Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Making Chocolate Gelato



Inspired by an article I pulled out of Traditional Home called “Sassy Sorbet”, I decided to make some cocoa infused frozen desserts. My first attempt at a tasty frozen treat was to use my remaining white chocolate square with berries from Dylan’s Candy Bar. I grab my Trader Joe’s Organic Cocoa Powder made with criollo and trinitario cacao beans from Peru from the pantry along with the white chocolate, caster sugar and salt. Ohhh! This should be good!

I was off to the race. I used a recipe from the internet as a guide, but I added my own spin to the recipe. So, here is what I came up with…Chocolate Surprise Sorbet by Cocoa Connoisseur:

Ingredients:
1 ¼ c Caster Sugar (fine sugar)
3 1/3 c Water, Room Temperature
¼ c White Chocolate with Berries (from Dylan’s Candy Bar or something similar)
1 c Cocoa Powder
2 tsp Vanilla
Pinch Salt

Preparation:
Whisk together the Caster Sugar and Water in a bowl until sugar is dissolved. Add the Cocoa Powder, Vanilla and Salt to the sugar/water mixture until smooth.

Chop the White Chocolate with Berries into small pieces. Add the chopped White Chocolate chunks. Blend completely.

Pour the mixture into your ice cream maker’s freezer bowl. Follow your machine’s instruction book to start and operate the unit.


Personally, this stuff was delicious! My husband loved it so much he kept eating it. Then, the next day I come home from work and the sorbet is all gone!! What in the world…the man was claiming I was making him “fat” with these desserts.

If you ask me, that is a personal problem and he must have lost his mind throwing out a good batch of chocolate sorbet (I didn’t event get a picture of it yet). But in actuality, he was addicted and kept eating it. They say, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. Well, I definitely won that battle!

Oh, back to the cacao beans. Both criollo and trinitario beans are grown in tropical regions within the latitudes of 20° South and 20° North of the equator. The temperature must consistently be between 70° to 77° F for the beans to flourish. Only about 1% of criollo and 14% of the trinitario are used to make chocolate. Both beans are quite flavorful, but unfortunately, they are not used in most of the chocolate we eat today (especially here in the USA). As for criollo beans, most of the beans produced are a criollo/trinitario hybrid with 2% to 5% cacao producing trees available. So, if you’re a label readier, look for criollo and trinitario for the best beans!

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