I have a 1 1/4 lb box of 64% dark Guittard chocolates. I would like to use this chocolate for baking. Is there a brownie recipe or one for a simple chocolate cake that someone could post, please? The ones I have are for unsweetened chocolate or chocolate powder.
The chocolate is very tasty, but a little too sweet for eating, for my taste.
I also do not like too much sweetness for my baked stuff. A recipe for a good chocolate mousse would be fine, as long as the amount of sugar is not overpowering. Years ago, I had a wonderful recipe for chocolate mousse from Gourmet Magazine, flavored with orange zest (and juice or extract?) and served in the hollowed out orange peel halves. I don't expect anybody to remember it after so many years, but it was a wonderful dish.
Margaret, I have a nearly-complete set of Gourmet magazines from 1980 to
1985. Do you think the recipe would come from one of those years? If so, seeking out that recipe would be a good excuse to look through those old magazines. (I keep them around to remind me of what a lovely thing Gourmet *used* to be.)
Dear Victoria, It could be, even if I think it was from an earlier year. It may be that I remember wrong, of course. It could have been between 1980 and 1983, when I entertained a great deal.
If you find it, I would be really grateful. Thank you very much for offering to look for the recipe.
It sounds like what you really need is the conversion or substitution procedures for substituting what you have for what your recipe specifies. I'm sure this could be easily found. Cocoa powder + fat = unsweetened chocolate. Sweetened chocolate has varying levels of sugar added. Milk chocolate adds milk powder.
While this is not a chocolate mousse recipe, it looked like it might fit your needs. It calls for less than 1/2 cup of sugar for 8 servings, so I think it would probably not be too sweet, but you could probably cut down on the sugar a bit if you want. It's from
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(I tried to find the chocolate mousse recipe, but they don't seem to have anything like that on-line).
rona
CHOCOLATE-ORANGE POTS DE CREME Parisians love chocolate, and cooks in Paris might make this with Valrhona, one of the best French brands. Begin preparing the dessert a day ahead. 3 cups whipping cream 8 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped 4 tablespoons orange liqueur
Bring 1 cup cream to simmer in medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Add chocolate; whisk until smooth. Whisk in 2 tablespoons orange liqueur. Spoon
1 tablespoon chocolate mixture into each of eight 3/4-cup custard cups. Place cups in freezer. Reserve remaining chocolate mixture.
Combine milk, peel and 2 cups cream in medium saucepan. Scrape in seeds from vanilla beans; add beans. Bring to simmer. Whisk yolks and sugar in large bowl to blend. Whisk hot cream mixture into yolk mixture. Let stand
30 minutes. Strain through fine sieve set over medium bowl, pressing on solids. Whisk 2 tablespoons orange liqueur into custard.
Preheat oven to 325°F. Ladle custard over chocolate in cups. Place cups in large baking pan. Pour enough hot water into pan to come halfway up sides of cups. Bake until custards are set, about 50 minutes. Remove cups from water. Stir chocolate mixture over low heat until just pourable if necessary. Spoon generous 1 tablespoon chocolate mixture over each. Chill overnight. Serve cold.
See my recent repost, "RE: rich, moist chocolate cake" of the recipe originally posted under "Cake Recipe - Chocolate Death", for the cake part of Chocolate Death. CD itself is complex, but the cake part is simple and excellent. Also see my posts re: substituting semisweet or bittersweet in recipes asking for unsweetened chocolate, especially in regards to brownies.
I assume you have "L'Harmonie"? IMHO this is very good, so the cake recipe will work well with it.
Yes, it is Harmony, but it comes packaged differently, in little 1.75 oz boxes with five little foil wrapped chocolate bars in each tiny box. Or, perhaps it came the same way before and I forgot.
I got them at the Chocolate Show in November. The chocolate does not seem to be as flavorful as it was before. I had a lot of it and gave some of it as Christmas gifts, but I still have more than a pound left over for baking.
Thank you for the recipe for the Death By Chocolate Cake. I may try it, if I don't use it for Mousse.
Right now, I feel too lazy to make anything. I baked too much the last few weeks, for Chanukah, Christmas and just for visitors who dropped in.
MAYA, thank you for the URL for the dessert recipe site. I have already added it to my recipe folder and will try several things in the near future.
A healthy and happy and sweet year to all, Margaret
That's the "retail package". I think it's awkward and a bit silly - they should sell as one 50g bar rather than 5 smaller mini-samplers (which are pretty useless for sampling, anyway). Still, the chocolate is good. It's better to buy it in the 275 g baking bar or the 1 kg bloc.
How have you stored it? I can't imagine chocolate would deteriorate appreciably that fast unless your storage method were very inadequate.
Technical nomenclature note - the particular cake recipe I posted is called "Chocolate Death", not "Death by Chocolate", which is a different group of (rather unrelated) chocolate cakes. AFAIK the "Chocolate Death" name applies only to the cake I describe. In any case, you're welcome.
IMHO L'Harmonie isn't really the best fit for mousse - it's a bit too sweet, and has nutty components that, again, disappear in mousse. Chocolate mousse suggests an aggressively fruity chocolate - some Valrhona chocolates are good for it, as well as most of the Bonnat line.
With its nutty flavour, L'Harmonie is great in tortes, or in cookies. The key point is to minimise mixing with dairy, especially cream which will flatten out the nutty flavours completely.
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