"chocolate dipped" news and stories

Dark Chocolate Dipped Altoids sounded so good after reading Joe's initial review that I decided to keep an eye out for them while shopping. Target seems to be a veritable gold mine of new and limited edition candies, so it didn't surprise me when I saw a box near the checkout and picked them up.

At least, I thought I saw a box of the candies I was looking for. I didn't discover that I picked up a tin of Dark Chocolate Dipped Cinnamon Altoids instead until I took a closer look at the package later that day. I'm not a big fan of cinnamon candies in general, but I have to admit that the chocolate-coated cinnamon Altoids were pretty addictive. The chocolate was not too sweet and melted fairly easily in my mouth, cutting the normally sharp cinnamon flavor substantially and leaving behind an almost Mexican chocolate-type flavor.

I still haven't had a chance to sample the regular chocolate covered Altoids, but I think I'll be satisfied with my accidental purchase for a while yet.

Some of you may argue that macaroons aren't cookies, in the strictest sense of the word. Still, they turn up in the cookie sections of most of my cookbooks, so that's good enough for me. The basis of this recipe comes from Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. As with raspberry thumbprints, I made a few adaptations. First, I added the grated zest of one small orange to the basic macaroon recipe. Then, after the macaroons had cooled, they were dipped in melted dark chocolate, Callebaut to be specific. As you can imagine, the orange and chocolate play very well off one another.