Saturday, April 19, 2008

The endless possibilities of desserts

Seeing the success of my dark chocolate cranberry walnut clusters has inspired me to do some more dried fruit and nut pairings. The possibilities are seemingly endless. I really like working with dark chocolate. It has such a nice rich flavor that is not too sweet. I know that many people enjoy milk and white chocolate as well, but for me dark chocolate is the stuff. I'm thinking almonds and apricots with dark chocolate would be a great combo of texture and flavor. I think I may need to build up some sort of listing of all the different types of nuts and dried fruits and just start experimenting with different combinations.

As far as chocolate goes I think I'm going to spring for some of the fancier dark chocolate. I think the semi-sweet chips are pretty good, but don't have quite enough of the cocoa flavor that I really enjoy. If anyone has any suggestions of good brands of dark chocolate please let me know. I'll do a thorough investigation tomorrow at the grocery store. I find that writing down my ideas in my blog is much easier that keeping stuff on paper. I tend to make my notes on little scraps of paper or on the back of an opened envelope and then inadvertently throw them away, losing the idea in the process. One of these days I'll get around to getting a notebook and start keeping things a little more organized.














2 comments:

Harbor Hon said...

OMG! Jared, you so sound like me with the notes on little pieces of paper that I keep throwing away. :)

As to the chocolate, have you tried bittersweet? That is my ALL TIME favorite chocolate. Or, add a little cayenne pepper to your dark chocolate when you melt it. Changes the flavor ... experiment with quantity ... I usually use a few pinches.

Jared said...

Have not tried bittersweet chocolate or cayenne pepper, but both of those things sound like great ideas. Chocolate is a really flexible medium. Thanks for the great ideas!