Tag: chocolate

  • Chocolate Halloween Treats Recipe – GF Video

    Chocolate Halloween Treats Recipe – GF Video

    Here’s a Halloween Treats Recipe for those of you who want to go the DIY way and make their own treats for the trick or treaters.

    As you know I love chocolate almost in any form, and I was watching Jacque Pepin’s TV show More Fast Food My Way and he did a quick little recipe for these DIY Halloween treats,  he called them Chocolate Rochers, similar to my last name. Very simply just melted chocolate with a couple different crunchy items dropped onto parchment. They were brilliant, really simple and I thought that’s a GardenFork Halloween treat if I ever saw one. Click Here to buy Jacques Pépin’s Book More Fast Food My Way

    Our Halloween Treats Recipe is based on his, pretty straightforward. Taking crunchy items like Rice Crispies, Cornflakes, toasted almonds, you could also use toasted hazelnuts or toasted walnuts. It’s really what do you like, if it’s crunchy and goes good with chocolate, it probably works. I’m a big fan of peanuts as well, you could have peanuts that you toasted in the fry pan.

    chocolate-halloween-treats-recipe-pin

     

    As far as what kind of chocolate to use for the chocolate Halloween treats, we were using semi sweet baking chocolate which I preferred or a big bar of Hershey’s dark chocolate, both of which you can buy at almost any grocery store. Experiment and buy a couple different ones and see what you like.

    Be very careful when melting the chocolate! You can melt it in the microwave with short pulses of about 30 seconds and you wait a minute or two and then zap it for another 30 seconds. I found that a simple homemade double boiler works fine for mem. A small saucepan pan with about an inch of water in it,  a metal bowl on top works very well as a double boiler.
    So there you go, our version of a DIY Chocolate Halloween Treat. What is your favorite kind of halloween treat that you can make? I would love to hear in the comments below, it’s great to hear from you all.

    Chocolate Crunchers, a DIY Halloween Treats Recipe

    1 box of semi sweet baking chocolate or whatever chocolate you like.

    2 cups of Rice Crispies, Corn Flakes, roasted nuts such as almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts.

    In a double boiler, break up the chocolate bar into pieces and melt the chocolate. Do not over-melt it, you want it such that it is thick.

    Take the bowl off the boiling water and add in the chosen ingredient(s). Be careful as the bowl is hot.

    If you are working with kids, scrape the melted chocolate into another bowl.

    How much of the crunchy ingredients is up to you. I prefer most of the nuts be covered in chocolate.

    Drop tablespoon sized amounts of the melted chocolate onto parchment paper and let the chocolate cool.

  • Triple Chocolate Cake Recipe – GF Video

    Take our chocolate cake recipe, add chocolate chips and chocolate icing, and make a triple chocolate cake! Based on comments viewers made to our original simple chocolate cake video, we added a few things to amp up the cake, and it tastes amazing.

    I love this cake for its simplicity. But then, I love making everything as simple as possible, life is complicated enough as it is. So with a few additions, you can amp up the decadence of the chocolate cake and it still takes almost no time to make.

     

    triple-chocolate-cake-recipe
    Adding chocolate chips on top of the batter makes this decadent.

     

    Snooki said in her comment that her family makes a similar chocolate cake recipe and adds chocolate chips across the top of the batter, so we did that. Simple and done. You could mix the chips into the batter, but this cake doesn’t need it. I like how the chocolate chip layer is on the top. If you wanted to switch it up a little, you could use white chocolate chips, or peanut butter chips. Either one would be a great addition.

    Cathy suggested the chocolate icing or glaze. ( Not sure if its called icing or a glaze, let me know your thoughts below ) Take a half stick of butter, melt it, add in cocoa and powdered sugar and spread across the top of the cake. You could do this just before serving, but I like to do it beforehand and let the glaze settle into the cake a bit. I like the word unctuous, and it fits here really well. Now while writing this i want some cake, and its not even lunchtime yet.

    Do you guys make a cake like this? Let me know in the comments below, we can make a third and fourth version of this going forward

    Check out our original simple chocolate cake recipe video here.

    Triple Chocolate Cake Recipe – GardenFork.TV
    Ingredients
    • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
    • 1 cup sugar
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 3 tablespoons cocoa
    • 1 teaspoon baking soda
    • 3/4 cup veg oil
    • 3/4 cup water
    • 1 tablespoon vinegar
    • 1 cup chocolate chips
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla
    Cooking Directions
    1. This is based on our simple chocolate cake recipe, amped up with more chocolate
    2. Heat Oven to 350F
    3. Put all the dry ingredients in an 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 pan.
    4. Mix together well, using a whisk or fork if you like
    5. Make a well or hole in the middle of the dry ingredients
    6. Add the wet ingredients in to the well.
    7. Mix the wet into the dry until it looks like chocolate cake batter
    8. Smooth the top of the batter, and scatter across the top the chocolate chips
    9. Bake on the middle rack of the oven. Check at 25 minutes, you want it moist, not dry.
    10. In our oven, this bakes in 30 minutes, a convection oven may be faster.
    11. Mix up the chocolate icing recipe, pour across the cake, and let it cool.

    Simple Chocolate Icing
    Ingredients
    • 1/2 stick – 4 ozs butter
    • 2 teaspoons cocoa
    • 1/4 cup milk
    • 1 cup powdered sugar
    • 1 teaspoon vanilla
    Cooking Directions
    1. This icing was suggested by one of our viewers, and its great on chocolate cake
    2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.
    3. Turn off heat and add milk.
    4. Stir in cocoa
    5. Add in powedered sugar
    6. Mix well and then spread over the cake.
    7. Smooth it out if you want and allow cake to cool.

  • Seized Chocolate and Star Trek : GardenFork Radio

    Seized Chocolate and Star Trek : GardenFork Radio

    Eric the Chocolatier tells all on seizing chocolate, Why dogs can’t eat chocolate, Twitter in Practice, Mike needs a friendlier picture, Gmail gets Hacked – Bad things happen, Lego and Star Trek Foamers, Bread Starter

    Call us: 860-740-6938 leave a comment or ask a question

    Karen Solomon can be found here:

    www.ksolomon.com

    www.jamitpickleitcureit.com

    www.twitter.com/bolongarose

    more chocolate comments from Scott of www.the-ecohouse.weebly.com

    Eric suggests the Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms for mushroom identification

  • Jacques Torres, chocolatier with a wrench.

    Jacques Torres, chocolatier with a wrench.

    The first time I checked out Jacques Torres’ chocolate store in Dumbo Brooklyn, I could see Jacques behind this big glass window that allowed people to see the chocolate being made.

    He had an adjustable wrench and was whacking some sort of machine with it.

    I decided immediately: ‘i like this guy’

    jacques torres chocolate
    Pick up these chocolates, make everyone happy.

    I have since bought a bunch of chocolate from him. He makes these small chocolate squares in a ton of ever changing varieties, and you can select which ones you want to make up a box. These boxes of chocolates make great gifts. Anybody I give them to loves them. ( you can order them online here )

    Jacques and Jaden Hair invited me to an evening at Jacques’ Manhattan store last week with some other food bloggers. It was very nice being in chocolate heaven. Jacques provided the food, and Taittinger Champagne & The Seeker Wines provided the drinks. Jacques is one of those guys with an infectious personality, he likes food and likes to share it with others, and a big thank you to him for sharing it with me. ( we talk about my visit on GardenFork Radio here )

    Kinda decadent, chocolate and nice wine, hanging out in NYC. But decadent in a good way.