Serves: 4

1/3 cup finely ground masa harina (Maseca)

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1/2 cup cold water

4 cups milk

3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar (or piloncillo, see note)

2 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

Dash of ground cinnamon

2-inch piece of vanilla bean, split to expose seeds, or 1 teaspoon vanilla

Add the masa harina and cornstarch to the cold water and whisk to dissolve lumps. Combine the mixture along with the milk and brown sugar in a deep saucepan. Whisk over low heat.

Once the atole has begun to thicken, after about 10 minutes, add the chocolate, cinnamon and vanilla bean.

The tiny granules of masa will take about 20 minutes to swell and thicken. Suddenly, the atole will become smooth and velvety thick.

Remove vanilla bean and serve.

Note: Look for piloncillo, unrefined Mexican brown sugar pressed into a cone shape, at Mexican groceries.

Recipe | Image

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Well, here’s something in the news that is bound to stir the chocolate pot a little bit. On April 1st, just in time for Easter, a 6 foot chocolate statue of Jesus will be unveiled by its creator, Cosimo Cavallaro, in Lab Gallery in the Roger Smith Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

The statue will be positioned on the cross, and will be available for viewing from the street from midnight-1am, and from 6-7pm until April 7th.

The statue was created from 200 pounds of chocolate and can currently be seen on the front page of his website at CosimoCavallaro.com. What do you think – an inspired piece of work, or a blasphemy?

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Tis the season to hunt down great candy – and one part of my hunt is for great sugar free candy for my husband who is diabetic, and LOVES chocolate. Not only that, he is incredibly picky about his chocolate, making it necessary to start early to find something great for him. A Bountiful Harvest is one of our favorite chocolatiers – partially because of the fabulous sugar free chocolates they make and partially because their presentation is so beautiful. Check out this bunny that is coming home with us for Easter – he is too beautiful to eat, really. Not.

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There’s nothing like reading about chocolate and eating Oreos. Yum. I love my work.

Godiva may be a master chocolatier, but there is nothing like an Oreo and a big glass of milk. Do you agree?

Some Oreo info from Wikipedia:

Originally, Oreo cookies were mound-shaped. The source of the name “Oreo” comes from the Greek “ωραίο” – “oreo,” meaning “beautiful” or “nice.” The modern design of the Oreo cookie allows it to be eaten in several ways. Some people twist apart the wafers and eat the filling first; others eat the cookie without taking it apart. Some prefer to eat Oreo cookies after dunking them in milk.

According to a statement from Kim McMiller, an Associate Director of Consumer Relations, a two-stage process is used to make Oreo cookies. The base cake dough is formed into the familiar round cookies by a rotary mold at the entrance of a 300-foot-long oven. Key ingredients include sugar (later replaced with high fructose corn syrup), Dutch cocoa, and pure chocolate liquor purchased from outside suppliers in addition to flour which is milled at Nabisco’s flour mill.

And here is a video made by some other Oreo lovers to Weird Al Yankovic’s The White Stuff – which is a parody song about – you guessed it – Oreos. Watch this to see what my teeth look like right now. Yummy.

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Chocolate Raspberry Truffles are incredibly elegant, unbelievably delicious and surprisingly easy to make. My favorite comes from Godiva, with a very close second coming from my own kitchen. This is my recipe (which I have had on a card for years and years, but I believe came from a Williams-Sonoma cookbook that belongs to a friend):

6 Tbs unsalted butter

8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped (the better the chocolate, the better the truffles!)

1/2 cup good quality seedless jam (Polaner All-Fruit is my favorite)

3 Tbs Chambord liqueur

1/3 cup sugar

Place the butter and chocolate in the top pan of a double boiler, stir until melted and smooth. Remove from the heat and stir in jam and liqueur. Pour mixture in a shallow pan, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 3 hours or until firm.

Place sugar in a shallow bowl or saucer. To form into a truffle, using a teaspoon scoop up a 1 inch piece of mixture. With cool fingers, form into a ball, then drop ball into the sugar and roll around to coat completely. Keep the truffles in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks (they won’t last that long, trust me on this).

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As the 17th of March drew closer, I looked for inspiration at my favorite Irish pub in Manhattan. As I savored my pint, I saw a Guinness poster that said, “My Goodness, My Guinness!” It was like an angel sang in my ear: “What if you combined a dark chocolate pudding and Guinness, topped it with whipped cream lightly flavored with Guinness, and then put it in a glass to make it look just like a pint of the black?” After a few failed attempts, I got it just right.

I am going to let you go to Epicurius to read the recipe, and would like to offer thanks to Accordion Man for the heads up (and he actually has a much more readable version of the recipe on his site)! Happy St. Patricks Day! Are you wearing your green??

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This is SUPER cool – and what a great gift! A new company, ChocPix, will make your picture into a square of chocolate, so when you hold it up to a light – you see a picture! The picture is made strictly with the thickness of the white chocolate – no dyes at all, and is made from fair trade chocolate (have you answered our sidebar poll yet??). The catch? I am thinking this is only available for UK chocolate lovers. Hopefully they will spread throughout the planet before long, this is such a nifty idea!

Chocopix has also produced a chocolate picture of Wallace & Gromit that is for sale in support of Comic Relief at RedNoseDay.com. Let us know if you have seen this before – I think this sounds SO cool!

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The CocoaVia Chocolate Blueberry Snack Bar (yum!)

Kemps Fat Free Chocolate Frozon Yogurt (not so good – fat free is never good, IMO)

Stonyfield Farms Fat Free chocolate Underground Yogurt (again with the Fat Free – you know, I have tried SO hard to like Stonyfield yogurt – and I love yogurt – but it just doesn’t get it for me. They are so cute with their packaging and their friendly face to the world, but I will keep on trying them, I think. I’m not ready to give up the ghost yet.) There is another Stonyfield yogurt review this week too, so check it out if you are interested…

Silk Chocolate Soymilk – I am going after this. I am a HUGE milk drinker, and I can stomach soymilk, but not too much. I have thought about trying the chocolate milk version, and after reading this review, it is mine.

***

This is my current favorite healthy chocolate – Body Fortress 100% Premium Whey Protein Powder (in chocolate, of course). This, mixed with my favorite low carb milk substitute, is my breakfast every day – well, almost every day. This is as close a good mix of chocolate milk as I have found, and it is nice and low carb. Not quite Nestle’s Quik, but close enough for satisfaction.

There are another couple of days to go in Healthy Chocolate Week, so don’t forget to stop by and see what they are talking about at I.Ate.A.Pie, and then go try some healthy chocolate yourself. What are your favorite healthy chocolate treats?

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Chocolate Mint Brownies

Ingredients

For the brownies:

1 cup All-Purpose flour

1/2 cup soft butter

1/2 t salt

4 eggs

1 t. vanilla

1 can (16 oz) Hershey’s syrup

1 cup sugar

For the mint filling:

2 cups confectioners sugar

1/2 cup soft butter

1 T. water

1/2 t. mint extract

3 drops green food coloring

For the topping:

1 10 oz package mint chocolate chips

9 T butter

Combine brownie ingredients in a bowl, mix for 3 minutes on medium speed. Pour into greased 13 x 9 pan and cook at 350 for 30 minutes. Cool completely.

**I usually like my brownies rather underdone – but this is not the recipe to do that with. Must have a good foundation for the rich goodies on top!

Filling: Combine filling ingredients and beat until nice and creamy. Spread filling evenly on top of cooked brownies. Refrigerate until set.

Topping: Melt chocolate chips and butter in the microwave – let cool until lukewarm. Spread the topping over the filling evenly. Refrigerate again until set, and store in the refrigerator.

**These brownies are so rich, that you really don’t need much more than a 1″ x 1″ piece – a 9 x 13 pan will absolutely feed a ton of people (or me, if your family is like mine ).

There is a great LowCarb version of these brownies posted here, if you’re interested.

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This is White Peach KitKat. And Mini Kitto Sakura Saku Yo (cherry blossoms are blooming – how cool is that?). I have also run across Green Tea, Passion Fruit, Cheesecake, and dozens of other flavors (lots of truly exotic ones!). So the question absolutely begs asking – why on earth are these Kit Kat bars so popular in Japan and abroad in general, when Nestle can hardly sell one other flavor than the good old Milk Chocolate bars they sell in the United States? Well, I found the answer. In Japanese, “kitto katsu” loosely translates to “I hope you will win” and the Kit Kats have been adopted by Japanese students as good luck charms. [source] Ah ha. Now that makes a little more sense.

I am sure these funky KitKat flavors are super yummy, but what got me this morning was this review, on CandyBlog, of the KitKat Bitter – which is right up my alley. They point out that the KitKat Bitter is just loads better than the American dark KitKat, and a step above the Canadian version (which is better than the U.S. version, but not as good as the Japanese). Scrumptious! Must. find. this.

What is your favorite flavor of KitKat? You must have one. Give it up.

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