Chocolate & Marshmallows & Graham Crackers

I love s’mores.

They remind me of golden afternoons with my sister laughing and smearing chocolate on each other’s faces while making them.

They remind me of  ebony nights that were lit up only by the scarlet glow of the campfire which my friends and I gathered around.

They’re a beautiful mix of chocolate, marshmallow, and graham cracker.

I suppose this post is for my love of s’mores…just some pictures…

In the case that you don’t know how to make them …

1. smear some graham cracker halves with chocolate.

2. Grab a marshmallow, and skewer it on the very end of the skewer, and roast it over a open flame(camp fire, stove top…)

3. After the marshmallow is golden brown or just really burnt looking, put the marshmallow on the chocolate smeared graham cracker and smush it down with the other half.

And there you have your smore.

Ahh, such beautiful over sweetness….

~D.D.

Chocolate & Strawberries

The past few days have been sleepy. Utterly and completely sleepy. I’ve been sitting around practically doing nothing, except this summer reading project I have from school. So when I found a box of strawberries and a bar of dark chocolate in the fridge I immediately thought, I have nothing to do, so why not chocolate strawberries??

Ahhh, I absolutely love these things…The flavor of the strawberries and chocolate are a perfect combo… But, strawberries and chocolate aren’t the only ingredients. If you just melt chocolate, and dip a strawberry in it, and let that harden, you’ll end up with a very….rough looking chocolate coating. I wish I had a picture to show you what it looks like, but some one already ate my rough-chocolate-strawberry-example. So, if you don’t want that rough chocolate  coating, you need butter. Yes, butter, and just a little bit. It really smooths out the chocolate so nicely!

You can use any chocolate types but I personally think dark chocolate, and semi sweet chocolate taste the best(better contrast with the sweetness of the strawberry!)

And a little tip for strawberries: The darker and the squishier, the sweeter(at least most of the time).

So basically, you simply melt a bunch of chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, and then you add in some butter, then you take the strawberry and dip it in, then(this is if you don’t mind a flat bottom strawberry(a picture is below) cover a plate in plastic wrap and place the strawberry on that and let it cool for a while in the refrigerator.

A flat bottomed strawberry:

However if you have strong distaste for this kind of chocolate strawberry like me, you can either:

a. grab some tooth picks stick the strawberry on that dip it, and then stick the other end of the tooth pick into something that will elevate the strawberry

b. after you dip the strawberry you can attempt to flip it over on to its top and hope it balances.

After I made these and put them in the refrigerator i think some of them may have dissapeared…

anyway, i hope you enjoy your own :)

~D.D.

My First Daring Bakers & Failiure

This years daring baker challenge was a swiss roll ice cream cake(click on the link to see what it is), and I’ll have to say, mine did not come out all too well…Firstly I nearly forgot to do the challenge. It’s almost a go figure sort of thing, because I seem to forget so much(like that time I forgot to put the eggs in my sugar cookies…lets just say the that it didn’t turn out all too good…). Secondly, it’s blazing hot(at a high of ninety degrees :( ), and the last thing I’d want to attempt to make is an ice cream cake. The ice cream didn’t for even two seconds outside of the freezer, and so when I tried to add it to the cake it melted through the holes in between the swiss rolls,  and coated the top of the whole cake & possibly was absorbed by the cake(hence why it looks really strange and wrinkly as you see…If you want to see really pretty and normal looking swiss roll ice cream cakes i suggest you google it since mine is kinda ugly…)

And then the bottom layer of ice cream took ten seconds to melt into liquid, as you see up there in the very first picture. But even with the strange, messed up appearance, it actually tasted a lot better than I actually thought it would taste like.

Since we daring bakers were allowed to modify and flavors and tastes, I changed some the original vanilla and chocolate flavors of the ice cream to coffee and dark chocolate. I also added a pinch(literally) of instant coffee to the cream of the swiss roll. But as you can see it didn’t change the appearance at all.

Okay so here we go:

Swiss Rolls Recipe

Adapted from Sunita Bhuyan(of Sunita’s World)’s origninal recipe

*You will definitely need a hand mixer for this

• 6 eggs( medium sized)
• 1 cup of caster sugar(like regular sugar, but finer, although not as fine as confectioners, you can buy it at a store(it’s also called superfine sugar, or fruit sugar, or quick dissolving sugar)
• 6 Tablespoons of regular flour sifted together with 5 tablespoons of natural unsweetened dark cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons of boiling water

Firstly preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and grease and line a pan or two (11×9 or atleast something close) with grease proof baking paper.

Okay, so now we start out with the caster sugar and the eggs. Blend those together using the mixer, until they turn a white color. It seems sorta impossible, but yes it does happen, even if it takes a bit, so just be patient and pay attention to color and foaminess of the mixture. It should be really thick and foamy. Thick enough to trail on the surface and remain there for a couple of seconds. Then take mix-of-flour+cocoa and fold that into the mixture little by little(gently, you don’t want to squish the foaminess). And now fold in the boiling water. Then put half of the mixture in one pan, and if you have a second fill it with the other half, and stick the pan(s) in the oven.

And now while that stuff bakes, lets make the cream.

For the filling:

• 2 cups of whipping cream(NOT heavy whipping cream, since the fat content is higher, and it tends to be slightly greasier)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 tablespoons of caster sugar

Add the all the ingredients to a bowl, and whip it together using the hand blender, until it’s thick and frothy, and like whipped cream.

Now back to the cake-y thing. Cut off the crisp edges, and place a towel upon it , and keeping the towel on it, roll it up, and place it on a rack to let it cool. Do this for both of the cake things, and when it is cooled,  unroll the cakes, and spread the cream thickly on the cakes keeping away from the edges(about a half an inch or so). And now roll up both of the cakes, and you can keep them in the fridge for as long as you want(although the shape gets more oval than round) or just cut it up right now.

So now after you cut it up, get a bowl of some sort(i used two cake pans and put half in one and the other half in another) to put the whole desert into and now line that with cling wrap and line all the swiss rolls around the inside of the bowl.

Nowww, Ice cream #1: Dark Chocolate Ice Cream

• 2 cups of whipping cream(once again, not heavy whipping cream)
• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons of natural unsweetened dark cocoa powder

Okay, so now start with the sugar and the cocoa powder and using a mortar and pestle(like me :D) or food processor grind that together. Now pour that and the cream into a sauce pan(stir it using a whisk) and heat it until little bubbles form on the sides of the pan and then let the mixture cool. Then put it in a freezer safe container and stick it in the freezer for about a half an hour or so. The edges of the mixture should start to freeze,  and stir it up vigorously and leave the pan in there again and check on it a bit later, and then stir it up again. Continue repeating this process until it’s fully frozen and ice cream like.

Ice Cream #2

• 2 cups of whipping cream
• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of instant coffee

This is pretty much the same as the chocolate ice cream. Grind together the coffee powder and the sugar and then add it into a sauce pan with the cream and heat it up until there are little bubbles around the edges, and then let it cool then pour it into a freezable pan and let it sit for a half an hour or so, and stir it up and continue doing so until solid.

Now the hot fudge sauce(this goes in between the two ice creams)

You need…

• 1 cup of caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons of natural unsweetened dark cocoa powder
• 2 tablespoons of cornstarch
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 1 tablespoon of butter
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Now add the caster sugar, the dark cocoa powder, the cornstarch and the water into a sauce pan and stir it up over heat using a whisk. This may take a bit, but eventually it will become thicker and gloppier, and fudge saucy. And thats when you take it off the stove and add in the vanilla extract and the butter.

Now putting it allll together.

You already have the bowl lined with the plastic wrap and swiss rolls, so now we use the the first layer of ice cream(i used coffee).

Make sure it’s softened and sorta “pour” it into the swiss-roll-lined-bowl and stick that in the freezer so that layer can freeze(approx. an hour). Now pour in the fudge sauce, and put it back in the freezer so that can firm up(approx. an hour). And then after that hour take it out again, and add the chocolate(softened) ice cream layer and let that freeze for an hour also, and then tada! You’re done :)

Well, you gotta flip the cake over too, but you can do that all by yourself :)

Note: If the cake decides to be stubborn and not come out, wipe the outside of the bowl with a hot wet towel, or just tap on it.

~D.D.

Chocolaty & Frozen

As I told you in my previous post it’s been crazily hot out, and so I’ve been living off of ice tea. And now for some reason I have a sorta craving for cold and chocolaty. That and my sister wants a chocolate milk shake(although to her, any thing cold and chocolaty happens to qualify as a milkshake:D).

And so I made hot chocolate, poured it into my blender full of ice and it came out a hot chocolate slushy thingy. Quite delicious really :D

Annnnddd, making these hot chocolate slushy things also gave me an excuse to use the super tall glasses that have been hanging out at the top of my cabinets gathering dust for the past few years :). I really love using fancy glasses to put stuff in. To me, you can stick anything in a martini glass and make it look cool. Well, anything that doesn’t have true form(things that do have a true form:cake, flan, tiramisu|things without a true form: pudding, slushy things, ice cream| get the idea?). 

These tall glasses work nicely for certain things too, although I recommend sticking with drinks for these ’cause it’s not too fun spending ten minutes to get that last spoon of pudding or ice cream in there.

And of course, I also think everything in a glass looks fancy with a bit of something on the rim(i.e. a lemon, a twirly lemon peel thing, a fancy little umbrella thing(I was obsessed with those as a kid), an orange even, etc.)

Ahh the joy of things frozen and chocolaty.

By the way, if you were curious about the hot chocolate recipe i use:

some milk(any type is good)

some sugar

some semi sweet chocolate

some half and half

And I pretty much just melt the chocolate into the milk and add a teaspoon of sugar and a bit of evaporated milk, stir it up, taste it, if it tastes bitter i add a teaspoon more, if it’s not creamy enough I add in half and half, and if it’s not chocolaty enough….you know

As for the frozen bit:

Cool the hot chocolate!

So now look at how much hot chocolate you’ve made. You want triple the amount of ice(you don’t have to be exact). So now take the ice you have, and put it into a blender, and pour in the hot chocolate, and leave it for a bit(you know how when you lick a pole outside when it’s deep winter, and your tongue gets stuck? It’s because the thin layer of spit on you tongue got frozen by the pole because it’s so cold. Same thing with leaving the cooled hot chocolate on the ice. It’ll spread out all over the pieces of ice, and there’ll be a thin layer which will freeze up, which helps). And now blend the mixture, until it looks and feels like a slushy!

I know it’s not very accurate, but I never really measure things when I make drinks and things. That and you should be able to modify this to your tastes. You don’t like creamy? Kick out the half and half. Now you think this seriously needs a bit of cream, because it just needs it?

I personally like it light but sweet. So I use 2% milk and use only approximately a teaspoon of half and half, and approximately two or three teaspoons of sugar.

It’s allll up to you.

~D.D.

Brownies & Mother’s Day

Today, as May 9th came around, I realized a difficult task was at hand: a mother’s day present. Usually, I bake something for her, take for example last year I made a tiramisu (though I have to admit, that was partially for me :D). So this year, I decided that I should make something fully for her, and her favorite desert was brownies, so brownies was what I made. It was actually quite fast, and easy, and I got it done under an hour( minus the baking time, but that doesn’t really count to me so…).

Outrageous Brownies

adapted from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

Ingredients

• Three and a half sticks of (chopped up) butter(the 1/4 of a pound kind)
• A little bit less than 1 pound(or two cups) of chocolate chips(semi sweet)
• 9 ounces semisweet chocolate chips(make sure you keep these seperate! Don’t mix it in with the other chocolate chips.
• 6 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• Eight medium eggs(or 6 extra large eggs or seven large eggs)
• 3 tablespoons instant coffee granules or powder(but if you’re using powder, make sure it’s a little bit less, because the coffee taste becomes overpowering if you add too much)
• 2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups sugar(maybe a little less)
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• For walnuts: if you want very sparse walnuts add a cup of them. However if you want a walnut or two or three in every bite, add in 3 cups. Or you can add how much ever you want!

First you may want to preheat the over to 350 degrees(I myself don’t, but if you’re one of those people who like the oven ready ahead of time, go ahead). Okay, so after that: mix together the chopped butter, the unsweetened chocolate and the minimized pound of semisweet chocolate, in a bowl(you don’t need a big one yet so, just make sure you have enough space for the chocolate and butter) in a pan of simmering water. Eventually you’ll come out with a bowl of warm chocolate and butter that you will probably want stick your fingers in and eat( it looks and smells soooo good). Don’t do anything with it yet, just set it to the side, and let it cool. Next, in a large bowl combine the coffee, the eggs, the sugar and lastly the vanilla(make sure you don’t beat it, just stir). How ever unlike the previous mixture, it won’t look or taste as wonderful(don’t go and taste it either, remember that it has raw egg). Then stir in the the chocolate/butter, and the result will be a delectible looking, russet colored batter, and then sift in the salt, baking powder, and only one cup of flour. Then lastly combine the remaining nine ounces of chocolate chips, the walnuts, and the remaining one/fourth a cup of flour.

Next, butter and flour(basically just smear a bit of flower and bit of butter all around the pan, it works insanely well!) the pan you’re going to bake it in( I suggest a pan that creates a very thin sort of brownie, but that’s just the way I like it), and bake it at 350 degrees, until you can stick a toothpick in it and have it come out clean. Don’t over bake them, or you’ll come out with square chocolate flavored jaw breakers instead of brownies(a very, very, bad experience!).

So when I did deliver these to my mother freshly baked and all, she smiled her little smile, and went all motherly on me with the hug, and kiss, and thank you :D. And after lunch we had these for desert :)

Happy mother’s day to all mother’s out there :D

~D.D