From My Kitchen : Instant Gratification Gourmet Hot Chocolate

This recipe came out of a sudden, immediate, and undenyable desire for hot chocolate after I was warm and comfortably in my fleece pants and fuzzy socks. 

Sadly, when I opened my pantry the only raw coco I had was frighteningly out of date. I did locate a bag of jumbo semi-sweet chocolate chips. Cookies crossed my mind, but there are way more steps and dirty dishses involved in cookies. I wanted to sate the sweet tooth right then.

What resulted was a lovely cup of thick, sweet, decadant, spicy hot chocolate that is a dessert all by itself. A thickness somewhere in between pudding and a cup of the old faithful Swiss Miss.

Just the dreges left

The addition of salt, cinnamon and cayenne cuts the sweetness of the melted chocolate chips, but it would have been better with a little whipped heavy cream with a little vanilla and almost no added sugar. Next time, I'm also going to try a dark chocolate chip, like the Special Dark ones that Hersey's makes.

Tools to Use.

2 Quart Saucepan
4 Cup Measuring Cup
Whisk
Ladel
Your Favorite Mug

Your Shopping List

1 bag semi-sweet or dark choclate chips (keeping in mind that the darker the chip the less sweet your end product)
4 cups of whole milk. (Don't skimp on your milk fat, it's what makes it smooth and rich. Using dark chocolate almond milk would probably be tasty, if you want a non-dairy alternative)
1 tsp. Kosher salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cayenne
1 tsp vanilla extract

Assembly

• Put the milk in the saucepan, on medium heat. 
• Add the chocolate chips and start whisking. Don't stop. 
• Once the chips have mostly melted, add the salt, cinnamon, cayenne and vanila. 
• Heat the whole pan, whisking continously, until it's a little hotter than you might want to drink. 
• Ladel into your mug and try to not making yummy noises at every sip.

App Review: Pepperplate

What its for : Recipe organization, meal planning, shopping list organizing, weekly food packing.

Personal Technology: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.0 (app & Chrome) & HTC OneX (ICS app) & Windows 7 (Chrome)

I'm taking a little break from the Portland posts to laud the wonderfulness that is Pepperplate.

I've been looking for a menu planning app that may all my wants in a single app and this one comes the closest.

Pepperplate gives me a place to collate my own recipes, many of which only existed in my head or on random scraps of paper stuck in cookbooks, along with ones I pull from my favorite websites. Those recipes can then be organized into menus, those menus into plans and those plans into shopping lists. It makes my little organizational heart go pitter-pat.

When you are ready to start cooking, you can set several timers to help get it all on the table at the same time. I've found this a little clunky, but it's still helpful to know in the beginning of cooking a dish when you should start your sides, but if you aren't good at getting a meal on the table (like me) this isn't going to help you much.

East of access is king in this app - from my laptop (at work when I come across some awesome idea for a meal), my phone (at the grocery store while I'm shopping), and my tablet (while I'm cooking in the kitchen) has meant better meals and less frustrating shopping experiences. 

The sync feature is my largest gripe and that's pretty minimal. Occasionally, the sync doesn't complete until you restart the app, or, reverts to a prior shopping list while in the middle of a shopping trip. Annoying, but it's not enough to make me not want to use it.

Being able to make notes on recipes that came from somewhere else is helpful, since I have to make adjustments for the tastes in my household.

The applet Chrome uses on the tablet doesn't function the way the developers obviously wanted it to. You can't easily import or copy and paste. Again, annoying but until I run out of interesting things from Bon Appetit and allrecipes.com it's not keeping me from using it.

You can get the app from Google Play (or iTunes)  and from here on the Web.

Daily Snapshot : Sunday 3/10

Dinner prep, and final product. Roasted chicken with homemade bacon, Brussels, gala apples and garlic. Single pan of wonderful chicken/bacon/veg goodness. Full post with instructions, coming later today.