Cookie Towers: Chocolate Pepper Cookies

Today I have the Christmas Factory in full swing. This year, I’m making cards and cookies. We’re giving our neighbors cookie towers, with two or three different kinds of cookies. Don’t tell them!

The light cookies here are the Italian Almond Cookies I posted in August, and the dark ones are chocolate pepper cookies. I found this recipe in an old Martha Stewart Christmas book from 1989. I changed it a little, of course. What I love about this recipe is that it’s not too sweet, but still intensely chocolate. On the heels of chocolate week, what’s better than that?

In addition to Christmas presents, these cookies make perfect ice cream sandwiches. Fill them with some veryvery good vanilla gelato and you’ll be transported back to childhood, but with a more sophisticated, adult flavor.

In this recipe you’ll find ground black pepper. Yep, black pepper. But wait, it gets worse. You’ll also find cayenne pepper. Yep. Cayenne. These two peppers enhance the deep chocolate flavor of this cookie. Trust me on this. It really makes a difference. For the black pepper, I grind it from my pepper mill and then grind it more in a mortar and pestle. You want it really really fine.

There’s a lot of cocoa in this. I probably don’t have to say that it should be the best that you can find. My cookies are really as black as they look in these photos!

Chocolate Pepper Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart’s Christmas

350 g / 1 1/2 cups softened butter

450 g / 1 3/4 cups sugar

2 large eggs

525 g / 3 cups all purpose flour

200 g / 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp freshly, finely ground black pepper

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp ground cinnamon

• Sift together the flour, cocoa, salt and spices.

• Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

• Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture, mixing it well. Shape into a flat rectangle and refrigerate for at least an hour.

• Preheat oven to 160 C / 350 F.

• Working with 1/4 of the dough at a time (leaving the rest in the refrigerator), roll very thin and cut into the shapes you want. Transfer to baking sheets lined with baking parchment or silicone mats. Martha says that you can re-roll the dough once more. I re-rolled it until it was used up, but I didn't add much more flour while I was rolling (see note, below)

• Bake 10 - 12 minutes or until crisp. (Here’s my favorite part of this recipe) Don’t let them darken. (SNORT! Could they BE any darker??) Transfer carefully to racks to cool.

NOTES:

• In order to roll this dough out uniformly thin, I used the same trick I use for the almond cookies: I put two long bamboo skewers on either side of the dough and roll the dough between them.
• This dough gets a little sticky as you work with it, and you don’t want to add too much more flour as you’re rolling it. Not only because adding more flour as you work the dough will make the cookies tough; but also because the white flour will show against the dark cookie! To solve this problem, I rolled the dough between two sheets of cling film which I had lightly floured (to get the flour to stick you have to roll the dough once to transfer a little of the butter from the dough to the cling film). From time to time you have to pull the cling film up from the dough, add a tiny bit of flour to the cling film, turn it over and do the same thing to the other side. When the cookies are cut, you can simply lift the cling film and peel them off like stickers. Voila!

Chocolate Week Continued: Behind the Scenes

This is a continuation of Chocolate week, which began with a giveaway and continued with a visit to a chocolate shop here. Today we’re going to go behind the scenes in that chocolate shop--La Maison Saive.

When you walk into this chocolate shop, you are immediately struck by the wonderful smell of chocolate. Next is the friendly smile of whoever’s working in the shop that day. Most often it’s Florence, Christophe’s wife. If it’s very busy, it may be his mother. If it’s not busy at all, it may be Christophe who comes from the atelier to help you choose your chocolates.

From the shop you can get a glimpse of the atelier. The part closest to you looks like a kitchen you might see in anyone’s house. Oven, cooktop, sink, fridge. And because it’s a very busy season right now, lots of notes and orders on the cabinets!

But if you walk back there you see immediately that it’s not a normal kitchen. You see this, which stands about 4 1/2 feet tall.

Then you see this, and you know you're in the right place:

This is called a cuve, and Christophe has nine of them. Each one holds from 25 to 40 litres of melted chocolate. There are dark, milk, and white cuves, as well as cuves for sugar-free chocolate. The cuves serve to temper the chocolate and to keep it at the right temperature for working. They provide a vat of chocolate for dipping and a ‘fountain’ for covering things with chocolate. It’s here that a lot of the work of making the pralines takes place.

Before anything can be made, though, the chocolate has to be tempered. If it’s not tempered, it won’t be shiny, and there’s a risk that the cocoa butter will leach out, making the chocolate grey. It may also look greasy or dull. Eww. As long as we’re on this subject, I’ve learned that you should NEVER put chocolate in the fridge, especially if it’s softened by being in a warm place. If you do that, you’ll get chocolate that’s dull and grey. That’s because the cocoa butter starts to separate from the chocolate when it’s warm, and cooling it down just solidifies that white cocoa butter, making the chocolate look nasty. It’s still edible, but not very pretty.

Ok, back to the story. To temper the chocolate, they fill the cuve with chocolate and melt it slowly. They bring it up to a temperature of 42 degrees C (107.6 F). Then they take it out of the cuve and pour it onto the adjacent work surface, where they cool it down. Then they put it back into the cuve and bring it to 32 degrees C (89.6 F). At that point they can work with for 4-5 hours before they have to do it all again.

To make a molded chocolate, they begin with these molds. Christophe estimates that he has around 1500 of them, in different shapes. Each one holds 21 normal pralines. To form the shell you see here that will be filled with a flavored ganache or a cream, the mold is put under the fountain part of the cuve, filled up with chocolate, and then emptied.

Here you see Christophe filling a mold for hollow tennis ball shapes. The large spatula in his hand is for scraping the top and the sides of the mold after it’s filled and emptied. In the background you can see a tray of truffles he was working on before he stopped to fill this mold for me.

Here you see him emptying the mold back into the cuve. Before the mold is emptied, it’s put on that little shelf you see attached to the cuve, and shaken gently to dislodge any air bubbles that may have gotten into the chocolate before it hardens. After it’s emptied, there’s a shell of chocolate that has hardened inside the mold, which is left to cool completely. For large hollow items, they may make two or three layers of chocolate shell before they put them together.

For pralines, it's the same process. The shells might be filled with a flavored ganache, a caramel, or cream filling. In every case the process is the same. The filling is made in the kitchen area, put into large pastry bags, and each shell is filled by hand. The molds are set aside to cool.

When they’re completely cool, they’re run under the fountain again to seal them, the mold is scraped again, and then set aside to cool. The finished chocolates are then turned out like ice cubes. They’re ready to eat!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million words. To see some short videos of the process I described above, go to Christophe’s website HERE. Don’t be put off by the fact that it’s in French--the videos have no sound, and will make this process very clear. To see them, click on the link, wait till the word “Bienvenue” shows up, and click on that. Then at the top click on the piece of chocolate that says “Nos Coulisses”. This will take you to a page with several videos:

Préparation fourrage--making a ganache. This is the basis for many of the fillings and also for the truffles. Basically, it’s a mixture of cream and chocolate and whatever flavors he wants to use.

Fourrage--Filling the molds with the ganache. Behind, a cuve that’s cleaned and shut down. I can’t help but admire the work here with a pastry bag.

Finition--Closing the molded chocolates--you can see the finishing of the molded shapes as well as the cups which are dipped one-by-one into the cuve.

Démoulage--Unmolding the chocolates, which are then stored in a cool store room next to the shop until they’re needed to replace the stock that has been sold.

Massepain--Marzipan cutting. In this video you see Jonathan, the former apprentice. When I asked Sophie, the current apprentice, what was the hardest part of her job, she said working with the marzipan. It has to be kneaded by hand, and it’s apparently very hard to do.

Dressage--Making truffles, later to be dipped in chocolate in the cuve. Another chance to admire his pastry bag work. After the truffles have been left to dry, they’re threaded four at a time onto a fork, dipped into the cuve chocolate, and pushed off the fork into either cocoa or powdered sugar. (dipping truffles) The white spots you see here and on Sophie’s hands are the powdered sugar that these truffles will be rolled in after they get their chocolate shell.

Enrobage--Covering things with chocolate. Here, orange peel. Also marzipan and (sometimes) pâte de fruit.

The day I was taking photos, Sophie was putting candied orange peel into this machine, which has a long conveyer belt at the other end. Christophe was waiting at the other end to put them into a box to send to the shop at the front. They cooled and hardened as they moved down the line. I couldn’t help thinking of that wonderful scene with Lucille Ball in the chocolate factory.

So now you know how artisanale chocolates are made. When I think of the work that goes into each one, I am amazed that they are so affordable!

Chocolate Week Continued: The Chocolate Shop

Chocolate. When you talk about Belgium, most people think of chocolate. They don’t think that Brussels is the capital of Europe, they don’t think that the new President of the EU is Belgian. They think chocolate. They don’t think that Belgium has the oldest spa and the oldest casino in Europe. They don’t think about the Formula 1 circuit. Nope, it’s chocolate. They don’t think about fries, which were invented here. They don’t think about the bazillion different beers brewed here. Nope, nope, nope--they think chocolate. Me too!

Chocolate is an important part of life in Belgium. Belgians have said for years that chocolate was good for you. Now we know that it's true: chocolate lowers cholesterol and keeps us happy. Chocolate is serious business here. Every year, the grand chocolate houses create new chocolates. When the crown Prince and Princess have another child, chocolates are created to celebrate. Needless to say, buying a box of chocolates is a very different experience here than in the US.

First, you have to know that there are different ‘grades’ of Belgian chocolate. The international industrial chocolate brands are what has brought Belgian Chocolates their reputation, and they’re an important part of the chocolate story here. But Belgians rarely buy them. Then there are the smaller industrial brands, generally available all over Belgium and perhaps in neighboring countries, but not overseas. Those are, in my opinion, a step above the international industrials. But they’re still industrial grade chocolates. That is to say, they’re made by machines.

The chocolates prized by Belgians are those that are made by hand, the artisanale chocolates. With some notable exceptions, these are only available in the region where they’re made, often only available in one shop. In one town. Everybody has his or her favorite chocolatier, and I’m no exception.

This is our favorite chocolate shop, La Maison Saive.

It was opened 11 years ago by Christophe Saive, who’s the maitre chocolatier. Christophe is always smiling, always in a good mood. (I probably would be too if I worked around chocolate all the time). When you go into his shop--or any artisanale chocolate shop in Belgium--you’re confronted by a wide range of chocolates, or pralines. (in Belgium, a praline is a filled chocolate--it has nothing to do with the pecan confections that you can buy in New Orleans.)

In Christophe's shop you’ll see more than 80 different kinds of pralines, made with dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, sugar-free chocolate, single-source chocolate. You’ll also see chocolate bars, chocolate spread, cocoa, liqueur filled chocolates, chocolate covered cherries and orange peel, pâtes de fruit, marzipan, marrons glacées. The choice is staggering. What you won’t see is boxes filled with chocolates. Nope. Each and every one is created at the time you buy it.

You choose the box size and form, and then choose what you want to go in it. The vendeuse then puts on a white cotton glove and carefully places each chocolate in the box. When the box is full, it’s closed up and finished with a bow. Each box. Every box. Made personally to your specifications.

Christophe makes around 8 TONS of chocolate each year. Ninety percent of that is pralines, which weigh between 10 and 15 grams each. That’s more than (lemesee....carry the two....divided by....) 575,000 individual chocolates. Each one made by hand. In the workshop (atelier) Christophe works with Sophie, his apprentice. In the front of the shop there’s Florence, his wife. In the busy seasons (like now) his parents help out--his dad in the atelier and his mom in the shop while Florence packs the Christmas orders for corporate customers. It’s a real family business.

Like the big chocolate houses, Christophe creates a new praline each year. In the past, he’s introduced us to pralines with lavender, rose, licorice, allspice, as well as some surprising ones: beer, cumin, tomato (it IS a fruit!), balsamic vinegar, and (oh, yes!) cardamom. Cardamom was my favorite until this year. This year, Christophe brought us truffled truffles. Oh, my.

Continuing chocolate week, in my next post I’ll show you how these chocolates are made. Meanwhile, don’t forget the double truffle giveaway --there’s still time to enter!

Double Truffle: Kicking off Chocolate Week and a giveaway

I love truffles. Both kinds: the dark, rich, chocolate kind and the earthy, aromatic, mushroom kind.

The first time I had mushroom truffles was in Italy. They were freshly grated over pasta dressed only with peppery green olive oil. Oh, my. That was a revelation. Even though they cost a lot, I buy them. It only takes a tiny bit to flavor a whole dish with their indescribable flavor.

Then there’s the chocolate kind--for me, always dark chocolate, rarely adulterated with other flavors. But it has to be a good chocolate-fruity, dark, complex. I admit it. I'm a chocolate snob. Hey, I live in Belgium!

Truffles in either form, then, are treasured at our house. When I heard that our favorite chocolatier was planning to make truffle-flavored truffles, I was cautiously thrilled. Thrilled, because two of my favorite flavors were going to be united in one place; cautious because sometimes my favorite things don’t like each other much (remember the orange-cardamom tarte tatin?)

Yesterday I got to try my first truffled truffle. Oh. Yess. First you taste the rich dark fruity chocolate, followed by the deeper, mysterious earth flavor of the truffle. Just enough of it--any more and it wouldn’t work. It’s a marriage made in heaven, I think.

No, that’s not right. They’re really awful. You wouldn’t like them. I’ll have to eat yours. Just because I like you.

If you don’t believe me, though, and would like to try them for yourself, leave a comment on this post between now and December 20. Overcome with seasonal spirit, I’m going to give away a box of truffled truffles. If there are more than 50 comments, I’ll give away two boxes. (NOTE: I will ship these wherever you live. Please don't let my living in Belgium stop you from entering the contest.)

During the next week or so, I’ll be visiting our chocolatier at his workshop and taking photos of how he makes his chocolates. So stay tuned for Chocolate lessons!

New Toy

Before I started this blog, I took a lot of photos. Most of them I took for the normal reasons, but there were a lot that I took so that I could paint them. When taking reference photos for painting, it’s the form and the colors and the light that are important; focus, depth of field, composition, etc are less important, because you can change all that when you paint the scene. Photography skills aren't very important. My camera stayed on "auto".

When I started this blog, I began to see the need for better photos. So I dusted off my old photography books and bought some new (i.e., digital) ones. I took the camera off “auto” and began to re-learn about f-stops and white balance and depth of field. I knew that one day I’d trade in my trusty 5-year-old Fuji bridge camera for a DSLR. First, though, I decided to learn all I could with the Fuji and to keep it till I had learned enough to need more than the Fuji could do.

Last week I decided that the time had come. I had done a lot of research, decided what I wanted, and VOILA!

It's a Nikon D90. I have to note that I’ve had a really hard time taking a good photo of it with the Fuji. I’m trying hard to ignore the nagging thought that the Fuji is jealous of the Nikon. My early training as a Psychologist is not serving me well here, I’m thinking.

Needless to say, I’ve spent all my free time snapping away, trying to learn how to transfer what I learned from the Fuji to the Nikon. LOL, it reminds me of when I was younger and got the chance to drive a Lambourghini from one side of town to another. I got in it, put it in gear, and popped the clutch. YOWZA! I was not prepared for that kind of power....

The Nikon is a little bit like that. It can do amazing things, if only I knew how. So I’ve been taking photos of everything in sight. I thought I’d share some of them with you. Kind of like vacation photos, but I never left home.

This is our friend Etienne. He’s a photographer who lives in Paris. He spent a day here with Dan taking photos. (Did I tell you that Dan is a sometime model? Maybe I didn’t.)

I spent some time with them, learning what I could from Etienne, who was very generous with his time and expertise. While he was taking photos of Dan, I was taking photos of him, playing with the settings on the new camera and trying to learn how to change them quickly to capture what I wanted. Needless to say, I’m having to upgrade my photoshop skills at the same time. My head is spinning. But in a good way.

Here are a few of the several hundred that I took. No, let me re-phrase that--here are the few that are presentable out of the several hundred that I took:

Here's Etienne looking at his camera--I love the expression in this one.

Here they're working on the terrace of an old chateau:

This is my favorite one of Etienne, directing a shot:

Finally, here’s my sweetie, looking pensive:

And here he is looking at me.

OVERDUE

Way back in October, Sam at My Carolina Kitchen nominated me for an award. Between trips and family stuff I haven’t yet been able to accept it. Today’s the day!

I’ve seen this badge on several blogs and always secretly envied those who had received it--now I have one! (Don’t hate me ‘cause I’m beautiful, ok?) Thanks, Sam, I’m touched and honored to receive this award, even if this post is long overdue.

Besides the cool badge there are, of course, some rules:

1. Post the award on your blog. Present this award to seven others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.
2. Tell those seven people they’ve been awarded HONEST SCRAP, inform them of these guidelines, and ask that they link back to you.
3. Share “Ten Honest Things” about yourself.

When I received this award, I was in Japan. I started a list of things you probably wouldn’t already know about me, and ended up with a nice loo-ong one. Can I find it now? Of course not. So I made a new one:

1. I prefer baths to showers. If there’s a tub, I immerse myself. I think I came by this honestly, as my Dad did the same thing for as long as I can remember.
2. My favorite meals consist of small dishes of intensely flavored food. The food in Japan was exactly what I love most.
3. The most exotic places I’ve been are Japan and Ukraine. (So far...)
4. I bite my fingernails. I know, I know, but I’ve always done it and I don’t seem to be able to stop. (This is an HONEST award, after all!)
5. I sleep on my side. Dan says I snore sometimes, but HE doesn’t have an HONEST award, does he? That’s all I’m saying about that.
6. I’ve just discovered the music of Jacques Brel. They don’t make them like that anymore. Just a man and a microphone, that’s all. No fireworks, no special effects, no backup singers. Just him and me. And his hands.
7. I LOVE spicy food. This is probably due to early culinary experiences with my Dad’s barbecue sauce. If you’re good, one day I’ll share the recipe with you.
8. I love to eat with chopsticks. I’m pretty good at it too! I have about a bazillion pairs.
9. Lemesee, lemesee... Two years ago I traded my PC for an iMac. My life has been easier all round since then. I can’t imagine ever going back.
10. My favorite season is autumn. I love the cool air and seeing the trees deck themselves out in colors and the wonderful smell of it. A couple of years ago I walked outside one day and there was a gorgeous smell in the air. I couldn’t figure it out--was there a new bakery somewhere? Was there a tree blooming? What WAS it? AHA! I finally realized that it was fall. My favorite season. I was born in the fall.

That’s it, at least until I find that list. I’ve thought a lot about who to pass this on to, and I’ve chosen seven blogs that I love to read, which inspire me for one reason or another, and to whom I haven’t given an award already. Give them a visit; I think you'll enjoy them:

The Hungry Dog

The Gypsy Chef

Serendipity (another one!)

Once in a Blue Moon

Night Owl Chef

Moveable Feasts

Jillicious Discoveries

Thanks for reading this far, if you have. If you haven’t, then please don't tell me. Ignorance is bliss, after all.