More Fun in the Mail: Scharffen Berger Gift via The Peche

Do people frequently send you chocolate in the mail? No? Well, you should try starting a blog about chocolate. Because since Labor Day, I’ve gotten fudge from Kansas City, stone ground chocolate from Nashville, and samples from Ritter Sport.

And then today, when I went to pick up a package of swim caps for the team I coach from the front desk of my building, I found that I had yet another package.

Inside was a letter. Apparently, the folks over at The Peche thinks that I’m interested in the Scharffen Berger Adventure contest.

Maybe they think that because I told them about my detailed project plan for test recipes. And look, Scharffen Berger has a nice card with inspiration recipe that involves multiple adventure ingredients.

And underneath those inspirational cards about the contest, there was more.

Yes more.

The goods:

• A 3 ounce bar of 41% cocoa milk chocolate
• A 3 ounce bar of 72% cocoa Bentre, which is a limited edition chocolate maker’s series bar
• A 9.7 ounce block of unsweetened chocolate (which I love to use in pumpkin spice brownies)
• ¼ gram of select Persian saffron threads (!), which is one of the adventure ingredients
• 1.19 oz of Artisana coconut butter, another adventure ingredient
• And fancy Scharffen Berger baking cups

Oh, this is going to be fun. And just in time for the weekend. My life is about to get way better.

Cherpumple Part 1: An Exercise of Epic Baking

At times, we all do things we aren’t proud of. I’m sure that, for example, Ronald Reagan would prefer to forget that whole Iran-Contra thing. And in retrospect, Martha Stewart would probably be a little more precise about her answers to questions about stock trading. It happens to all of us.

And this weekend, I did something I’m not very proud of.

I made a cherpumple.

That three layer dessert which involves one layer of spice cake containing a pumpkin pie, one layer of yellow cake containing an apple pie, and one layer of white cake containing a cherry pie. All surrounded with cream cheese frosting. It's a spectacle that doesn't belong in my kitchen

The motivation for this? It all started on Jenna’s blog. You should read about it there, where you, yes you, can also bid on this very cherpumple and make it your own.

Also, since a cherpumple involves no chocolate, I will make this a post about chocolate by giving you a link Jenna’s recipe for Sweet and Salty Thumbprint Cookies. This recipe include bittersweet chocolate AND unsweetened cocoa powder. It's a win all around.

So now that we’ve officially made this a post about chocolate, how, yes how, does one make a cherpumple? The inventor, Charles Phoenix cheats and uses store bought pies and cake mixes. Not me.

I made pie crust from scratch.

Then made pies from scratch.

I wrapped them tightly and froze them, because this makes it appreciably easier to move the pie into the pan for baking.

You may notice that I baked the pies in disposable cake pans. Why cake pans? Because the edges are vertical, which I figured would be better for structural integrity of the final stack. I also used cake pans because I found 8” disposable cake pans, which means that when I used my 10” springform pan to bake the pie-cake layers, I would have 1” of pure cake all around the edges. Also good for structure.

After the pie baking was complete, I started making cakes. Again, from scratch.

As in, I did the whole butter-sugar creaming thing.

And added in dry ingredients that I mixed myself.

I baked a stand-alone layer of about 2 cups of batter in a 10” springform pan lined with parchment paper at 350° F for 20 minutes; the purpose of doing this was to ensure that I had a solid mass of cake in each layer.

It is worth noting that if you make a cherpumple, especially if you do so by making pies and cakes from scratch, and spend a good amount of time talking about the process and modifications you are making to optimize structural integrity, your friends and family will worry about you. One of them might come over to check on you and eat some leftover chili.

While said friend is visiting, it’s completely socially acceptable to work on baking one of the pie-cake layers. I checked. And then I spread a little batter at the bottom of a 10” springform pan lined with parchment paper.

Then, as my slightly horrified friend watched, I dropped a pie on top of the batter.

I poured the remaining batter around the pie edges and on top of the pie.

Then it baked at 350° F for NINETY MINUTES. That’s how much of a monstrosity each layer is.

I chilled this layer to ensure that it would be easier to work with, placed it on top of the previously-baked layer, and tightly wrapped them in plastic wrap before freezing them.

Oh, and I did this three times. Three pies from scratch. Three homemade batches of cake batter. Three sessions of baking a pie into a cake.

My friend is still worried about me.

And I haven’t even posted about the frosting and assembly process. That post shows up on Thursday. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, go to Jenna’s blog to bid on this beauty.

Macaron Monday: Accepting a Challenge, Chocolate Style

One treat I like sampling at fancy bakeries is the French macaron. I tried one from Cacao in Cleveland Park, and another one from Praline in Bethesda, with the Cacao version being a bit better. The reason I like sampling them at fancy bakeries is that, in 30 years of life, I’d never learned out to make them from scratch.

Until this weekend.

Last week, Heather issued a challenge: Make macarons, or another culinary creation you have been apprehensive about conquering, and write a post about the process. This challenge, dubbed “Macaron Monday,” was just too tempting, and I settled on staying true to the challenge title and researched recipes for macarons. Chocolate, of course. I periodically read Helene’s site, so I knew that she was the go-to resource for all things related to making macarons. After poring over her extensive macaron recipe collection, and after translating ingredient masses into volumes, I settled on the following ingredient list for the shells.

Macaron Shell Ingredients

3 egg whites

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 1/3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup natural process unsweetened cocoa powder (Scharffen Berger)

¾ cup almond flour

The neatest thing about making the shells is that I get to use my stand mixer AND my food processor. Two of my favorite things in life.

Other things that I adore include chocolate, sugar, and ground nuts.

I took the powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and almond flour and ran them through the food processor until finely ground, taking care to ensure that I didn’t accidentally make sweet chocolate almond butter by running the food processor too long.

Having prepared that mixture, I moved on to making the meringue. Per Helene’s suggestion, I’d separated my egg whites three days earlier, and let them sit at room temperature for about a day before working on the shells. I began by whipping the egg whites until, as Helene says, they were foamy like bubble bath.

I then continued whipping them and slowly added the sugar until I had a glossy meringue, which, as Helene notes, should look like shaving cream.

Now it was time to add the almond-sugar-cocoa mixture and give a couple of quick folds.

And then carefully fold until well mixed, taking care to not over-mix.

Since the batter for the shells needs to be piped out into circles 1.5” in diameter with the edges approximately 1” apart, my engineer self got to measuring.

Unnecessary, but fun.

I got out my wide plain decorating tip, and filled up a pastry bag with batter.

Then it was time to oh-so-carefully pipe out the 1.5” diameter rounds.

In an attempt to get that “foot” that Nick Malgieri calls the mark of perfection on a meringue-based creation, I let the piped rounds sit out at room temperature for about 45 minutes. This was supposed to help form a “skin” on the surface of each piped round, which would rise up as a unit during baking and result in that ever-desirable “foot.” I put the sheet in the oven, which I’d heated to 280° F, and let the piped rounds bake for 20 minutes.

While the shells rose fairly nicely during baking, that signature “foot” didn’t appear. No worries. They were surely still fit for filling. After the shells cooled for a few minute, I removed them from the parchment paper and set them on a cooling rack, and made some ganache for the filling in the meantime.

Ganache Ingredients

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (Scharffen Berger 70% Cocoa Bittersweet)

½ cup heavy cream

This part is easy: Heat the cream to a simmer over medium heat. Remove from heat, drop chocolate in pan and allow to sit for five minutes. Stir to a uniform consistency.

As the ganache cooled down a bit, I matched up shells of similar sizes to ensure that the sandwiches were as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Once that was done, I pulled out a narrow decorating tip and attached it to a pastry bag, which I then filled with still-warm ganache.

The purpose of piping the ganache was to ensure that I had the ganache just hit the edges of the shells without any leakage occurring.

After allowing the piped ganache to cool a bit further, I made paired the shells and had some pretty respectable macarons for a first go-around.

The shells have a slight crunch on the outside and a soft almond-flavored interior, which is a good compliment to the intensely-flavored bittersweet ganache inside. The shells are slightly moist, and therefore stand up well to the ganache and do not crumble when you bite into them.

This is definitely something I will try again. Thanks for the challenge, Heather. We should make this a regular thing.

Olive and Sinclair: Mexican Style Cinn-Chili

That package I received from Heather last week had two stone-ground chocolate bars from Nashville, and I only discussed the 75% cocoa dark chocolate bar in my first post about the package. Truthfully, I was even more excited about the second Olive & Sinclair bar, the Mexican Style Cinn-Chili bar, but when trying out a new chocolatier, I like to sample a plain chocolate first to get a better sense of what they are all about before I dive into the more exotic creations. Having accomplished that by trying the 75% cocoa dark chocolate bar, I moved along to the Mexican Style Cinn-Chili bar.

Again, the aroma isn’t very strong – not even from the cinnamon or chili – so I had to bite into it to find out more.

My impressions of this chocolate came in four stages. First, the chocolate is soft with a little grit to it, and that unique texture leads to the second stage of taste-testing: the cinnamon. As the soft chocolate melts away, the chili starts to come through as the third stage. The fourth stage comes several seconds later, when I tried to determine what the chocolate itself tasted like. After several bites of this 67% cocoa bar, I was convinced that it was more about the add-in flavors than the chocolate flavor, and that the chocolate quality was most evident through the texture. Since I adore cinnamon and chili in chocolate, I enjoyed the spiciness despite the fact that it overwhelmed the chocolate flavor. I would certainly get this bar again, but more for the cinnamon and chili mixed with the high-quality cocoa butter than for the chocolate itself.

Olive and Sinclair: 75% Cocoa Bar via Blogger Chocolate Exchange

Something very awesome showed up in my mailbox yesterday afternoon.

Alright, well, that was awesome, but few people get as excited about The Economist as I do, and it usually has very little to do with chocolate. This, however, has everything to do with chocolate.

After I sent Heather some Teuscher super-dark chocolate to sample, she kindly sent me some chocolate from her neck of the woods (Nashville), along with a cute homemade card. I love checking out boutique and bean-to-bar chocolatiers, and these bars by Olive and Sinclair certainly fit the bill. I started off with the 75% cocoa pure chocolate bar.

Inside that sassy wrapper is a dark chocolate bar sourced entirely from the Dominican Republic. The aroma wasn’t that noticeable, so I had to take a bite to find out what this bar was all about.

The bar is quite soft for a dark chocolate, and melts very nicely. Clearly, high-quality cocoa butter is in play here. The chocolate is not very sweet, which allows the chocolate flavor to shine, but there is just enough sugar mixed in to cut the bitterness to make it enjoyable on its own. I sensed a woody taste with a bit of a cherry after flavor. I definitely like this bar, and will be on the lookout for shops that carry it. Thanks, Heather! Nice find over in Tennessee.

Blogger Chocolate Sharing and Teuscher Deal for DC Folks

I write a lot on here about Teuscher, despite the fact that there is no store in DC. Every time I get myself to a city with a Teuscher shop, I lament this unfair state of the world to whoever happens to be the chocolate consultant working that day. Evidently, I have done this so many times that at least one staff member in Boston remembers me based on this rant. Their chocolate is so good, though, that it's worth traveling long distances to obtain.

I mentioned the Teuscher 99% bar to another blogger who loves super-dark chocolate, and sent her some to try.

Not only did she love it, but she had the brilliant idea of combining it with coconut. You must read about it.

But how, how to get your hands on some Teuscher chocolate if you are in DC? Well, you could try to be friends with me. Or, you could get in touch with the Teuscher shop in Philadelphia, which is offering special shipping rates to DC-area residents in light of the lamentable lack of a Teuscher storefront here. Simply call or email Rachel Goldberg (215-546-7600 and rachel at teuscherphiladelphia dot com) and let her know that you heard about the special shipping rates from the District Chocoholic blog. I hear they have pumpkin truffles in stock for Halloween, but they may be in short supply, so call soon.

Now if that isn't just the best way to start a weekend, I don't know what is.

Check out Another Blog: My Cornmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Today, I did a guest blog post for Janet, whose blog is entitled "Dying for Chocolate." This is a blog that I just have to keep up with, for obvious reasons. I passed along my recipe for cornmeal cookies.

Go check out her blog for the recipe, and make this fall-inspired chocolate cookie yourself.