Category Archives: Food science

Peanut butter and chocolate

Posted on November 4, 2009 | 1 Comment
Photo credit: Bob.Fornal (Flickr)

Photo credit: Bob.Fornal (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fornal/373418814)

I apologize to everyone who is allergic to peanuts. Partly because this post is all about peanut butter, but mostly because it’s just so damn delicious.

Every year for the past three years, I have made a peanut butter banana chocolate pie on March 14. For you folks who aren’t math geeks, that’s pi(e) day. As in, 3/14 and 3.14. And really, an excuse to make and eat lots of pie.

Really, it’s an exercise in taking something that’s pretty cool, and making it extravagantly over-the-top. I looked at a recipe for peanut butter mousse pie in a chocolate crumb crust and thought, “you know, what that needs is some sliced bananas in the bottom of it, and maybe a layer of chocolate ganache on top for good measure.” And thus, the peanut butter banana chocolate pie was born. Next time around, I think I’ll take it further and caramelize the bananas in rum.

~~Science interlude~~

Peanuts are not a nut, they’re a legume. Ergo, people who are allergic to peanuts can still eat nuts – unless, of course, they’re allergic to nuts.

Peanuts are rich in an amino acid called arginine (arr-jin-een). Foods that are rich in arginine have been associated with higher likelihood of outbreaks of cold sores and, erm, outbreaks that are like cold sores. To be precise, it’s thought that an imbalance in the levels of two amino acids, arginine and lysine, is responsible for cold sores. (Outbreaks, that is. There’s a cute little virus that causes cold sores and the like in the first place.)

Incidentally, chocolate is also quite rich in arginine. Hrm. Arginine sure is tasty.

~~End interlude~~

There’s just something about peanut butter. It’s rich and luxurious, and that stick-your-tongue-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth feeling is comforting. It reminds me of being an awkward kid with pigtails. I’m pretty sure that when I was a kid, my parents gave me a spoonful of peanut butter just so I’d stop talking.

And peanut butter and chocolate? Divine. Baskin-robbins ice cream, all melty chocolatey with a ribbon of peanut butter stickiness? Yes, please.

I picked up some peanut buttery chocolatey things while in Seattle last week. It’s all research, you see. In my head, I’m creating the world’s best peanut butter and jelly bonbon. It’ll be one part peanut butter praline, one part grape jelly, and all kinds of grown-up, nostalgic tastiness.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Food science, Homemade

Tagged , , , ,

Like Picasso at IKEA

Posted on August 13, 2009 | 4 Comments

I wandered into a chocolate shop the other day, just to have a look around. I really didn’t plan on buying or eating anything.

What’s that phrase about the best-laid plans?

One VISA swipe later, I sat down with a cup of coffee and two square-ish nubs of chocolate: one that was raspberry flavoured, and one that purported to contain bacon.

Yum, bacon.

The problem is, I’ve become kind of cantankerous and picky when it comes to chocolate. I can’t just eat it. I have to dissect it. So, I couldn’t ignore the fact that square chocolates should be, well, square. They should also be even and flat, and not sort of sideways and woozy-looking. And you know, as pretty as that cocoa butter design was on top, it was too bad that the corners of the chocolate were all cracked. And when I turned the chocolates over, it was really too bad that the bottom was cracked along every edge.

This told me a few things.

1. Quality control wasn’t there. I know there are some places that think that mistakes make things look handmade and rustic, but it actually just makes things look messy. If you’re going to do the handmade thing, then really give ‘er and make them look cozy and handmade. But trying to sell me a sad-looking piece of chocolate just makes me sad.

2. Someone mistreated these chocolates. Trade secret: most chocolate shops work weeks in advance, and then refrigerate or freeze the confections until they’re needed. The trick is to acclimatize the chocolates very slowly as they cool, and even more slowly as they warm up. This is because the inside of a confection is made of ganache. A mixture of chocolate and cream, ganache expands and contracts at a different rate than plain chocolate.

If you’re patient and let the confections cool down and warm up slowly, then they’ll look fine. However, if you’re impatient, then the ganache inside will expand faster than the chocolate outside, resulting in sad, cracked edges.

And really, if you’re impatient, you shouldn’t be working with chocolate. What’s the point?

In this case, not only did the chocolatier fail to make sure that every chocolate was perfect, but whoever handled them afterwards couldn’t be bothered to treat them properly. It’s like putting a tacky copy of a Picasso in one of those do-it-yourself cheapie IKEA picture frames.

Boo.

(Oh, and the bacon chocolate? Not nearly as delicious as I thought it would be. Neither the chocolate nor the bacon tasted very good, and the two flavours together just seemed like an afterthought. Double boo.)

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Food science

Tagged , ,

Boozesicles

Posted on August 6, 2009 | 4 Comments

I confess that I’ve never made boozesicles, though I have made some pretty boozy granitas. The thing with freezing alcohol is that, well, it doesn’t. At least, not in a residential freezer, which doesn’t get as cold as a commercial freezer. Depending on how boozy the mixture is that you’re trying to freeze, you’ll have varying degrees of success.

What is freezing, really? Freezing occurs when water goes through a phase change from liquid to solid. In order to do that, all the little water molecules have to find each other and pack together nicely.

Think of a group of friends where there’s some underlying sexual tension. You know, Marie likes Scott and Scott likes Marie and everyone at the table knows it, but Scott and Marie are trying to be discreet. What this actually means is that they sit really close together and touch each other on the shoulder and laugh in a non-cheesy way so that you’d be blind not to know that they’re into each other.

Water mixtures—like juice, iced tea and lemonade—freeze reasonably well because the primary liquid is still water. When you throw alcohol into the mix, then the alcohol molecules interfere with the packing of the water molecules. Kind of like what would happen if Juan, Marie’s super sexy ex-boyfriend showed up and sat between Marie and Scott. Exactly like that.

So can you make boozesicles? Well, yes and no. If there’s a little bit of booze, you’ll be okay. The boozesicle might be slushier than you’re used to, or melt faster than normal.

But it’s a fine line.

Add too much booze and you’ll just have a boozy slushy. Which is probably not a bad thing, but you can’t eat it with a stick. Or on a stick. You could, however, eat it with a spoon. And hey, when your biggest concern is whether to eat a boozy slushy with a stick or a spoon, you know it’s summer and life is good.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Food science

Tagged , , , ,

Mexican chocolate fudgesicles

Posted on August 3, 2009 | 3 Comments

I was all a-twitter (get it? get it?) last week about Mexican chocolate fudgesicles. It started with an insatiable craving for fudgesicles, and then my pastry brain kicked in and wondered how I could turn something lovely into something stupidly extravagant.

Now, I haven’t done any market research. Heck, I haven’t even googled the term. But I’m going to say that in my humble kitchen, on Thursday August 30th, when I was supposed to be writing a proposal, Mexican chocolate fudgesicles were born.

I started with Alton Brown’s fudge pop recipe (thanks to Lorna for the link), but made a few changes. To make it Mexican, I infused the cream/milk mixture with cinnamon and ancho chiles. I also tried it with two kinds of chocolate. The first batch used a mixture of chocolate (mostly dark, but some milk) that made me sad: samples that I picked up that just weren’t tasty or subtle or, if you’ll excuse the snobbery, worth my time eating. The second batch used one bar of Theo 84% Ghana chocolate.

Also, I added a pinch of salt – because salt makes everything taste perkier and happier.

Observation 1. The recipe, which calls for mostly cream and a little bit of milk, is too rich for my liking. When I think of fudgesicles, I think of melty, slightly icy popsicles. The high proportion of cream in this recipe means that you get a really rich, full-flavoured popsicle that isn’t very icy. I’m going to repeat this with more milk, which has less fat and more water than cream – and thus, should result in an icier fudgesicle.

Observation 2. The mixture of sad chocolate actually produced a nicer, meltier fudgesicle. The final mixture was probably about 60% cacao content, which qualifies as dark (and perhaps as bittersweet, depending on who’s doing the marketing).

The 84% chocolate was just too much for this recipe, and I should have known it. Chocolate with more than 70% cacao content usually isn’t good for putting in recipes, because it’s just too much cacao. The actual reason depends on what you’re making, but in this case the high cacao content made the end product less melty. Which is fine, but isn’t what I was going for.

Observation 3. Work-in-progress fudgesicles are delicious. As far as starting points go, this is a good one.

Alton Brown’s Fudgepops recipe (reproduced from the Food Network website)

[My edits are in square brackets.]

Ingredients

  • 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
  • 12 ounces (1 1/2 cups) heavy cream
  • 8 ounces (1 cup) whole milk
  • 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • [2 cinnamon sticks]
  • [1 dried ancho chile, seeded and lightly toasted]
  • [1 pinch of salt]
Directions
Special Equipment: Icepop molds

Place chopped chocolate into a medium glass mixing bowl. Set aside.

[Take the heavy cream and milk and heat in a medium saucepan over medium heat with two sticks of cinnamon and one dried ancho chile that you have seeded and lightly toasted. Bring just to the boil, pop a lid on it, and let it sit at room temperature for 20-60 minutes.]

Combine heavy cream, milk, and cocoa powder [and a pinch of salt] in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Whisk constantly until cocoa is dissolved and mixture comes to a simmer. Remove from the heat [then strain out the cinnamon and ancho goodies] and pour over the chocolate.

Let stand for 2 to 3 minutes and then whisk gently until all chocolate is melted. Whisk in the vanilla extract.

Divide the mixture evenly among the molds and place in the freezer. Freeze for at least 4 hours or until solid. Fudgepops can be held in the freezer for up to 1 week in an airtight container.

[Yeah right, one week in the freezer. I dare you to make these and leave them for one week. DARE YOU.]

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Food science, Homemade

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Vulcano: no-melt, low-calorie chocolate

Posted on July 20, 2009 | 3 Comments

Everyone’s all aflutter with the news that Callebaut has developed a low-calorie, no-melt chocolate. Actually, I’m not sure that everyone’s excited about the same thing. Most people seem to be excited about the low-calorie part. I’ll bet people in hot places are excited about the no-melt part.

I’m not so keen on either. I’ll admit to mild scientific curiosity as to how they engineered chocolate that melts above 50 degrees Celsius, rather than at the standard 30 degrees Celsius. I’m guessing that they took out most of the cocoa butter, which is largely responsible for chocolate’s meltiness and calories. But then what? Chocolate alchemy, I suppose.

Callebaut plans to market its chocolate as no-melt in Asia and Africa, and as low-calorie in Europe and the U.S.

Okay, it’s pretty cool. I give them that. Let’s take a minute and reflect in the infinite coolness that is Vulcano.

…And then let’s get back to reality. Why do you eat chocolate? Do you eat it because you like it? Why do you like it? Is it the taste? The meltiness? The mouth-feel? The antioxidants? The flavonoids?

Can you name just one reason?

How about this wacky idea: you like chocolate because it’s pleasurable. It tastes good. It melts on your tongue. It causes your brain to release happy-making endorphins. It’s all of these things. It’s a pleasurable experience, and one that you can experience in public without getting arrested.

God forbid that we should actually take pleasure in something. A few years ago, people started talking about chocolate as an antioxidant-rich superfood—a preventative piece of dark chocolate a day keeps the cardiac surgeon away. Mass-market chocolate bar companies started selling individually wrapped portions of their bars so that people could eat just one, without feeling guilty. Chocolate as a form of medicine, chocolate as a source of guilt.

Guilt and pleasure have always, and will forever be, inextricably linked.

I heard a woman at the Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon ask how many calories were in a sample she was eating. I’ve heard some crazy things, but that’s pretty high on my list. Honey, look around you. You’re in a room with thousands of pounds of chocolate. Calories go out the window at something like that. Suck it up and eat the chocolate, or just stay home. This in-between, guilt-laden space? Not cool.

Eat chocolate because you like it. Period.

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Food science

Tagged ,