Tag Archives: Chocolate

Chocolate Ice Cream

For Mother’s Day, my children got me an ice cream maker. How very nice of them! With the gift, I also got an ice cream mix. According to the directions, I just add half and half and cream and process. Twenty-five minutes later– Chocolate Ice Cream. Well, yeah, it was chocolate ice cream. But gritty. Definitely not Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk. So, I researched how to make chocolate ice cream and avoid the horrid grittiness. Recipes included ingredients that varied from heavy cream to half and half to whole milk to cream cheese. Sugar was always in the mix with eggs or cornstarch offered as thickeners. But what explained the “gritty” texture?

According to various experts, the heart of the problem lies with water. There’s water in the milk or half and half. The more water, the grittier the ice cream. Some bloggers use sweetened condensed milk or cream cheese to avoid the use of liquid milk products and their dreaded water. With every substitution, there is usually a downside. So, what’s the downside of using cream cheese or sweetened condensed milk? Some reviews criticized these recipes as not really “feeling” like ice cream in their mouths. Or not really melting. Say what now? Ice cream pretty much has to melt.

So, I ran across David Lebovitz’s recipe on Brown Eyed Baker for chocolate ice cream and he pretty much followed the standard 5 egg yolk recipe, but added admonitions to keep the water to a minimum. In other words, simmer the milk base and let the water evaporate. Cover the ice cream base after it’s cooled off, then watch for condensation and wipe it off so that it doesn’t end up back in the ice cream. Little steps that add up to some completely wonderful ice cream. I made only a few minor alterations. This recipe produces a very rich and intensely chocolate ice cream. Truly amazing.

First, some warnings. Making your own ice cream isn’t something you do because it’s cheaper. It’s really not. It’s fun, sure! You can make your own combinations. But cheaper? No. However, you control the ingredients. You can make it GMO free or organic.You can use pastured dairy products, which taste amazing!! Additionally, you can omit ingredients that may not be particularly good for you, like emulsifiers. Emulsifiers are added to make commercial mouthfeel “creamier”. You’ve seen them in the best of ice creams: polysorbate 80, soy lecithin, guar gum, and carrageenan are but a few. Recent studies have indicated that these emulsifiers may play a part in metabolic syndrome and increase inflammation by interacting with gut flora. (http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science/Food-emulsifiers-linked-to-gut-bacteria-changes-and-obesity) Lovely, I know. Who doesn’t love a good “gut flora” discussion while making ice cream? The emulsifiers are needed to keep the ice cream smooth during its trip from the factory to the store and your house when temperatures are so variable and melting and refreezing occurs. When you make your own ice cream, there is no travel time, so no need for emulsifiers!!

Get out your ice cream maker and give this a go. I promise, you won’t be disappointed and you’ll be making ice cream on your terms.

Chocolate Ice Cream

Makes about 1 quart

2 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (I used regular cocoa powder)
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used Ghiradelli bitterwseet)
1 cup whole milk
¾ cup granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon chocolate extract

1. Warm 1 cup of the cream and the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan, over moderate heat, whisking constantly to incorporate the cocoa into the cream. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly. Remove from the heat. Add the chopped chocolate to the cream mixture, stirring until smooth. Add the remaining cream and stir well. Pour the mixture into a large bowl, scraping the saucepan as thoroughly as possible, and set a mesh strainer on top of the bowl.

2. Using the same saucepan, combine the milk, sugar, and salt and place over medium low heat. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the 5 egg yolks. Temper the yolks by slowly pouring the warm milk into the egg yolks, while whisking constantly. Once the egg yolks are warmed, pour them back into the saucepan.

3. Stir the custard mixture constantly over the medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula (170°F on an instant-read thermometer). Pour the custard through the strainer. Make sure to squish (technical term) all the yolk mixture through the strainer and scrape the bottom of the strainer into the chocolate mixture. Once the custard is through the strainer, stir it into the chocolate mixture until smooth. As the mixture cools, the stir in the vanilla and chocolate extracts. Cool completely and place, covered, in the refrigerator. Check periodically for condensation and wipe off the lid and sides of the storage container.

4. Chill the mixture thoroughly (up to 8 hours), then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (If the cold mixture is too thick to pour into your machine, whisk it vigorously to thin it out.)

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

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My kids were getting tired of waffles for breakfast on school mornings. Really, really tired. But they are so easy. You make them on the weekend, freeze them, pop them in the toaster and serve with “breakfast meats” you reheated because the hubs made them the night before and BAM! breakfast complete. A seriously 5 star breakfast complete, if I do say so myself. But, repetition has a price. Boredom.

So, I tried pancakes. They were fine, but didn’t store particularly well. Couldn’t really separate them as nicely as the waffles. The kids then came to a bit of an impasse. They could agree on nothing, until I came across a recipe for Chocolate Chocolate Chunk Muffins. Well, what’s not to like? To quote Cosby, it has wheat, eggs and milk! Must be good for you! The recipe was originally from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours. She is one of my favorite cookbook authors. I found it on the Brown Eyed Baker’s blog. I made a very few changes because Dorie Greenspan’s command of baking is just extraordinary. Just reading the ingredients was a joy because you could see how they all fit together and their purpose.

I have one little change. For whatever reason, buttermilk recipes are never quite right for me. The batter is always too dry. When I substitute milk and vinegar, it seems to work quite well. I’ve tried all brands of buttermilk and find that I have to add more liquid. Plus, buttermilk comes in quarts and I always need 1 1/4 cups or something like that. What do you do with the rest? Make the recipe again? Milk is just more versatile and I don’t throw it away like I do buttermilk.

Ok, I lied. I have two changes. I’m not breaking up some fancy, expensive chocolate for this recipe. Bittersweet chocolate chips are just fine!

Also, and I’ve mentioned this before, I scoff at melting chocolate over the double boiler. ESPECIALLY when I’m melting it with butter. Put a dishwasher and microwave safe plate in the microwave and nuke for a few minutes on low power. Done. Stir, use mixture, and place in dishwasher. No messy cleanup of several bowls and pans.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins
Makes 12
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 15-20 minutes

6 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips (divided)
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cups sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line muffin pan with liners. Set aside.

Place 2 ounces of the chocolate and all of the butter in a microwave safe bowl. Over low power (50% or less), microwave the chocolate and butter in small increments until just melted. For my microwave, I started with 60 seconds on 50% power. Stirred the items, then another 30 seconds on 50% power and the mixture was melted. Stir between each increment, as chips can retain their shape not appear “melted”. Set aside. Or, feel free to use the double boiler method.

Whisk flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large mixing bowl. In a large liquid measuring cup, combine milk and vinegar. Let sit for 5 minutes. Stir. Add egg and vanilla extract.

Pour the melted chocolate mixture and the buttermilk mixtured into the flour mixture. Gently stir together until just blended. I found the mixture to have a mousse-like quality, much more so than a batter quality. Add the remaining chocolate and stir gently. Divide equally among the muffin cups. Bake for 15-20 minutes until a tester inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool in a baking rack for at least 5 minutes.

Chocolate Dipped Shortbread

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One year. My little blog is one year old! Hard to believe. So, for my one year anniversary, I decided to write a blog about my secret most favorite obsession. I have never confessed this to anyone, but my favorite cookie, bar none (Ha! I see what I did there…), is shortbread. Delightfully simple. Crumbly, buttery, and just simply fantastic. I tried Walker’s Scottish Shortbread years ago and was simply enchanted, despite the fact that it lacked my most favorite ingredient: Chocolate.

Shortbread, said to be the favorite cookie of Mary, Queen of Scots, first appeared in cookbooks in 1736. Interestingly, it started as a yeast recipe. But the mid-1800s, it morphed into the more modern familiar butter-flour-sugar based recipe.

Finding a recipe was rather easy, but there seems to be a bit of a divide. Some recipes are very purist: flour, sugar, and butter. But there is some discussion about adding either cornstarch or rice starch to the mix. The recipe I used called for confectioner’s sugar, which is essentially sugar mixed with cornstarch. Why cornstarch or rice starch or rice flour? These items contribute bulk without toughness because there is no protein or gluten. Fun fact I learned making these cookies!

“Short” in baking vernacular is not a description of the size of final product, but that something was used to shorten the gluten strands that form when you use flour. So, shortbread will be a crumbly cookie, because it lacks long strands of gluten. The butter playing the part of “shortening” the gluten strands.

I added the chocolate not for my own amusement, but my daughter thought the cookies would be better with chocolate. I did not, I thought they were perfect plain. Of course, she won out!

I found the recipe in James Beard’s American Cookery and added the chocolate!

Chocolate Dipped Shortbread

1 1/2 cups butter (some recommend 1/2 salted/1/2 unsalted)
1 cup powdered sugar (may also use plain sugar)
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate
1 tablespoon butter

Cream the butter until almost like whipped cream. Gradually cream in the sugar and continue beating until very light. Stir in the flour, then turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured board or counter and knead the mixture until it is very smooth and will break slightly when the thumb is run from the center to the edge of the ball of dough.
Side note: This is not “dough” in the traditional sense. This is a pile of crumbs. Seriously. See photo below:

You can still kind of knead it and see that it does change consistency after several minutes. I seriously wasn’t expecting it to be a pile of sand. Now, if you omit the confectioner’s sugar and just use regular sugar, I doubt your dough would look like this.

Traditionally, this dough is pressed into shallow pie pans, the dough being about a 1/2 inch thick. The edges are fluted as on a pie crust, and the serving portions are stippled across the dough with a fork so that the shortbread can be broken easily into small pieces. Prick the dough with a fork in even the smallest pans, or it is apt to blister in the enter.

Bake in a 275-300 degree oven until the dough turns a pale brown around the edges. Time of baking depends on size of pan and thickness of the dough.

Remove from the pan, cool on a rack, and store in an airtight container.

For the chocolate dipping sauce: place chocolate and butter in a microwave safe bowl. Using 50% power, in small bursts of time, microwave the chocolate and butter until just melted through. I do this in 2 minute increments and stir between times. Slather on cookies, let dry.

Brownies

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Yes, my New Year’s Resolution is fading fast. I have kids and they want snacks. Pineapple, apples and blueberries aren’t cutting it anymore!

Brownies. I joke that there’s no point in cutting brownies because they just end up getting slivered to death in my house. A literal death by 1,000 cuts. It’s no secret that I eat the most. I do. I hide them from my husband and children. I am shameless. Truly. Note in the picture the lack of actual brownies. There’s might be seven there. Couldn’t make it to the picture stage.

In addition to being a brownie addict, I am a bit of a brownie snob. There is only one type of brownie: fudgey. Take your cakey brownie and go. Don’t try to cover the listless dryness with frosting, it’s a lost cause. People have made their entire careers off of one spectacular brownie recipe (see Maida Heatter). For the longest time I thought the only good brownie came from a mix. Recipe after recipe lead me to the dry, unsatisfactory cake-like brownies I despise. I was partially convinced by Alton Brown that super chemicals unavailable to a lowly home cook made the mix brownies deliciously moist. I held that belief until I came across Maida Heatter and James Beard. Maida’s Palm Beach Brownies are the stuff of legends, and rightly they should be. Crinkly top, moist middle and all over CHOCOLATE. James Beard held little affection for the lowly brownie, but pointed me to an issue I had not considered: eggs. In one sentence, he cleared up the cake vs. fudge issue I had been having. If you spot a brownie recipe with more than 2 eggs, they will be cakey. If not, fudgey. It’s just that simple, most of the time.

Maida Heatter’s recipe teaches that brownies are pretty much eggs, sugar and chocolate. Small amounts of flour for binding and extracts for flavor amp things up a bit, as does a shot of expresso. But, was really sets Heatter’s recipe apart is the amount of sugar. 3 ¾ cups! Holy Crap! Which might explain how she gets away with 5 eggs and not having a cakey brownie. But, then I thought of fudge, and pretty much, same thing. Sugar. Lots and lots of it.

So, for me, the perfect recipe will have lots of sugar, 2 eggs and lots of chocolate. I can’t do so much sugar in a brownie. I’m by no means a nutrition drill sergeant, I’m doing a blog on brownies, but I have to draw the line somewhere. 3 ¾ cups in 1 pan of brownies is my line. The recipe is good, trust me. Really, really good. But it’s a tad much.

My mom used to make black bottom cupcakes when I was a kid and I loved them. I’m not that big of a cupcake fan now (read: can’t sliver them and mentally eating a whole cupcake instead of slivers of that amount to the same mass seems gluttonous.). So, I wanted to recreate the recipe with brownies. You can make the brownies without the cheesecake topping and they are wonderful. The cheesecake topping is great, if you like that. Allegedly, my husband didn’t, but a suspicious number of brownies (whole, not slivered) are missing, indicating otherwise.

Brownies are a rather new invention, probably around the 1900s. General thought has the creation coinciding with the rise in food science and ready availability of chocolate, refined flour and sugar. Of course, there is the legend of the Palmer House Brownies, created when a patron asked for a dessert that could be packed up and taken to the Chicago Exposition. Either way, the brownie is an easily made and transportable dessert.

This recipe was inspired by recipes on Epicurious.com

Black Bottom Brownies

Cream Cheese Topping:

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 egg
⅓ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
⅛ teaspoon salt
6 ounces chocolate chips

Brownie Layer:

6 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grease and flour a 8×8 or 9×9 baking pan. Set aside.

Put the cream cheese, egg, sugar, vanilla, and salt together in a mixing bowl. Mix together until well blended. Add the chocolate chips and set aside.

Over medium low heat, melt together the bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate and butter. The chocolate mixture will be glossy. Remove from heat and whisk in the sugar and vanilla. One by one, whisk in the eggs. After the eggs are incorporated, stir in the salt and flour until completely incorporated. Finally, stir in the flour.

Spread the brownie mix evenly into the baking pan. Top with the cream cheese topping. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a pan comes out with only a few moist crumbs, 35-45 minutes.

Hot Cocoa

Waffles!

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Waffles are a really, really old food. So old, that there is reference to them in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales the 14th Century! Puritans, fleeing English persecution, stayed for a bit in Belgium and brought the waffle to colonies. Thomas Jefferson, according to legend, brought a waffle maker from France and threw lavish waffle parties. Who doesn’t love a good waffle?

I really, really love waffles. When I was a kid (and there were only 3 channels on the tv), all we had were pancakes. Waffles were restaurant type food. Fancy stuff, not something mom would just make for breakfast. Even though pancakes are made with essentially the same batter, the batter was transformed into something special on the waffle iron. Crunchy, yet tender. Somehow always sweeter.

In 2009, Kellogg’s put out a press release saying it would have to ration its Eggo Waffles due to a flooded plant in Atlanta and issues with a bakery in Tennessee. This shortage was a really big deal at the time. There were panicked consumers stocking up just like when Hostess recently shuttered it factories. I should confess, I have a hard time understanding why one would pay for a frozen waffle. They don’t taste particularly good and are insanely expensive, given the ingredients (ingredients listed are for Eggo’s Homestyle Waffles):

Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, vitamin B1 [thiamin mononitrate], vitamin B2 [riboflavin], folic acid), water, vegetable oil (soybean, palm, and/or canola oil), eggs, leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), contains 2% or less of sugar, salt, whey, soy lecithin, yellow 5, yellow 6.

Vitamins and Minerals: Calcium carbonate, vitamin A palmitate, reduced iron, niacinamide, vitamin B12, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin B1 (thiamin hydrochloride), vitamin B2 (riboflavin).

I think the normal price is about $2.50 per 10 ounce package. The organic brand (Van’s) is $3.50 per 8 ounce package. The ingredients aren’t really much different:

Water, Organic Whole Wheat Flour, Organic Unbleached Wheat Flour, Organic Soybean Oil, Organic Oat Fiber, Organic Cane Sugar, Baking Powder (Baking Soda, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Organic Cornstarch, Organic Malt Extract, Sea Salt, Organic Soy Lecithin, Organic Guar Gum, Organic Caramel Color.

I’m not sure how I acquired my first waffle iron. I just remember buying a box of frozen waffles and thinking how EXPENSIVE they were. And I had to buy 2 boxes for just the weekdays. I decided to buy a waffle iron and try it out. It was so easy! My kids pretty much eat waffles every day for breakfast. I make them on the weekend, freeze them, and toast them all week. It’s really not that hard and makes my mornings SO easy. I make eggs or reheat sausage made the night before and toast the waffle. Viola! Breakfast. Of course, my kids now think pancakes are a special treat! The ingredients I use are organic or pastured and I don’t need guar gum and colors to make them look good. And, the fat in the recipe is butter versus soybean/vegetable oil. Needless to say, they are a lot cheaper!

Waffles require a gentle touch. The key is bubble maintenance. A good waffle recipe has two methods to infuse bubbles into the batter. One is through chemistry. The combination of an acid and a base (usually baking powder, which is activated by liquid). The other is through the whipping of the egg whites. I will confess that I have skipped the egg white whipping portion of the recipe and just tossed the eggs in there and really, saw no appreciable difference. I’m serving a 7 and a 10 year old. Not Gordon Ramsey. So, when you get to that part of the recipe, understand that you can take a short cut. Also, I have substituted Whole White Wheat flour from King Arthur Flour for the All Purpose Flour and no one seemed to notice.

Chocolate Chip Waffles

1 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
3 eggs, separated
1 3/4 cups of milk
6 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups chocolate chips (I use 60% cacao)

Preheat waffle iron.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Whisk until aerated and well combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, butter and vanilla. Slowly add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and stir just until the flour mixture is moistened.

In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until they hold firm peaks.

Fold the egg whites into the now moistened flour mixture until just combined. Gently fold in the chocolate chips.

Spray the waffle iron with a spray oil (I use coconut) and then follow your waffle iron’s instructions. I freeze the leftovers in a freezer bag and enjoy the rest of the week.

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Tag Archives: Chocolate

Chocolate Ice Cream

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

Brownies

Hot Cocoa

Waffles!

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