This week it’s chocolate week so I thought I would pull together some stuff about chocolate, some useful, some interersting and some downright silly.
I made a chocolate fountain one year at home for New Year’s eve. Most of you probably already know this but I didn’t…when melting chocolate, if you want to add cream – don’t mix cold cream into warm choclate because it will just curdle and clump up. Chocolate fountain a nice idea that didn’t materialise that year. I only found out later that you have to warm the milk or cream first before adding it to the chocolate!
Chocolate Fountain when it works!
Chocolateis produced from the tress of the tropical Cacao tree and has been cultivated for thousands of years with it first documented use in 1100BC. The origins of cooking with chocolate can be traced back to Aztec times when it was enjoyed as a hot drink before being brought to Europe where it was immensely popular with the upper classes. It was extensively refined and by 1819 a Swiss manufacturer made what is thought to have been the first chocolate bar. Since then chocolate has been infused into our chocolate recipes and savoured as a much-loved treat with the average Britain alone consuming 8.6kg a year.
We have tons of recipes for chocolate mainly for desserts, biscuits and cakes.
Choc chip cookie helps sign up new members to MyDish
One of my most popular is New York chocolate chip cookie recipe – I love the recipe and the story that goes with it. It is the recipe we always use at exhibitions and this week at university freshers fairs to give people a taste of great homebaking so they can see what we are all about before they sign up to be a member. We tried university freshers fairs for the first time to get people who are setting up their own home for the first time, to swap their favourite recipes with their friends and in 3 days we signed up over 1500 new members. Hooray for the choc chip cookie!
Other favourites of mine are chocolate mousse, chocolate brownies, chocolate crispies and of course chocolate cake. In fact i was trying to lose some weight over the last few months and after a month of healthy eating I was craving for some chocolate and made myself a chocolate refrigerator cake bar – yum yum that cured the craving straight away.
But the best cake shared on MyDish in my opinion is the 5 minute chocolate mug cake - I think the title speaks for itself wouldn’t you say? And in my humble opinion, the funnest is one for chocolate Pizza
I was completely stressing out over the pattern on the football – I know it’s a bit over the top really as the fact that it was round was good enough for all the little 8 year old boys. But I didn’t realise at first that football patterns are made up of hexagons and pentagons. And then when I tried to copy my sons football, it wasn’t the traditional black and white variety that I think of , but a new FiFa designed football.
