Category Archives: chocolate

Nutty cherry chocolate coconut flapjack granola bars

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What? Cherries and chocolate and coconut and nuts? And oats? Is this possible? Indeed it is, and its delicious, too. My boys like granola bars, and believe that they’re a healthy snack. I believe that granola bars are just cookies disguised as a healthy snack. And they remind me of the English version of flapjacks, which I love a lot. I have no problem with my boys eating cookies, or other sweet snacks, but if they’re going to eat something unhealthy, I’m going to make it for them myself, dammit! For some reason I feel better knowing that they’re getting actual butter and sugar rather than processed blizz blazz. It might seem silly, but there it is! Plus these have oats and nuts and fruit, so there’s some good with the bad. Obviously, you can throw anything you like in there! Don’t not make them because you don’t have all of these specific ingredients! I had fewer chocolate chips than I thought, so I threw some mini M&Ms left over from Isaac’s birthday into the mix.

I think of oats and chocolate as being ultimately comforting. And I’ve always wanted to make a playlist of empathetic songs. Songs like the magnificent It Hurts Me Too, by Elmore James. So I’ve compiled such a list, and I love it, so far. Some of the songs might be more sympathetic than empathetic – it’s a fairly liquid shift from one to the other, isn’t it? But they’re all supportive and comforting. Can you think of any songs to add to the list?
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Banana-chocolate chip-cranberry sauce cake

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Banana cranberry sauce cake

Hello, and welcome to another installment of “Claire clumsily paraphrases wikipedia in an attempt to share an artist that she loves.” David recently purchased a many-volume set of Memphis Minnie CDs. So much good music! She just kills me. She, quite literally, rocks. In the past I haven’t been able to find recordings of all her works, but I’ve read her lyrics like poetry. It’s so wonderful to be able to hear them now. Let me tell you a little something about her… She was born Lizzie Douglas, in 1893. She learned very young to play guitar and banjo, and ran away from home at thirteen to try to support herself as a musician. She landed in Memphis, Tennessee, and played in nightclubs and on the street. She travelled with Ringling Brothers circus for a while, and eventually she married and recorded with Kansas Joe McCoy. In the thirties she moved to Chicago, and formed a band with drum and bass, thus single-handedly inventing rock n roll. (What? what?) She went on to record during the forties, but her popularity and her health failed in the fifties. She died in a nursing home in 1973. Her songs are remarkable. On her gravestone it says, “The hundreds of sides Minnie recorded are the perfect material to teach us about the blues. For the blues are at once general, and particular, speaking for millions, but in a highly singular, individual voice. Listening to Minnie’s songs we hear her fantasies, her dreams, her desires, but we will hear them as if they were our own.” You do feel this way when you hear her songs! Her life was so different from mine – so wild and uncertain and vulnerable – and yet when I hear her songs I often think, “I feel that, way too.” Her words are so human and raw and honest and mysterious, all at the same time. The picture you form of her, from her songs, is of a woman who is strong and funny, empathetic but guarded, and who has been hurt and has known a lot of pain.

Here’s I Hate to See the Evening Sun Go Down,

I hate to see evenin’ sun go down
I hate to see evenin’ sun go down
Cause it makes me think, I’m on my last go-round

Some people take the blues, go jump overboard and drown
Some people take the blues, go jump overboard and drown
But when they gets on me, I’d rather stay ‘n go sit down

I been to the river, looked it up and down
I been to the river, looked it up and down
But when my mind never let me, to jump overboard and drown

There’s such a strange hopefulness in the lyrics, with the very blues that are bringing her down also buoying her up.

She has quite a few songs about prostitution, but I love the odd beautiful detail of Hustlin Woman’s Blues…

I stood on the corner all night long, counting the stars one by one
I stood on the corner all night long, counting the stars one by one
I didn’t make me no money, Bob, and I can’t go back home

New Dirty Dozen is a sassy, funny insult song, based on the game dirty dozens, which involves inventing increasingly hurtful insults about a person’s family, until somebody can’t take it any more and gets angry…

Come all you folks and start to walk, I’m fixing to start my dozen talk
What you’re thinking about ain’t on my mind, that stuff you got is the sorriest kind
Now you’re a sorry mistreater, robber and a cheater
Slip you in the dozens, your papa and your cousin
Your mama do the lordy lord

She has beautiful songs about rambling, about being cold and homeless, with sore feet and not enough to eat, songs about being treated cruelly by policemen and judges and doctors and boyfriends, songs about dirt dauber wasps building nests on her when she was a child, songs about superstition, even a song about President Roosevelt and a mule, she has a lovely song of admiration about Ma Rainey, she has generous songs offering shelter and food to desperate men, she has saucy, sexy songs, songs full of hunger and pain, songs full of warmth and humanity. And she plays guitar like a mother-flipper!

Here’s a small playlist of Memphis Minnie songs.

And here’s a cake that uses up leftover cranberry sauce and bananas that are past their prime. It’s rich and moist and tasty. I added chocolate chips, cause I love them, but you could easily leave them out.

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Chocolate-covered, raspberry-filled coconut shortbread cookies

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Raspberry coconut chocolate-covered cookies

Isaac says that the worst thing about turning seven is that you’re all achy when you wake up in the morning. And I said, “just you wait till you’re forty-three and when you drop a pencil it’s not worth bending down to pick it up!” (And then I worried that I was belittling his complaint. And then I worried that he was coming down with something, because a seven-year-old shouldn’t be achy! He seems fine, though.) But I spent some time thinking about it, this morning, sitting on the couch with Clio and not getting anything done. (She’s no help, this puppy! Does she shoo me off the couch and say, “get to work!”? She does not! She makes ridiculously cute little grumbly clucky noises “ooonph, ooonph” and curls up on top of me with a big sigh so I couldn’t get up even if I wanted to!) Ah yes, I was thinking about it this morning, whilst slowly recovering from a busy weekend of I’m-too-old-to-be-a-waitress, especially in shoes that are a size too big. I’ve been feeling very stressy, lately. With stomachaches and headaches and rashes. Of course a big part of the problem is that I stress about the symptoms, I’m too aware of them when they’re there, and not grateful enough to feel better when they’re gone. Something I think about quite a bit is feeling good – a specific moment in time when you feel good and you know it. You walk down the streets of your town feeling sunny and light and happy and comfortable with yourself. You’re not hungry or tired or manic. You’re not worried about anything. The sun is shining, and it feels good to walk in a place that you know and love. It’s not a lot to ask, really – it’s more the absence of discomfort and anxiety than anything else – but it seems like such a precious, elusive feeling. It would be nice to bottle it as an elixir for the next time you have a sniffle, or you shut your finger in a door (that’s me, last night!), or you’ve got worries weighing down your heavy feet. It’s a feeling I associate with youth and springtime, but you can feel it in the winter, too, even when you’re forty-three and you don’t always feel like bending down to pick up a pencil.

I like songs about this sort of moment, and I was listening to one the other day, but I can’t remember what it is! I’ve started a short playlist of the ones I can think of, and I’d appreciate your help in adding to it! Songs about feeling good, in your neighborhood. I’ve stretched the rubric a little for some of these, but the nice thing is, listening to these songs makes you feel good!

I had a meeting with a client who asked me to make a dessert for a dinner party. (Okay, so the client was my mother and the meeting was a glass of wine in the afternoon! Before pick-up at the school! Shocking!) The party was a wine-tasting featuring Argentine wines, and the maternal client requested a dessert with coconut, raspberry and dark chocolate. So I decided to make a version of Argentine-style alfajores. These little cakes are made with a subtly-flavored coconut shortbread, sandwiched together with raspberry jam, and coated in bittersweet chocolate. They also reminded me of the empire biscuits that my scottish mother-in-law makes. I think they would make a nice sweet for a holiday party, because they’re portable – you can stuff a few in your pockets and wander from conversation-to-conversation, fully stocked!!

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Isaac’s Robot Cake!

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Robot cake

I pretty much spent the entire day yesterday making a robot cake and blowing up 125 balloons. I consider it a day well spent, even though all of the balloons were popped within ten minutes once the party started, and the cake quickly became a headless, armless little lump of a robot. The party was wild! And noisy! And rambunctious! But Isaac had a wonderful time, slept late this morning, and then announced that he feels so lucky to be part of this family. I went on and on about Isaac yesterday, so I’ll just share a few pictures today. Here’s Isaac, wearing my shirt, blowing out his birthday candles…

Here’s a series of pictures he did for a flipbook. I just love them! I love the way his little brain works! It’s only part way done, and I’m on tenterhooks to see how it ends.

I made the cake with non-cake pans, I used an oven-proof bowl for the head, a souffle dish for the body, a small square baking dish for the feet (cut in half into two rectangles) and three cupcakes each for the arms. I used m&ms to make the control panels, and twizzlers to make the hoses, because Isaac assures me that robots have hoses. My policy is to make an ugly cake look nice with lots of candy, and make a messy house look good with lots of balloons, so that’s what we did!

And Isaac says his favorite song is Brianstorm by the Arctic Monkeys, so here it is!
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Pumpkin blondies with chocolate-covered ginger

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Pumpkin blondies

I’ve mentioned in the past that my fun-o-meter might be broken. I’ve told you how things that I’m supposed to find fun make me anxious, and things that many people think of as chores are my favorite things to do…every….day. On my ideal day we’d go for a hike, write or draw a bit, listen to music, make a nice dinner, go for a walk around town, watch a good movie. Nothing fantastic, but we’d do it together, and we’d all be in good moods and get along with each other (this means you, boys!) Nothing makes me feel like getting out the old fun-o-meter adjuster like a holiday. I like holidays, but I don’t anticipate them as eagerly as I once did. You can never quite match that childish zeal, and sometimes it makes me feel a little sad to have lost it. Isaac is a living manifestation of Halloween excitement. He asks me every morning how many days are left. He plans his costume, wears the bits we’ve already made, changes his mind about what he wants to be. He draws zombies and skeletons and ghosts. He’s sad that we don’t have more Halloween decorations, and he spent an afternoon cutting them out of paper and hanging them in the windows. And he wants to carve pumpkins, lots of pumpkins. I’ve been thinking about pumpkins, this morning, and I think they might be my golden ticket back to Halloween glee. I can’t really get excited about trick-or-treating. I love making the boys’ costumes but I’m anxious that I won’t get them done on time, or they won’t look right. But pumpkins…lately I’ve looked on pumpkin carving as a messy and slimy task. But today I realized the error of my ways. I love pumpkins! I love everything about them. The way they taste, the way they smell, their color, the word, “pumpkin.” I love how mythological they seem – they can replace a horseman’s head or they can become an enchanted carriage. And I love the idea of souls and spirits…this time of year is so rich in the remembrance of souls, so joyful and awe-ful. A jack-o-lantern is a pumpkin spirit, smiling out at you with fiendish glee. It’s the ingis fatuus that leads you across dry fields of middle-aged disillusionment to the vibrant, glowing, slightly frightening, sweet, morally complicated, highly anticipated night that is Halloween. I can’t wait to carve one!

I thought these pumpkin blondies turned out very tasty! They’re a little softer than a normal blondie, cause of the pumpkin, but they make up for this (not unpleasant) attribute with taste. I spiced them with cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice, and I added chocolate-covered-ginger, which contributed a lovely chewy little bite. I added a handful of chocolate chips, too, because you can never have enough chocolate!

Here’s Mikey Dread’s spooky Pre-Dawn Dub.
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Pear/hazelnut/chocolate crisp and ginger ice cream

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Hazelnut chocolate pear crisp and ginger ice cream

I had a hard time taking this picture, because of the fading light. In the summertime I could take pictures of my food outside, in perfect light, just before we ate it. Lately it’s been harder and harder. It’s often dark by the time we eat our meal, and I have to save some to photograph the next day, which reminds me of last winter (and makes me feel a little crazy! Who photographs their food? Who does? Well, everyone lately, it seems.) For some reason this simple fact – that I can’t take a photograph before dinner – makes me feel almost anxious. It drives home the fact that days are getting shorter and that winter is coming, in an oddly concrete way. I love the long days of summer – so generous and expansive. There’s time for anything that you might want to do. Evenings this time of year always make me feel melancholy. The darkness is closing in on you, and you can feel time passing. In the summer we have gloaming, a warm glowing beautiful hour, when all the golden heat of the day collects on the edges of the world and holds the bright clouds. In the winter we have dusk, full of chilly shadows and dark spaces. It all goes so fast – it all slips right by you, as you’re caught up in the worries of the day.

You know what makes autumn evenings pleasurable? Cooking! Being in a warm, cozy kitchen, no matter how dark and cold it is outside, making something warm and comforting is what it’s all about this time of year! This dessert is one of the best I have ever made. Ever!! David suggested the ginger ice cream, and he suggested making something with apples to go with it. So I made this crisp. It has apples and pears, it has a sprinkling of bittersweet chocolate, and it has a crispy hazelnut brown sugar crust. I can’t stop eating it! And the ginger ice cream has a little salty bite to it, and a little gingery bite to it, and it’s so smooth and creamy. The contrast in warm crisp and cold ice cream is just like this time of year, when seasons and temperatures melt into each other.

Here’s Evening Time and Autumn Sounds from Jackie Mittoo. I’ve probably played them both beofre, but they’re just so perfect!

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Chocolate dipped cinnamon-malt cookies

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Chocolate dipped malt cookies

I like to read the end of a book first. I’ll read the last couple of pages first, and then I’ll go back to the beginning. I like to re-read books, too, especially books with happy endings. For a lot of people, knowing how it’s going to end spoils the enjoyment. Not for me. It’s hard to explain what a keen pleasure it is to know what’s going to happen, and to follow the characters as they make their way towards it. I suppose it’s like a child wanting the same book read over and over, until the words are almost memorized, until they can correct you if you leave out a sentence or read something in the wrong order. My boys will watch the same movies again and again, eagerly anticipating their favorite parts. It’s strange how something familiar can seem so new and suspenseful. Isaac will run out of the room at the same scary parts, even though he knows the movie has a happy ending. When I was younger I wanted to know how my life would go, too. Not how it would end, but what would happen along the way. I read horoscopes and when I found three pennies I’d throw i Ching, the book of changes. I don’t any more, though. Everything is going so fast as it is, we’ll know soon enough. And I’m caught up in the days, as they roll into each other, in so many ways all the same, but each full of a million little changes and surprises.

Dogs can’t have chocolate!

These cookies are like malted milk balls, but way better! They’re so good. They’re very addictive. They’re soft and cakey but they have a little bit of crunch. And they have chocolate!! The taste of malt and cinnamon is so soothing, to me. These are the ultimate comfort cookie.

Here’s Tom Waits with How’s it Going to End.

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Chocolate Covered Cherry Cake

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Chocolate covered cherry cake

I’ve told the story in the past of how, when we were 23, David came into the ice cream parlor where I worked and ordered chocolate and cherry ice cream. Since that time, the poor fellow has been fed some combination of chocolate and cherries for every single birthday, valentine’s day, anniversary, back-to-school-night, groundhog day… Yesterday was no exception. But as I was thinking about it, maybe it’s sort of a metaphor for marriage. (Hold tight, folks, and fasten your seat belts, it’s an extended metaphor!!) You’ve got your basic ingredients. You know you love them, more than any other flavor ever, and part of the reason that you love them so much is because they work so well together. And the ways that they can be combined is endless and as surprising as you make it. Because each individual flavor is distinctive and variable – bitter, sweet, soft, melting, warm, cool – and when they come together to form a whole, it’s their contrasts as much as their similarities that make them so pleasing. I owe David so much, over all the years since we were 23; he’s made me more happy, more human and more sane. He’s taught me so much about art and music. He has such a beautiful and unique way of looking at the world – really looking – he sees shapes and colors and patterns and beautiful things that I would pass by obliviously. I feel so lucky to have him with me to puzzle through life. And year after year my way to thank him for all this is a combination of flavors that are good on their own, but work wonderfully together.

This cake, for his birthday yesterday, was supposed to call to mind a chocolate covered, rum-soaked cherry. It has layers of rum-cherry-chocolate chip cake interspersed with layers of cherry preserves and rummy chocolate mousse. And the whole thing is topped with bittersweet chocolate ganache. For some reason, although the cake batter was pinkish (because it had cherry jam in it) it took on a greenish tint upon being baked. Possibly because I have aluminum pans? It was a comical surprise that we took in stride, and carried on valiantly eating large pieces of cake.

Here’s a 23-year-old Johnny Cash singing I Walk the Line. I wonder what kind of ice cream he liked?

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Lacy crispy nutty chocolatey malt cookies and malted chocolate chip ice cream

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Lacy chocolate-nut-malt cookie

I bought some malted milk powder on a whim the other week, and for a few days I put it in everything I made. I’ve always liked malted milk. I’m fond of mild, distinctive flavors. We have a small brewery in our town, and some days the air is full of malt and hops, which I find lovely! And, of course, the words “malted milk” made me think of Robert Johnson! King of the Delta Blues. Such a fascinating figure, as everybody knows. I can’t get my mind around his story, somehow. It’s so shadowy and full of myth, so full of beautiful, odd details that make him the legend that he is. He sold his soul to the devil; he learned to play guitar on dark nights in graveyards, aided by ghosts; he played facing the wall, away from the other musicians; he died young, in mysterious circumstances; he used a different name everywhere he travelled. It’s the real, human details of his life that kill me, somehow – if they’re true, and that we’ll never know. His mother was born into slavery. He was sent from home to home, as a child, and given a different name each time. His sixteen-year-old wife died in childbirth. And he travelled – he went from town to town, staying with a different, frequently older, woman everywhere he went. They must have cared for him, and taken care of him, in so many different ways. I’m fascinated by the idea of a rambler – of a person who can’t stay in one place for too long, who needs to be rootless and wandering. I just can’t imagine a life like that, which is what makes songs on the subject so appealing.

And Robert Johnson’s voice touches a nerve. It’s so plaintive, and somehow both human and haunting all at once. He uses it so beautifully – it’s wild but controlled. But it’s his lyrics which really throw me for a loop. Dark, mysterious, elemental, sexual, violent, cryptic, and oddly touching, all at once. I always feel like I know what they’re all about, but I have no idea what he’s saying. And, as with all great poetry, it’s that feeling of the words slipping in my brain that makes me want to hear more.

One of my favorites is Phonograph Blues, which starts

Beatrice, she got a phonograph, and it won’t say a lonesome word
Beatrice, she got a phonograph, but it won’t say a lonesome word
What evil have I done, what evil has the poor girl heard

And then, of course, there’s Malted Milk.

I keep drinkin’ malted milk, try’n to drive my blues away
I keep drinkin’ malted milk, try’n to drive my blues away
Baby, you just as welcome to my lovin’, as the flowers is in May

Malted milk, malted milk, keep rushin’ to my head
Malted milk, malted milk, keep rushin’ to my head
And I have a funny, funny feelin’, and I’m talkin’ all out my head

Baby, fix me one more drink, and hug your daddy one more time
Baby, fix me one more drink, and hug your daddy one more time
Keep on stirrin’ my malted milk mama, until I change my mind

My door knob keeps on turnin’, it must be spooks around my bed
My door knob keeps on turnin’, must be spooks around my bed
I have a warm, old feelin’, and the hair risin’ on my head

Malt chocolate chip ice cream

Which brings us back to malt powder. These cookies have almonds, hazelnuts, spices, chocolate chips and malt powder. They are very very crispy. The day I made them was extremely humid, and within an hour they melted. I’ve never seen anything like it! I put them in a warm oven for about 10 minutes, and they came out as crispy as can be. Both the ice cream and the cookies have chocolate chips that I processed for a minute or two, so they’re a little crumbly. Some chips stay whole, some turn to dust, and I like the contrasting textures.

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French cake a week – Gateau chipolata

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Gateau chipolata

In which Claire, who doesn’t speak french, bakes her way through the cake section of a 1962 French cookbook.
“L’intérieur du gateau doit rester moelleux.” Says my cook book. Oh yes, say I, the interior of the cake should stay soft! Moelleux is a nice word, isn’t it? A soft word. A melty word. I love melty things! I love when the snow melts in the springtime, ice dripping from branch tips and releasing the buds from their frosty casing. I love ice cream mostly because it melts. It’s such a pleasant anxiety to eat it before it’s a puddle – to savor each spoonful or lick of the cone when it’s just the right creamy softness, before it’s just cream. It’s about time passing! Add hot fudge and you have the frisson of warm and cold, you have the changing of seasons. I like butter melting on toast, cheese melting into warm bread, secret melted cheese or chocolate hidden inside of things, a chocolate-covered cookie melting in tea. I love the melty feeling you get inside when you’re happy, when you feel love for something. I like the scene in Amelie when she melts – she turns into water and melts away into a puddle. Amelie, of course, is french and very sweet, and so is this cake! It is delicious! It’s crispy on the outside, soft in the middle (as it should be), chocolatey, a little crunchy because of the almonds. It’s somewhat similar to the cake I made last week, in that it’s flourless and chocolate, but it’s denser, and last week’s cake had quite a lot of cornstarch in it, and this has much less. The recipe didn’t specify an amount of butter – I think it must be a misprint. This being a french cake, I decided to add a whole stick (1/2 cup)! And I decided to add salted butter, because the recipe doesn’t call for salt, and I like a pinch of salt in my baked goods.

Here’s Nouvelle Vague with I’ll Melt with You.

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