Candy

Pancakes are soooo Saturday. You can find the recipe for these fluffy little cakes on the Tasty Kitchen blog. I’m sort of freaking out. ©2012 How Sweet It Is

Do you hate coconut? Olives? Ginger? Hard Candies? Then read on!

I’ve been meaning to review this bar for a while. In fact, this is the third bar I’ve had. The previous two bars simply didn’t last long enough for me to write about. Why? To put it simply, this is the best milk chocolate in the world. Bar none. Duffy’s Venezuela Ocumare Milk Chocolate won a gold medal in this year’s Academy of Chocolate awards in the milk chocolate bean-to-bar category. It won a silver and a gold medal for the chocolate maker in this year’s International Chocolate Awards. Seventy% described it as “the best milk chocolate that has ever been produced”. I could go on, but really, the chocolate speaks for itself. At 55% cocoa solids, it has an intensely chocolatey flavour. There are notes of banana and red fruit in there with some nutty notes toward the end, but this isn’t a complicated chocolate, it’s just perfectly balanced and faultlessly executed. But don’t go thinking this is a chocolate bar just for awards judges and chocolate reviewers. This is a bar that everyone can enjoy. Every day milk chocolate fans will love the creamy, chocolatey flavour as much as anyone. I’m not going to go into too much depth here, because it really is something you need to try for yourself. I have a small 30g bar here which comes with this very attractive moulding pattern, but you can buy the larger 80g bars on Duffy’s website for a very reasonable £5.80. You couldn’t buy a half decent bottle of wine for that, let alone the best bottle of wine in the world. So what are you waiting for? Go buy it before I do. Information Buy it online from: RedStarChocolate.co.uk Contains milk chocolate (55% cocoa solids). Cacao Origin: Venezuela Filed under red star chocolate, uk. Tweet This The post Duffy’s Venezuela Ocumare 55% Milk Chocolate appeared first on Chocablog.

On Wednesday, I covered Madécasse Chocolate‘s Pink Pepper & Citrus bar. They make bean-to-bar chocolate in Madagascar, which, in addition to paying their cocoa farmers a fair price, generates 4 times the impact of Fair Trade. Today, I’m writing up their Sea Salt & Nibs bar, which brags that it was Best in Show in the Paris Salon du Chocolat. As far as I’m concerned, it was a well-deserved award. The Sea Salt & Nibs was “63% cocoa, crunchy, & a touch of salt”, with 2/4 dots on Madécasse Chocolate’s intensity scale. It was formed in the same mold as the Pink Pepper & Citrus bar, except its back was covered in tiny bits of cacao nib. The chocolate had a softish bite with a light crunch from the nibs. They added a great cocoa depth without any of the bitter astringency that sometimes comes with cacao nibs. The chocolate was intensely flavored. It started off mellow with a caramel cocoa depth, then took on powerfully bright citrus and cherry notes. Every once in a while, I caught a crunchy crystal of sea salt. The salt brought a brief flash of saltiness while highlighting the fruity notes in the chocolate. This was another tremendous bar from Madécasse. As corny as it sounds, every bite took me on a flavor adventure. I am 100% sold on this brand and will be buying more bars the next time I’m at Whole Foods. A ZOMG!

I wish I could show you more pictures of this dip. BUT. We ate it. Way too quickly. It surprisingly wasn’t a one day process. I made it and we ate it that afternoon (we, meaning only two of us and a little bit of my husband but not enough to make a dent) with nearly an entire bag of chips. So adultlike. It was fabulous. What a story. Then last night (after a big walk… like, exercise) … we did it again. Reheated it with extra beer. And finished it. Yep. Spicy Beer Queso with Chorizo and Black Beans Yield: serves 4-6 Total Time: 30 minutes Ingredients: 1/2 pound chorizo 1 large shallot, diced 1 small jalapeño, seeded and diced 1/2 red pepper, diced 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 1/2 cups of your favorite beer 1 (8-ounce) block of cream cheese, softened 12 ounces of white cheddar cheese, freshly grated 1 cup of black beans sliced scallions + cilantro for topping Directions: Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Remove any casing from the chorizo and add to the skillet, using a wooden spoon to break apart the sausage until it is in crumbles. Cook until the fat is rendered and the sausage appears to be cooked through. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a paper towel to drain. At this time, I used another paper towel and just wiped out the excess inside the skillet. Keep the heat under the skillet around medium-low and add olive oil, peppers, shallot and garlic with a pinch of salt. Stir well to coat. Let cook until softened, about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat up to medium and add beer. After a few minutes, stir in softened cream cheese and continue stirring until it's melted. At first it will look crumbly and separated, but it will melt! Once it is creamy, add in the white cheddar, stirring again until melted and reducing the heat to low. Stir in the black beans and sausage, then remove from heat and serve immediately. Top with scallions and cilantro if desired. This stays creamy for a good while but like any queso, will seize up after time as it cools. If you can sit it over heat (like in a fondue pot) it will be perfect (with a stir every now and then) but otherwise, it reheats beautifully in the microwave with some additional liquid (beer, water, broth, etc)! But apparently this was needed because… are you even serious Grey’s Anatomy? ©2012 How Sweet It Is

Do you like chocolate? Do you like beer? Well you’re in luck! As part of my ‘day job’, I help out with the Sambrook’s Brewery website, and we thought it would be a great idea to bring beer and chocolate together in one fantastic event! We’re holding a beer and chocolate pairing evening at Sambrook’s Brewery in Battersea on Thursday 30th May, and we’d love you to come! Jennifer Earle of Chocolate Ecstasy Tours and our sister site World Chocolate Guide will guide you through a selection of chocolates from some of London’s finest chocolatiers and beyond. Jo Miller from Sambrook’s will talk about the beers we’ve paired with them. You’ll get to try five exciting chocolates and five amazing beer samples, and you’ll even get a welcome pint on arrival. It’s a great opportunity to learn more about chocolate and beer, to chat to the experts or just get a look inside a working brewery. Tickets cost £25 or £20 for Sambrook’s Brewery membe

Now this is just downright disturbing. I know babies are supposed to be cute and all, but the idea of a little baby sitting in the cocoa pod were my chocolate comes from is just gross. I know what babies do, and I don't want a little baby doing it in my cocoa pod. Chocolate already has enough problems being associated with poop, this isn't helping at all.I found this ad here.CC

Via Neil, here’s a tricky puzzler with a chocolate bar theme. From Cheezburger.com: If you’re curious how this works, the solution can be found here.

I feel like it’s been for.ev.er (say it like the sandlot, do it) since we talked about cookies. Pretty sure it’s because I get super weird about cookies in the Spring. It’s like I make tons of them over the holidays and then am totally cookied out. Well – at least cookied out to the point of baking them. I sure do eat my fair share, but the thought of baking them is the last thing on Earth I want to do. I mean, I made the cookie s’mores but those were totally store-bought cookies. It happens. Like lots of other people, I can be oddly picky about my cookies. I don’t loathe store-bought, but if they actually TASTE like store-bought? Then yeah, gross. Chocolate chip cookies are probably my favorite but also the most frequent offenders of not always being delicious. If I want a cookie, I want a good cookie. Or like ten good cookies. You know what I mean. The thing is though, that I almost always love every single peanut butter cookie that I taste. Probably because it can be ch

Madécasse Chocolate is a new company to me. They’re “bean-to-bar in Madagascar” and, though they’re not Fair Trade certified (probably due to the expense), they claim that their business practices generate 4 times the impact of fair trade cocoa. Pink Pepper & Citrus was 63% cocoa, pink pepper, & combava fruit. Combava fruit sounds super exotic, but I think it’s just another name for Kaffir Lime (still exotic, but slightly more familiar sounding). The bar was prettily molded to highlight that it was made in Madagascar. It broke easily along its scores, but its texture was soft, with a matte mouthfeel. This bar was astoundingly complex. I didn’t have to close my eyes or try too hard to really focus on the flavors; they came out swinging. It started off with a deep earthiness, then yielded to a bright, citrusy fruitiness with an undertone of pepper’s just-shy-of-acrid essence (but not its heat). All this for only 2/4 dots of intensity on Madécasse Chocolate’s sca