loosely with foil.)  Cool completely in the
pan on a wire rack.  Invert onto a cookie sheet; gently lift off pan and remove foil.  Invert
again, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

5.  With a long, sharp knife, cut brownies into squares, then cut each quarter into 8
squares.  (Can also be cut into slabs and frozen.) Makes 32.

Enjoy!

I was enjoying one of my favorite combination of flavors this week, chocolate and orange, when I noticed something different about my box of Smarties. There, in both French and English, a gentle reminder about the benefits of a balanced diet and physical activity. With obesity reaching epidemic levels, this effort by candy manufacturers to raise awareness is commendable. Just wondering how widespread this practice will become?…

I’ve never been much of a computer-based gamer. I’ll play the odd game of solitaire or backgammon. I do wander the virtual landscape of Second Life, these days looking to solve the CSI:NY SL murder mystery. But I’ve never been into this whole Doom/DOD and other multiplayer computer-based games. The idea of destroying stuff to win never appealed to me. So when I came across the game of Chocolatier in an article on macnn, my curiosity was piqued.

The game is the brainchild of PlayFirst games. According to Macnn, Chocolatier…

“…maintained a Top 20 position on several casual game sites for approximately five months.”

PlayFrst was now releasing the sequel to that game, Chocolatier 2. I took a look at the first version of the game and liked what I saw:

“Oh the gloriously rich and delectable life of a chocolatier! Constantly surrounded by mounds of chocolate bars and boxes of mouth-watering truffles! Become a master chocolatier one ingredient at a time as you travel the world to find the best prices and maximize production…but don’t forget about those conniving competitors who wish you poorly! Do you have what it takes to conquer the world through chocolate?”

There was a 60-minute free trial you could download to test it. I did just that and became hooked. I’m not sure where those 60 minutes disappeared, but before I knew it I was frantically looking for my credit card and signing up for the registration key. Reasonably priced at $19.95, it has been my time sinkhole for the past couple of days. Despite its simple graphics, I have found myself totally submerged in the story and its environment. Dashing from city to city, buying ingredients, factories, retrofitting them for special recipes, discovering new recipes through a deep stable of characters around the globe, making new recipes, selling chocolates, the whirlwind never stops. You are sent on special assignments, delivering letters, special orders of chocolate bars or squares – I haven’t made it to the truffle level yet, all the while accumulating and spending money. You get special awards and titles as you move up the chocolatier ladder. You can then upload your high scores and awards to the FirstPlay website to see how you stack up against other players. I was ranked 167 last I looked. Still a ways to go for me….

Chocolatier 2 looks a little slicker than its predecessor, the UI a little cleaner. The PC format of both versions of the game also comes with the Together feature. Unfortunately, not so for the Mac version. There are also forums for players to interact on the FirstPlay website, with tips and tricks. I still have lots to do with Chocolatier before I will need to upgrade to Chocolatier 2. But, as I contemplate a 10-hour flight over the holidays, I may just give myself another small Christmas present before I board that plane…

My first challenge as a Daring Baker was a take-off on my favorite cake and donut: Boston Cream Pie. I was a little surprised, I confess, at how complex the recipe first read. I had never done a chiffon cake before, and although I had made custard in the past, I had never done it with nine egg yolks!

Nonetheless, on a day off from work, I got everything ready and followed the directions. The orange chiffon cake came out really nice. Boy, that stuff is easy to eat…it’s so light. The custard didn’t turn out as well, though. I may have undercooked it, or the “heavy whipping cream”, the recipe called for, was not heavy enough. Still, all was not lost. It turned into a very nice, and slightly citrusy, ice cream.

I really enjoyed this challenge and can’t wait to see what’s in store for November.

For some history on Daring Bakers, please click over to Andrea’s article on this wonderful community. Andrea’s own blog can be found at Andrea’s Recipes.

BBC News has a report a couple of days ago on a pilot study conducted by Researchers from Hull York Medical School. A special dosage of dark chocolate was having a poistive effect on patients suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In fact, in the small study, two pateints actually felt enough better to return to work after a six-month absence. Professor Atkin explained:

“Dark chocolate is high in polyphenols, which have been associated with health benefits such as a reduction in blood pressure.

“Also high polyphenols appear to improve levels of serotonin in the brain, which has been linked with chronic fatigue syndrome and that may be a mechanism.”

The conclusion to this report was that, though still more research is definitely needed, there was no harm in ingesting a small amount of dark chocolate every day. This advice to be taken in moderation, of course….

One of the recipes in the dvd series by the Culinary Institute of America (see post below) was the Mole Negro de Teotitlan del Valle. We had done mole at Northwest during Latin American days. One of my colleagues, Rossana Ascencio, originally from Mexico, led this class. I found the process intriguing and was looking for an opportunity to try it again. Here was my cue.

I found most of the ingredients (four different types of dried chiles, Mexican chocolate, tomatoes, spices) on Commercial Drive. The tomatillos were a bit of a challenge, but I finally found them at South China Seas Trading at the Granville Island Market. (note to self: get down to the GI market more often…and early in the day). However, I could not find an avocado leaf anywhere. El Sureno Market had almost every other leaf imaginable except for this one. I gave up on it and cooked the mole without it. Suggestions as to where I can find this leaf will be appreciated.

I was happy with the final results. The whole process took about four hours, but well worth the effort. I look forward to making this recipe again.

Click on picture for slideshow
of mole making:

Looking for hots spots to buy the best chocolate around the world? Google Earth makes it easy thanks to a new mashup tool developed by Ecole Chocolat, purveyor of an online chocolatier course. The interactive map lists some 1200+ chocolate shops around the world. You can even view and post reviews of your favorite chocolate shops. Click on the the map to access the site.