From the category archives:

Chocolate

An Understated Chocolate Cake

by Laura 29 June 2012

This cake has been part of our repertoire for more than a decade; I bet I’ve made it more than 20 times now. It’s from an era when I still cooked and baked from recipes, and one of the rare ones I still pull off the shelf. I make other chocolate cakes, of course, but [...]

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Midnight {triple chocolate} Cookies

by Laura 14 February 2012

This triple chocolate, slice-and-bake cookie is made with black cocoa, raw cacao nibs, and ground dark chocolate. It’s chewy with just a little crunch from a roll in turbinado sugar. The ultra-Dutched cocoa, dark chocolate, and raw cacao give the cookie great depth. If you don’t want to hunt down or special order ingredients, substitute [...]

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Jacques Torres’ Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Laura 29 June 2011

Can three weeks really have passed? My goodness. I have been busy building a twenty by eight foot hen house and coop in the backyard, walking several hours a day in preparation for the Susan G. Komen 3-day 60 mile walk, and, well, I’ll spare you the rest of the dizzying list. After I finish [...]

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Four-minute Chocolate Chocolate Cake for One

by Laura 22 March 2011

We took our first two-hour walk of the season today, through the woods and marshes near our house. Slippery ice, squishy mud, the first glimpses of patches of green since our November snow fell, honking geese, loud woodpeckers at work, and Little Annie as happy as can be. Welcome Spring! When we returned, muddy pawed [...]

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An Old-fashioned Minnesota Blizzard & Rich Hot Chocolate for Two

by Laura 20 February 2011

After a taste of spring, we are in the midst of another good old-fashioned Minnesota blizzard. I love a blizzard. Here in Minnesota, snowfalls come and stay for the winter every year, but a real pileup, one that sends people en masse to the markets and shops the day before it’s to hit, is always [...]

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Bittersweet Chocolate Cookies

by Laura 18 February 2011

This is a recipe coup like I haven’t celebrated in years. The last two really whoop-worthy were a particular restaurant chocolate soufflé cake that my Dear Husband adored around 1998, and my ikebana-sensei’s daughter-in-law Nori-chan’s goma dare (now that’s a mouthful) around 1989 in Osaka. Every once in a while I really can’t figure out [...]

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White Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes with Dark Rum and Vanilla

by Laura 9 February 2011

My mom took a lot of classes when we were growing up in the 70s. Our house was full of macramé plant hangers and wall hangings and Christmas decorations. We had Santa and all of his eight reindeer and Rudoph. There was cast pottery painted by numbers—smaller pieces plus a huge barn scene that hung [...]

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Rose Water, Hibiscus, & Dark Cocoa Macarons with Rose Water and Hibiscus White Chocolate Ganaches

by Laura 7 February 2011

My Sweet Boy’s lovely girlfriend Taylor is over to bake today, and we are taking on macarons. We’ve had to hearten ourselves along through a string of failures—macarons are notoriously temperamental—but we are having fun, and spending six hours together on them has been an unexpected and happy surprise. We’re on batch four now this [...]

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Heart-shaped Brownies with Fudge Frosting

by Laura 1 February 2011

Before we moved out of the city, we lived on Hague Avenue in the Merriam Park neighborhood of St. Paul. My sister Molly and I walked to school at St. Mark’s and to Don’s Country Boy on the corner of Selby and Hamline Avenues by ourselves, where we would pick out a candy bar for [...]

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Salted Peanut White Chocolate Lollipops

by Laura 12 December 2010

These sweet lollipops are so easy to make it’s a little silly. You pipe melted chocolate into molds, pop in a stick, and, well, that’s it! Last year I made them with dark chocolate flavored with mint extract. This year I decided to try white chocolate with chopped salted peanuts. I think white chocolate deserves [...]

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Dark Chocolate Caramels with Smoked Sea Salt

by Laura 9 December 2010

I’ve made caramel for many years now, but when I saw this recipe in the December, 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine I had a feeling it would become a staple in our Christmas candy repertoire. It has. I make it every year now, and it gets a lot of wows. Salted candy has been trendy [...]

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