Olive Oil Chocolate Mousse and Birthday Reflections

I’m a groupie for birthdays. They punctuate another year passing.  A year, quite possibly, filled with trumpets and violins.  And to celebrate this cacophony that is life: you get to eat cake. Or cheesecake.  Or pudding, if that’s your thing.  Which is totally cool.  On your birthday you make the rules. 

As I tend to do around my birthday, I’ve been reflecting a bit.  And so I’ve compiled a list of things I’ve learned over the past year.  Also, I made chocolate olive oil mousse.  (There is no better accomplice for the procrastination of lists than chocolate.)  Two words: worth it. 

It’s rich, dense—yet also still fairly light, as mousses tend to be—and perfect with ... wait for it ... brandy.  “ Surely, this year has been more than chocolate and brandy?” you ask.  Right?  Crickets.  Fair enough.  

Regardless, please find my birthday reflections below.

-When you attempt to compile a list of what you've learned over the span of a year you may start to panic. (If this is the case, I urge you to breath.  Lists are stressful.)

-Just because you can freeze cake doesn’t mean you should.

-Life is short, wear the nice underwear.

-If you drink more than one manhattan, you will wake up looking like you had more than one manhattan.

-Sometimes love does hurt. 

-If you are having trouble sleeping, read Karl Marx (he's better than warm milk).

-Living in a studio apartment curtails sentimentality.  There just isn’t the space. Some tangible memories are bound to be jettisoned.  It's okay.

-Nothing good happens after 12 am.

-When in doubt, a little champagne never hurts.

-You can’t make people like you.  But you can will them to develop unruly sideburns and receding hairlines with abandon.

-Buy flowers more than you think you should.

-If it can’t be fixed with duct tape or a martini, it ain’t worth fixing. 

-When you are in a rotten, no-good mood, ask Billie Holliday to join you. 

-Impose no limits.  (Heaven knows, anything goes.)

-Take chances and lighten up about them.

-If you are feeling like life is just a little too much, remember: breath first.  Make chocolate mousse second.

Olive Oil Chocolate Mousse

Adapted from Tony Maws

Ingredients:

11 oz chocolate (70%)

9 egg, yolks and whites separated

3/4 cup sugar, divided

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup brandy

pinch of kosher salt

Instructions:

In the bowl of a kitchen stand mixer, whisk egg whites until they are frothy and then add in 1/4 cup sugar; keep whisking until medium peaks form.  Place egg white mixture into a large bowl.  

Chop the chocolate and melt over simmering water (in a double boiler), stirring occasionally.  While the chocolate is melting, add the yolks to the bowl of the kitchen stand mixer (it should no longer contain the egg whites at this point, but you don't need to wash it) and whisk with 1/2 cup sugar until the mixture becomes thick and pale yellow.  Once the chocolate is melted, slowly pour the chocolate into the egg yolk mixture, being careful that the yolks do not curdle.  Add in the olive oil, brandy, and salt.

Fold in the egg whites and, at this point, you may decide you are done.  I was a tad nervous about leaving raw eggs in my fridge for a few days, so I heated the mixture in a double boiler, over simmering water, stirring (by folding) until it reached 140 degrees.  (Caveat: the next day, I realized the USDA states egg dishes should be heated to 165 degrees.)  Pour into glasses and refrigerate 4 hours before serving.

Yields about 10 (1/2 cup) servings

Notes:

-I reduced this recipe and only made 1/3 of it.  The proportions worked out great and I didn't have too many leftovers to contend with.  For the recipe above, I figured I'd keep the original amounts, as "about 3 servings" is sort of an odd recipe yield.

-The mixture will look slightly runny when you pour it into your glasses, but it will set up and get fairly thick in the fridge.  

-I realize that heating the egg whites likely reduces some of their "poof" but, for me, I would do exactly the same thing the next time.  (Though, I might try adding a bit more olive oil, it didn't come through as much as I would have expected.  Despite this, I adored this mousse.)

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie (No Perfection Required)

I recently attended a “Coping with Stress and Adversity” conference. There we learned to “never say never, or always” and how to offer criticism by sharing a “star and a wish.” So when I saw this recipe I thought: now is the time.

I have never very rarely been able to follow a recipe precisely. Meticulously following directions tends to make me anxious. (Which should come as no surprise, considering the kind of conferences I frequent.) I can do it. But I don’t like it.

Before I bake, I take a few deep breaths, read the directions aloud, and wish for the best. Tried and true recipes require less meditation, but new recipes can unhinge me. Yet, when I saw these chocolate chip cookies, I decided to dig deep, follow the instructions, and shut up about it.

A classic recipe like chocolate chip cookies can evoke an added layer of stress, as there can be so much expectation, fond childhood memories even. You typically can’t please everyone. Some like thin, crisp cookies, while others like them soft and chewy. And then there are those that can’t commit and prefer to have it both ways (turns out, I’m one of those). Well, this recipe caters precisely to … umm, everyone.

I followed the directions perfectly (actually, I’m not sure if I’m still allowed to say perfectly after my seminar). Browning the butter was crucial and made the cookie dough reminiscent of toffee. The process was actually pretty therapeutic. What was not therapeutic: despite following the recipe with precision, I had cookies come out looking like they'd been steamrolled. When I retraced my steps I found baking soda that was "best by June 3, 2010."

Yet—and here’s the kicker—even flat these cookies are lovely. Nutty. Chocolately. Crisp and chewy. And if you follow the directions (which are not difficult, I might add) you’ll get fantastic cookies.

And, though I probably shouldn’t be advocating for the use of cookies as a 'coping mechanism' after the conference I just attended, I could swear having a cookie and milk moment brought my blood pressure down again. Now, I don’t know you, and I don’t know anything about your blood pressure, but my guess is that you don't have freshly baked cookies with milk nearly enough.

So here comes the star: bake these cookies and you’ll be a hero. The recipe is from Cook's Illustrated. They’ve done the heavy lifting and have written instructions that truly work. Their dough is divine chocolate intervention and their method is perfection.

As for my wish? I wish I had fresher baking soda. And also, more cookies. Always most days, more cookies.

Cook's Illustrated's Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

1-3/4 all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda*

14 tbsp unsalted butter (1-3/4 sticks)

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed

1 tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1-1/4 cups chocolate, roughly chopped into chunks (or chocolate chips)

Position oven rack to middle shelf and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda together in a medium bowl and set aside. Then, heat 10 tbsp of your butter in a saucepan, swirling constantly, until butter is nutty and dark golden in color. Transfer melted butter to a large bowl; add in remaining butter and stir until the butter melts.

Add sugar, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla extract to melted butter and whisk until combined. Add egg and egg yolk and whisk until smooth and sugar is fully incorporated and without lumps (this should take about 30 seconds). Let mixture sit about 3 minutes, then whisk again for 30 seconds. Repeat this process 2 more times; the mixture will become smooth, thick and shiny.

Stir flour into batter until just combined. Then stir in chocolate. Scoop cookie batter into portions that are about 3 tbsp each. Bake cookies one tray at a time, rotating tray half way through baking, until the cookies are golden and their edges have begun to set but the centers are still soft, about 10-14 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Makes 16 cookies

Notes:

-Warning! Baking multiple cookie trays at a time can cause uneven baking. (This is really good news if you only have 1 baking sheet due to the size of your tiny, tiny kitchen.)

-I still am not over this batter. It was a rich, caramel-wannabe cookie dough in its finest hour. The browning of the butter and use of dark brown sugar is spot on.

-For the chocolate I used half Taza's stoneground 70% dark chocolate (because I just love the stuff) and half Scharffenberger chocolate.

-For more info check out Cook's Illustrated's explanation.

-*Check the expiration date. I beg of you.

New Traditions and Cacao Nib Chocolate Biscotti

Can I make a chocolate confession? I tend not to swoon over it. It can be a bit overdone: the red rose of desserts. And yet here I am, about to add another sin to my recipe box.

I promise you, these studded chocolate biscotti will have very few enemies at the table. Or wherever you chose to eat them. At whatever time of day. With whatever beverage of your choosing. That's the thing about a chocolate biscuit: it's pretty easy going, and it pairs as well with red wine as it does with your morning coffee.

Taza's chocolate covered cacao nibs in the recipe also add a little intrigue. The small pieces of cacao bean, which Taza describes as "light" and "fruity," are roasted and covered in chocolate. Made right here in Somerville, MA. This is a chocolate I can get behind.

Nibs aside, biscotti purists (are there such people?) may scoff at the butter in this recipe, as traditional biscotti is said to forgo it. Which begs the question: what does traditional really mean? I imagine butter might have been omitted because it was hard to come by, no? Is a recipe coming from an octogenarian Italian grandmother not tradition enough? We are talking cookies here-and we are lucky enough to have butter regularly available-let's not take ourselves too seriously, shall we?

It is worth noting that this recipe is from my grandmother, not only because she is a great cook, but because my grandfather-her husband-turned ninety on Sunday. Yes, ninety. And if you are looking for someone to swoon over sweets, he is your man. When I called on Sunday, my grandmother was preparing their traditional Sunday macaroni dinner with apple pie for my grandfather for dessert. "We eat pie instead of cake on our birthdays," she said, when I asked what they were having to celebrate.

Traditionally, it is thought that women adore chocolate and red roses. Conventionally, cake is consumed on your birthday. Apparently, my ninety year old grandfather prefers apple pie. So maybe the secret to long life is butter in the biscotti and pie on your birthday.

Or perhaps it's making your own traditions. To which I say, the hell with convention: leave the red rose, bring the chocolate biscotti.

Cacao Nib Chocolate Biscotti

2 cups all purpose flour, plus extra for dusting

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp kosher salt

6 tbsp butter, plus extra for greasing

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

3/4 cups chocolate covered cacao nibs (or chocolate morsels)

1 tbsp powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet with butter and then dust with flour, shaking off extra flour. In a bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl (or mixer bowl), beat butter and sugar until lightly fluffy; add eggs and continue to beat until well combined. Stir flour mixture into butter mixture until it forms a stiff dough; mix in walnuts and cacao nibs.

With floured hands, form dough into 2 logs (about 10 inches long and 2 inches wide) and place on greased cookie sheet; flatten logs slightly with your hand and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Bake about 35 minutes or until slightly firm to the touch. Cool logs on baking sheet for about 5-10 minutes. On a cutting board, cut biscotti diagonally and bake until crisp (about 10-20 minutes more). Let cool. They'll keep for at least a week.

Makes about 20

Notes:

-There is nothing like the sound of crisp homemade biscotti hitting your plate.

-This weekend Taza and local ice cream hero Batch will be pairing up to make ice cream sundaes at Taza's factory store in Somerville. Go and get your nib on.

Yogurt Seduced By Chocolate

Life is full of the unexpected. It’s lovely when you peel off the sunset tangerine skin of an orange to reveal deep garnet flesh, signaling that your fruit is actually a blood orange. Pulling off your covers at 6 am to reveal that your apartment is 53 degrees and has an improperly working shower water heater is not the stuff of sunsets and gemstones. But that's life. I try not to dwell.

I’ve grown accustom to this dichotomy and have developed, what some may deem, an unusual sense of humor because of it. This week, I chuckled when I noticed my grocery shopping list included bittersweet chocolate, cocoa powder, and Draino. Revealing that I am either a woman on the verge—deciding whether to turn towards cacao or sodium hypochlorite—or a lady with a clogged drain that loves chocolate. Luckily, today I am the latter.

Which leads me to the ultimate unexpected chocolate delicacy: chocolate yogurt. I've made it many times and it never ceases to impress and delight. It's really more like chocolate pudding masquerading as yogurt. You could even go so far as to say it is a yogurt that’s been sexed up, like it’s wearing strands of pearls and red panties.

It could be argued this yogurt comes to the table with its seductive accessories a few days late, given that we’ve passed Valentine’s Day. But even if you think you've had your fill of cacao (mon dieu!), the chocolate in this yogurt is subtle, light, and refreshing.

At the moment, I can’t think of anything quite like making homemade chocolate sauce to fold into milk and then warm overnight into yogurt. The yogurt sets to pale brown, with a luscious cream layer on top and a thicker chocolate layer at the bottom. And just like red panties—really now—is there ever actually a bad time for chocolate? Especially when it’s not expected.

Chocolate Yogurt

3 3/4 cups 2% milk

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup half and half

1/3 cup coffee

6 oz 2% Greek yogurt

1/4 cup maple syrup, or more to taste

Heat milk in a medium saucepan until it boils, whisking occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool until lukewarm (about 90 degrees). In another pan, while milk is heating, combine cocoa, sugar, half and half and coffee and whisk on medium heat until smooth and glossy (it will look like chocolate syrup). Set aside until milk has cooled. If the chocolate sauce sits too long and starts to harden, simply warm it slightly again, though you don't want the sauce to be too hot because you'll eventually be adding it to your yogurt and your lukewarm milk.

Whisk the Greek yogurt into your chocolate sauce and then add to your milk. Add maple syrup and whisk until combined. At this stage, you may want to taste to make sure your yogurt is sweet enough; simply add more maple syrup as needed.

Pour the yogurt mixture into 6 oz glass jars (without their tops) and then into a yogurt maker for 12 hours (it will look soupy). Refrigerate before eating.

Makes about 7-6 oz jars.

Notes

-Alas, you need a yogurt maker for this. While not normally a fan of specialty gadgets (one has to be choosy when living in a studio apartment), I love my yogurt maker and use it more than I ever thought I would. It's from Williams-Sonoma (and Euro Cuisine is the brand).

-Yes, technically you are using yogurt to make yogurt. But you need to get your cultures somehow (and this is the easy way). Greek yogurt adds nice body. Having a little fat helps too.

-I've used honey instead of maple syrup and it also works well.

-This does require some planning. I usually try to make it a few hours before I go to bed.

-I like the intense chocolate flavor non-alkalized cocoa powder provides, so that's what I tend to use.

On a Wing and a Chocolate Covered Ground Cherry

Everyone needs a little whimsy. I recently found some in the ground cherry. Ground cherries are those little Chinese lantern-looking fruits that appear at farmers’ markets in August and September.

I held off buying them for years because I found them perplexing. What were they hiding inside their papery shells? Also, they made me feel bad. You tear their poor little husks back and then what? The cherry is gone in an instant. The whole husk removal process made me feel like I was tearing off angels’ wings. I have enough to worry about without having to fret that I am stirring up trouble in the cherub community.

Then I tasted them. It was like a pineapple and a very sweet cherry tomato got together and had a love child that they wanted to keep a secret. Ground cherries may come all wrapped up, but I can’t keep quiet about them. They are ethereal.

Much like the lemon-ginger mousse coupe I had at Myers + Chang earlier this week. I have practically been stopping strangers on the street to spread the lemon-ginger gospel. Tasting it was like eating a cloud of lemon meringue pie.

The mousse also came with a homemade fortune cookie. You don’t get much more whimsical than that. My fortune: he who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at. Ha!

Joanne Chang’s fanciful dessert (and fortune) must have inspired me because I decided to hold the ground cherries I recently bought by their wings and dip them into chocolate. I used Taza chocolate because I love it and because it is the only chocolate I keep around.

Their factory in Somerville, Massachusetts uses authentic, hand-chiseled Mexican stone mills to grind the cacao they purchase (fairly and responsibly) from farmers. This makes for lovely chocolate. Their granite millstones also make for chocolate with a slightly gritty texture that doesn’t lend itself well to certain baking projects. One could argue it’s probably not practical to have Taza as my “house chocolate.” (To which I reply, since when is chocolate practical?) So on a wing and a prayer, I dipped the ground cherries into Taza’s gritty chocolate.

It worked, but it wasn’t optimal and I’d probably recommend a different chocolate if you are going to try this. Though, you have to love a product with an ingredient list like this:

Ingredients: organic roasted cacao beans, organic cane sugar and organic vanilla bean.

So the ground cherries took a little bath in some pretty pure stuff. Sure, you can see they have a little bit of texture to their bottoms, but this is chocolate dipped fruit we are talking about. Best to keep it light and keep your brow unfurled.

It turns out in the end, the ground cherries held their own little husked maxim: he who laughs at his own chocolate covered ground cherries laughs often (and eats well).

Chocolate Covered Ground Cherries

About 1.5 ounces high quality chocolate, of your choice, chopped into similar-sized pieces

1/2 pint ground cherries

Pull back the husks of the ground cherries but do not detach. Melt two-thirds of the chocolate in a microwave at 10 second intervals. (This is an easy way to temper chocolate so that it chocolate stays smooth and glossy. Though, I suppose if you are using gritty chocolate, it doesn't really matter much now does it?) When the microwaved chocolate is melted, add the reserved chocolate and stir until all of the chocolate is melted. Dip the ground cherries into the chocolate and allow to set.

Notes:

-It is recommended to heat the chocolate until 110 degrees. I've had a candy thermometer on my wish list for quite some time now. Sadly, I don't know that I'll ever be the kind of gal to take the temperature of chocolate before I eat it.