All Entries Tagged With: "Chocolate"
Five Minute Chocolate Cake in a Mug
I just received this recipe from my friend, Jean. It has a very captivating title which is “The Most Dangerous Cake Recipe in the World”. I thought of sharing this with chowtimes readers.
This looks like any ordinary chocolate cake but it is made in the microwave oven in 5 minutes. What makes it so dangerous is that you can have this indulgences whenever you have a crave and it can be prepared so easily and so quickly.
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons sugar
- 2 tablespoons cocoa
- 4 tablespoons flour (Nanzaro preferred 3 tablespoons of flour for a more denser texture like brownies)
- 1 egg
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 3 tablespoons oil
- 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
- a small splash of vanilla extract
- 1 large coffee mug
Mango with Chocolate Meringue
It was mango season and Minoo made a dessert with mango in the Gilmore Park Community Kitchen. We are very lucky to have abundance of fresh fruit in Vancouver. When a fruit is in season, the price is so affordable. So, enjoy them while they are the cheapest and when they are the freshest.
This Mango with Chocolate Meringue has a base of succulent mango slices infused with orange zest and is topped with an airy topping of chocolaty meringue and nuts. Since the meringue is made of just egg whites, this dessert is good for people who is watching their cholesterol.
Ingredients
- 2 medium-sized ripe mangoes
- Finely grated zest of 1 orange
- Whites of 3 large eggs
- a pinch of salt
- 125g or 1/2 cup caster sugar (superfine granulated)
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 15g or 1 tablespoon chopped hazelnuts
Mango is considered as a superfruit for its phytochemicals nutrients. It is rich in prebiotic dietary fiber, vitamin C, polyphenols and carotenoids. Mango also contains essential vitamins and minerals like vitamin A, B, B6, E and potassium, copper, 17 amino acids.
The pulp of mango is also a rich source of pectins and is great for making pudding.
Easy Chocolate Pudding
For dessert, Christina, Paul and Lorna made this Easy Chocolate Pudding for the South Arm Cooking Club for Seniors pizza mania meet. Apparently, Paul is a fan of chocolate. This Easy Chocolate Pudding is made specifically for Paul.
This Easy Chocolate Pudding recipe is adapted from John Scharffenberger. This recipe serves 6. The chocolate pudding is not overly sweet and I’m sure kids will love this. This makes a great dessert for any chocolate lover.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/8 cup teaspoon salt
- 3 cups whole milk (we used 2% milk for a lower fat)
- 6 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (or good chocolate chips)
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Dulcinea Chocolate Cafe on Denman, Vancouver
You guys remember Rey? Well … if you remember, he’s the one who promised to bring us on a culinary adventure of Filipino cuisine. Rey is a Filipino community advocate and he wanted to create awareness of the third largest visible minority community in Vancouver by encouraging the creation of local Filipino content on the internet.
Last month, Rey introduced to us the Chinese Filipino food by bringing us to Little Ongpin in Richmond. In the second leg of the adventure, Rey next introduced us to Spanish Filipino food.
The Dulcinea Chocolate Cafe is located on Denman in Vancouver Westside. We were met by Mari and David, who opened this delightful outlet with their daughter since October 2008. So this place is just 6 months new. Mari and David are both of Spanish descent from the Philippines. Mari told us she is a chocolate lover … and the place was started out of her love of chocolates! She’s so friendly and approachable that I can see that she connects to her customers very well.
I was told by Rey that pure Spanish Filipino makes up only 2% of the population in the Phillipines. Despite the low number, the Spanish has a lasting influence in the Filipino culture having colonized the country for 333 years. That is why most of the Filipino names are Spanish names.
When Rey suggested Dulcinea and raved about their Hot Chocolate, we initially thought “what’s the big deal”? We soon changed our perception of hot chocolates after this experience.
The name Dulcinea came from the name of Don Quixote’s true love in the novel of the same name. We had always thought that Dulcinea was pronounced as Doo-See-Nea. A big sign on the wall says “Doo-see-nay-ah”. You learn something new everyday. The name Dulcinea means overly elegant sweetness — a perfect name for a chocolate cafe.
Dulcinea started off as a Spanish Chocolate Bar in the Vancouver Westside neighborhood. Mari told us that the place evolved quickly since they started six month ago … from starting to serve tapas, then soup, sandwiches … and Dulcinea took life on its own when customers requested for certain food and Dulcinea responded.
We went to Dulcinea at 4PM. It’s an odd hour, I know but Rey wanted us to treat this like a Merienda. I had always heard that the Spanish culture has a really odd day … like taking a nap after lunch, having dinner at 9:30PM and Meriendas in between meal times.
We half expected the place to be empty at 4PM and thought that Rey suggested that time because Mari and David would be the least busiest. We were amazed that even at 4PM, Dulcinea was packed … with people … having … Merienda! The crowd actually taper off at about 5′ish.
This is it … the above is what Dulcinea is famous for. Their signature Hot Chocolate which is called the 1528. It is a shot of thick chocolate. It is like the espresso of chocolates … but much more thicker. Any thicker it would not be drinkable! Even the spoon provided is designed to scrap off the thick chocolates from the sides of the cup.
The 1528 costs $2 per shot. If you have never tried it before, go to the counter and ask for a small sample. They pass out samples and once you take a sip, you’ll probably want one for your own.
Now … if you want a solo cup of the 1528 … listen here … FOR FREE … just go and tell Mari, David or whoever at the counter that “Chowtimes Loves Xocolatl” and you will receive a solo cup of the 1528. Serious! I suggested to Mari and David that they put in a little fun promotion to benefit readers of chowtimes and was surprised to hear a yes from them. I suggest you know what a Xocolatl is (see below) and how it is pronounced (pronounced as choco-latl).
Consider this is like Suanne and I buying you a cup of hot chocolate. :-)
Update 05-Apr-2009: The offer for the free 1528 had now expired. Mari and David expressed their thanks to everyone who had taken time to visit their store and tried the 1528. However, Dulcinea will continue to offer samples of the 1528 (just not a solo cup of it). There could be more offers coming. Just stay tuned. I hope those who had the 1528 enjoyed it!
Oh … 1528 … that is the year that the Spanish took cocoa from Mexico and shipped it back to Spain. That year was the start of Europe’s love of chocolates. Nice name, I thought.
If you’re not into thick hot chocolates, there is the Classico … a more watered down version but still really rich and creamy.
I had the Hot Chocolate with Chai. These are not very large cups like I am used to (i.e. we drink Milo at home and we make really big cups and gulp them down real fast). Here I find that I took my time to savour every sip.
The Xocolatl (how do one pronounce that again?) is quite exciting. I’ve never seen a dried chili served with hot beverage before. This one is a hot chocolate with chili nutmeg and cinnamon. The chili wasn’t that hot. Be brave and go try that one. You’ll probably love the contrasting flavours here.
What’s chocolate without fondue? It’s something about fondue that makes it the favourite of just about everyone. I think it’s because it’s a fun food to have with friends. We noticed that the grapes were frozen … not sure why only the grapes were frozen while the banana and strawberry wasn’t.
Besides the delightful hot chocolates, Dulcinea has absolutely the best cakes and pastries one could find in Vancouver. This is coming from our resident cakes fan, Suanne. Our fav has got to be the Lava Blanco above which is chocolate mousse with white choc inside of it.
Instead of ordering each item by itself, we actually ordered the sampler which gives us a little of everything we wanted.
Schokolade Cafe on East Hasting, Vancouver
Polly and I went for a last cake meet just before the school closed for winter vacation. I suggested we go to Schokolade Cafe located at 2263 East Hastings St. I had marked this place down on my cake meet places to go since we went to Seri Malaysia which is just a block away from Schokolade Cafe.
Schokolade Cafe specializes on freshly made artisan chocolate truffles, fine pastries, cakes and real hot chocolate. All their chocolates are made with Swiss Lindt premium chocolates couvertures.
Schokolade also customs made all the fresh chocolate truffles for their VIP corporate clients and for any company special events. Polly and I were quite curious when we saw the Singopore Lion Head chocolates on display at the counter. Only later we were told by the owner that she is from Singapore and the cafe had just opened for 1 1/2 years.
This cafe is relatively small with only 3 small tables which seats 2 each and a few counter high chair seats.
Polly and I ordered their real hot chocolate drinks for a change. Polly opted for their Spicy ginger Oriental Express Hot Chocolate (left). We can pick either milk chocolate or dark chocolate and Polly opted for milk chocolate. The gingery permeated hot chocolate is great for a the cold weather. My Spicy Ancient Aztec Hot Chocolate with 70% Dark Chocolate is equally great with the spiciness from the chili powder. The medium drink cost $4.00 each.
We ordered their famous chocolate cake. The cake is about 2 inches tall and has 6 layers of cream fillings. This small slice of cake costs $3.95. It is a very rich cake.
Click on read more for more items.
The next item we ordered is a Salmon Quiche. It is flavoured with dill and served warm as we chosed. This piece costs $3.95.
We also ordered a Walnut Tart for $3.50. This tart is not too sweet and filled with lots of walnut pieces and the pastry is flaky.
We ended up bringing this Florentine home as the cake is simply too rich and we simply cant take another bite of sweet stuff. This Florentine is layered with almonds and dried cranberries and raisins. It is actually very good as it is not densed but crunchy and light. This costs only $2.50.
We also brought home this two pieces of complementary truffles. The story is when I presented the coupon from their website, we were told that the coupon is not valid anymore and in place, they let us pick a truffle each. Well, they should have updated their website to prevent any more confusion in the future. Anyway, Polly had the coconut ginger truflle as she seemed to be obsessed with ginger lately. I had the Mango Jalapeno truffle which the spiciness did come through. The truffles were sold by weight and it’s approximately $1 per each truffle as we were told.
The bill came up to $23.00. If you are a chocolate lover, this is a place you should visit.
Pennsylvania: Hershey’s Chocolate World
Since we were around the ‘hood, we included a trip to Hershey … Hershey, Pennsylvania. Hershey is the home of Hershey. It is also known as “The Sweetest Place on Earth”.
Hershey, Pennsylvania was not always known as Hershey. It has another name (can’t remember) but was renamed as Hershey when the town became well known for the chocolate it makes.
Everywhere you go, you see the name Hershey. There is always something named after Hershey, ad nauseum. There are stadiums, library, homes, schools, parks, and what nots all named after Hershey. Even the street lamps are in the form of Hershey Kisses! Some of the street lamps are wrapped Kisses, while some are unwrapped like the one you see above.
Tourism is as big as chocolates here in Hershey. There were unbelievable number of people who visits Hershey everyday. I am quite surprised. The infrastructure (road, car parks, etc) they have around the Hershey’s Chocolate World rivals that of Disneyland (but of course not as many visitors).
Our first stop is at the Heyshey’s Chocolate World. They have a number of attractions and from a glance they looked quite interesting but frankly, we were quite disappointed. Clearly, the attractions are geared towards the kids below the age of ten. I know our boys, now barely into their teens, would have been bored to death here.
We booked ourselves a Trolley Tour which took us around the Hershey town. I really got bored barely five minutes into the tour. It’s like every other sentence they uttered the word “Hershey” in it. I think they oversold the Hershey name. The only best part is when they passed around sample of Hershey Kisses.
Believe it or not, they made everyone do a singalong on the trolley tour. Gosh … You are my sunshine? Bicycle built for two?
At least they have a theme park with some wild looking rides. We only got to see it from the outside. That will appeal to my boys.
They brought us around to see the chocolate factory, again from the outside. This is reputed touted as the largest chocolate factory in the world. They don’t conduct factory tours here anymore, to our disappointment.
Instead, we had to ride the kiddie rides which brought us round to see singing cows and childish fake manufacturing line.
Do you know which is Hershey’s top selling brands? It’s Kisses, Reese’s and of course the Hershey Bar.
At least we have been there. I think Hershey Chocolate World is over-rated. We could not resist getting some chocolates though … but they melted in the car by the time we got to Philadelphia.
Alrighty … am going to take a breather on this travel series and move on to restaurant reviews starting tomorrow. (Was that claps I hear now?) :-)
Brussels Series: Belgian Chocolates
Believe it or not … the only chocolates that I bought was these chocolate eggs in Brussels. I did pop by some of the famous chocolatiers in Brussels but they were either too expensive and I simply had not room in my bag to carry a single box of them. Even these cheap chocolates which I bought from Hema was a class above other cheap chocolate eggs — definitely much creamier.
But guess what … when I got home, WB and KC came by our home and dropped off a box of Belgian chocolates! Well … what do you know?
I can only name the following famous Belgian chocolate brands … Neuhaus, Godiva and Guylian. What are the other brands you know of?
WB and KC brought us a box of Godiva. Although originally a Belgian brand, it is now also manufactured in the US by of all people, the Campbell Soup company.
Godiva’s signature package is the Gold Ballotin, that is French for ?small, elegant gift box?. All of them looked so delicious. Half the enjoyment is reading up each of the piece and then tasting it.
We believe this box costs about CAD$30. Wow … that’s so generous of WB and KC to share this box with us; we were touched. Thanks a bunch! Indeed, “Life is like box of chocolates …” don’t you think?
