This brownie recipe from San Francisco chocolatier Michael Recchiuti uses four different kinds of chocolate: milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, and white chocolate. I'm going to make brownies this week and since I usually go with a typical one chocolate recipe, I'm going to definitely try this. Full recipe (from Food and Wine) after the jump.

A food recall involving chocolate? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Yup, Kraft food is recalling 24,000 cases of their Baker's Premium White Chocolate Baking Squares (6 oz.) because they might contain salmonella. The use by dates are March 31, April 1, April 2, and April 3 (all 2008), followed by the letters XCZ. The UPC code 0043000252200.

Kraft is advising that customers throw out the white chocolate. If you need more information about the recall, Kraft's phone number is 800-310-3704.

Warning: the following story doesn't give you permission to start downing dark chocolate by the case.

As someone who has high blood pressure, I welcome any new news that eating certain types of food can help bring the numbers down. Of course, if I just exercised more I could lose some weight and that would probably take care of 97% of my problem, but in case that doesn't happen, I like hearing news like this. Researchers in Germany have discovered that small portions of dark chocolate might help people who are in the early stages of high blood pressure. 24 women and 20 men, aged 56 to 73, were given both white and dark chocolate over 18 weeks. The white chocolate didn't have much effect at all.

I'd write more but I have to run out to the store and get some dark chocolate.

Way back in 2005, Cybele reviewed Orange Creme Hershey's Kisses at Candyblog. The orange-flavored white chocolate kisses didn't last too long at the time, but Hershey's has just re-released them, labeled as a "limited edition" offering for their year-long 100th anniversary celebration.

The original review noted - and I completely agree - that these chocolates taste a lot like orange creamsicles in the way that they blend orange and vanilla. The chocolate has a tempting orange scent and melts into your mouth smoothly and easily when you bite into one. Unfortunately, these kisses also have an almost overpowering sweetness to them that makes it difficult to eat any more than one at a time without having something to wash them down with.

The concept for these kisses is a good one. I'd try mixing these up with dark chocolate kisses (or other dark chocolates) for some variety and to subdue the sugar.

The bag makes no mention of how long the release will last, but I wouldn't be surprised if they stick around at least until Easter at the beginning of April.

I am not a big fan of creamy things, including cream-based soups and cream-based drinks and desserts. That means that while I like the flavor of Bailey's, I just can't drink very much of it at one time. When I got a bottle of the new Bailey's with a hint of Caramel Irish Cream Liqueur, I loved the flavor (more than Jonathan did) and began to come up with recipes that would show it off. I settled on baking a batch of cookies, though the liqueur would do well in a cake, too.

To play up the caramel flavor, I used brown sugar in the cookies and stirred in a combination of white chocolate and butterscotch chips. The overall flavor from the liqueur was subtle, but noticeable, and the mix of sugar, chips and Bailey's was a winning combination. The cookies are on the softer/chewier side, so the chips actually stand out as adding a slightly firmer texture to the treat.

If Bailey's isn't your thing, or if you can't find the caramel, not to worry. I included some variations after the recipe:

Let's face it: if you take a glace at the rapidly expanding chocolate section of almost any store, there is bound to be at least one product that needs a second (and much closer) look just to figure out the label. In this case, I'm not referring to products with unusual flavor combinations, but to those marked with a cacao percentage.

Consumers and manufacturers alike have gone crazy over chocolates labeled with their cacao percentage in the last year or so, and even though the numbers themselves are clear, not everyone understands what those numbers mean. Often, the percentages are equated with the quality of the chocolate, leading to the idea that the darker the chocolate, the better it will be in spite of the fact that the darkest chocolate - usually unsweetened, 99% cacao- is actually quite unpalatable.

The cacao percentage indicates how much of a given product, by weight, is made up of cocoa solids from the cocoa bean (cacao), like cocoa butter and cocoa powder. The rest of the bar is made up of sugar, vanilla and/or other ingredients, including milk and the occasional emulsifier. This basically means that a bar of chocolate with a higher cacao percentage will usually have more chocolate in it and a stronger cocoa flavor (i.e. it will be more bitter) than one with a lower percentage, but that doesn't necessarily mean that bars of equally high percentages will taste alike.

Moonstruck Chocolate Co. usually focuses on making some of the most beautiful confections that you're likely to see, with creation designs and precision artistry, but for Halloween, they do something a little different. In the spirit of the season, some of their seasonal offerings look more scary than sophisticated, which we love because it seems a little more appropriate for the holiday. The Halloween Horror Pizza is milk chocolate topped with a chocolate truffle eyeball and some gummy goodies that you wouldn't expect to find on any pizza. The Ivory Skull and Wormy Jack are both filled with gummy candies to give anyone who bites into the chocolate a Halloween trick, as well as a treat.

If you can't make up your mind as to which one you want, you can order a combo pack that contains one of each.

A mini muffin is just not as cute when it isn't tucked inside a miniature wrapper. The downside, of course, is that a portion of the already small morsel will stick to the paper. The upside, however, is that you can simply eat a second muffin to make up for it without any guilt. These are Mini Mocha Macadamia Muffins from Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea and, although the word "muffin" might inspire thoughts of wholesome fare, these sound deliciously decadent. The muffins are flavored with coffee and cocoa and they are rich with sour cream and butter. On top of that, they are packed with macadamia nuts, white chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate. The recipe makes about 48 mini muffins, so be prepared to share them. It shouldn't be hard to find willing friends and family to help polish them off.

It has been a while since A Passion for Ice Cream was our cookbook of the day, but this post marks the second time that a recipe from it has been featured here, providing ample evidence that the recipes in the book come out looking as fantastic at home as they do in the book, not to mention that its continued popularity among other food bloggers seems to indicate that the recipes taste as good as they look. This is the Cho Cho Cho brownie sundae, as constructed by Anita of Dessert First. The recipe calls for a fudgy chocolate brownie to be topped with a scoop of white chocolate ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. The presentation is simple and elegant, an easy one to recreate at home and a nice way to spruce up some brownies. If the triple chocolate combination sounds a bit too rich, you can do what Anita did and substitute vanilla ice cream for the white chocolate.

Monica Passin, the self-described "chocolateuse," is the artist behind Painter Girl Chocolates. Her chocolates are the result of 2 1/2 years working with chocolate as a medium for art. Her efforts at painting the "Birth of Venus" with chocolates were what really cemented her desire to work with it as a medium. She blends white, milk and dark Belgian chocolates to create new colors and subtle changes of flavor and texture for her animal print bars. A hint of lemon or espresso adds flair to the chocolates.

And, going beyond taste, they just look really neat.

The patterns (from top to bottom in the picture) include cheetah, zebra, wild pony and snow leopard. The bars are $7 each - pretty steep for 2.5 ounces of chocolate. The gift wrap options are cute, though, so they are definitely worht a look as a gift for an animal lover.

If your family and friends belong to the Cheesecake Factory Fan Club, then tell them this is a Ricotta Cheese Tart, otherwise they will be expecting something that tastes like a dense and creamy cheesecake and think the texture of the ricotta is grainy.

For the last year or two, give or take, M&Ms Australia has been selling white chocolate M&Ms. I like white chocolate, but I wouldn’t ordinarily go out of my way to pick some up and I didn't expect to like these when I first saw them. A few pieces later and I was hooked. They have the same, familiar candy shell as the classic milk chocolate candies, but lighter in color and filled with a smooth white chocolate. The chocolate was very creamy and made a perfect contrast to the crisp coating. They were a bit sweeter than regular M&Ms, but they were also more satisfying.

Much to my chagrin, the M&Ms Australia discontinued them and I was left without a source. Until now, that is, since Joe posted yesterday about the American release of white chocolate M&Ms! This pretty much confirms my suspicions that the Australian release was part of some test-marketing scheme for the US-based company and I’m glad to see that they’re bringing them back.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]