Chat With Me, Chocolate, and Your Chance to Be on the Food Network

Sometimes you have to break the rules. I know that a long blog post is not a good idea. "No one will read it," they say. Well, poo, I'm doing it anyway. This post has three sections: one about an upcoming opportunity to chat with me live about baking with chocolate, another about some recent chocolate bars that I've tried, and a third about a chance to get on the Food Network. Read all or none, as you see fit.

Section 1: Chat With Me

I was invited by Scharffen Berger to be a panelist on Tuesday night's Girls' Night Out (GNO) Twitter Party about baking with chocolate. If you've never attended a GNO before, no worries, neither have I. Together, we'll learn how it all works (here's a tutorial that hopefully will help). It should be fun to get a chance to talk to all of you and meet a bunch of new people. The chat starts at 8 PM CST.

Here is the official invite:

Join the #gno gang and Scharffen Berger, maker of America's finest dark chocolate, this Tuesday, February 16 from 9-11 ET (8 CT, 7 MT, and 6 PT) as we share our passion and tips for cooking with chocolate!

• What: Girls’ Night Out (#gno) Twitter party (Click here to learn about #gno!)
• When: Tuesday, February 16, 9-11 p.m. EST (8CT, 7 MT, & 6 PT)
• Where: Party with us on our very own Custom Tweetgrid! Check back on Monday for the link. (Use hashtags #gno and #sbchocolate.)
• Topic: Cooking with chocolate with Scharffen Berger
  
• Who: @ahhnalin @carrotsncake @cupcakeproject @janemaynard @katefarber
  
• Party Favors: Click here to enter for a chance to win this week’s giveaway. Deadline: 2/17
• RSVP: Use Mr. Linky on the Mom It Forward Site (enter the twitter URL and your twitter ID (e.g., http://twitter.com/jyl_momIF). If you would like to include your blog, please enter it next to your name. Make sure to include your twitter URL in the URL line. Please do not enter your blog URL there.

Note: I will be a half hour late. As much as I love chocolate and Twitter, I don't want to miss my hoop class. I've gotten pretty hooked on hooping recently. I've got to exercise if I'm going to bake with chocolate!

Me hooping in the garage.
It's funny that I don't hoop outside because I don't want my neighbors to watch me
and yet I will post a picture on the blog for thousands of readers to see.

Section 2: Chocolate

While I love baking with chocolate, I also enjoy the fine art of eating chocolate bars. Periodically on this site, I fill you in on some new bars that I've tried from some of my favorite companies.

Section 2A: Patric Chocolate (If you haven't heard of Patric Chocolate, I highly recommend that you read the interview that I did with the owner, Alan McClure, on my now defunct blog, Food Interviews)

Patric Chocolate has two news bars that I've been meaning to write about for quite some time: a 70% Madagascar Bar with Nibs (shown above - isn't it gorgeous?) and a 70% Rio Caribe Superior. If you are someone that likes mix-ins in your ice cream shakes, I bet you'll love the addition of nibs to Alan's perfect-on-its-own Madagascar bar. I'm an anti mix-in person, so I found the nibs distracting, but I could see how texture fans would embrace the nut-like nibs.

The Rio Caribe bar has a completely different flavor than the Madagascar bar. It reminded me of men’s cologne – floral, but in a masculine way. If you can't picture that description tasting good in chocolate - just try it!

Full disclosure: Patric Chocolate is made here in Missouri and Alan has become a personal friend of my husband and me. But, I tell it like it is. If I didn't find his chocolate to be some of the best on the market, I wouldn't recommend it to you.

Section 2B: Amano Chocolate (If you haven't heard of Amano Chocolate, I highly recommend that you read the interview that I did with the owner, Art Pollard, on my now defunct blog, Food Interviews)

The other day, I received a surprise package in the mail from Amano Chocolate with two new bars, Guyas and Dos Rios. I hadn't even heard that Amano had new bars! I tasted the Guyas first and quickly began to plot out how many days I could make that one bar last and who, if anyone, I would be willing to share it with. Like all of the bars that I am writing about here, this bar has no added flavors. However, like the Patric Madagascar and the TCHO Fruity, it tastes like citrus and berries.

The Dos Rios is different than any chocolate bar that I have ever tasted. The smell of the bar alone is so intense and so complex that I'm not sure you would guess you were smelling chocolate if you didn't know what it was. You might think that it was a pineapple or maybe a bunch of cloves or a sachet of herbs that Grandma kept in a underwear drawer. I wouldn't pick it as the first single origin bar to try, but if you've tried a bunch and are looking for something completely new, this is it.

I admit that half of the time I don't even read the press releases that come with the free stuff I receive. Shame, shame! But, a story in the Amano press release really touched me. "Before Guayas was released to the public, I traveled to Guayaquil, Ecuador, and threw a party for the farmers who grew the beans. This may have been the first time a chocolate company had a 'launch party' with the farmers." Fantastic idea!

From now until the end of March, Cupcake Project readers will receive 10% off any Amano chocolate purchased through their site. Use the coupon code 17V01130R74.

Section 2C: TCHO Beta

I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of the TCHO Chocolate beta program. I've been getting to try and provide feedback on TCHO chocolate before it hits the market. But, since you can't try it yet (sorry to taunt you), I recommend that you check out the TCHO-A-Day. You can get a 30 day supply of quality chocolate for $20. It's hard to beat that price. It's one of my new favorite gift ideas!

Section 3: Your Chance to be on the Food Network

Last week, I received a Facebook message from someone at the Food Network saying that they wanted to talk to me about the show Cupcake Wars. I tried not to get too excited, but I couldn't help but think that maybe they wanted to cast me on the show. After all, fellow cupcake blogger Natalie of Bake and Destroy got to be a judge. I responded to the message and waited on pins and needles to hear back.

It turns out that while the response wasn't great news for me, it IS great news for you! The Food Network simply wanted me to help spread the word that they are looking for amazing bakers to compete on Cupcake Wars.

If I can't be on the show, I'd love it if one of my readers could! To apply,
email your name, phone number (photos and website if available) and what makes you the perfect candidate for “Cupcake Wars” to supercupcakecasting@gmail.com.

All Done

Toys for Your Kids and Toys for Your Taste Buds - A Giveaway

Our definition of toy changes as we grow. My favorite toy when I was a kid was my stuffed animal whom I creatively named "Teddy" (as it turns out, he was a monkey, not a bear). Today, my favorite toy is my Kitchen-Aid mixer (no, I'm not giving one of those away).

Toys for Your Kids

Many months ago, I was contacted by Action Toys about reviewing their new cupcake toy, Crazy for Cupcakes. Since my baby is still in the womb (his favorite toy is the umbilical cord), I thought that I would recruit some product tester kids. Sadly, the coordination effort on that task ended up being far more work than I anticipated. So instead, I'm offering the toy to you for your kid to try.

This photo supplied by Action Toys. All other photos in this post are by J. Pollack Photography.

Each "cupcake" in this toy contains four parts - a cup, cake, frosting, and a topper. Your child can mix and match to create his/her own cupcake masterpieces. Some of the parts are also scented. I tried really hard to smell them through the plastic, but the smell does not come through. If you win, you'll have to let me know what you think.

Toys for Your Taste Buds

You will most likely not want to share with your child the second toy I'm giving away .

Sure, your kids like chocolate. I, for one, have plans to raise a chocolate snob who will prefer single-origin bean-to-bar chocolate over the cheap stuff. But if you have to share with your children, try to keep your little ones from eating a whole bar in a single sitting - you're going to want this chocolate to last.

Amano, one of my favorite chocolate companies (see the interview with owner Art Pollard on my now defunct blog, Food Interviews), has recently come out with three new chocolate bars. I had the luxury of trying free samples of all of them and wanted to pass on that joy to one of my readers.

Two of the three new bars are Amano's first milk chocolate bars. I've grown to prefer dark chocolate and the milk chocolate seemed too sweet to me. I certainly wouldn't turn them down, though! They were really good for milk chocolate. I liked the Ocumare a bit better than the Jembrana - it had more complex flavors. If you love milk chocolate, though, you may love them both.

The Montanya bar. Ah, the Montanya bar. Wait - don't stop my day dreaming. This bar was heavenly. It was so full of smoky, spicy bursts of flavor that after I ate a small square, I didn't want to eat anything else for an hour so that the last little bit of flavor could linger in my mouth. To say I loved this bar would be an understatement. If you don't win it, you should buy it!

How Do I Win?

Entering to win toys for your kids or toys for your taste buds is easy:

• Leave a comment on this post by midnight PST on Tuesday, June 23. In the comment, include:
• Which prize you would like - either Crazy for Cupcakes (you'll get Batch 1 and Batch 2) or Amano Chocolate (you'll get one of each of the three bars shown above). You can only pick one prize.
  
• Your email address so that I can contact you if you win.
• If you would like to to enter to win both prizes or enter twice for a prize you really want:
• Tweet about this contest with a link to this post.
• Leave a second comment on this post. In the comment, include:
• Your Twitter ID
• What prize you're entering for with your tweet

Good luck!!

Cacao Nib Cookies - For the Chocolate Lover Who Wants Something Different

Cacao nib cookies are to chocolate chip cookies as vanilla bean ice cream is to French vanilla ice cream - each has its place.

Some of you will question why I would want to remove a sweet, melty chocolate chip and replace it with a hard, bitter, nut-like thing. I see your point.

You may be surprised to find that the bitter nibs are the perfect complement to a sweet cookie and allow you to truly enjoy the essence of the cacao in your cookie bites. While they are not a replacement for the chocolate chip cookie, cacao nib cookies are a nice change and will be treasured by chocolate lovers.


These cacao nib cookies were brought on by more Fancy Food Show loot (see my posts on Nutorious and Teeccino for other Fancy Food fun). I'm definitely going to make it back there in future years (though I tend to doubt that I'll be able to pull off my seven hours straight of noshing while carting around a baby).

At the show, Jonathan and I stopped by to say hi to Art Pollard of Amano Artisan Chocolate. While I had interviewed him for my now basically defunct (or should I say on prolonged hiatus) blog, Food Interviews, I had never met him in person.

Art sent me away with four different kinds of cacao nibs to try. I think he meant to give me all five varieties, but accidentally gave me two bags of the Madagascar (as it turns out, that one was my favorite, so that was fine by me!).

Eating the nibs in cookies, salads, or anywhere you would use nuts is a treat, but the best part of the nib experience is opening and smelling the contents of the bags. Taking a big whiff of each open bag makes you feel like you are right in the chocolate factory - and each bag smells different. There is no way you could smell these cacao nibs and leave saying, "chocolate is chocolate."

I baked some cookies with each of the four nib flavors that I had (Accra, Barlovento, Jembrana, and Madagascar), kept them separate, and had a taste-off. Of the four participants, two liked the Accra the best, one liked the Jembrana the best, and I liked the Madagascar the best. I guess you will just have to try them and see what your favorite is!

The Cacao Nib Cookie Recipe

I got the recipe for the cacao nib cookies straight from Allrecipes. They were labeled "Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies." They were not big, fat, or chewy (could it be that the nibs affected the cookie texture?). These cookies were best right out of the oven when they were chewy, soft, and warm. After cooling, they became hard and crispy. But, if you put a cookie on a paper towel in the microwave for 15 seconds, it's back to its fresh from the oven perfection.

Because these cookies required the trip to the microwave, I wouldn't call this the ideal recipe, but if you don't mind the 15 second wait, these cookies are tops!

If you have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, simply replace the chocolate chips with nibs and enjoy!

Here is my reprinting of the recipe from Allrecipes, with my slight change from chips to nibs:

• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 3/4 C unsalted butter, melted
• 1 C packed brown sugar
• 1/2 C white sugar
• 1 T vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 C cacao nibs, or more, to taste
  

1. Preheat the oven to 325 F (165 C). Grease cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until well blended.
4. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy.
   
5. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.
   
6. Stir in the cacao nibs by hand using a wooden spoon.
   
7. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
8. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted.
   
9. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Food History Facts

I thought about entering these cookies into Sugar High Friday's event - The Test of Time. In order to do so, the dish had to be over one hundred years old or a reinvention of a dish that was one hundred years old. "Surely, chocolate chip cookies were invented over one hundred years ago," I thought.

Not so.

According to Kitchen Project (no affiliation with Cupcake Project):

Ruth Wakefield invented chocolate chip cookies in 1930 at the Toll House inn she and her husband Keneth ran near Whitman, Massachusetts. Like a bed and breakfast she made food for her guests. One evening in 1937 she got the idea to make a chocolate butter cookie so she broke up one of the bars of semi-sweet chocolate that Andrew Nestle gave her. She thought that it would mix together with the dough & make all chocolate cookies . Needless to say, it didn't. However the cookies came out decent so she served them. They of course were so good they had to be done again. She published the recipes in several newspapers and the recipe became very popular.

Even then, the cookies were still called chocolate crunch cookies. Apparently, pre-chocolate chip, Nestle tried including small choppers with their bars of chocolate so that people could more easily make the cookies. I wonder if the choppers at all resembled the chocolate chopper I have that is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets.

Before you believe the entirety of the story on Kitchen Project, be sure to also read the Wikipedia page on chocolate chip cookies which stirs up a bit of controversy and is one of those sad big company screwing the little gal stories.

Oh, and...

Be sure to check out the cookie dough cupcakes using cacao nibs!

Last Day to Win Free Amano Chocolate

Today is the last day to enter to win free Amano chocolate on Food Interviews. Comment on each of the five parts of the interview for your best odds of winning! On some of the posts, there are less than 20 entries, so your odds of winning are very high!

Also, I received an email from Gina from A Half-Dozen Eggs with her great review of the Vere chocolate that she won during the Vere chocolate interview. Be sure to check out her blog post, but here is a summary that she said I could publish:

Cayenne + Cacao Nibs: Wow! The smoothness of the chocolate and then *pow!* the heat of the pepper - delicious. I gave my husband a small square (yes, I shared...some). He's not really a chocolate fan but even
he was impressed.

Espresso + Anise: I love chocolate. I love coffee. I do not like licorice at all. However, this was a great chocolate bar. The licorice flavor was very slight and not at all overpowering. I like this one but it's not my favorite.

Raspberry + Lemon: I thought the lemon overpowered the raspberry in this bar; however, I loved the raspberry seeds in the bar. Don't give me seedless raspberry anything, why bother? So I was glad to have the seeds. Loved it!

Banana + Macadamia Nut: I couldn't really taste the banana until I had quite a bit of chocolate in my mouth. I liked the bits of macadamia nuts rather than big nuts

Ultimo: is just that - the ultimate. Plain, dark chocolate. And I don't mean plain as an insult. Plain and simple are *good* things sometimes and they're great things in the case of this chocolate. Smooth, delicious, bittersweet chocolate. And even better because it is organic.

Announcing Food Interviews: Another Chocolate Interview and Giveaway!

Photo by Amano Artisan Chocolate

After two sucessful interviews on Cupcake Project, one with Vere Chocolate owner Kathy Moskal, and one with Supreme Spice owner Anjali Damerla, I am now hooked on interviews!

I have started a new blog, Food Interviews, where I will be doing all of my future interviews.

If you enjoyed the interview about Vere Chocolate, you will probably enjoy the interview I'm featuring this week with Art Pollard, founder/owner of Amano Chocolate (you may remember that I reviewed Amano chocolate and I LOVED it!).

Just like the Vere interview, there will be 5 chocolate giveaways, so be sure to check it out and leave a comment each day this week.

Although Food Interviews won't always be about something cupcake related, I hope you'll enjoy it as much as you enjoy Cupcake Project.

Oh - and don't worry - I'll still be making cupcakes here!

A Quick Vere Giveaway Followup

I also wanted to let you know that I have heard back from two of the Vere chocolate winners.

Ivy posted a review of the chocolate on her blog, Little Ivy Cakes.

Tish sent me an email:

The chocolate arrived at my house all beautifully packaged and in perfect condition, so I would have no hesitation in purchasing on-line.

The quality of this chocolate was arguably the finest eating chocolate that I have
ever consumed. I know that qualitative statements like that will always start a
riot, but I prefer bittersweet dark over milk chocolate.

I had no difficulty picking up the fruity notes in the chocolate itself, and the additions such as banana and raspberry were not overpowering. Just a hint of banana. A whisper of raspberry-lemon. The sensual burn of chili. All wrapped in the caress of intoxicating chocolate.

Wow.

I really loved this chocolate. Just one small square of it is plenty to satisfy my craving. And believe me, I have a real need for chocolate every day.

Thank you so much!

I'm so glad that they both enjoyed the bounty!

Amano Chocolate: What a Difference a Bean Makes

Back in March, I wrote about the TCHO beta bars I received through Blake Makes. I commented on how TCHO used a flavor wheel to describe all of the different flavors in the bars: chocolatey, citrus, fruity, floral, nutty, and earthy. I wasn't sold on that method and I'm still not. However, after receiving three different Amano bars, all of which were 70% cacao content, I better understand the need for some kind of new taste description system.

While all three bars contained the same ingredients (cocoa beans, pure cane sugar, cocoa butter, and whole Tahitian vanilla pods) and the same cacao percentage, the beans for each bar came from different places. The taste difference was huge.

After the break, my comments on each bar.

The Three Bars

Ocumare: Ocumare De La Costa is a remote valley on the central coast of Venezuela. The type of cacao it is known for is called crillo. The package says it's fruity and floral. Both Jonathan and I thought it had an olive flavor. The best thing about this chocolate and its brother and sister (yes, I just assigned the other bars sexes) is that as you hold it in your mouth, more and more flavors emerge.

Cuyagua: Cuyagua is another valley in Venezuela. Amano tells us that this bar has an "incredible complex chocolate flavor with natural flavor notes of spices, fruit." I'd have to second that comment on complexity. It's rich and smooth like you want chocolate to be, but also spicy and bitter and sweet all at the same time.

Madagascar: This bar is made from beans that originated in Venezuela and were transported to Madagascar. The package says it's a "mild chocolate flavor, accented with citrus." The Madagascar bar was my favorite. It is quite citrusy - so much so, that as I sucked on it, it actually made my mouth pucker.

Which Amano Bar Would I Recommend?

All three. I mean that literally. Don't just get one - get all three so that you can see what a difference a bean makes. It's fascinating.

Are You Writing About This to Tell Us You Are Making Another Chocolate Cupcake?

I am not writing about this to tell you I am making another chocolate cupcake. I was given three bars and wanted to use them all for a very important purpose - eating! I didn't want use these bars in a cupcake because I wanted to savor the chocolate all to itself.

Amano has, however, started selling bulk chocolate for baking! I may have to get my hands on some of that!

In the meantime, I did the second best thing I could do and made a tres leches cupcake dedicated to Venezuela, the home of all of these great beans.