Adventures in chocolate
Jan. 31st, 2004 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittenscribbleIf you crush mint leaves into your hot chocolate before you bring it up to a boil, the resulting liquid has a pleasantly tangy sweetness to it. Have it with marshmallows and a peppermint stick left over from Christmas. You don't even need to get fancy with the hot chocolate; Swiss Miss mix and milk is fine. But if you really want to go all out, don't use mix. Instead, grate shards of bittersweet chocolate into a saucepan of milk and let it simmer (about 2 oz chocolate to every cup of milk, more if you're feeling decadent). A bit of heavy cream wouldn't hurt either; makes it nice and thick.
The minty hot chocolate goes quite well with chocolate coffee cake. The recipe includes lots of bittersweet chocolate and two entire cups of coffee. Eggs and butter hold it together, and flour and sugar provide the body. A dash of rum and a bit of cinnamon give it spark. You'll smell it cooking about twenty minutes in, when the entire house begins to smell like chocolate. It'll come out all moist and spongy. (I originally made it a bundt cake, but I had been deficient in greasing and flouring the pan; the top stuck when I flipped the cake over and I ended up serving it in chunks. It was appreciated nonetheless.)
I've been snacking on it all day, and there's still plenty left for a Super Bowl treat tomorrow. I'll just have a bit right now; that and the hot chocolate will put the perfect cap on this chilly Saturday evening.
...man, I love winter.
The minty hot chocolate goes quite well with chocolate coffee cake. The recipe includes lots of bittersweet chocolate and two entire cups of coffee. Eggs and butter hold it together, and flour and sugar provide the body. A dash of rum and a bit of cinnamon give it spark. You'll smell it cooking about twenty minutes in, when the entire house begins to smell like chocolate. It'll come out all moist and spongy. (I originally made it a bundt cake, but I had been deficient in greasing and flouring the pan; the top stuck when I flipped the cake over and I ended up serving it in chunks. It was appreciated nonetheless.)
I've been snacking on it all day, and there's still plenty left for a Super Bowl treat tomorrow. I'll just have a bit right now; that and the hot chocolate will put the perfect cap on this chilly Saturday evening.
...man, I love winter.
