Monday, June 16, 2008

hey, bargain shoppers: your friendly neighborhood target store may have just put a bunch of pretty decent chocolate on clearance! this weekend i picked up a handful of chocolate bars from Frey, which is notable mostly for the fact that they produce some really f'in unusual combinations (especially for a mass-market retailer).



i picked up the Japonais, a milk chocolate bar with hazelnut and meringue filling, as well as the White Chocolate with Lemon and Lime Zest. each was $1.28 per 3.5oz bar. they also had White Chocolate with Blood Orange and Cinnamon (not too sure about that combo) and White Chocolate with Blueberry.

so far i've only tasted the White Chocolate with Lemon and Lime, and it is exceptionally tasty. the chocolate has a nice snap and melts readily, but the real star is the zest, which is very bright and... well... zesty! the texture is a little unexpected, somewhat crispy like toasted coconut, as if the peel had been freeze-dried before mixing with the chocolate. totally yummy.

anyway, just a heads up for you bargain shoppers... good luck!

BREAKING NEWS ALERT: the reason it doesn't have the texture of zest is that it is, in fact, not zest at all. instead, the chocolate contains little crunchies made of lemon or lime "powder." so, probably not all natural, but it doesn't change the fact that i thought this bar was delicious.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

my canadian friend also brought with her an assortment of local candy, since she knows what a weirdo i am. so far, most of it has remained untouched (!) but i did try these:



the caramilk deluxe comes in individual portions, like a mass-market truffle or bonbon. each is filled with smooth, flowy caramel (right up my alley!) and a curious darker chocolate filling that has a bit of chew to it. the flavors all come together so you can't really tell any one ingredient from anything else except by texture. overall, i wish the caramel had a little more OOMPH, either from burnt sugar or perhaps salt. still, i enjoyed it and ate 'em all.



assorted walker's toffees... i only tried "nutty brazil," which is a soft chewy toffee with shards of brazil nuts mixed in, and "nonsuch liquorice," which is (as the name suggests) a black licorice toffee. the normal walker's toffees are good, enough chew to provide some substance but not dangerous to dental work. unfortunately i LOATHE the flavor of black licorice so i threw this one out after just a bite, but i'm sure someone somewhere would enjoy these :)

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

i bake all sorts of stuff depending on my mood, but it seems like i'm always coming back to cheesecakes. the base recipe is relatively simple, but lends itself well to countless modifications. and even though i have a tendency to try somewhat bizarre varieties, i'm kind of a cheesecake purist at heart: i really prefer to leave the cheesecake filling alone. you can put chunks of stuff in it, sure, but i don't care for "flavored" cheesecake batter, even chocolate, and i don't like to mess with the fat content.

that said, one of my friends from canada is visiting this week and she has lost an enormous amount of weight. i had no idea what to expect, to be honest, but she looks FAN-freakin'-TASTIC. and she's kind of wearing the clothes that say, yeah, i know i look good! but that's a subject for a different blog :)

so in her honor, i wanted to try my hand at a low-fat cheesecake. hmm, perhaps "low-fat" is a misnomer; how about "lower fat?" i used reduced fat cream cheese, reduced fat sour cream, and replaced most of the sugar with splenda. i was a little concerned that the batter really did look different than my normal cheesecake batter-- a little grainier, a little more wet. i ended up making this into a black forest cheesecake, thinking that perhaps the chocolate would mask a bit of the "diet" flavor.

the result? i like it. it actually turned out very creamy and the flavor is pretty good. i can definitely taste the splenda. and the cheesecake might (MIGHT) actually not be sweet enough, but i dunno. it seemed to go over pretty well. so it turned out to be a fun challenge! nonetheless, i think i'll be back to my ridiculously high fat cookery in the near future :)