Chocolate Crinkles

I just made these chocolate crinkle cookies. They are divine. I'd been seeing these cookies in all my cookbooks and thought, "Hm. Those look good. I should really try those." Finally, I did. I used the recipe from Betty Crocker's Baking For Today (2005). Before I give you the recipe, I should mention that I now do all my baking with unbleached white flour. I read in Essentials of Baking (Williams Sonoma, 2003) that unbleached flour has a more pleasant taste, and I quite agree. I think it has made a huge difference in the flavor of my sugar cookies, especially. Oh, I also use parchment paper to bake with now. It's just simpler.

Anyway, here's the recipe:

1 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate, melted and cooled
2 eggs
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
approximately 1/2 cup powdered sugar

In large bowl, mix granulated sugar, butter, vanilla and chocolate with spoon. Stir in eggs, one at a time. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheet with shortening or spray with cooking spray. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls into powdered sugar; roll around to coat. Shape into balls. On cookie sheet, place balls about 2 inches apart.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until almost no indentation remains when touched. Immediately remove from cookie sheet to wire rack; cool.

Be sure to really drop the dough directly into the powdered sugar. I thought I was being so clever by deciding it would work better to ball it up in my hands first. I was definitely wrong! Plus, if you ball it up after you've rolled it in the powdered sugar, the excess sugar comes off and doesn't get everywhere when moving the cookies. Maybe the dough was so sticky because I only left it in the refrigerator for about two hours. Hey, when you bake a dozen different cookies in half a week, you start to look for shortcuts! :)

(Note: The image was also taken from Baking For Today.)

5-Minute Fudge

My sister told me the best fudge she ever tasted was Rachel Ray's 5-Minute Fudge her friend made. I'm a bit skeptical of Rachel Ray because I've heard that her recipes are not as quick and easy as she professes. Some food critics say that her recipes are good, though. And Summer did say it was the best fudge she ever had. Summer's hard to please when it comes to fudge, and actually, so am I. So I decided to give Rachel Ray a shot. And I came to the conclusion that if I ever need to make something to impress someone, but I don't have a lot of time, I'll make this fudge.

Her fudge includes currants, and it's in the shape of a wreath. I generally think that putting fruit in dessert completely goes against the whole purpose of dessert, so I left the currants out. Also, presentation is nice, but in my family, desserts don't really last long enough to make the presentation matter, so I just slapped the fudge in a 1" jelly roll or cake pan. Fudge wreaths? Who needs 'em?!?

So this is what my final adaptation came out to be:

1 (12-ounce) bag semisweet chocolate morsels
9 ounces (3/4 of a 12-ounce bag) butterscotch morsels
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (8-ounce) bag walnut halves

Lightly grease the cookie/cake/jelly roll pan with softened butter.

Place a heavy pot on the stove and preheat it over low heat. Add chips and milk and stir until chips are melted and milk combined. Stir in vanilla, and remove fudge from heat. Stir in nuts immediately.

The fudge will set up almost immediately. Chill covered in the refrigerator.

Now, this recipe does not take 5 minutes. But it probably doesn't take more than 10, either. Because butterscotch has a higher melting point than chocolate, you will probably need to raise the heat a bit past "low". I suppose you could just add as much butterscotch as you like, since it's a pretty rough measurement. Same goes for walnuts. If you like crunch, add more.

It's really a foolproof recipe. Try it.

Ghirar-heaven?

Ghirardelli chocolates aren't my favorites. I'd rather have a Milka or a Ferrero Rocher. Yesterday, though, I DID have Ghirardelli because my boss gave me some small samples -- or "Fun Sizes," as the candy world likes to call them. I wasn't expecting to be swept off my feet. But swept off, I was. I scanned the wrappers in the order of best to . . . least best. I'll cover the main points below.

1. Milk Chocolate with Double Chocolate Filling. This piece was brilliant. There was just enough filling to make each bite the perfect moistness. Now -- nearly two days later -- I can't recall what kind of chocolate was in the middle -- sweet or semi-sweet? Whatever it was, it was gooooood.
2. Milk Chocolate with Caramel Filling. The effect here is kind of like those Nestle Treasures. The Caramel isn't chewy, but syrupy -- just how I like it.
3. Dark Chocolate with White Mint Filling. This was actually not that tasty to me. As I get older, I am developing a taste for dark chocolate, but I'm still pretty particular about the amount of dark chocolate in a candy. For example, dark chocolate tastes great with mint. Look at the York Peppermint Pattie or the Junior Mint -- peanut butter and chocolate is perhaps the only flavor pair that tops the dark chocolate/mint combination. The problem with this Ghirardelli version, I think, is that it just has too much dark chocolate. To put it another way, Ghirardelli didn't use enough filling.

Well, folks. There's a very rough overview of Ghirardelli chocolate anatomy. Try these little chocolate squares out. I think you'll be very pleased.

Blogpoll = Crazy Poll

I had some technical difficulties with the current blog poll -- one of which is that I didn't name my poll. So obviously, it just says "Your title". Sorry, guys. Just work around it.

Aztecs and Chocolate

The Aztecs prepared a drink that contained chocolate, water, chili, achiote (a natural coloring), cinnamon, and vanilla. It is said that Montezuma drank 50 goblets of this bitter beverage each day.

Hernando Cortez brought cacao back to Europe but it was not well received. Later when Europeans deleted the spices and added sugar, the popularity of chocolate as a beverage soared.

(Source: California Academy of Sciences)