Posts Tagged ‘cocoa powder’

Hot Chocolate Gets a Sugar-Lift

Posted: 6th May 2013 by doomthings in Drink, The Foodening
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Sooooo, I like hot chocolate.  More recently, I’ve started making it from scratch (and by scratch, I mean the recipe on the side of the Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder box), instead of buying packets, which are way too sugary for me.  (As a side note, the Starbucks hot chocolate packets are pretty good).   The original single-serving recipe calls for 2 tbsp of sugar.  It’s not bad, I love it!  However, this morning, I decided to try honey.  Mostly because we have lots and I don’t want it to harden and be unusable (it’s happened before!), but also because I’ve been wanted to experiment with honey as a sugar substitute.

If I’m being totally honest, I originally thought maybe honey had healthier attributes than sugar, which was my initial drive for the substitution.  After lots of research, I found that it won’t make much of a difference, and if it does, it will be very slight.  If you want to get picky, yes, it’s sweeter than sugar and while teaspoon-for-teaspoon honey has more calories, the thinking is that you’ll use less, perhaps in the long-run lowering your calorie intake from sweeteners.  I think this is probably crap for most people (people like them their sweets!), so I really think taste should be the driving factor.  Don’t take my word for it, check out both sides of the honey versus sugar argument and decide for yourself.  I know I’m not being any healthier and I want a different taste.  I’m happy with that.

Ingredients (adapted from Hershey’s Unsweetened Cocoa Powder box):

  • 2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (dutch processed or other, contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t really make a difference)
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • dash salt
  • splash vanilla

Directions

  1. Combine cocoa powder and salt in a mug.
  2. Microwave milk until desired temperature is reached. (2 minutes works for me)
  3. Add vanilla and honey to milk, stirring until dissolved.
  4. Add milk mixture to mug and stir until dissolved.

The sugar version of this tastes good of course, but the honey version added just a hint of extra flavor.  I’ll be doing this from now on!

Chocolate Pudding

Posted: 14th April 2013 by doomthings in Dessert, The Foodening
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This is no ordinary chocolate pudding.  It’s baked, smooth, chocolaty goodness.  The best part is that add-ins are easy and almost always add a delicious twist.  Also, it’s my husband’s very favorite dessert, which makes it even more fun to make.  The original recipe was a bit more complicated and had nuts in it (and serves 6).  We prefer much smoother desserts so the nuts are swapped out with cocoa powder, making it much more chocolaty and super smooth.  Also, this recipe serves 2.  Perfect for fancy food date nights.

Chocolate Pudding | doomthings

Ingredients (adapted from Donna Hay’ “Modern Classics Book 2”):

  • 4 tbsp chopped chocolate (chocolate chips or dark is best)
  • 4 tbsp butter
  • 1 egg
  • 4 tbsp sugar
  • 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tbsp flour

Directions:

  1. Melt chopped chocolate and butter in a saucepan over low heat and stir until well combined and smooth.
  2. Beat egg and sugar in a small bowl until light and creamy.
  3. Mix in cocoa powder and flour until smooth and glossy.
  4. Stir in the chocolate/butter mixture and stir until smooth.
  5. Grease 2 oven-proof cups or ramekins and divide the chocolate mixture evenly between them.
  6. Place the cups in a baking dish and fill the dish with enough hot water to come halfway up the sides of the cups.
  7. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees F.

When they’re done, the tops of the puddings will have pulled slightly away from the edges and look sort of like brownie tops.  The cups stay hot for a while, so we use those oven gloves.  (On a side note, oven gloves were one of our favorite Christmas gifts ever.  Wow, that statement made me feel old.).

Excellent Add-Ins:

  • Peanut butter
  • Cherries (real ones)
  • Raspberries
  • Strawberries

Death by chocolate.  That is all.

Banana Ice Cream Gets Better…

Posted: 3rd April 2013 by doomthings in Dessert, The Foodening
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I’ve updated the Banana Ice Cream post to include the following amazing discovery.  If you’ve already discovered this, I’m just a little slow…

Out of laziness, being full, and forgetfullness, I did two things:  1) I left my chopped up banana in the freezer for over a week.  2) When I finally made the banana ice cream, I left that in the freezer for over a week.

You can guess how number one was resolved.  I took it out of the freezer, let it sit about 10 minutes and made my ice cream.  I tasted it, and it worked just fine.  Horray!  I was actually pretty full, so I put the newly created dessert into a sealed container and put it back in the freezer.  About 9 days later, I remembered it was in there and pulled it out.  It was pretty frozen, so I left it sitting on my counter for a while.  I honestly can’t remember how long, but I would guess anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour.  By the time I sat down to devour it, I found that it actually had the texture of something between frozen yogurt and ice cream!  When I made it the first time, it was definitely on the other side of frozen yogurt, away from ice cream, as far as texture was concerned.  That was definitely not a bad thing, but this “new” texture made it taste and feel more like chocolate ice cream than just creamed banana with chocolate in it.  I highly recommend this strategy.  It takes a little more planning, particularly if you have more than one mouth to feed, but it’s worth it.  It is worth nothing that all my banana ice cream trials have been single serving.  If you were to say, make multiple servings, I would put them in single serving containers before freezing so they thaw faster when pulling them out for a treat.

Texture is almost just like ice cream.

Texture is almost just like ice cream.

Chocolate Waffles

Posted: 19th March 2013 by doomthings in Breakfast, The Foodening
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This doesn’t really seem like a huge shift to the right in terms of trying new things.  I know, I know, but who doesn’t like waffles and chocolate?  It just seems natural to mash them into a magical goo called breakfast.  Originally I attempted to follow this recipe I found on Pinterest, but it was way too complicated and I had waffle mix in my house.  Because of that laziness, and the fact that I didn’t use it, I haven’t reproduced the recipe here.

Also, I really didn’t like the idea of adding extreme amounts of high fructose corn syrup from store-bought chocolate syrup.

So, in the spirit of using what’s easily accessible in my house, being lazy, and really wanting waffles immediately, I grabbed a box of store-bought waffle mix, cocoa powder, sugar, (and the ingredients called for on the box) and made a mess.

Ingredients:

  • Waffle mix (store bought or homemade) and associated wet ingredients.
  • Unsweetened chocolate cocoa powder (to taste).
  • Granulated sugar (half the amount of the cocoa powder).

Directions:

  1. Combine waffle mix as per the box or recipe directions.
  2. Add cocoa powder by tablespoons to taste.  Mix well.
  3. Add sugar in half (or less) the amount of cocoa powder.  Mix well.
  4. Pre-heat the waffle iron and grease well.
  5. Spoon 1/3 cup batter into each mold, and cook until golden brown.

I ended up adding the cocoa powder until it “looked right”, and kept tasting it until it was adequately chocolatey.  For each scoop of cocoa powder, I added half that amount of sugar to sweeten the mixture up a bit.  I did notice that the more chocolate that was added, the more the waffle exhibited the “bitter” taste of unsweetened cocoa powder, despite the added sugar.  I didn’t mind though, too much sugar makes me crazy so I didn’t want to go overboard.  Because it’s just me and my husband, I seriously reduced the Bisquick recipe to make 4-5 waffle squares.

How were they? Delicious!  Also, they were husband approved, so this will definitely be made again.  As a side-note, it’s really hard to tell if these waffles were burned, although I have a sneaking suspicion that they were.  Despite that, they definitely did not taste burned.  +10 experience points.

[pictures will be posted as soon as I make this recipe again]