I admit it: I’m on a chocolate-cake-made-in-a-food-processor kick. It’s just so easy to toss everything into a processor, blend it, pour it into a pan, and bake it! And nuts and dates just seem to lend themselves to being blended, poured, and baked. I have a feeling the chestnut cake I made recently is just [...]
Two observations that would seem to be quite unrelated: chestnuts are in season again (!), and wow, food processors sure are handy! One dish that makes the two connect: flourless chestnut chocolate cake made in a food processor. Ridiculously easy, ridiculously tasty — using steamed chestnuts instead of flour gives the cake a dense, fudgy [...]
Continue reading about Having Your Chestnuts and Your Cake, Too
Even with plug-in ice cream makers that churn the mix all on their own — as opposed to the old-fashioned, human-powered crank models — making ice cream can still be a challenge, especially if you’re not adding heaps of sugar and fillers. (Both of which lower the freezing point and keep the ice cream scoopable [...]
As a kid, I always liked marbled pound cakes and swirled cheesecakes. And two-toned frozen yogurts. Somehow, seeing two flavors intertwined on one plate (or in one cone) makes both of them doubly delicious. And you know what the best part is? It’s ridiculously easy to make marbled and swirled desserts — doing so usually [...]
Continue reading about Chocolate & Vanilla with a Berry Twist
First it was omega-3s, then it was antioxidants; now, the food rage is probiotics. (Mind you, these have all been mainstay elements of whole, unprocessed foods for millennia, long before food scientists and genetic engineers and corporate interests got involved in our food chain. Thankfully, we’re now “discovering” that traditional cuisines contain plenty of foods [...]
Chocolate as we know it doesn’t much resemble the pod on the tree. (Chocolate is made from cocoa “beans” that are actually seeds, and those seeds are encased in pods that grow on cocoa trees.) A looooong process has to happen before the seeds of a tropical plant can become a candy bar: the pods [...]
One day, I hope to live in the Chocolate Belt: that narrow strip around the equator where cocoa trees grow. How great would it be to have your very own cocoa pods dangling outside your front door? The process of transforming the raw bean into a chocolate bar is a very long and complicated one, [...]
Continue reading about Making Modern Chocolate Beverages in an Ancient Way
I don’t know about you, but when I find an exciting new (to me) ingredient, I like to drop it into as many culinary settings as I can to see what happens. Some ideas, like my “let’s make hot chocolate with red wine instead of milk!” notion, though, are rather ill-fated. Random combinations are not [...]
Who doesn’t like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? Peanut butter and chocolate just go together. But I guarantee that once you make your own PB&C in solid form or smoothie/shake form, you won’t ever want to go back to the prepackaged kind. The homemade variety tastes better, it’s a whole lot better for your health, [...]
