Christmas Cheer: Dark Chocolate Cinnamon, Chili & Nibs

Really excellent chocolate makes the perfect Christmas gift. There’s more or less infinite variety, so you can find something for everyone, it’s delicious, something people don’t typically buy for themselves, and it’s a consumable, so they won’t have to carry it around for the rest of their lives. It requires no storage, wrangling, organizing, maintenance, batteries, assembly, or remembering to take it to a store and use it up.

So, over the course of the year I’ll pick up various other presents for the people I love. A piece of art for so-and-so, a book that screams to belong to what’s-his-name… In December, though, my research starts in earnest. I look at best-of articles for the year, scour the lists from local directories and chocolate shows, and peruse the selections of chocolatiers, both local and in other parts of the country, trying to locate the perfect, most excellent, enjoyable, preferably local, creative selection. Last year it was the inimitable Dude, Sweet Chocolate in downtown Fort Worth.

This year, after much deliberation, I settled on Kate Weiser, who has her flagship store in the swanky Trinity Groves shopping center in Dallas. After all, who couldn’t use a little something beautiful under the tree after this crazy year?

Kate Weiser makes what can only be described as art chocolate. Her work is gorgeous, creative, and whimsical in a deeply satisfying way. I have never had this much fun wrapping presents, you guys. Carl the drinking chocolate snowman sits in a pot of hot milk, melting away and releasing gorgeous clouds of hot chocolate mix from his tummy and marshmallows from his head, finally furnishing drinking chocolate for 4-6 people. There have also been white chocolate, peppermint, and chipotle versions of Carl in the past. She creates beautiful, truffle-stuffed chocolate ornaments, decked with gold leaf and saturated with the most beautiful blues and pinks and light greens you’ve ever seen in a chocolate shop. Her truffles are incredibly distinctive, ranging from the tame but solid orange butterscotch to the more outrageous dark chocolate and Japanese lime or the daring mango habanero. And her candy bars (like the Passion Praline! Yummmmm...) make the most beautiful stocking stuffers you’ll ever find.

It was a thoroughly magical Christmas. After Andrew and I madly worked through the last few edits for the Isaacs-Bryant Family Cookbook (my other big Christmas gift - thank you for all your help, my dear!), my mother and I joined him and his delightful family for their celebration; we sang, we laughed, we drank lots of wine and made delicious food and danced in crazed circles around the kitchen to joyous Irish Christmas reels (that was mostly me and mom, tbh). Fortunately I wasn’t the only one with the terrific idea of giving chocolate for Christmas – I received no fewer than five different chocolate bars. The most interesting, though, was a Redstone’s bar that I received from Andrew’s brother, Alex. Andrew had given him the terrific advice of sticking to 70% or higher on the cacao content (a really good guideline!), and, in a fit of inspiration, one of the bars Alex picked up for me was laced with cinnamon and chili. I guess I’ve got a reputation for gravitating towards the spicy stuff.

Here’s hoping your 2016 Christmas was every bit as delightful and chocolatey as ours!

Photo Credit: Redstone Foods

Item: Dark Chocolate Cinnamon, Chili & Nibs
Percentage: 72%

Made By: Redstone's
Made In: Carrolton, TX 

Purchased At/Price: Christmas gift!

Review: They’re not trying for too much subtlety here, but the result is excellent execution and a thoroughly enjoyable bar. There’s plenty of heat, with a clear, unmuddy balance between the cinnamon and chili flavors. The cocoa nibs are another success story here – in many bars they’re just simply too big, too hard, or otherwise obnoxious, but here they’re perfect. Toasty, dark, crunchy bits that don’t shatter your teeth or taste burnt, don’t disrupt the experience of the bar, and overall add a nice complement to the smoky, dark heat of the bar. The chocolate flavor isn’t the star of the show here, but it’s good and clean enough to provide a nice backdrop for everything else going on. This one could even be a little (prepare yourselves) sweeter and it would be a lovely contrast to the heat, and could definitely stand a few flakes of sea salt, but it’s still very well done as it is, though. Overall, this is an elegant practice in things being exactly enough – exactly enough heat, enough cinnamon, enough nibs, enough sweetness, enough brute chocolate flavor – to be thoroughly enjoyable. One important caveat - the cinnamon and chili flavors are both super strong, so if you're not a fan then I'd steer clear.

Well done, Alex. Way to capture the Christmas spirit.

RECOMMEND
 
With love,
 - K 

Happy New Year!: Kate Weiser Passion Praline Candy Bar

Happy 2017!

I turned 29 on the 31^st. I’ve always loved having a birthday on New Year’s Eve – it’s a day that begs for celebration and has a delightful cyclicality to it. As the calendar ticks of another trip ‘round the sun, I can draw energy and inspiration from the delighted resolutions of so many people determined to get the very best out of the coming year. I can’t imagine a more invigorating day for a birthday.

My New Year’s was delightfully quiet. Andrew and I spent the evening with friends, eating the rest of the amazing Kate Weiser chocolates left from Christmas (another post on that coming soon) and an incredibly dense, chocolatey birthday cake concocted by my amazing mother, and watching Star Wars. We had our obligatory champagne at midnight, and then dispersed, enjoying the last of the Christmas light displays on our way home.

Now, by most objective measures 2016 was pretty rough. Suffice it to say that it was a hard year for water, refugees, heroes and celebrities, American politics, the UK, the EU, global politics in general, anyone who’s Muslim, and all residents of Syria and neighboring countries.

On the other hand, after a century of decline the tiger population increased in 2016, Tubman is set to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, the US has reached an all-time low in teen pregnancies and seen impressive gains in high-school graduations, the FARC rebels in Columbia signed a peace agreement with the government after decades of armed conflict bringing peace to the entire Western Hemisphere for the first time in at least 60 years, India planted 50 million trees in a single day, Costa Rica ran on 98% renewable energy for a whole year, giant pandas and manatees just got taken off of the endangered species list, the Americas were declared measles-free, Liberia was cleared of Malaria, we found the ALS gene, Africa has no active cases of Ebola, we finally detected gravitational waves, and pretty soon I might be able to go visit Cuba without selling my kidney. So that’s all pretty cool.

This year in particular seems to be marked with new beginnings and transitions. There’s a weird sort of impending finality associated with turning 29 – it’s the last year of my 20s, and it feels a little bit like I’m coming to the end of the first act (not to be overly dramatic, of course). My sweetie and I are both starting new jobs this month, I’ve got a brother with some exciting career news for this year, and a mom who’s also in transition. My dad and youngest brother are in for some big changes this year as well, and I’ll be helping one of my best friends get hitched in June.

As for me, I’m still trying to figure out what I want from 2017 beyond a big sunny field to lie in. I’d like to read more actual books (scaling back on the internet articles, news, and blogs that currently dominate my reading habits). I’d like to get better about staying in touch with all the wonderful people in my life and maybe figure out how to be less conservative about interacting with strangers. Maybe figure out how to make some new friends. I’d like to join the board of a non-profit and take at least one international trip to Asia or South America – maybe Ecuador or Thailand, but suggestions are most welcome. 

I'd also like to write more. And eat more chocolate. So, one pledge for 2017 is that I will write at least one review for this blog per week. They may not have lengthy stories attached to them, and they may not always get posted to Facebook promptly, but there will be at least one post per week for the duration of this year. 

Here's to a more chocolatey year for everyone!

Item: Passion Praline Candy Bar
Percentage: ?? (Pretty light - maybe 35-40%?)

Made By: Kate Weiser
Made In: Dallas, TX

Purchased At: Kate Weiser Trinity Groves Outlet Store

Review: Kate Weiser makes what can only be described as art chocolate. She describes this one “tart passion fruit combines with crunchy hazelnut gianduja for the perfect citrus treat. My personal fave!” This is not pure chocolate, but it’s definitely top-notch candy. A crunchy, beautiful art-milk-chocolate shell encases two gorgeous, creamy layers of creamy chocolate filling. The upper layer is a white-chocolate passion-fruit ganache, while the lower layer is a milk chocolate hazelnut gianduja (a chocolate spread or filling of at least 30% hazelnut), sandwiching whole toasted hazelnuts and some crunchy “cornflake praline.” That’s a complicated description for something that actually winds up coming across pretty wonderfully simple in the eating. 

There’s a delicate, lovely inter-play between the creamy, tart passion fruit and the earthy, crunchy hazelnut, and the chocolate ties it all together, providing a smooth medium for everything to play nicely together. I’ll say that the praline seemed to get just a tad soggy after a while, but the whole bar held up admirably in the car on a hot day (an important virtue in Texas). The milk chocolate is also stellar, which is something you won’t find me saying that much – It’s sweet, but not overwhelming, gentle, but not spineless, milky, but utterly free of that gross dried-milk aftertaste that hangs around after cheap milk chocolate, reminding you of every horrible decision you’ve ever made. *shudder.* This is some really wonderful (and beautiful!) stuff. 

HIGHLY RECOMMEND

With love,
 - K 

This Anxious Holiday Season: World Peace Cookies

This post is a little different. 

There are some days when a bar of chocolate is just too hands off to handle all the crap that life decides to throw at you. There are days when the world seems like it's reeling, drunk or blind, on the edge of some precipice, and the intersection of all this madness centers right over your apartment complex in the form of a soul-sucking, bleak, dreary, masterpiece of a day. When Mellville's damp, drizzly November leaps off the pages and into the December skies of DFW, extreme measures are called for.

And so, with my sister heading into the social crucible that is the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota, an increasingly uncertain political future for my country, a friend back in the hospital, concerns about my family, and facing down the prospect of starting at a new, much scarier job on January 1, on this particularly bleak and drizzly Saturday, I turned to the inimitable Dorie Greenspan to help set things right. 

It was time to set up Christmas at Andrew's parents' place, so we broke out the mulled wine and Christmas carols on Spotify, and as Andrew decked the halls with lights and garlands, I took to the kitchen. Furnished with a sparkly shirt, Christmas apron, and Santa hat, creating the deepest dark chocolate rounds, flecked with the most divine bittersweet, rolling and punching out butter-logged sugar cookies into Christmas trees, soldiers, and holly with the nostalgia-laden cookie cutters I grew up with, tending to the long-simmering stew on the stove.

It felt, miraculously, like everything was going to be ok.

These cookies have been on my "to bake" radar for a while, and they fulfilled all of my wildest expectations - as French sables, they are delightfully light, sandy shortbread cookies, but with a chocolate heart as deep as the fudgiest of brownies. Don't overbake these, and don't get too creative - they are perfect. Just be sure to have plenty of milk on hand - you will want it. (They are also well-complemented by a batch of these sugar cookies. Just in case you get inspired and want to make both like I did. They very much benefit by each others' company.)

I think we could all use a little peace right now, and sometimes, when everything else seems like it's falling apart, chocolate can at least serve to get you through the afternoon. 

Item: World Peace Cookies

A word on mixing, log rolling and patience: This dough can be different from batch to batch — it always seems to turn out well no matter what, but the inconsistency can be frustrating. I’ve found that it’s best to mix the dough for as long as it takes to get big, moist curds that hold together when pressed and then knead if necessary so it comes together. When you’re rolling it into logs, keep checking that the logs are solid. Again, the dough can be capricious and it may not always roll into a compact log on the first (or second or third) try. Be patient.

         Makes about 36 cookies

   1 1/4 cups (170 grams) all-purpose flour
   1/3 cup (28 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
   1/2 teaspoon baking soda
   1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons; 5 1/2 ounces; 155 grams) unsalted butter, cut into chunks, at room temperature
   2/3 cup (134 grams) packed light brown sugar
   1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
   1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
   1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
   5 ounces (142 grams) best-quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped into irregular sized bits

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together. (I didn't sift. Still delicious.)

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter and both sugars together on medium speed until soft, creamy and homogenous, about 3 minutes. Beat in the salt and vanilla. Turn off the mixer, add all the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to start the blending. When the risk of flying flour has passed, turn the mixer to low and beat until the dough forms big, moist curds. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix to incorporate. This is an unpredictable dough (see above). Sometimes it’s crumbly and sometimes it comes together and cleans the sides of the bowl. Happily, no matter what, the cookies are always great.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface and gather it together, kneading it if necessary to bring it together. Divide the dough in half. Shape the dough into logs that are 11/2 inches in diameter. Don’t worry about the length — get the diameter right, and the length will follow. (If you get a hollow in the logs, just start over.) Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and freeze them for at least 2 hours or refrigerate them for at least 3 hours.

When you’re ready to bake: Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Working with one log at a time and using a long, sharp knife, slice the dough into 1/2-inch-thick rounds. (The rounds might crack as you’re cutting them — don’t be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between them. (If you’ve cut both logs, keep one baking sheet in the fridge while you bake the other.)

Bake the cookies for 12 minutes — don’t open the oven, just let them bake. When the timer rings, they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, and that’s just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can munch them, or let them reach room temperature (I think the texture’s more interesting at room temperature).

Bake the remaining dough.

Eat. Be at peace. 

The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months, although I can't imagine it'll last that long. If you’ve frozen the dough, you needn’t defrost it before baking — just bake the cookies 1 minute longer. 


With love, Kat

Guide to Talking About Politics (Or, 5 Handy Tips for Not Being an Insufferable Ignoramus This Election Season): Dark Chocolate Spicy Caramel

Last night I engaged in the futile, barely entertaining practice of watching the first Presidential debate. I got through the whole painful thing with the help of some Ghirardelli and cheap beer, but we didn't learn anything new, no minds were changed, and I logged into Facebook afterwards with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Sure enough, there was the obligatory tsunami of partisan memes, "fact checks," stilted commentary, and general dysfunctional chaos. *sigh*

It frequently feels like we’ve reached peak political madness, with two of the most despised presidential candidates in recent memory, tons of private money pouring into our elections, the worst political polarization we've seen in decades, racial tension erupting, political scandals, banking scandals, violent attacks, and the media feasting on it all like a dog wolfing down a rotisserie chicken.
 

However, as bewildering and chaotic as everything seems right now, it is made infinitely worse by all the meaningless, partisan noise being bandied around on social media, message boards, and more, by generally well-meaning people whose minds are made up and only want to trumpet that to the world. It’s not that commentary is a bad thing – being engaged in the process is incredibly important – but just adding thousands more badly fact-checked sound bites to the giant partisan machine isn’t helping anything. 

So, on the theme of debates in general, I'd like to offer my 5 rules for behaving like an adult while discussing complicated stuff. Feel free to share! Civilizing the Internet may be a lost cause, but Borges wrote that "only lost causes should be attractive." Therefore, without further preamble, as a concerned citizen, sometime Internet user, and a politically-minded human being, I would like to offer this as my personal guide to being a Responsible Participant in the National Dialogue.

A Guide to Talking About Complicated Stuff

(Or, 5 Handy Tips for Not Being an Insufferable Ignoramus This Election Season)

1. Shut the Fuck Up

            For God’s sake, stop contributing to the meaningless noise.

Hollering that you support gun control doesn’t do a damn thing. Posting cartoonish memes of politicians looking dumb with some reductive, tragically biased, out-of-context phrase stamped over their face doesn’t do a damn thing. What are you trying to prove? That you’re more obnoxious than anyone else on Facebook? Because it’s working.

If you want everyone to know you’re in support of 2^nd amendment rights, then write something about why you support open carry, or whose policies you agree with and why. If you want to let your liberal flag fly, write a thoughtful post on the Democratic Party platform. Don’t junk up everyone’s feeds with more senseless vaguely political white noise.

I know: reposting these things is a quick, easy way to convey where you stand on an issue and connect with friends who agree. But this isn’t the time or place for these kinds of “atta-boy” affirmations. In a country struggling with a breakdown of dialogue and increasing polarization, we don’t need to be reinforcing this kind of simplistic, tribal reasoning. Trying to reduce an entire issue or candidate to the size of an Instagram post is about as ridiculous as trying to draw an accurate representation of the solar system with a 4-pack of Crayolas.

If you want to junk up my feed, post pictures of baby otters. Or your daughter’s latest crafting project. Or pasta recipes.

If you’re looking for affirmation, take it offline.

2. Do your Fucking Homework

In three parts! 

Part 1: Fact check your memes, people. Seriously. I swear to God, if I see one more meme saying that Clinton is going to take away all our guns I’m going to scream. You’ve heard it a million times before, and I’ll repeat it again here, because apparently it hasn’t stuck yet: Just because it’s online, does NOT make it remotely true. Even if it agrees with your ideology and looks semi-legit. Maybe especially if it checks those two boxes. This is one of Google’s highest callings – put it to work. The beauty of the Internet is that these answers are usually just a few clicks away, so you don’t typically even need to work that hard for it. You’ll look smarter and you’ll be able to actually speak intelligently about the things you wind up talking about.

Part 2: If you post something and then find out it’s inaccurate or untrue, take the damned thing down. Delete the post. There’s enough junk on the Internet that we don’t need gratuitous garbage information floating around perpetuating itself through infinite reposts.

And, finally, Part 3: be an accuracy cop. If you know your shit (I’m talking real policy, people, not partisan bullshit), and you see your friends and family perpetuating the false or partisan bullshit, call them on it. Be civil, be kind, don’t be an ass, but let’s be each other’s keepers.

Friends don’t let friends post stupid shit.

3. Argue Like a Grown-Up

Can we please all accept that using the “so-and-so is DUMB!” hasn’t been an effective way to win an argument since we were 6 years old? Our country is at a crossroads, and we still have throngs of otherwise responsible adults who fling around insults as a way of attempting to interact intelligently.

“Only idiots believe…” is a great way to alienate a bunch of people, particularly since it’s generally not true. “You’re stupid!” or “what an idiot!” are great phrases if you’re writing a comedy sketch, but have no place in discussions of real consequence. Absurd, condescending language like “moron,” “Drumph,” “Killary,” “lunatic,” and the spectacularly dysfunctional term “librtard” just manage to make you look like a flailing, reactionary neanderthal who's in over your head. 

Don’t call anyone a moron because of what they believe. Instead, make a real point about why you think what you do.

When in doubt, think back to your debate teacher. Would your debate teacher approve of how you’re approaching this? Then it probably won’t do any good. Reconsider. If you didn’t take debate, use this nifty rule of thumb: the first person to insult, degrade, or otherwise attack their opponent’s character loses the debate instantly.

Take the high road. The view is better from up there.

4. Accept that You Are Both Wrong and Ignorant. Yes, You.

Are you a Supreme Court Justice? Are you a Senator? The President, maybe? Maybe just a Governor? No? Didn’t think so.

So don’t act like you know everything there is to know about the law, the constitution, or interpreting said documents. Because you don’t. I don’t, either. I’m necessarily wrong about a lot of things, because I haven’t made it my life’s work to understand them.

However, there are people – brilliant, thoughtful, well-intentioned people – who have made it their life’s work to understand these things, and they’ve come to some pretty radically different conclusions. Justice Scalia, may he rest in peace, disagreed with me on a shit-ton of issues. And you know what? He was way better informed than I am to make those calls. You may disagree with Ruth Bader Ginsberg on everything under the sun, but she’s far, far better qualified than you to be making those decisions. That’s why she’s on the Supreme Court and you and I get into flame wars on Facebook.

Can we please all accept that we’re not right about everything? That we are, in fact, probably wrong about most things? That vastly different interpretations are valid, important, and contribute to this wonderful, evolving, living Democracy of ours? There has always been tension between progressive and conservative values, which is right and good. The real work of Democracy happens in the constructive wrangling between the two. (Emphasis on constructive.) Democracy doesn’t work when there’s a runaway victory of either ideology, and it doesn’t work when there’s a deadlock between the two. I daresay either scenario would eventually look pretty ugly for everyone after a while.

5. Fuck the Echo Chamber

One of the amazing things the Internet does is that it makes it really easy to find like-minded people to connect with. We may have a few token friends from across the aisle, but you can truly spend your entire life looking at comfortable, affirming newsfeeds that reassure you that your candidate is right, the other side is the enemy, and you should really pat yourself on the back for being so enlightened. Your friend posts things that make you feel oogey? Unfollow them! They don’t ever need to know, and you don’t ever have to see their icky opinionated socialist/gun rights/third-party candidate/race relations babble.

We listen to conservative/liberal talk radio, we read conservative/liberal news outlets, we talk to our conservative/liberal friends. Our conservative/liberal families reinforce our ideas and ideals, and we live, breathe, and move in a world where it is assumed that we will be good conservative/liberal soldiers.

These echo chambers we create for ourselves have the effect of reinforcing themselves over time. The longer we spend in them, the more information we have to support our previously formulated views, and the more validation we receive from the people who agree with us. This is terribly, terribly dangerous. We run the risk of becoming reasonably well-informed but radically different and fundamentally opposed species; speaking on the same issues, referencing the same source documents, but with no frame of reference to connect with or understand each other, and no incentive or impulse to make a real effort.

Please, please, don’t fall into this trap. Make some friends who disagree with you on important things, and then make a monthly lunch date to talk about those things. Dare to talk about politics at family gatherings. Listen to real, substantive commentary that you disagree with, and really try to connect with the people and motivations behind them. No one wakes up in the morning thinking “ah! Another lovely day to spread chaos and undermine Democracy!” Start by assuming that the people who make you uncomfortable have reasons, probably good reasons, for believing what they do, and then work backwards from there.

This whole Democracy thing doesn’t work if we lose sight of each other as human beings, and it doesn’t work if we stop listening to each other.

I look across the aisle, and I see people who are every bit as concerned about the direction and the welfare of this country as I am, but somehow we've managed to wind up speaking entirely different languages. We hurl catchy slogans and verbal feces at each other, hoping that something will stick, and wondering how this disastrous dumpster fire of an election could possibly have happened on our watch. I can't answer that. I'm just as baffled and dismayed as anyone else. But I think we could stand to return some civility and thoughtfulness to our national dialogue. That might help start the conversation.

Here's some chocolate to help. 

Item: Dark Chocolate Spicy Caramel 
Percentage: ???

Made By: Ghirardelli
Made In: San Leandro, CA
Price: $16.95 for 33 squares (I got the smaller bag, but I can't find my receipt)

Review: Ghirardelli is a giant, soulless chocolate conglomerate, befitting a celebration of the giant, soulless political machine. A member of the Lindt family of businesses, Ghirardelli has been making chocolate in the California Bay Area for more than 160 years, and was the first major chocolate producer to popularize putting the cacao percentage on the packaging. They are one of the better giant, soulless chocolate conglomerates, but that doesn't make them "serious" chocolate - their "dark" chocolate reads a lot like good milk chocolate, really (maybe 60-ish%?), and the vast amount of production mean that the chocolate has very little in the way of character. The Spicy Caramel flavor is a new one in their classic filled squares line - honestly, the flavor profile reminds me a lot of the Chili Nut M&Ms from this spring, just with somewhat better chocolate and without the peanut in the middle. The caramel is in a nice, oozy, creamy center, surrounded by a crisp chocolate shell, and chances are you'll find one or two of the squares in your bag have sprung a leak and lost some of their filling, but fortunately there's no shame in licking it off the foil wrapper. The "natural chili pepper flavor" is interesting - it doesn't really *taste* like anything, it's just kind of *there,* so the spicy adds some interest, but not much character. Still, it manages to cut the sweetness of the caramel nicely, and it's a fun, somewhat unusual flavor combination. Overall, I'm glad I got them.

RECOMMEND, WITH CRAPPY BEER AND A SIDE OF OBNOXIOUS PARTISAN BULLSHIT

With love,
 - K