Whipped Chocolate Pudding: Retro Ad & Recipe

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I do so love these Retro Ads and Recipes. This is a Carnation Evaporated Milk Ad that appeared in Life Magazine April 26, 1963. Do you think Don Draper tried this? Maybe when he was still with Betty?

"The secret is Carnation...the milk you can whip like cream--and at 1/2 the cost." You might want to try real whipping cream in the recipe. Of course you have to have cake lying around... kind of like cake pops. You have to make or buy a cake to morph into another form. In this case: Whipped Chocolate Pudding.

White Chocolate Cheesecake for WHITE CHOCOLATE DAY

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Today is White Chocolate Day. By definition, white chocolate is not actually chocolate.White chocolate doesn't contain any cocoa solids (chocolate liquor) and does not have 'chocolate' flavor. But I like the unique creamy flavor good white chocolate does have--of course that depends on the brand and that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. (see below)


White chocolate contains cocoa butter, a product of the cocoa bean used to make chocolate. White chocolate used in baking and candy making is a blend of milk, cocoa butter, sugar and often vanilla. This is what you'll find in milk chocolate, except without the cocoa. If you are using white chocolate, make sure to buy the very best. Cheap white chocolate often has the cocoa butter replaced by vegetable fat. Check the ingredients on the package. It should have a cacao percentage just as other chocolate bars.

Examples of good white chocolate:
E. Guittard has 31% Cacao White Chocolate wafers. Great for baking (and eating)
Green & Black's uses cocoa butter, pressed directly from the crushed cocoa beans. They also use a blend of milk and Bourbon vanilla. Available in 3.5oz bars.
Askinosie has bean to bar white chocolate and uses goat's milk instead of cow's milk. The main ingredient in their white chocolate is 34% natural, non-deodorized cocoa butter. The cocoa butter is pressed in their factory, and they are the first small-batch chocolate maker to do this. After pressing theibeans to create the cocoa butter, they combine them with goat's milk powder and organic cane juice, and then craft it for days in their 85-year old German melanguer, making their white chocolate one of the only single origin white chocolates in the world. It has a very unique buttery/nutty flavor, less sweet than many other white chocolate.

Because it's comprised mainly of cocoa butter, white chocolate can be used in so many ways. Check past posts for White Chocolate Mashed Potatoes, White Chocolate Brownies, White Chocolate Coffee Cake, White Chocolate Truffles and a host of other white chocolate candies and baked goods.

My favorite White Chocolate Recipe, though, is for White Chocolate Cheesecake! Here's an easy recipe adapted from the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I changed the original graham cracker crust to a Chocolate Cookie Crust (see below)... much better, I think, but then I like chocolate.

WHITE CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE WITH CHOCOLATE COOKIE CRUST

Ingredients for Filling:
1 cup chopped white chocolate (make sure it's good white chocolate that's made with cocoa butter)
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
16 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 egg yolks
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream

Directions
1. Move oven rack to lowest position. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease bottom and side of springform pan, 8 x 3 inches.
2. Prepare Chocolate Cookie Crust (see below). Baking 6-8 minutes and cooling.
3. Place chopped white chocolate in top of double boiler (or saucepan on top of another saucepan over simmering water). Heat over low heat, stirring frequently, until white chocolate is melted. Remove from saucepan.
4. Increase oven temperature to 475ºF.
5. Beat melted white chocolate, 3/4 cup sugar and flour in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until blended. Beat in cream cheese and egg yolks until smooth. Continue beating, adding eggs one at a time, then add sour cream until blended. Pour batter carefully into crust. Cover pan with aluminum foil.
6. Bake 20 minutes; remove foil. Reduce oven temperature to 300°F. Bake 1 hour. (If cheesecake browns too quickly, cover loosely with aluminum foil during last 30 minutes of baking.)
7. Turn off oven and leave cheesecake in oven 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack 15 minutes. Run metal spatula along side of cheesecake to loosen before and after refrigerating. Cover tightly and refrigerate at least 8 hours, but no longer than 5 days. Run metal spatula along side of cheesecake to loosen; remove side of pan. Place cheesecake on serving plate. Refrigerate if you plan to serve later.

I like my cheesecake unadorned, but you can always add fruit or chocolate sauce.

Chocolate Cookie Crust:
Ingredients
30 chocolate wafers (to yield about 1-1/2 cups crumbs)
5 tablespoons sweet butter, melted and slightly cooled
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Directions
1. Put cookies in food processor; process until finely ground.
2. Transfer crumbs to mixing bowl; combine crumbs, butter, salt, and vanilla; stir until crumbs are moistened.
3. Press mixture evenly across the bottom of a 9-inch spring form pan and all the way up the sides of the pan; pack tightly so crust is even and compacted.
4. Bake in 350° oven for 6-8 minutes or until crisp.
5. Let cool completely before filling.

Chocolate Marble Coffee Cake for Break the Fast

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Yom Kippur starts tomorrow night, and although I'd love to bring a Chocolate Babka to the Breaking of the Fast the following evening, I know that's not going to happen. Babka is a yeast bread. If you feel so inclined and are invited to a Breaking of the Yom Kippur Fast, here's a link to a great Babka recipe. So, I'm now into substitute mode. Why not an easy Chocolate Marble Coffee Cake?  The following recipe includes butter and sourcream, so check to see if your hosts are Kosher and whether or not they're planning a meat or dairy meal. And, everyone else, this is a fabulous chocolate marble coffee cake for just about any time! It even tastes great toasted!

I would love to say this is an original recipe, but it's not. Yes, I've tweaked it a bit, but it's almost exactly as it appeared as "Chocolate Ripple Coffee Cake" by Carole Walter in Fine Cooking, October 29, 2008. You're going to love it! It's one of my favorite go-to recipes! I'll bet you have most of the ingredients on your shelves. I do.

CHOCOLATE MARBLE COFFEE CAKE

INGREDIENTS

For the cake:
3 cups sifted cake flour
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1-1/4 cups sweet butter, slightly softened
1-1/2 cups superfine sugar
4 large eggs
2 tsp. Madagascar vanilla extract
2 cups sourcream

For the filling:
1/2 cup toasted pecans
6 oz coarsely chopped dark chocolate (64-75% cacao)
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
3 Tbsp light brown sugar
3 Tbsp Dutch-processed or natural cocoa powder  (Tip: Natural vs Dutch-processed) 

For the streusel topping:
4 Tbsp sweet butter
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
2 Tbsp light brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp table salt  

DIRECTIONS

Position rack in center of oven -- 350ºF.
Butter and flour 10-inch tube pan with removable bottom.

Make topping: In 2-quart saucepan, heat butter over medium heat until almost melted. Remove from heat and cool to tepid. In medium bowl, combine flour, pecans, both sugars, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt and stir with fork. Add flour mixture to butter and stir until evenly moistened and crumbly.Make filling: In food processor, pulse pecans, chopped chocolate, both sugars, and cocoa until chocolate is finely chopped, 12 to 14 pulses. Set aside 1/2 cup of tmixture as additional topping.Make cake: In medium bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add sugar slowly, beating until combined. Scrape bowl. Beat in eggs one at a time, blending each one completely before adding next. Scrape bowl and blend in tvanilla. On low speed, alternate adding dry ingredients and sour cream, adding flour in four parts and sour cream in three parts, beginning and ending with flour, and scraping  bowl as needed.
Layer and marble batter and filling: Spoon 2cups of batter into prepared pan. Smooth with back of big spoon, spreading batter to side of pan first and then to center. Sprinkle 1/2 cup filling evenly over batter. Cover filling with about 2 cups batter, dropping chunks around pan and smoothing with spoon. Sprinkle another 1/2 cup filling evenly over batter and cover with 2 more cups batter. Layer on another 1/2 cup filling and then remaining batter. (four layers of batter and three layers of filling.) Insert table knife 1 inch from side of the pan straight into  batter going almost to bottom. Run knife around pan two times, without lifting up blade, spacing circles about 1 inch apart. Smooth top with the back of spoon.

Top and bake the cake: Take a handful of streusel crumbs and squeeze firmly to form a large mass. Break up mass into smaller clumps, distributing streusel evenly over batter. Repeat with remaining streusel. Clump reserved chocolate filling mixture together with your hands and sprinkle over tstreusel. Press both toppings lightly into surface of the cake. Bake until top of cake is golden brown, the sides are beginning to pull away from pan, and skewer inserted into center of the cake comes out clean, 70 to 75 minutes. Transfer towire rack and let cool for an hour before removing from pan.


 

Chocolate Bytes: Nestlé's answer to Willy Wonka

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Nestlé has released candy bars with GPS-lined wrappers that send a signal to a helicopter with $16,000. (10,000 pounds) Unfortunately you have to live in the UK or Ireland.

Nestlé, the maker of KitKat chocolate bars has hidden global positioning system chips in six candy bar wrappers, released in the United Kingdom and Ireland, that could make someone a little richer.

According to Nestlé, the "We Will Find You" competition will "scramble a crack team of highly trained individuals" to find whoever opens one of the six GPS-embedded candy bars -- one each within KitKat 4 Finger, KitKat Chunky, Aero Peppermint Medium and Yorkie Milk.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the GPS chips are activated once the wrappers are opened, and they then send a signal to Nestlé. The company said the winner will be located within 24 hours by a helicopter for hand delivery of a briefcase containing £10,000, worth about $16,000, in cash.

It wasn't clear when or if the promotion would make its way to the U.S., or if the winning chocolate bars were edible.

Check out this cool video ad..

COOKING TO KILL! Chocolate Noose Recipe

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With Halloween just a few short weeks away, I thought I'd post another "Chocolate Recipe" from one of my favorite "Tie-in" Cookbook Collection: Cooking to Kill! The Poison Cook-book.  The recipe is for Chocolate Noose --not Chocolate Mousse !!!

This is one of my favorite books in my Killer Cookbooks: Mystery-related cookbooks. Published in 1951, Cooking to Kill! has Recipes by Ebenezer Murgatroyd with Comic Drawings by Herb Roth (Peter Pauper Press, 1951).  Cooking to Kill! has been called "not only a cook-book to end all cook-books, but also a cook-book to end all cooks." 

Avocado Egg Salad

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Green eggs and ham,Could it be?A whole new wayto enjoy thee?
Well, yes it is!And truth be told,It's creamy goodnessTo behold.
I sure do like it,Sam I am.I like this kindOf green eggs and ham!

I guess my brain's gearing up to get back to my first graders ... I just couldn't resist writing this little Green Eggs and Ham ditty for this one.  And truth be told, ... though I can hear those skeptics out there ... this Avocado Egg Salad is really, really good!
It will definitely be appearing in my lunchbox line-up this coming school year.
Come on.  Be daring.  Give it a try.  You'll be surprised ... in a good way.

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Avocado Egg Salad
Source:  Adapted from Skinnytaste.com

6 hard boiled eggs
1 medium avocado, cut into chunks
2 T. mayonnaise (or plain yogurt, or combination of the two)
2 tsp. finely chopped fresh chives or 1 tsp. dried chives
2 tsp. red wine vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt
Pinch of ground black pepper

Separate the egg yolks and egg whites.  Coarsely chop the egg whites.

Using a fork, mash together the egg yolks and avocado.  Combine with the mayonnaise, chives, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  Mix in chopped egg whites.


Enjoy!  (Enjoy those green eggs and ham, oh Sam I am.)


NOTE: The red wine vinegar adds fabulous flavor and helps keep the avocado from turning brownish. This can keep in the refrigerator for a couple of days, and while it won't turn brownish, the color does change a bit to different shades of greenish.



This post is linked with Whacha Whipped Up Wednesday, Cast Party Wednesday, Pin It Thursday, Sweet Treats & Swanky Stuff, Foodie Friday, Inspiration Friday, Weekend Potluck, Weekend Wrap Up Party, Strut Your Stuff Saturday, Nifty Thrifty Sunday, Think Pink Sunday, Sundae Scoop, On the Menu Monday.

Marinated Fig and Arugula Salad with Blue Cheese & Walnuts

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I am soooooo excited about this salad.  I absolutely love, love, love fresh figs.  Adore them.  I mean, majorly huge crush. 

And let me just tell you, I was fortunate enough to end up with a whole slew of fresh figs to take home with me this weekend.  Yup, for the fourth week in a row I was on the road ... this week Mark and I were 'home' visiting our families.

At home, there are fig bushes.

And the season's second crop of figs had just started ripening on one of those fig bushes.

So right before we got in the car to come back home, we were given the go-ahead to clean out all the ripe figs to come on home with us.  Score for me! 

Tugging on branches and reaching as far as we possibly could, we ended up with a big ol' platter full.  Aren't they gorgeous?



But before we get to this absolutely amazingly delicious fig salad, let's back up and talk a bit about fresh figs.

Prior to meeting my husband, the only thing I knew about figs was the inside of a Newton.  Had never had a fresh fig.  Had never seen a fig growing.  Clueless.

Then I started going to my mother-in-law's farm.  And I met fresh figs.  Oh, how wonderful a day that was!  Mark couldn't believe I'd never seen fresh figs.  Man alive, I had been missing out.

Now whenever we're 'home' during fig season, I walk right out to the figs and eat them straight off the bush.  So juicy, yummy, and sweet!  Here's one of my mother-in-law's fig bushes ...

... and baby unripe figs growing nestled in the branches.

When they turn kinda purple-ish brown-ish ... it's time!  Time to enjoy their squishy deliciousness.



We seek out the ones with cracks in the skin ... like this one ...



... they're the sweetest!  It's actually surprising I had a 'cracked' one like this to take a picture of ... they don't usually make it into the house, gobbled up as soon as they're picked from the branch.

Now, to make this marinated fig salad ...



... take some gorgeous fresh figs, cut them in half, and marinate them in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, honey, and olive oil.


(Oh, and just look at the beautiful inside of a fig!  Did you know the inside is actually the flowers? Yup, a fig is really an inside-out flower. Cool. Weird - but cool.)

Arrange the marinated figs on a bed of arugula, top them with a smidge of blue cheese and some walnuts, and you have a fabulous seasonal treat to behold.  So incredibly good.

I think I've got just enough figs left to make this salad one more time ... if all the figs don't just get popped in our mouths, that is.  Hmmm, I'd say they've got about a 50/50 chance of making it to a salad plate.



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Marinated Fig and Arugula Salad with Blue Cheese & Walnuts
Source:  A Tracey original, marinade adapted from Southern Living Magazine

For 2 servings:
10 fresh figs, halved
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
4 T. balsamic vinegar
1 T. honey
1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
Tiny pinch of salt
About 2 c. arugula
About 1 T. blue cheese crumbles, or more/less to taste
About 2 T. coarsely chopped walnuts

Combine olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, Dijon mustard, and salt in a bowl; whisk until well combined.  Add figs and stir gently to coat.  Set aside and let stand for 30 to 45 minutes.

Divide arugula and place on two salad plates.  Place figs on top of arugula and drizzle with a small amount of the marinade.  Top with blue cheese crumbles and walnuts.

NOTE:  The combination of the marinated figs and blue cheese is absolutely fabulous, but be aware that the blue cheese can easily take over the flavor of this salad.  I recommend using the blue cheese sparingly, and adjusting the amount to suit your personal taste.

Enjoy!



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