The Prague Post
September 8th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Beyond the bar

The many uses and forms of chocolate allow for creativity
From the chef | Search restaurants | Archives

July 18th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Homemade brownies, with little side touches, will melt anyone's heart.
enlarge

The early explorers returned from the New World with cacao beans. Spanish monks adopted the bitter drink derived from the beans to European tastes by adding sugar and spices.

Thus began the world’s love affair with chocolate. As European states began colonizing newly discovered lands and cultivating the cacao plant, the craze spread. Keep in mind, these early aficionados were true chocoholics — aside from a few cake or pastry recipes, the new treat was available only as a drink until the mid-19th century.
Today it comes in many forms, most commonly cocoa, the powdered version of cacao seeds. So home chefs should understand a few basics:
Milk chocolate is a sweetened style with a small percentage of cocoa solids (around 10 percent) and a greater level of milk solids. Cocoa solids include fatty cocoa butter and other byproducts. The low cocoa content in relation to milk makes for a simple chocolate. It was invented in the 1800s and later became the basis for rudimentary chocolate bars. It’s used in “chip” form to make cookies, but is otherwise not a baking product.
White chocolate relies on fat from the cacao bean, along with milk, sugar and other ingredients. Some people dismiss it as nonchocolate, but not because of its color. The whitish shade results from the lack of nonsolid extracts from the bean and a low cocoa solid content (around 30 percent). It tends to be sweet, with no bitterness.
Dark chocolate, like milk chocolate, is (with one exception) a sweetened style. But it contains little or no milk solids. A high concentration of cocoa butter makes dark chocolate both rich and bitter. In semi-sweet form it consists of more than 40 percent cocoa solids, yet has enough sugar to mute some of the natural bitter tang, making it perfect for desserts such as chef Vlasta Jiros Lacina’s brownie recipe.
Bittersweet chocolate can reach 85 percent. It can be frighteningly dense and bitter, which translates beautifully when used in baking, creating intensely flavored dishes. Unsweetened chocolate is as advertised: composed almost completely of cocoa solids and explosively sharp.
This recipe calls for another derivative of the cacao bean called Dutch chocolate, invented in the 1820s, that is mild in flavor and mixes easily.
Vlasta Jiros Lacina is executive chef for Ambiente, located at Manesova 59, Prague 2–Vinohrady. Tel. 222 727 851.

BROWNIES

Ingredients
400 grams (14 ounces) caster sugar
200 grams butter, softened
110 grams bitter chocolate (more than 60 percent cocoa butter)
100 grams plain flour
100 grams walnuts
30 grams Dutch bitter cocoa
4 eggs
1 vanilla bean
Pinch of salt
The extras
500 grams vanilla ice cream
200 grams powdered sugar
200 grams fresh cranberries
Preparation
Use a blender to mix egg and caster sugar into a thick foam.
Add softened butter and stir until smooth.
Melt bitter chocolate.
Add melted chocolate, chopped walnuts, Dutch bitter cocoa, seeds from the vanilla bean, salt and flour.
Stir until you have a runny batter without lumps.
Preheat the oven to 150 C (300 F).
Grease a 15 x 25 centimeter (6 x 10 inch) baking tray with butter.
Pour the batter into the tray, place in oven and bake for 40 minutes.
Remove from oven, turn the tray upside down and place onto a slightly wet tea towel like marble cake. Lift off the baking tray after cooling.
When brownies are cool, cut into 3-centimeter cubes and sprinkle the top with half of the powdered sugar.
To serve, crush fresh cranberries with the rest of the powdered sugar then scoop vanilla ice cream on top of berries; place brownies on the side.


Other articles in Night & Day (18/07/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.