Showing posts with label dessert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dessert. Show all posts

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Dark 70 Chocolate Bar Caramel With Black Sea Salt



I may have to find a way to incorporate this chocolate bar into my sex life. It is THAT GOOD. Like, scandalously good. Like, as I'm eating it, I can't stop whispering "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod," and I feel like I'm doing something kind of dirty and naughty every time I take a bite.
That is the caliber of product we are dealing with here.
You have been warned.
Strangely, I have never noticed this chocolate bar in TJ's. I received Dark 70 Chocolate Bar Caramel With Black Sea Salt from friend J as part of a birthday gift, and she had casually offered, "It's really good" when I opened it. I said, "It does sound yummy" and "Funny, I've never seen it before," and then I didn't really think about it much till later that night, when Seth and I dug into it on the couch while watching one of those ridiculous "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" shows on MTV. (Quick episode recap: Young people drinking. Young people arguing drunkenly. Young people in helmets trying to push each other through a tunnel, for money. Young people talking to camera, reflecting on their drunken arguments and helmeted pushing challenge. The end.)
But now back to the chocolate. Oh my. For starters, this is 70%-cacao dark chocolate, my friends. Sooo deliciously bitter! Secondly, the bar itself is thin and delicate, which causes the chocolate to melt very quickly in your mouth---mmm. Thirdly, the combination of caramel and sea salt inside the chocolate is totally perfect and addictive. Salty-sweet! Sweet-salty! ...playing on an endless loop, with that velvety bitterness of the dark chocolate mixed in. PERFECTION. Naughty, naughty perfection.
And I should add, too, that I'm not normally a caramel-with-chocolate fan. That combination is usually too sweet for me, too one-note sugary. But THIS caramel is more buttery than sugary, and the addition of the sea salt keeps the sweetness from overpowering all of the other flavors.
I am going to have to keep one of these in stock in my cupboard at all times, going forward. It is one of those to-be-savored-on-couch-after-kids-have-gone-to-bed indulgences.
Now I just need to find a fabulous TJ's wine to pair it with.
Suggestions?

Monday, April 2, 2012

Cocoa Powder Unsweetened

Thanks to Joe, I can make a warm, comforting, decadent-tasting mug of hot cocoa and feel very little guilt about it. Trader Joe's Cocoa Powder Unsweetened is the only cocoa powder I've come across that isn't "processed with alkali" and that contains literally nothing but cocoa powder. At 20 calories per tablespoon and one gram of fat, this fine, silky cocoa powder feels almost healthful to me, in that it's likely delivering the benefits of chocolate without all the saturated fat and sugar.
For homemade hot cocoa, I just pour milk (usually 2%) into a mug, heat it in the microwave for 2 minutes or so, then add a couple of heaping teaspoons of the cocoa powder. I stir a LOT and for a LONG time to fully blend the powder into the milk and break up most of the little lumps. Then I add sugar to taste, usually not much more than a teaspoon or so, because I like bitterness.
And that's it! I make it for my kids, too, of course, and they enjoy it. (Don't get me wrong---they'll suck down that Swiss Miss crap just as fast, but they certainly don't turn up their noses at the homemade stuff.)
I should mention that I haven't used this cocoa powder for baking, much, mostly because I don't bake chocolate cakes and the like all that often. My friend and mother-in-law, Lala, did use it for brownies the last time she visited us, and oh my, those brownies did not disappoint! They were perfectly rich and chocolatey. Mmmm.