Fare Exchange: Chocolate rules the day in recipes, tips

Welcome to September, month of beginnings and of anticipation. We have some unanswered questions from the summer - particularly, how to make thickly iced cake pops and homemade ice cream sandwiches.

And our newest request comes from CEB of Lookout Mountain. "My husband and I heard of a recipe from King Arthur flour for yeast bread that you could keep in the refrigerator, pinching off dough to bake as needed. We would like that recipe. Most of all, we are looking for an easy yeast bread dough that is soft enough to please our three little ones."

Jane Henegar

Concerning the authentic Mount Vernon Amaretto Pie, the jury is still out; the now-closed Mount Vernon Restaurant on Broad featured a piled-high, dreamy confection in a pie shell.

This week Ann Stone had a lead on a cookbook recipe, but still needs help. "I am searching for the recipe for Amaretto Cream Pie from the Mount Vernon restaurant here in Chattanooga. It was published in a Ronald McDonald House cookbook from the mid-90s. Although I have that cookbook, that page is missing. I have Googled the recipe but can't seem to find the original - only some knockoffs. I also checked with the library, but they don't have the cookbook." So keep searching, food sleuths, please.

POPULAR COBBLER

As to the chocolate cobbler Virginia Akins remembered, Kathleen Maxwell sent "the version that I use, shared over 100,000 times on the web." Contributor Erin Latch wrote, "I take this to family dinners, and I fix it in the mornings to take to work for breakfast." Interestingly, there is a division of opinion on the web; some cooks use only 1 stick of butter in the batter, half the required amount.

Chocolate Cobbler

Batter:

2 sticks butter

1 1/4 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup milk

Chocolate Layer:

1 cup sugar

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 cups boiling water

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a 9- by 13-inch glass baking dish, melt the 2 sticks of butter in the oven.

Meanwhile in a bowl, mix together the 1 1/4 cups of sugar, flour, vanilla and milk. Once the butter is melted, pour the batter over the butter, but do not stir.

In a separate bowl, mix together 1 cup of sugar and the cocoa.

Sprinkle cocoa/sugar mixture on top of batter. Do not stir.

Pour the 2 cups of boiling water on top of that (don't stir) and bake for 30-45 minutes. I bake mine until I have a nice golden brown crust. In my oven, this usually take about 35 minutes. Serve warm. It is great with ice cream.

CHOCOLATE PROFUSION

We will continue in the chocolate vein until our lines are up today. Seasoned cooks know that kitchen success is more than just recipes; we tend to skip and skimp unless we know the reasons behind the recipes, and we can get predictable without knowing some variations on themes. Enter Mr. and Mrs. Sunday, our teachers. Although they didn't say so, I am envisioning the ideas below as filling for prebaked tart shells or phyllo mini shells. Might just a bite be enough?

Here they offer numerous tips for "Working With Chocolate":

Working with chocolate can be horrifyingly complex; there are several different crystalline structures for chocolate, only one of which makes for the nice snap and smooth texture we're all familiar with from a lifetime of chocolate bars. If a chocolate recipe mentions tempering (i.e. controlling that crystal content), it's not ideal for your first attempt.

Ganache, however, is dead easy. There are just two primary ingredients: chocolate bars and cream (use coconut cream if you're fiercely lactose-intolerant or vegan). Use equal parts by weight.

Other potential ingredients are flavor adjusters that may be added to taste at the last minute: vanilla (we like cooking with Mexican vanilla extract), instant espresso powder (Starbucks Via coffee powder or regular instant in a pinch) and salt (like kosher salt, without iodide - some folks find iodized salt bitter).

Put the cream in a pot, and bring it to a boil. Chop up the chocolate bar while heating the cream. Take the pot off the heat, and stir the chocolate into the cream until it's all melted and the ganache is smooth.

Ingredient choice and trade-offs:

» Use real chocolate - not "melting chocolate" or "icing chocolate" and ideally not chocolate chips. All of them have additives that as a side effect reduce flavor. Use real chocolate bars. Pick a chocolate that you like to eat; the better the chocolate, the better the ganache. We like either Lindt or Green & Black, both available at Walmart. Most ganache is made from dark chocolate; milk or even white chocolate can work, but you may have to add extra chocolate to adjust texture (it may be too watery). The ganache will get thicker as it cools, especially if you're using coconut cream.

» Can I use unsweetened chocolate and add my own sweetener? Absolutely, but don't use aspartame (aka NutraSweet) as it doesn't handle heat well.

» Cream: Low-temperature-pasteurized local cow cream is tastiest but most anything will work fine - the chocolate drowns out an awful lot of nuance. We like Aroy-D and Chaokoh coconut cream and milk available at Asian Food and Gifts on Hixson Pike, but you may taste the coconut flavor. Others will likely work fine without the coconut taste. Coconut milk works, but again you may need to adjust texture.

» Don't use plain water; the fat/water emulsion is needed to keep the ganache from separating (aka breaking).

Adjust flavor in this order:

» Vanilla: About 1/2 teaspoon per 1/2 pound (8 ounces) of chocolate if desired. After all, you LIKE the chocolate you picked. If making white chocolate ganache, look for clear vanilla extract (McCormick and Wilton both make it. If the grocery store doesn't have it, try Michaels near Northgate or Hamilton Place) or skip. Most white chocolate already has some in it.

» Espresso powder: Add this if the flavor isn't complex enough to suit you (about 1/2 teaspoon per 1/2 pound of chocolate). Don't do this with white chocolate.

» Salt intensifies flavor and cuts sweetness. The lighter the chocolate, the more salt you'll need. You don't need much. Think pinches, not cups.

If you don't have a scale:

The chocolate weight is written on the package. Water-based liquids (like cream) usually weigh fairly close to their volume, so 8 ounces weight will be just a bit over 1 cup. As they say, "A pint's a pound the world around." To be precise, 1/2 pound of heavy whipping cream will be 1 1/4 cups. You're going to be adjusting texture at the end anyway, so don't sweat it too much.

Next week the Sundays will comment on applying ganache wisdom to lava cake. And might a chocolate filling - that's what ganache is - become a standalone chocolate candy, with again a wise adjustment of solid to liquid proportions?

We're bursting at the newsprint seams, and so must stop. But next week's column is already filling up, so do come back in a mere 7 days.