... a spirited celebration of regional food and culinary craft, season by season, with original recipes by Susan S. Bradley
Bless your heart if you are actually reading this post rather than running for cover to another food blog. Yes, I know this combination sounds a tad bit unusual, but I assure you it is Pure Genius.
Lest you think I’m being immodest here, the idea is not mine. The combination was recently featured in Gourmet Traveler, and that’s where I first encountered it.
As I said in the previous post, Caramelized Ancho Chile & Cinnamon Almonds, are you ready for one of the most spectacular desserts I have ever created? It is so indulgent, so bright, so refreshing, so festive, and so sinful (Using fresh strawberries out of season? Have I gone to the dark side?) that it may well be the PERFECT dessert with which to bid winter a grateful farewell. Goodbye freezing rain, mud, ice, and threats of snow. Goodbye short grey days and long dark nights. Have a safe journey to the other side of the globe, and please please please don’t hurry back.
Is there anything better in the world than a scoop of the richest vanilla bean ice cream you can get your hands on and a generous topping of an equally rich dark chocolate sauce? Okay, maybe add a couple of perfect strawberries to that picture. And then, since we’re talking perfection here, how about a small handful of toasted almonds as well?
Folks sometimes ask what inspires my recipes. Such a hard question. Anything and everything is my truthful response. I am almost always thinking about food.
This brownie recipe, for instance, was inspired by the following nearly concurrent events:
•Sampling goat’s milk cajita in a Mexican grocery store in Portland.
•Making cajita myself.
•The All Chocolate! All Month! celebration at LunaCafe.
•Plan to work cajita into a brownie recipe for the celebration.
•A Brownie Throw Down on The Food Network, which the Vermont Brownie Company won with their chevre brownie.
With this post, we kick off the second annual Love Rules! All Chocolate! All Month! celebration at LunaCafe OtherWorldly Kitchen. To check out the wonderful chocolate creations we debuted last February, be sure to visit the All Chocolate! recipe archive.
Beginning now, every post until the end of February will feature, you guessed it, CHOCOLATE. In fact, I’ve been covered in unsweetened and bittersweet chocolate, as well as cocoa, for many weeks now, trying to come up with the world’s best, truly CHEWY (not fudgy, not cakey) brownie. And finally, after many attempts, I succeeded. In all the testing, I also serendipitously hit upon a wonderfully silky, light, and luscious fudgy brownie that turned me, the swamp boogie queen of chewy brownie lovers, into a fudgy brownie convert.
On the second day of Christmas … my true love gave to me … Mocha Java Hazelnut Cookies.
Every Christmas cookie bake-a-thon should include at least one amazing chocolate cookie. Not only does chocolate add a festive and luxurious note to any celebration, it actually elevates mood and feelings of good cheer. As if this were not enough advantage for a single food source, chocolate is also the richest source of antioxidants known. Imagine! Cookies that bless the mind AND the body.
A whirlwind tour of Phoenix/Scottsdale restaurant desserts, complete with fabulous photos.
I want to wrap up LunaCafe’s February 2009 Love Rules! All Chocolate! All Month! celebration with a really special dessert. If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been covered in cocoa powder and melted chocolate all month. I discovered and perfected the world’s most delectable cookie, Bittersweet Chocolate & Toasted Walnut Cookies Perfecta [...]
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