use real butter

Recipe: chocolate éclairs

Around this time of year, I’m usually too busy cleaning my house and cooking traditional dishes for the Lunar New Year to take notice of Valentine’s Day. That and the fact that I am not romantic AT ALL. Honestly, Valentine’s Day would not have been on my radar this year if it weren’t for my client’s product shoot last month. Since several of you inquired about the chocolates from this post, I thought I’d share some Robin Chocolates with you.

say hi to the valentine’s day chocolate truffle lineup (each is a different flavor)

Robin Chocolates is a local chocolatier based in Longmont, Colorado (just outside of Boulder). The confections and pastries that come out of that store are simply gorgeous, matched in beauty by the incredible quality of these award winning chocolates (rose caramel, salt caramel, raspberry, irish cream, molé, pomegranate, lavender, orange blossom, key lime pie… to name a few). I love working with Robin, the chocolatier and owner, in part because her candies are such a pleasure to photograph. The other reason is because Robin is badass. She is this petite, smart, no-nonsense, hard-working, talented, passionate, funny woman who is on her third successful career and loving it (first was Navy, then tech). BADASS, I say.

meet robin

Each chocolate is a work of art – elegantly decorated and lovingly hand-crafted. Whenever I pick up product to photograph, Robin leads me around the back and fills a bag of “rejects” for me to give to Jeremy (because I don’t really eat chocolate and yes, she thinks I’m crazy). I mentioned the Valentine’s shoot to my mom a few weeks ago. Mom likes chocolate. She asked if I could send her the truffles when I’m done photographing them. I explained that I didn’t think they were suitable to send to her since they are heavily handled and kept around for almost a month until we are sure there are no reshoots. I could detect the disappointment in her voice even though she said it was okay. So I ordered a box of the Valentine’s truffles just for Mom.

12 of hearts: now that’s a pretty gift

And because I like you guys, I asked Robin if I could give away two boxes of her VERY AMAZING Valentine’s Day chocolate truffles. Robin does not screw around, kids. She uses Valrhona chocolate and magically weaves flavors and textures together into a most decadent and sublime masterpiece. You want a box, or at the very least, you want to send a box to someone you love… I mean someone you REALLY love. This is coming from me, the person who doesn’t really dig on chocolate, but who won’t shut up about Robin Chocolates.

THE DEALIO: It’s a giveaway! Win one of two 12 of Hearts boxes (heart-shaped chocolate truffles) shipped anywhere in the United States. That means if you live outside the US but want to ship the chocolates to someone or someplace in the States, you can enter.

1) Leave a comment on this post sharing who your favorite Valentine is.
2) One comment per person, please.
3) Comments must be received by 11:59 pm Mountain Standard Time, Thursday, February 7, 2013.
4) The chocolates can only ship within the United States (winner’s recipient must have a US mailing address).
5) Two winners will be selected at random by Jeremy (Kaweah has retired).
6) The two winners will be announced on Friday, February 8, 2013.

Good luck!

kaweah can’t eat the chocolates, but she’ll taste the props

We’re not done with chocolate, not by a long shot. Back in the day, when I was a member of the Daring Bakers and our ranks numbered in the hundreds, one of our monthly challenges was éclairs. I was excited because éclairs had been on my “learn to make” list for a while. But the week before the reveal date, I went into the ER with a leaky appendix (unbeknownst to us, it had been leaking for months) and left a few days later without my appendix. I had missed the August 2008 challenge, but the éclairs remained on my to do list for four and a half years. I finally crossed it off the list this weekend. The recipe has multiple parts mixed and matched from two different sources, so I’ll present them to you in the order I made them. First: chocolate pastry cream.

milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, sugar, butter, chocolate

heat the milk in one pan

stir the yolks, cornstarch, and sugar together in another pan

temper the egg yolk mixture with the hot milk

If I were eating the éclairs, I would have made regular pastry cream. But I made these for Jeremy (and my neighbors) and I knew that a chocolate pastry cream would appeal to him. This chocolate pastry cream comes from the Daring Bakers challenge which follows Pierre Hermé’s recipe. It’s probably the nicest and most well-behaved pastry cream I’ve ever made – thick and smooth with terrific flavor. I think as long as you use good quality chocolate (I used Valrhona 66%) and other ingredients, it can’t go wrong.

add chocolate to the pastry cream

finish with butter

rich, silky, smooth

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: peanut butter truffles

You know when you get sick and you feel awful and then when you’re well again it’s completely amazeballs awesome? That’s me times a million. I get that same feeling of elation as I would every time I came out of a chemo round. It makes me want to burst through the front door and go running into the mountains. Because I was sick for most of last week, I decided to lay low over the holiday, listen to my body and rest. I do get a little stir crazy after a few days indoors, but managed to find several projects to keep me occupied. And it helped to just stay off the computer.

cardboard tube light saber fight: the light saber lost

nothing beats a hot bowl of chinese noodle soup when you’re sick

We had received a club shipment of sparkling wine the week prior – four magnums. I was on the mend, so we decided to have some folks over to help us put a dent in the bubbles over the weekend. I mean, magnums are so festive, no? I was psyched to be able to cook for friends or do anything for that matter! We were treated to a blazing sunset off the deck and an evening spent with wonderful people. I’m feeling good and ready to plunge into January!

bubbles

i had to stop folding dumplings to run out and catch this one

Jeremy and I walked off the party food Sunday afternoon. It had been a week since I’d been outside in the woods or even remotely active and I missed it. It’s my battery charger to get out and breathe that clean air, to walk through the pristine snow. And now that I’m nearly back to normal, I can look at the computer monitor without getting a headache. In the baking madness of mid December, I dug up an old recipe my elementary school teacher had made for my class back in the 70s. They’re called peanut butter truffles, but I always thought of them as peanut butter balls. It called for margarine in the filling and paraffin wax in the coating, so I made the appropriate adjustments.

butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, peanut butter, confectioners sugar, butter

That’s right, I subbed butter for the margarine (we don’t use margarine on this blog, EVER) and omitted the paraffin wax altogether. It’s a simple treat to make, which is probably why my teacher thought it would be a good project for her class of second graders. I just remember bringing home a small canister filled with cupcake papers that had three peanut butter balls in each paper and wanting to show my grandma what we had made that day in school.

beat the butter and peanut butter together

add the confectioner’s sugar

it should be fluffy when mixed

I haven’t made these in a long long time. I used organic ingredients where possible and mixed the filling in no time with my stand mixer. I considered skipping the butterscotch chips and just tempering dark chocolate for the coating, but there was that whole nostalgia thing going on in my head. So the butterscotch chips stayed. But if you are interested in tempering chocolate for a coating, I describe the seed method in this post.

grab a pinch of peanut butter filling

roll into balls

now melt the chips

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chocolate gingerbread pancakes

People react to tragedy in different ways, and we were reminded of this on Friday morning when shock and despair rippled through our collective consciousness. I shed tears for people I didn’t know – victims, survivors, families, a community – and later more tears for my friend whose little nephew was lost in the shooting. You can do something or you can do nothing, but we all have a choice here and my hope is that we will think carefully and clearly about that choice.

I have experienced loss, but I am no expert. I seek solace in nature, a place so cold and indifferent and yet almost painfully beautiful. The world continues around you, no matter what has happened, and I find comfort in that. It helps me to pick myself up and continue. I thought I’d share some of the beauty in my corner of the world from a weekend that left so many of us heartsick.

an especially bright meteor from the geminids shower early friday morning

two meteors within 30 seconds of one another

a lovely red fox hiding out in the yard

We spent the weekend hosting a dear high school friend of mine and his wonderful wife at our house. It’s so nice to spend an entire evening catching up and sharing with people you love and admire, but rarely get to see in person. We curled up on couches under warm quilts, eating dessert, bonding over any topic and every topic. The following morning was Mitch’s birthday and Shannon clued me in on his favorite breakfast treat – pancakes. Imagine this Harvard-trained world-traveling consultant-do-gooder gourmand sitting down to a stack of pancakes and clapping his hands together like a little kid. Just one of many reasons why I love Mitch.

happy birthday, sweetie

I am not a breakfast person, and I think most of you knew that. But isn’t there something awfully special about pancakes? I sort of feel that pancakes bring out the kid in all of us. They are like breakfast presents for children – both the small and the big children. Morning happiness on a plate. An act of love. I’m thinking Saturday mornings in your pajamas eating pancakes with sticky syrup and watching favorite cartoons with nary a care in the world. I equate pancakes with childhood… precious childhood. Let’s make some pancakes.

eggs, molasses, brown sugar, spices, flour, chocolate, butter, buttermilk, leavenings

While I don’t indulge in pancakes very often, I do enjoy a fluffy buttermilk pancake from time to time – preferably with fruit inclusions. But sometimes you have to go a little wild and change things up. As I flipped through my copy of Desserted, my eyes locked onto a recipe for chocolate gingerbread pancakes. How Decemberish!

mix the dry ingredients

mix the wet ingredients

add chocolate (i swear this isn’t dessert)

**Jump for more butter**