- End of a Year -

Well here were are, after Christmas, exhausted, relaxed, five pound heavier, and generally happy. I've had a whirlwind of a Holiday with family flying out, arriving very late Christmas Eve, opening lots of presents, lots of cooking (of course), going places, doing things, not getting enough chocolate, celebrating a birthday, gearing up for the New Year, more chocolate, playing in the snow, sledding in the snow, snowboarding in the snow, and on and on it goes until everyone leaves on Thursday. Yes, this has probably been the most exhausting Christmas for me yet (having fun just makes you that way, no?)

So just thought I'd say to all of you "Have a Happy New Year!"

Orange Chicken for dinner tonight.

- Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares -

So searching on Pinterest, I found these delicious bars and couldn't wait to make them for the Christmas party. I definitely recommend you guys check out the blog "Once Upon a Chef". There are a lot of great recipes, and this one doesn't disappoint! I mean, who can resist the "chocolate and peanut butter" combo, right? 

Anyway, so here is the link to the recipe so you can check it out and the rest of Chef Jennifer's blog - it is simply scrumptious! Once Upon a Chef - Chocolate Peanut Butter Squares

- What is Happening Today -

Oh yes, we are busy getting ready for the Christmas Party. The recipe for this will come later!

- Let's Talk Chocolate -

Chocolate, my first love, is probably the first thing that pops to mind when someone thinks about something sweet. As I mentioned before, I am of the opinion that dessert is only dessert if chocolate is a part of it...every other kind of dessert is simply called "breakfast". ;) As you will notice, and have probably noticed already, Chocolate is going to be a big part of this blog, as it is my favorite thing in the world to eat.

Lately, I have been growing picky about my chocolate. I used to be the milk chocolate lover of the family, and dark chocolate was a last resort...but that's sort of flipped recently. Now I never bake with milk chocolate if I can help it. It's not that milk chocolate is bad, it is just too sweet for my taste, at least for baking. I even like the extreme-dark chocolate bars that are 90% cocoa, yeah, I know, I'm crazy. My favorite is bittersweet chocolate, though. I am not a big fan of semisweet chocolate chips either, which is probably good since most chocolate chips you can buy are semisweet and not bittersweet. If they were mostly bittersweet they not be sticking around long enough for me to bake with them, and thus, my family would have some complaints to file. =)  

Anyways, talking chocolate. I recently finished taking a several week baking and pastry course at a small local cooking school. I learned a lot, like how to make creme brulee, properly torte and fill a cake, make cream puffs, salambos, and caramel, and last but not least, how to temper chocolate. And that is what I am going to share with you today. 

We made truffle with the tempered chocolate. Of course it is a delicious ganache center (just a simple chocolate and heavy cream ganache), which you can flavor with different liquors like hazelnut, raspberry, orange, etc. I put a little cinnamon into mine. But getting back to the tempering part:

You will need a double boiler, chocolate chips (bittersweet), and a thermometer (this is crucial).

So what happens here gets mathematical. You want to take a 30% of your chocolate and set it aside. For those of you who are like me and aren't math geniuses, I will simplify how to do this. So say you are using 1 pound of chocolate. Put it in a bowl on a scale. There are 16.00 oz. in a pound, alright. Now what you do is you take that decimal point in the 16.00 oz. and you move it to the left one number. It will look like this now (1.6 oz.) That is 10% of a pound. So now you just do this:  1.6 x 3 = 4.8. And that 4.8 oz. is your 30%. Pretty easy, right?

Now here comes more complications (and this is where you'll want to use your thermometer). You set aside the 30%, and the rest of the chocolate you melt in a double boiler. Once melted, use the thermometer. For this bittersweet chocolate, you must get it to 114-118 degrees F. Once you are there, pull the chocolate off. (Now if you are hotter than you want, once you have taken the chocolate off, just keep stirring the chocolate to cool it down to that right temp.) Once you have taken the chocolate off and it is the right temp, start adding the 30% leftover chocolate. I would put in half a handful and stir till it is melted. Do this a couple times and then check the temp. To properly temper the chocolate you must bring the temp down to 88-89 degrees F. Keep adding the chocolate, half handfuls at a time stirring till melted in between each handful till you reach the right temp. Now your chocolate is tempered properly and you want to start working with it immediately. 

If you are doing truffles, you should have already rolled the ganache into small balls and kept them chilling in the refrigerator. Then you coat the ganache centers in the tempered chocolate and put them on parchment paper to harden, they should harden within a couple minutes or so. Once done you can put them into the refrigerator for a few minutes, but after which, store at room temp for the tempered chocolate's sake. =) 

Here is the Tempering Guide:

For Dark Chocolate: Raise temp. to 114-118 degrees F. then lower to 88-89 degrees F. 
For Milk Chocolate: Raise temp. to 105-113 degrees F. then lower to 88-89 degrees F.
For White Chocolate: Raise temp to 100-110 degrees F. then lower to 84-86 degrees F.

And that, my friends, is how you properly temper chocolate.

 

And they were good...

-J.

- Uber Thick Chocolate Chip Pancakes -

Pancakes - the most iconic breakfast in America, and probably most of the World! Plus they come in so many different varieties. There are plain pancakes, chocolate pancakes, apple pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, pancake cakes, skillet pancakes, blueberry pancakes, and on an on the list goes. Everyone has a favorite. For a long time as a child I was always a waffle girl. When each of us kids got to pick a yummy breakfast on our birthdays every year, I would always pick the waffle over the pancake. I'm not sure why... I'm guessing it was probably my love for butter and how much more that butter could get trapped in those little indents, lending more fattening flavor. Yeah...I think that was it. Lately, however, I'm starting to hold the Chocolate Chip Pancake over the waffle. Now, ladies and gentlemen, when I say chocolate chip pancakes, what I really mean is CHOCOLATE CHIP pancakes. You can't get by with just seven chocolate chips in a pancake, it really has to be jam packed, walking that very narrow line between "pancakes for breakfast" and "dessert for breakfast".

So today I created my own Uber Thick Jam Packed Chocolate Chip Pancakes! I was so far over the moon with these I almost froze to death in space, true story. =)

So I started with flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. After whisking together, the eggs, milk, and vanilla are added, then those chocolate chips.

They cook for about two minutes on each side over a medium heat till they have that lovely golden-brown color!

Butter them up on a plate, and eat!

Uber Thick Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups Flour

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1 T. Baking Powder

1/2 tsp. Salt

1 1/2 cups Milk

3 Eggs

1 tsp. Vanilla

1 1/2 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Directions:

In a bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add milk, eggs, and vanilla. Whisk all together till well blended. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Butter a flat non-stick pan and heat on the stove top over a medium heat. With a 1/4 measuring cup, scoop a 1/4 cup, plus a little more, of the mixture onto the hot pan. Fit as many as you can on the pan. Cook for 2 minutes, flip, and cook for another 2 minutes (the first ones might take a little longer). Continue till all the batter is gone. Butter up the pancakes and eat up! 

Makes about 12 pancakes.

Enjoy!

-J.

- Lemon Blueberry Scones -

- Raspberry Vinaigrette -

How about a salad with pecans and dried cranberries? Then again, how about a salad with pecans, dried cranberries, AND a raspberry vinaigrette to top? Now that sounds like an irresistible combo, right? I made my first vinaigrette today, and I'm here to share.

It's pretty amazing, if I do say so myself...and this from a girl who is not the biggest fan of vinegar. The raspberry flavor really comes through without killing off the balsamic vinegar, which keeps you remembering that it is a vinaigrette and not something you can eat all by itself with a spoon, because that's what you'll be tempted to do!

In a jar put 1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar.

Add 1/3 cup Olive Oil, 1/4 tsp. Salt, 1/4 tsp. Pepper.

Add to the jar 3 Tbs. Raspberry Jam. Above is my Mom's homemade jam. That's what I used.

Cap the whole thing and give it a good shaking! And that's it!

Raspberry Vinaigrette

1/4 cup Balsamic Vinegar

1/3 cup Olive Oil

1/4 tsp. Salt

1/4 tsp. Pepper

5 Tbs. Raspberry Jam (seedless)

Directions:

Put all ingredients into a jar, cap it, and shake until well mixed. Add more olive oil if too thick (this will depend on the thickness of your jam) You can store this in the refrigerator and use as much or as little as you want on salads throughout the month! 

-J.

- Pork Tenderloin -

Today I created my own pork tenderloin recipe with a yummy, garlicy glaze. Nope! Sorry! Not giving you the recipe because it's going in my cookbook. All I'm saying is that is was a success! Yay! 

-J.

- The Chocolate Room, Brooklyn, New York -

Earlier this year when we were planning a May trip to Pennsylvania, we knew that on the way back, stopping in New York City was in order. When I found out this was happening, I begged that we stop at The Chocolate Room in Brooklyn. I'm quite the chocoholic, you know, one of those people who believes dessert isn't actually dessert unless chocolate is a part of it? That's me. So when I found out that there was a whole cafe devoted to chocolate, how could I pass it up? It turns out no one in my family could either, so we made sure to get to Brooklyn while in the neighborhood. 

Of course, even with GPS, we go very lost in the maze of streets in the city. But finally we found the place, and let me tell you, it was worth it. The place is full of delectable sweets. There are dozens of exotic chocolate bars from all over the world, trays of brownies, and a whole counter/bar lined with cake plates, each holding a different type of chocolate cake. I was in heaven. They started out by taking our order and then giving us all complementary scoops of chocolate sorbet, which was so intense with dark chocolate I think our eyes all rolled back in our heads a mile and a half. Then came my slice of cake. Chocolate filled with chocolate covered in chocolate. I was so busy photographing the cake and putting it on Instagram for everyone to see, that my brother A. was nearly done with his own order by the time I got to my slice. I know, I really couldn't believe I was able to hold out so long, but you know with something that good, you have to share it with your social network friends, right?!?

-J.

- Tomato Sauces -

Confession: The other day my Mom made a huge pot of pizza sauce to freeze, and when no one was looking I just stood over the pot gulping down the sauce by the spoonful.

I know a few people who hate tomatoes. This is quite the tragedy, and someone would do well to put it in a play. Do any of YOU reading this not like tomatoes? If so, please reconsider, I beg you. I don't believe I would be so in love with food if it weren't for this delicious fruit. Tomatoes are one of the most versatile ingredients. You can put them on a salad, you can roast them, you can can them, you can eat them, you can crush them, you can turn them into a paste, you can turn them into a sauce, you can dry them. The possibilities are endless.

When I was a little girl I would sometimes wake up in the mornings and smell tomato sauce for spaghetti wafting upstairs in all its red, tomato, garlic, herby, meaty, goodness. It's one of the best things to wake up to. I loved coming downstairs to the kitchen all lit up and my Mom in her apron at the stove top, stirring the sauce. And did I mention it smelled good?

I'll give you a tip on how to make amazing spaghetti sauce! You roast all the vegetables first for good flavor and then you blend then in a food processor, and then with a submersion blender to cream it up nicely. That's the sort I couldn't stop eating. 

-J.

- A Little Bit of a Change Can Go a Long Way -

So every year my family has our annual Christmas Party. We always bake dozens upon dozens of cookies for it. When we lived in California the party got to be WAY over a hundred people. Now we live in a small New England town and the party has downsized (which is good considering the only reason over a hundred people were able to fit comfortably in our house in CA was because the weather permitted overflow into the backyard, something frigid New England cannot provide in December). But anyway, our party is one of my favorite parts of December, as it has been an annual tradition my whole life and really throws me headlong into the Christmas spirit. 

So the point to this whole thing is just this: Brownies. Yes, the second most beloved American dessert classic (just behind the chocolate chip cookie, of course). At our Christmas party there i s really the best sort of brownie you can imagine. A brownie with cranberries in it! Now the idea might be kind of freaky putting a sour berry like that into a brownie. "Who in their right mind?" you're thinking, right? And the reason I know your thinking this is because at our Christmas Party I watch these brownies sit there, piled on the plate, mostly untouched the whole night by everyone outside my family. You might think this is a bad thing, baking all those brownies only to have no one eat them...but I don't really think it is. I'm rather delighted, inwardly, laughing manically at the untouched plate, knowing the less the guests eat of them, the more they miss out, and the more I get to stuff myself all the next day with the leftovers. I confess I am not all that sad at the thought that those guests don't know what they are missing. Does that make me a bad person? *evil grin*

But seriously, you guys DON'T know what you are missing here. The sweetness of the brownies really compliments the tart cranberries very well. 

So, here is what I recommend, mix up your favorite brownie recipe, and add about 1 1/4 cups of frozen cranberries to it if it is a 9x13 pan, or a 3/4 a cup if it is an 8x8 (and of course this may vary due to the thickness or thinness of your recipe. Mine are uber thick). These brownies are quite the festive holiday delight! Try them out this Christmas, you will not be disappointed! 

- J.