Chocoholics' Heavenly Treats

I also always love to make my family and friends Chocolate Birthday Cakes. For my Mother, who must have the healthiest eating habits that I know, I usually make a low-carb, low fat Chocolate Cake with Cherries. A couple of years ago I made my brother a White Chocolate and Raspberry Cake, that he first claimed being "overly sweet" for his taste, but by the next morning most of the cake had disappeared. Just a word of advice about melting white chocolate: always do the melting of chocolate in a bain-marie - a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water, but with white chocolate make sure that the water is not boiling anymore when you insert the chocolate in the bowl. I personally take the warmed bowl off the pot when inserting the chocolate.

I also don't need large tablets of Chocolate to devour, often just an After Eight - the famous British Chocolate Mint after dinner will suffice. If eating Italian a couple of 'Baci di Perugia' chocolates or Leonidas Ganache or Bûche Pralinée after a nice Stomp with sausages in Belgian style.

When I used to live in the Central Europe I often used to go for lunch at the local
Le Pain Quotidien and opt for a simple tartine et chocolate. During the week-ends we often had breakfast there, with croissants and hot chocolate and made sure that we always had some of their heavenly chocolate hazelnut spread available also at home.

The best French Hot Chocolate I have surprisingly not enjoyed in Paris, although some of the smaller Cafés in Bastille still make it in the traditional manner using whole milk, not cream. This should also be good news for those who worry about calories in hot chocolate. Over ten years ago my then favourite Patron de café shared his family recipe with me. While I will not mention the name of the Patron here, although I wish to send him my best regards, while sharing his wonderful recipe with you, so also you can enjoy the glowing goodness it brings to the cold of the winters!

But back to the best French Hot Chocolate, that I enjoyed in a tiny French Chocolatier in Tallinn, introduced to me by a dear friend. Since then I have always made sure, that I have time to stop for a cup at The Pierre Chocolatier when I visit Tallinn.

But life isn't always like a Box of Chocolates. There are times, when a chocoholic does run into an alert state and for those desperate moments I advice a simple bar of chocolate. A Cadbury Chocolate Bar, a Bounty, Twix or a Daim, at the right time at the right place, can turn almost any misery into a momentum. Just make sure to have some available - in your handbag, in the car and in your larder at home!

Green & Black's Organic truly masters the art of wine and chocolate pairing.

They offer deluxe chocolates in different flavours paired with Bonterra Organic Cabernet Sauvignon and Bonterra Organic Sauvignon Blanc.
So luxurious and simple, delivered to your door!

This Christmas I offered my husband, another secret Chocoholic in the family, a gift box of selected deluxe chocolates paired with St Peter's Organic Ale and St Peter's Organic Bitter. As he really enjoys the St Peter's range of different biers, he was delighted to try them with these elite chocolates.

I would recommend this idea for any loving wife or girlfriend whit a secret Chocoholic as a husband.

Chocolate Habanero Chili plants

Chocolate Cosmos flowers have a sweet and delicate scent of chocolate, that is most intense during the morning.

from Chokoladkultur.se

"One dissolves 1 ounce of chocolate bar in 6 ounces of water or tepid milk and heat it up until the mixture slowly simmers, stir it over the fire for a quarter of an hour, whisk until spumous, whereupon the scum is poured into a vessel. Continuous skimming is momentous; the remains in the vessel are to be whisked anew, so that it spumes."

After giving the cacao tree its scientific name, Theobróma cacáo, in the mid 18th century Swedish physician and botanist Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) described the beverage as mild and salubrious. Chocolate was sold in pharmacies and consisted of roasted and grounded cocoa beans, sugar, vanilla, ambergris and cinnamon, all processed into viscous paste to be dried. The different ingredients, especially combined, were considered to be stimulating the nervous system and the love life. The fortifying chocolate drink was also believed to cure several maladies.