CAIPIRINHA TRUFFLES: Cachaça Day

Today is Cachaça Day. Cachaça, a Brazilian white rum made from sugar cane, is the main ingredient in the Caipirinha, the national cocktail! How can you go wrong with sugar, cachaça, and lime? You can enjoy a caipirinha at home, but if you add chocolate, you can make Caipirinha Truffles! It's the perfect way to celebrate Cachaça Day!

CAIPIRINHA TRUFFLES

Ingredients
14 ounces white chocolate, chopped (make sure it's 'real' white chocolate)
Grated zest of one lime
1/4 cup whipping cream
3 Tbsp Cachaça
cocoa powder

Directions
Combine chocolate, lime zest, and cream in metal bowl; place it over saucepan over simmering water. Stir until chocolate is melted.
Remove from heat, add cachaça, and stir until smooth.
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 2-3 hours --or until firm enough to form balls.
Using a scoop or teaspoon, scoop out chocolate mixture (while cold and firm) and form balls. They don't need to be perfectly round.
Roll balls in cocoa powder.
Keep refrigerated.

THE ORIGINAL GERMAN SWEET CHOCOLATE CAKE: National German Chocolate Cake Day!

Today is National German Chocolate Cake Day. Here's a wonderful Vintage Ad with Recipe from Baker's Chocolate for German Sweet Chocolate Cake, using Baker's German Chocolate. (It also appeared in theBaker's Cookbook) This is an easy delicious cake with a wonderful Coconut-Pecan Frosting. Let me know what you think! 

And, it may sound odd that's there's an American National Holiday for German Chocolate Cake, but German Chocolate Cake is not German. German Chocolate Cake is an American creation that contains the key ingredients of sweet baking chocolate, coconut, and pecans.

In 1852, Sam German created a dark baking chocolate bar for Baker's Chocolate Company, and in his honor, the company named it "Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate."

Hower, the story goes that the first published recipe for German's Chocolate Cake showed up in a Dallas newspaper in 1957 and supposedly came from a Texas homemaker. The cake quickly gained in popularity and the recipe together with photos spread all over the country. America fell in love with German Chocolate Cake, and food editors were swamped with requests for information on where to buy the chocolate. In one year, there was a 73% sales jump in German's Baker Sweet Chocolate sales (then owned by General Mills).  

However, the cake most likely didn't originate from the Dallas housewife. Buttermilk chocolate cakes were popular in the South for over 70 years, and pecans were plentiful, also, to make the frosting. 

FYI: German's Chocolate is similar to a milk chocolate and sweeter than regular baking chocolate.

BLACK COW DAY: History & Recipe

Today is Black Cow Day. You can go out and give Bossy a pat, but really this holiday is about a different type of black cow. A black cow aka a root beer float is made with root beer, chocolate syrup, and vanilla ice cream. Have one at your favorite Ice Cream Fountain or make one today. So easy!

The history of the Black Cow From Leites Culinaria: The first true black cow day seems to have occurred on August 19, 1893. That’s when the notion of combining root beer and ice cream into a frothy concoction is rumored to have occurred to Frank Wisner, owner of a soda fountain as well as a mining company in Cripple Creek, CO. Although soda fountains were rampant at this point in our country’s culinary evolution, iced cream sodas didn’t yet contain ice cream. Instead, they were commonly made from either syrups combined with cream and cold soda water or cream mixed with flavored syrup. As the story goes, on that particular moonlit night, Wisner was gazing at the dark Cow Mountain when its snow-capped peak inspired him to float a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of his Myers Avenue Red root beer. Sure enough, he swapped root bear for cola, and ice cream for cream, and called the sweet creation “Black Cow Mountain.” It proved immensely popular, not just with the town’s children, but their mothers and the miners whom one might expect to find elsewhere—say, in a saloon or worse. Regulars promptly shortened the title to “Black Cow,” and since then, the term has been used interchangeably to describe root beer floats both with and without a dose of chocolate sauce. Consider trying it both ways before passing judgment.

BLACK COW

Ingredients
10 ounces root beer
2 scoops vanilla ice cream
1 Tbsp chocolate syrup
1 1⁄2 ounces whipped cream
 maraschino cherry

Directions
Pour root beer over ice cream and chocolate syrup in a large glass.
Top with whipped cream and maraschino cherry.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie S'mores: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day!

Today is Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day. I've posted several recipes for Strawberry Rhubarb Pie with Chocolate Crust, but for today's celebration I thought I'd post a fun recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Pie S'mores. S'mores you say? Pie in S'mores you ask? Yes!

TCHO Chocolate here in the San Francisco Bay Area makes a very unique bar--Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Bar. This unique bar won a Bronze medal at the Americas 2015 International Chocolate Awards.

As their materials note:
Remember when you were a kid and your mom baked a fresh pie with strawberries you'd picked that summer afternoon? Bursting with summer berry goodness, here are all the fixings in a real strawberry rhubarb pie — including the pie crust.

TCHO Pairings are about how great ingredients and great chocolate enhance the flavors of each other, masterfully mixing to create extraordinary chocolate delight! TCHO Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Bar has chocolate-covered strawberry rhubarb pie goodness that even has crunchy bits of real pie crust included.

FYI: This bar is seasonal, but I just checked, and it's available on InstaCart, so check other resources. You can also use other unique Tcho (or other brands) bars to make some uniquely flavored S'mores. 

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie S'mores

Ingredients
Graham Crackers
Tcho Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Bar
Marshmallows

Directions
Break graham cracker in half. Put a piece of TCHO Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Bar on graham cracker
Put marshmallow on stick and roast (or cook over a stove) until golden brown.
Take marshmallow off stick and lay on top of chocolate bar piece that's on top of the graham cracker. Cover with other graham cracker part and EAT!