CHEESE & CHOCOLATE PAIRINGS & RECIPE FOR CREAM CHEESE CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES: National Cheese Day!

Today is National Cheese Day. Chocolate and Cheese go perfectly together. You just have to have the right pairing.

Here are a few guidelines for the perfect CHEESE and CHOCOLATE pairing. Foods with similar flavor profiles work best together. For Darker Chocolates, choose a more complex, aged cheese. For Milk Chocolates choose a buttery cheese such as a Triple Brie. For Fruity Chocolates pair with a sharper cheese. For Nuttier chocolates pair with cheese high in butterfat. Spicy chocolates pair with sharp cheeses,

A few examples of Savory-Sweet Pairings:
Dark chocolate (80% or more cocoa) with a delicious true Blue cheese.
Burnt caramel chocolates with a beer-washed Cheese.
Bordeaux-style chocolate with a creamy triple crème Brie.
Citrus-y chocolate with a semi-hard, buttery table cheese (feta or havarti).

Here's an easy recipe for Cream Cheese Chocolate Truffles. You might also want to try my recipes for Goat Cheese Truffles or Blue Cheese Truffles, too.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Truffles

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
8 ounces softened cream cheese
4 ounces unsweetened or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup DARK cocoa powder, for rolling (or ground/chopped walnuts)

Directions
Pour cocoa powder or nuts into a shallow pie pan and set aside.
Chop chocolate into small pieces and melt in top of doubleboiler (or a pot over a pot of simmering water), stirring after every 45 seconds to prevent overheating. Set chocolate aside.
In large bowl of electric mixer, beat softened cream cheese. Gradually add powdered sugar. Beat mixture on medium speed for a few minutes, until well-blended.
Stop mixer and stir in melted chocolate. Beat until well combined.
Remove bowl from mixer, cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until firm enough to scoop, about 20-30 minutes.
Once candy is firm but not hard, scoop into 1 inch balls using teaspoon or candy/cookie scoop.
Roll truffles in cocoa powder or ground/chopped walnuts.
Serve truffles at room temperature, but if you're not eating right away, put in airtight container and keep in refrigerator.

CHOCOLATE EGG CREAM: National Egg Day

Despite its name, the Egg Cream contains neither eggs nor cream. I think it's the perfect recipe, though, today for National Egg Day! LOL!!!

Thanks to Whatscookingamerica.com for the history of the Egg Cream. 

In the beginning, it was a soda produced almost exclusively in New York (particularly Brooklyn). The basic ingredients are milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup. It is traditionally made in a small Coke-style glass.

True New Yorkers insist that it is not a classic egg cream without Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup. It is perfectly proper to gulp down an egg cream. In fact, egg cream will lose its head and become flat if it is not enjoyed immediately.

For many years, the egg cream remained a product sold only through New York soda fountains because bottled versions were hard to replicte. The cream, chocolate, and soda had a tendency to separate and to go bad after a couple days at best, and efforts to pasteurize or preserve the product ruined the taste. Today, Egg Cream drinks are bottled by a few small companies.

According to The Brooklyn Cookbook by Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy Jr., "You absolutely cannot make an egg cream without Fox's U-Bet." The cookbook quotes Fox's grandson, David, for the story of the syrup's name:

"The name 'U-Bet' dates from the late-'20s, when Fox's grandfather got wildcatting fever and headed to Texas to drill for oil. 'You bet' was a friendly term the oilmen used. His oil venture a failure, he returned to the old firm, changing Fox's Chocolate Syrup to Fox's U-Bet. He said, 'I came back broke but with a good name for the syrup.'



Chocolate Egg Cream

Ingredients
Approximately 1/2 cup cold whole milk (Skim or 2% milk won't foam as well)
1 cup bottled seltzer
2 Tbsp chocolate syrup (Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup)

Directions
Pour 1/2 inch of cold milk into a tall soda glass. Add seltzer or club soda to within 1 inch of the top of the glass; stir vigorously with a long spoon (this will cause it to become white and bubbly with a good head of foam).
Very gently pour 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup slowly down the inside of the glass; briskly stir with a long spoon only at the bottom of the glass where the chocolate sits. The resulting drink should have a dark brown bottom and a 1-inch high pure white foam top (if you mix it too much, the foam disappears).

NOTE: Do not let Egg Cream sit for a long period of time-5 minutes or more; it will go flat.


The Original Brooklyn Egg-Cream

Take a tall, chilled, straight-sided, 8oz. glass
Spoon 1 inch of U-bet Chocolate syrup into glass
Add 1 inch whole milk
Tilt the glass and spray seltzer (from a pressurized cylinder only) off a spoon, to make a big chocolate head
Stir, Drink, Enjoy

ROCKY ROAD ICE CREAM PIE: National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day!

Today is National Rocky Road Ice Cream Day!

Rocky Road Ice Cream was 'invented' in Oakland,  CA. One story goes that the Rocky Road ice cream flavor was created in March 1929 by William Dreyer in Oakland, CA. He cut up walnuts and marshmallows with his wife's sewing scissors and added them to his chocolate ice cream that reflected his partner Joseph Edy's chocolate candy that used walnuts and marshmallow pieces. Later the walnuts were replaced by toasted almonds. Fenton's Creamery in Oakland claims that William Dreyer based his recipe on a Rocky-Road style ice cream flavor invented by his friend, Fentons' George Farren, who blended his own Rocky Road-style candy bar into ice cream.  So however it came into existence, be sure and have a scoop of Rocky Road Ice Cream today... or make a Rocky Road Ice Cream Pie!

ROCKY ROAD ICE CREAM PIE

Ingredients
2 cups vanilla fudge swirl ice cream, softened
2 cups chocolate ice cream, softened
2/3 cup miniature marshmallows
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate, chopped and divided
1/2 cup toasted almonds, chopped (or lightly salted peanuts)
*Chocolate Pie Crust (see recipe below) Prepare first**

Directions
In large bowl stir together ice cream, marshmallows, 1/2 cup chopped chocolate, and toasted almonds or peanuts. Spoon into crust. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup chopped chocolate.
Cover and freeze at least 2 hours or until firm.
Let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes before cutting.

*Chocolate Pie Crust (good for lots of pies)
2 cups chocolate wafers (in a pinch use Oreos)
6 Tbsp butter

Directions
Melt butter.
Put chocolate wafers in plastic bag. Close bag and crush with spoon or rolling pin until you have tiny pea-sized chocolate bits. Or just whirl the cookies in a blender.
Combine melted butter with chocolate bits.
Press ingredients into 9-inch buttered pie pan. Be sure and go up the sides.
Bake 10 minutes at 325°F.
Cool completely before adding ice-cream.

How easy is this? O.K. even easier: Soften a gallon of Rocky Road Ice Cream and add to your Chocolate Pie Crust. Refreeze for two hours.

CHEWY CHOCOLATE COOKIES: Hershey's Retro Easy-Does-It-Recipe

As I always say, you can never have too many cookie recipes, so here's one more for your file: Hershey's Easy-Does-It Recipe #6 for Chewy Chocolate Cookies (1983). This recipe calls for either butter or margarine, but please use butter. The cookies will taste so much better! Happy June!