Dessert « (y)our food choices™

It’s Halloween! While we’re not the type of guys that like getting dressed up and partying until the sun comes up, we do find All-Hallows-Eve a mysterious and monstrous night to just hang out with some chocolate, red wine, and a good scary film. This year, the rage seems to be all about red wine hot chocolate. It’s essentially a good homemade hot chocolate recipe and a good amount of red wine. That’s it! I could end the post now to give you more time to go out trick-or-treating with the kids to pick up candy, but let me just add a few more words first before you’re out the door.

The best thing about this recipe is that it’s so damn easy. Which means, it’s also easy to mess it up. First rule, don’t skimp on the quality of the chocolate. While you can use a lesser quality bar like say, Hershey’s Milk chocolate, don’t. If you’re about to add wine to your hot chocolate, choose chocolate that’s on the dark and slightly bittersweet side. There is plenty of sugar in the wine and in the dark chocolate to give it the right amount of sweetness, and since there is already milk added to the hot chocolate why add more? Let the kids have the milk chocolate.

Next rule: use the right kind of wine. This is where you can save a little cash and go for something a little sub-par. A good everyday drinking blended red wine is the perfect accompaniment. Going for a single varietal may seem like the right choice, but after adding milk and chocolate, that Cabernet or Pinot Noir may only be a one note wonder. Although, since this is our first venture into the whole hot chocolate red wine thing, it might be good to explore our options. Since it’s Halloween, we chose to use Apothic Red. It’s a good winemaker’s blend that tastes great on it’s own and pares perfectly with dark chocolate.

Milk is also an important component to this recipe. Here, the best option is going to be whole-fat and organic. A little fat is a good thing now and again, and it’s also used here in a dessert drink which adds to the decadence, so go big. Skim and low-fat milk just wouldn’t cut it in our opinion. We’d rather just drink the wine and eat the chocolate than add either of them to those tasteless, low-fat milks. If you’re going for a non-dairy milk, maybe a cashew or almond milk variety would work and may even make it better. Steer clear of coconut milk. While tropical flavors do exist in wines, those flavors mostly come through in white wines and we wouldn’t want to waste chocolate, red wine, and coconut milk on something we weren’t sure would taste delicious. Lastly, add salt. A pinch of salt brings out the flavors of the chocolate and the wine. Not too much though or it will be a salt bomb.

There’s a million places on the web to find this recipe. We discovered it on thekichn.com which has links to many more sites. Now grab that bar of chocolate, bottle of wine, and whole milk and whip up a batch of this brew. Enjoy it while the kiddies are out trick-or-treating, or if you must join the kids on tonight’s excursion, put the batch in a thermos and enjoy your warm treat while everyone else is freezing.

And one more thing, if this election cycle is causing you to drink (more), add more wine to your hot chocolate and enjoy it with one of our 420 cookies (or a dozen).

Happy Halloween!

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Blood Red Hot Chocolate
serves 3
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2/3 cup fruity red wine, (we used Apothic Red)
1 cup milk
a pinch salt

Stovetop Method:
Bring chocolate and water to a simmer in a small saucepan over low heat; cook, whisking, until melted, about 3 minutes. Add milk and salt, whisk and simmer until desired heat; about 2 minutes. Pour into mugs, top each with red wine and serve.

Milk Frother Method (single serving):
Bring chocolate and water to a simmer in a small saucepan over low heat; cook, whisking, until melted, about 3 minutes. Pour 1/3 of the chocolate and 1/3 the milk into an electric milk frother. Press go. When finished pour into a mug and top with red wine.

Optional: Top with whipped cream or marshmallows.

This has been our summer of s’mores. It began in early June with a campfire and a family week in the mountains. On that trip, we even found ourselves manning a s’mores table at a race expo in West Yellowstone. We were up to our elbows in sticky melted marshmallows, Hershey’s chocolate and graham cracker crumbs. Still, we could have eaten more of them.

Before summer gets away from us, we’re spending some weekend time baking up this s’mores-inspired cake. The result is a tender graham cracker cake, a thick layer of rich chocolate ganache, and toasty “marshmallow fluff” frosting. Summer on a cake stand.

We’ve taken some liberties with this one. The chocolate is dark and the fluffy white frosting isn’t what it looks like. Instead of whipping up a traditional marshmallow cream, we’ve whipped up a bit of aquafaba (seriously cool stuff), sweetened it with sugar and lathered it on the cake. A kitchen blowtorch makes toasting a snap.

If you’re not familiar with aquafaba, welcome to one of 2016’s biggest food trends. Aquafaba is essentially the brainchild of some very clever French and American food geeks who figured out that the liquid in a can of garbanzo beans contained enough of certain bean proteins that it could be whipped like egg whites to create foam. As it turns out, aquafaba is more than just a passable substitute for egg whites. Aquafaba foam is more stable for longer periods of time and at a wider range of temperatures. It’s also much harder to over whip and break because it doesn’t dry out quickly. It can be flavored and colored to suit the use (think meringue, French macaroons), pavlovas, etc.). And, it’s also vegan. Although, that doesn’t seem to matter to us too much since we’re using butter, eggs, and cream in the cake and ganache recipes. However, we’re always game to try the latest food trends and incorporate them into our recipe repertoire.

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S’mores Cake
one 6-inch cake with a 6-pack of cupcakes

Graham Cracker Cake

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup graham cracker crumbs, finely ground
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter, room temperature
2/3 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2/3 cup kefir
2 tsp vanilla

Dark Chocolate Ganache

Aquafaba Marshmallow Fluff

Preheat oven to 350F and grease and flour a 6″ cake round and line with parchment. Grease and flour, or use cupcake papers, for 6-7 muffin spaces. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until well combined. Sift through a fine sieve and slowly push through most of the graham and flour until only small graham cracker crumbs are left. Add the crumbs to the flour mixture and set aside.

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth.
Add sugars and beat on med-high until pale and fluffy (2-3mins).
Reduce speed and add eggs one at a time, fully incorporating after each addition. Add vanilla.

Alternate adding flour mixture and kefir, beginning and ending with flour (3 additions of flour and 2 of kefir). Fully incorporating after each addition. Do not over-mix.

Spread batter evenly into prepared pans. Smooth the top with a spatula and gently whack the pans against the counter to evenly distribute and release any air bubbles.
Bake the cupcakes for 12 minutes then rotate the pan and bake another 12 minutes or until the cupcakes bounce back from a light touch. For the 6-inch cake. Bake for approx. 40 mins or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean.

Place cakes on wire rack to cool for 10 mins. Run a knife around the edge of the pan and cake to loosen. Gently remove the cakes from the pans, set on racks and allow to fully cool before continuing.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

5.25 ounces dark chocolate (1 1/2 bars TJ’s 3.5 ounce dark chocolate bars)
4 ounces heavy cream
2 tablespoon soften butter
pinch of salt

Chop the dark chocolate and place it in a heat proof bowl. In a small sauce pan over medium-low heat bring the heavy cream to just about a boil. Remove from heat and pour over the chocolate, add a pinch of salt, and let sit for a minute or two, then whisk the chocolate and cream together. Once all the chocolate is incorporated, add the butter.

Allow the ganache to cool at room temperature for a couple of hours or in the fridge for about 30 minutes before continuing.

Aquafaba Marshmallow Fluff
(adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie)

1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup ultra fine (baker’s) sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Drain the garbanzo beans into a bowl with a lid. Use the garbanzo beans for another use. Refrigerate the bean water over night. We think chilling it makes for a shorter whipping time.

In a stand mixer with the whisk attachment or using a handheld mixer, add the refrigerated bean water and cream of tartar to the mixing bowl and mix on medium-high speed. Once double in volume, add the ultra fine sugar and vanilla. Whisk until peaks reach desired stiffness. The bean water seems to hold up well to over-mixing.

Assembling the cakes:

Split the 6 inch layer cake in half and add 2/3 of the chocolate ganache to the split layer. Spread until to the border of the cake and top with the other split layered cake. Spread a thin crumb coat over the sides of the cake. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 30 minutes, or up to a day or two. Freeze the cake at that point for up to a month before frosting.

Top the cake with a very big dollop of the fluff. Using an off set spatula, smooth over the top and sides using swishing with flourishes to the cake. This is an excellent beginner decorator frosting.

Cupcakes:

With the rest of the ganache, divide between 6 or 7 balls (depending on how many cupcakes are left). Gently and quickly roll the balls between hands. Freeze until ready to use.

With a melon baller, scope a small amount of cake out of the top center of the cupcake. Place the frozen ganache in the hole. Frost the cupcake in a variety of ways, with a pastry bag, using a big ice cream scoop, or just a spooned dollop on top. Toast the marshmallow using a home creme brûlée kit or a more toolbox-type blowtorch. A quick sit under the broiler may work also to get some color on the fluff, but it could also melt the chocolate. Who knows?