All That Chocolate and No Vanilla

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There’s vanilla and then there’s Vanilla. Powdered vanilla produces baked goods that taste elegant and pricey, and sometimes I use it to boost regular bottled vanilla.

A chocolatier friend told me to add vanilla beans to a bottle of good whiskey. Part of the fun of this project is drinking enough of the whiskey to make room for the beans. I sampled the whiskey after six months and was not impressed, so I tucked the bottle into the back of a cupboard and forgot about it until the in-house archaeologist made a batch of something that tasted unusually good three years later. In a perfect world, I would have a vanilla cellar in preference to a wine cellar-and honey and canned salmon cellars as well.

Any liquid flavor that’s good with chocolate can substitute for or augment vanilla. Amaretto, creme de menthe, dark rum, orange curacao, almond extract, and cherry brandy are all good guesses when improvising. Vanilla marries flavors.

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Chocolate Week: Top It Off with Clever Judy Frosting

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Mix one cup powdered sugar, a quarter of a cup of milk, one egg, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Beat until smooth.

Melt four squares of baking chocolate with one tablespoon of butter. Pour into other mixture and beat briefly to heat egg. Set the bowl over ice and beat to establish texture. It sets up fast. Store the cake in the refrigerator.

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Chocolate Week: By the Pound

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Fruma Rosenthal is the friend of a friend who was the source of this recipe for a rich, elegant, and civilized pound cake marbled with vanilla and cinnamon. The best part of this cake is the crust, a crisp and delicate confection all on its own.

The chocolate vein of the cake is rich, fudge-like, and keeps well. If you want a solidly chocolate dessert, double the amount of chips and skip the cinnamon. I bake this cake in a tube pan, but deliberate muffin tops would be delicious.

Melt six ounces of chocolate chips with five tablespoons of milk and one and a half teaspoons of vanilla.

Cream one cup unsalted butter, two cups sugar, and three eggs.

Sift three cups of flour, one teaspoon soda, one-half teaspoon salt. Add alternately to the butter mixture with one cup of milk, beginning and ending with flour.

Add one teaspoon vanilla.

Divide batter into three sections: one vanilla, one with two teaspoons of cinnamon added, and a third with the melted chocolate stirred in.

Spray a tube pan with non-stick oil. (To improve the look of the finished cake and ensure a clean release from the baking pan, you can dust the oil with a layer of very finely chopped or ground toasted almonds.) Layer the different flavors of batter atop each other, and run a table knife through the layers to create a marbled effect.

Bake at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes.

Let cool for ten minutes and turn onto a cooling rack.

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Chocolate Week: Laughing All the Way to the Bank

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Extensive research in the chocolate aisle of a neighborhood supermarket leads me to conclude that utility-grade unsweetened baking chocolate is just as good a middle layer in a bowl of oatmeal as something with a die-cut, gold-stamped embossed wrapper that’s flown in from Europe.

Place half a serving of oatmeal in a bowl, chop up the little brown ingot and distribute it across the first layer, cover with the rest of the serving, and sprinkle sugar on top. I like turbinado sugar. Add flax seed, various fresh or dried fruits, and a dab of sour cream.

A rice cooker makes it easy to prepare oatmeal in the fog of dawn.

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Chocolate Week Warms Up with Commercial Brownies

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Celebrate two hundred posts with a week of treats.

The friend who gave me this recipe said I’d hate her for it, because they’re so easy to make. It really is possible to mix up a batch during a commercial break on television.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. The oven can be the toaster variety or whatever else you bake in.

Melt five tablespoons of unsalted butter and five and a third tablespoons of cocoa in a saucepan. Circumstances permitting, melt in a mixing bowl. Add one cup of sugar, two eggs, one tablespoon of vanilla, and three-quarters of a cup of flour. Stir to mix.

Choose a baking dish. This is a forgiving recipe, so it doesn’t much matter how deep the layer of batter is, as long as it’s not too thin or thick. Spray the dish with non-stick oil, fill it, and bake until the batter pulls away from the sides of the pan and/or a tester comes out clean, usually, until the next commercial or for twenty minutes or so.

These brownies are good made without salt. Substituting oil for butter will reduce the amount of saturated fat in them. Make the regular recipe a couple of times to get the feel of things.

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