Chocolate for your Sweetheart

Valentine's Day comes every year, and every year you want to make it special for your loved ones.  What better way to make someone happy than with homemade chocolate!  Here are 3 fantastic, decadent recipes from a recent cooking class called Chocolate for your Sweetheart taught by Heather, one of our cooking school instructors.

Making homemade treats for your Valentine adds such a special touch to the day so we have created a recipe for everyone.  Each recipe is a little more in depth than the previous, depending how much time you have to put into your homemade treats.  Or, if you have no time, you can sign up for one of our Valentine's Day Classes and let our chefs do the cooking for you!

Bittersweet Chocolate Truffles

Makes 24 Truffles
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Truffles can be simple to make at home. 
And making them yourself is sure to earn you some brownie points!

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces high quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• Assorted coatings such as toasted coconut, finely chopped nuts and cocoa powder (shown in above photo)

Directions:

1. Place chocolate in a medium bowl.  Bring cream to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat and then pour over chocolate.
2. Let sit (without stirring) 2-3 minutes, then whisk until smooth.
3. Refrigerate (uncovered) until somewhat firm, about 1 hour.
4. Spoon mounds (2 level teaspoons each) of chocolate mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or wax paper.  Return to refrigerator for 15 minutes.
5. With your hands, roll mounds into balls.  Place desired coatings in shallow bowls.  Roll balls in coatings, pressing in and covering completely.
6. Return to baking sheet; chill until set, about 30 minutes

Flourless Chocolate Cake
Serves 10-12
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Top this fudgey cake with vanilla ice cream or one of our Dessert Toppings

Ingredients:

• 8oz quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped
• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa, plus extra for dusting
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 2 Tbsp. Godiva chocolate liquor
• 1 Tbsp. sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Butter bottom & sides of 10" spring form pan and line bottom with parchment paper.
3. Melt chocolate and butter in a metal bowl of a pot of barely simmering water.  Remove from heat and stir in 1 1/2 cups sugar.
4. Add eggs one at a time, whisking well.  Sift cocoa over mixture and whisk until just combined.
5. Pour batter into pan.  Bake until tip has formed crust and a toothpick comes out clean (30-40 minutes).  Cool for 10 minutes then remove sides of the pan.
6. Whisk cream, chocolate liquor and 1 Tbsp sugar until stiff
7. Garnish cake with a dollop of whipped cream and a sprinkle of cocoa powder.
TIP:  Try warming one of our Dessert Toppings such as Black Cherry Cognac Sauce (shown above), Chocolate Raspberry Liquor Hot Fudge or Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Sauce for an extra kick of flavor.

Chocolate Macadamia Caramel Tarts
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Ingredients:
Crust:

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 Tbsp. ice water

Ganache:

• 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• 8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (do not exceed 61% cocoa), chopped
• 1 1/2 cups unsalted macadamia nuts (about 7 1/2 ounces), toasted, coarsely chopped.

Caramel Filling:

• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
For Crust:

1. Blend flour, powdered sugar and salt in food processor.  Add butter and cut in using on/off turns until mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. Add 1 Tbsp. ice water and blend just until moist clumps form, add more ice water by the teaspoonful if needed.
3. Transfer dough into individual tart pans, or one 9" pan with removable bottom.
4. Using lightly floured fingers, press dough firmly and evenly onto bottom and up sides of pan.  Chill for 1 hour.
5. Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375 degrees F.  Line crust with foil; fill with dried beans or pie weights.  Bake until pale golden around edges and sides are set, about 20 minutes.  Remove foil and beans; bake until crust is golden and cooked through, about 14 minutes.  Transfer to rack and cool crust completely in pan.

For Ganache:

1. Bring cream to simmer in heavy small saucepan.  Remove from heat.  Add chocolate, stir until smooth.
2. Spoon 3 Tbsp. ganache into 1 corner of small resealable plastic bag and salt; set aside at room temperature for piping.
3. Spread remaining ganache evenly over bottom of crust.  Sprinkle chopped macadamia nuts evenly over ganache layer in crust.  Freeze crust while preparing caramel filling

For Caramel Filling:

1. Combine sugar and 1/3 cup water in heavy medium saucepan.  Stir over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves.  Increase heat and boil without stirring until syrup is golden amber, occasionally brushing down sides of pan with wet pastry brush and swirling the pan, about 8 minutes.
2. Remove pan from heat.  Add cream and butter; stir until any caramel bits dissolve and mixture is smooth.  Attach candy thermometer to side of pan and bring mixture to boil over medium-high heat.  Boil without stirring until thermometer registers 240 degrees F, about 2 1/2 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, whisk in vanilla and salt.
4. Remove crust from freezer.  Working quickly, pour caramel filling into crust.  Gently shake tart pan to allow filling to settle evenly in crust.  Cool completely at room temperature, about 3 hours.
5. Place reserved resealable bag with chocolate ganache in microwave and heat in 5-second intervals just until smooth and pourable.  Using scissors, cut off very small tip from corner of bag with ganace.  Pipe ganache decoratively over caramel filling in crosshatch pattern.
6. Chill until chocolate is set, about 20 minutes.
7. Remove sides from tart pan.  Place tart on platter, cut into wedges and serve with vanilla ice cream.

Stonewall Kitchen's Super Bowl Playbook

With all this talk around here about the “big game” on Sunday we thought it would be fun for you to see how we go from idea to execution for our emails and website photos.

We, of course are rooting for the home team, The New England Patriots but have not confirmed our plans for Sunday night, yet. It will most likely be a game-time decision, which is easily accomplished with our quick and easy options for throwing a party together in under two hours!

The Play by Play

Before you can purchase any Stonewall Kitchen items a lot of behind the scenes work must happen.

First and foremost of course, is the idea for a new product, which comes from Jim Stott and Jonathan King, owners of Stonewall Kitchen. Our test kitchen then creates several variations of the product which our tasting team evaluates. After several evaluations, to make sure we produce the best possible product, we are ready for production. A lot more goes into this of course, but we are going to jump to the recipe development.

Kim is our recipe developer. She develops the recipes which appear on the sides of some of our product jars, like our simmering sauces and she also creates recipes for each and every product which appear on our website, on recipe cards, and recipe booklets. Kim also cooks the food for all of our photo shoots and in her spare-time she teaches class in our cooking school.

To get ready for our Super Bowl themed photo shoot, Kim set up four different stations in the kitchen, and neatly organized all the ingredients based on the four different recipes she choose: Our Guacamole Spice Mix, Buffalo Wing Sauce, Three-Bean Chili using our Sloppy Joe Sauce and our Cornbread Mix.

Kim shared some quick cooking tips with us which made preparation and clean-up so much easier.

Place parchment paper in your baking pan and spray it with cooking spray before you pour your baking mix in, this allows you to simply lift the corn bread out of the pan, no need to gauge the pan while trying to cut pieces out and it also makes for a quick clean-up.

  Use a spoon to scoop out the core of a jalapeno for effortless prep.

Cut an avocado in half, remove the pit, and then cut the rest of the avocado into squares to turn an otherwise messy job into a neat and easy way for preparing guacamole.

After all the food is cooked, baked and prepared it is time to deliver it to our photo studio.

This is where Michael, our photographer, and Cynthia,our stylist, prepare the scene to be photographed. Cynthia picks the props, and positions things just right so Michael can capture the scene. Once the photos are complete, Michael sends them around for review.

Once the photo is given the “go” our web designer, Ted, creates an email using copy from our copywriter, Nina. And often Kim’s recipes are linked to the email as well.

Super Bowl email picture appearing in your in-box soon

The emails then get sent out. You can sign-up here: email sign-up if you would like to receive our bi-weekly emails.

Sometimes we use the photos for other portions of our website or for promotional materials.

Cheers!  We hope you enjoy your own Super Bowl party!