"su good eats" news and stories

Well, chocolate actually does grow on trees, although it needs to picked, fermented, roasted and ground before it can be turned into the tasty creations we modern folk rely on to get us through times of stress, afternoon slumps, PMS and breakups (geez, could I be anymore of a cliché?). Between the months of June and October (the trees are very sensitive to cold and so can't be shipped when the weather turns frosty) eChocolates.com make it possible to have your very own pair of chocolate trees delivered to your home or office. To sweeten the deal, they are throwing in two free Vintage Plantation Chocolate Bars with any tree order. They ship on the first day of the month, so if you want your own chocolate tree, you better place your order soon, as September 1st is rapidly approaching (where did the summer go?). I'm very tempted to place an order for myself (they cost $9.95 plus $8.20 s&h).

[via Su Good Eats]
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Sometimes, holidays just beg to be celebrated with fried foods. Yesterday, to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Jessica made churros and posted about them on her blog, Su Good Eats. Jessica tells us that churros got their start as a French dish, not a Mexican one, since they are based on choux pastry, which is typically used to make eclairs and cream puffs. In this case, of course, it is deep fried and rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture to make a crispy and delicious snack that you'll want to eat as soon as it's cool enough to pop into your mouth. Coincidentally, the recipe came from the same cookbook that was our cookbook of the day yesterday, Rick Bayless's Mexico One Day At A Time!

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Chocolate and hazelnut is a nearly-unbeatable combination and among the most popular in the world of confectionery. It seems only natural to combine the flavors in other things, like spreading Nutella on toast, adding hazelnut syrup to a Starbucks mocha or baking a cake. Jessica, at Su Good Eats, tested not one but three different cakes using a hazelnut and chocolate flavor combination in a quest to come up with the best one. Not only are they delicious, but they are also lower in fat than your average cake - quite a feat considering that nuts are rather high in fat, even if it is the heart-healthy kind. Her favorite of the cakes was the above-pictured version of Nigella Lawson's Nutella Cake, which she describes as being almost like a solid slab of nutella: rich, smooth and flavorful. It is definitely the perfect cake to make for a special occasion or on a day when you are feeling just a bit decadent.

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