Quick & Easy Microwave Peanut Butter Fudge
April 10, 2013
Microwave ovens are the best friend of people who are always on the go. Did you know you can make a quick treat with just the help of this trusty machine? 🙂
Before I give you the recipe, here's a fun fact for ya. If you have been a loyal reader, you may have already heard about this from me some time back. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, did you know that chocolate had something to do with the invention of the microwave oven?
An American scientist by the name of Percy Spencer was working on what is known as the magnetron for radar sets. Allegedly, he walked by a cavity magnetron while it was at work then felt some heat and realized that a chocolate bar that he had been carrying in his pocket had melted into a sticky mess.
How To Fully Enjoy Your Chocolate
April 5, 2013
"Mindful eating goes beyond eating," said Lilian Cheung, a registered dietitian, co-author of Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, and director of health promotion and communication at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts.
You can easily be more mindful if you opt for high-quality chocolate and check the label before buying. You can get an instant idea regarding the sweetness or bitterness of chocolate by understanding the chocolate to sugar ratio.
"If you buy chocolate with a higher cocoa content, it will be less sweet," said Stephen Durfee, a pastry chef instructor at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, in St. Helena, California. "You will get more of the natural flavor of chocolate."
Butterscotch Chocolate Chunk Cookies
April 3, 2013
Butterscotch is defined as a type of confectionery with brown sugar and butter as the main ingredients. The authentic recipe for "making Doncaster butterscotch is one pound of butter, one pound of sugar and a quarter of a pound of treacle, boiled together.", according to "Housewife's Corner" and Masluk Cream Co. in an 1848 newspaper.
Butterscotch shares some characteristics with toffee. However, with butterscotch, the sugar is boiled to the soft crack stage, and not hard crack like toffee. The term “butterscotch” usually refers to delicacies with the flavor of brown sugar and butter together, even sans the actual confection butterscotch. Nowadays, butterscotch is considered a flavor, just like caramel.
We are all familiar with butterscotch anything, and many of them are only rip-offs, and the flavors don’t even match the real deal! Now that you are bound to know how to make butterscotch, please steer clear of artificially flavored treats! :p
Avoid Eating Too Much Easter Chocolate
March 29, 2013
A recently published research paper by the Birmingham team in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that zeroed in on attentive eating, claimed that paying attention to what one eats helps in developing control over one’s appetite.
A lot of people are on a chocolate shopping spree now, considering we are nearing Easter. To some, chocolate is a mere indulgence, but an enjoyable one. To others, it’s a root of guilt over cheating on diet.
Dr. Suzanne Higgs, from the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham, said, "People make many decisions every day about what foods to eat and how much to eat. These decisions are made easily and seemingly without much thought. Yet underlying these choices are sophisticated psychological processes that can be easily disrupted, especially if we are distracted by other demands. So it is perhaps no surprise that we sometimes eat more than intended."
Peanut Butter Banana Brownie Pizza
March 27, 2013
Pizza, along with cheeseburgers, is my weakness. However bad it is, it's still pretty good! Haha but since chocolate is our superstar, we might as well roll them into one.
Sweet treats are everywhere, and they never fail to sweep people off their feet. We just can't get enough of it that even savory dishes, like pizza, have their chocolate-y counterparts.
Instead of using vegetables to make the pizza filling and topping, you go for sweet ingredients. The young ones will surely have a blast!
Rum Chocolate Cake
March 20, 2013
I love rum cakes! I love chocolates! Combine the two, and you're bound to have an awesome treat. I love it most especially because it's spiked, and the richness of chocolate just feels like heaven in my mouth.
Rum Cake per se is a rich and moist cake that ages well. Sometimes, it is called blackcake. You can keep it, freeze it, and even mail it because the rum acts as a preservative. Rum cake has been a source of joy for quite a stretch of time now.
Here's a recipe that has the scrumptiousness of chocolate along with the flavor and kick of rum.
Chocolate Sorbet
March 13, 2013
People often mistake Italian ice for sorbet. And sorbet is sometimes confused with sherbet.
Some sorbets and sherbets have alcohol in them, and this can lower the freezing temperature, which could lead to softer texture. In Australia and the UK, sherbet means fizzy powder, and only the term sorbet is accepted.
While ice cream is dairy-based with air copiously whipped in, sorbet doesn't have any of those, creating a dense product bursting with flavor. Sorbet is served as a non-fat or low-fat alternative to ice cream.
Here's a chocolaty version of it!
Chocolate Beer In Chocolate Glass? Yum!
March 8, 2013
I love chocolate, and I love beer. Since I've always been blabbering about my undying love for chocolate for days on end, let me share with you the thing that part of my loyalty lies, and it's with beer.
I may be a girl, but I'm the kind of girl who loves to drink. I drink with my girl friends (friends who I have known since I was like 5 years old) every week. And when I say every week, it's every freaking week! It's like a pact, but we never really talked about it. We just get together once or twice (even thrice) a week. Cold beer always comes in handy, ALWAYS. Aside from the kick we get, we swear by beer's flavor. Both combined and long, almost relentless yet fun, conversations are fueled.
Black Forest Pudding Cake
March 6, 2013
Black Forest and Black Forest cake (American English and Australian English) are the English names for the German dessert Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, which literally means "Black Forest cherry torte". Hard to pronounce, but easy to make! Before I give you a recipe, let me share with you some fundamentals about Black Forest.
For the most part, Black Forest cake is composed of several layers of chocolate cake, with whipped cream and cherries between each layer. The cake is then decorated with additional whipped cream, maraschino cherries, as well as chocolate shavings. This recipe has the lusciousness of pudding to boot!
Typically, Kirschwasser (a clear liquor distilled from tart cherries) is added into the mixture. However, other liquors, like rum, can also be used. German statutory interpretation deems Kirschwasser a compulsory ingredient, or the cake can’t be legally marketed as Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte. Interesting, eh?