Chocolate Covered Things

Chocolate adds a new dimension to anything it covers: pretzels, peanut butter, cherries, almonds, marshmallows, caramel, figs, Clementines, orange peels, you name it, and someone has probably figured out the best way to coat it in chocolate, even bacon!

The folks at Vosges (http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/), a Haut-Chocolat confectionary in Chicago, concocted a bacon-chocolate bar, called Mo’s Bacon Bar, which combines applewood smoked bacon, alderwood smoked salt, and deep milk chocolate for a completely amazing sweet and savory chocolate experience. The best news, this culinary delight can be purchased at Sjolinds (219 E. Main, Mount Horeb).

Someday though, I hope a road-trip to Santa Cruz, California will afford me the opportunity to try the ice cream at Marini’s, (http://www.mariniscandies.com/ ) called Vegan’s Nightmare Ice Cream which boasts “delectable chunks of crispy chocolate covered bacon in maple syrup ice cream.” Wow. This sounds like Sunday brunch in a bowl!

Chocolate-covered Clementine slices from Italy sound particularly divine, as described at Zingerman’s web site, “…spectacular Calabrian oranges, soaked in a constantly refreshed bath of simple syrup for three weeks, cut in quarters, smothered in dark chocolate…. If you slide it in your mouth all at once, the luscious orange syrup won’t drip down your chin.” At nearly $2.00 a slice, you won’t want to waste a speck of this delectable treat! Check out http://www.zingermans.com/ for more chocolate covered things.

Best Part of Bridge Mix

Remember bridge mix? My favorite part is the malted milk balls, crunchy and tender and malty. Mmm. Then I like the chocolate-covered raisins. The round things with the jelly inside are good, too. The peanuts? Someone else can eat those.

Malted milk, the powder, was originally invented by Englishman James Horlick after he moved to Racine, Wisconsin! The original name was "Diastoid," but in a flash of marketing foresight, he trademarked the name "Malted Milk" in 1887. The powder was intended to be a non-perishable, high-calorie food supplement for infants and invalids. It gained popularity when arctic explorers began packing it on their trips, and was soon consumed for its taste rather than its nutritional qualities.

If I've rekindled a long lost taste in you for malted milk, maybe you'll want to try your hand at this recipe for Chocolate Malt Cake from thebakingpan.com!

More Digital Food

Another great web source for recipes are the websites of grocery markets and specialty stores. The frosted brownies above are Moist and Decadent Dark Chocolate Brownies from a recipe at the Whole Foods website. The ingredients look very simple, but in the comments, people who've made them rave, "They were gone in a day! Had to make a second batch, best brownies I or my husband have ever had."

Here are some more store sites with recipe sections:
Cub Foods

Trader Joe's

Piggly Wiggly

Sentry Foods

Willy Street Co-op

Copps

Brennan's Market (more of a blog than a recipe site)

Know of any others? Post them here in the comment section!

You Sure WE Didn't Invent That?

Chocolate and cheese sounds like a combo that could only have hailed from Wisconsin. Alas, no! This chocolate-flavored process cheese slice was actually developed in New Zealand to break into the lackluster dairy market of Taiwan! The Chesdale chocolate cheese proved so popular, that within months of its release, it cornered 10% of the Taiwanese cheese market.

A company spokesman said the cheese had, "a mild chocolate flavor, matched to a light Cadbury flavor - we backed off a little from Nutella."

Did someone say Nutella? Mmm. They have that over at Miller's, don't they?

Read more in the New Zealand Herald.

Chocolate Therapy

Chocolate is cheaper than therapy and you don't need an appointment.
--Unknown

Feeling blue? Is the weather getting you down? Is the economy worrying you? Is your love life sending you into the doldrums? Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes? Then, may I suggest a hearty dose of chocolate?

As a remedy for the blues, I personally recommend molten chocolate cake. When I am down in the dumps nothing cheers me up like a warm, rich, and sinfully gooey cake (with ice cream). The added beauty of molten chocolate cake is how easy it is to make. Most recipes call for the batter to be placed in small ramekins or muffin tins, which is nice, because then they can be easily shared with friends. Or not. And since the cakes are small, so are the calories.

Here’s a delicious recipe from Epicurious, my favorite online recipe site: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Molten-Chocolate-Cakes-with-Cherries-104736

A Digital Cookbook?

While I don't think that online recipe sites will replace printed, bound cookbooks anytime soon, these Internet jewels are worth looking into if you haven't before. As with anything else online, approach internet recipe sites using discrimination and common-sense. Many recipes are user-submitted, and could possibly flop.

Online Recipe Cons
• Recipe could be untested
• Directions not professionally written; could be missing steps
• Annoying pop-ups
• You have to wade through advertising

Online Recipe Site Pros
• Searchable
• User reviews
• Scaleable
• Interactive

What online recipe sites offer that cookbooks cannot is the interactive quality of being able to submit, rate, search and comment on recipes. On a very active cooking site, members will chime in and talk about how the recipe turned out for them, what they substituted, and what they'd do differently if they made the dish again. It can be fascinating to read the string of comments attached to a particularly popular recipe.

Online recipes are infinitely more searchable than a physical cookbook. Not only can you search for recipes that have specific combinations of ingredients, but you can also specify things like a cooking method (baked, grilled, etc.) or other terms like "easy" or "low-fat." And if you don't have something specific to search, you can browse.

It's also easy to scale the recipe size, for either more or fewer portions, without doing any math! Let's say you have an oddball amount of a certain ingredient you're looking to get rid of. (Not that that's ever happened to me, mind you, because I'm such a precise planner...ha ha!) You can tinker with scaling the recipe up or down until it fits the amount of the ingredient you have on hand.

My personal favorite recipe site is allrecipes.com. They have an active membership who post very useful comments and critiques, and they have an online recipe box where you can sign up for a free membership and store your favorite recipes.

Click here for a fabulous chocolate article at allrecipes.com - 10 Best Chocolate Recipes!

Don't Get Cross!

I've always had a thing for cross-sections. I'm curious by nature, and what better way to learn about the inner workings of something than to crack it open and see it in action?

Several non-fiction series explore cross-sections of various things, from machinery to homes, to historical constructions, to the human body. Here are a few titles and series available at the library that you might enjoy:

• Inside a _____ - various titles in the Intermediate Nonfiction section. The photo above is from Inside a Stove by Claire Seymour.

• Coolest Cross Sections Ever by Stephen Biesty (Intermediate Nonfiction, 608 Bie)

• Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith by Curtis Saxton (Intermediate Nonfiction, 791.43 Sax)

• What's Inside _____? - various titles in the Intermediate Nonfiction section include What's Inside Plants, What's Inside Buildings, and What's Inside Airplanes.

Come ask a reference librarian about exploring something in cross-section today!

And how about cross-sections of candy bars? Here's an easy page. Piece of "cake?" Okay, try the harder page!