I saw on DealNews that Chipotle is having a special leap-year promotion — if you buy any burrito today, you can get a free burrito by showing your receipt. Though you have to buy the burrito today, the free burrito can be redeemed through next Sunday (March 7th).
Category: food
Tagatose — A New Sugar Substitute
I was reading an issue of Wired’s dead tree edition that a friend had given me and they had a sidebar (not really a full article) on new sugar substitutes. The usual suspects such as aspartame and sucralose were there, but they also had high praise for one called tagatose which they described as “subtle & natural”. So, I checked online for more information and — go figure — found a Wired article on tagatose.
Like Splenda, tagatose is made from sugar, but tagatose is derived from milk sugars within whey. And, though Splenda already tastes very natural, apparently tagatose is virtually imperceptible from sugar. The only downside is that tagatose isn’t calorie-free — it has about 1/3 the calories of sugar. But, it doesn’t affect blood-sugar levels or cause cavities.
Levin whips out a set of keys, unlocks his desk, and rummages through a drawer. He pulls out a bag of tagatose-coated bran flakes and a chocolate bar, both creations of his Danish licensee. The bran is a little stale but sweet enough, and the chocolate tastes just like the real deal. He hands me a baggie of pure tagatose. I hold it up to the light, dab a little on my finger, and try it. A dead ringer for table sugar. […]
Though it’s not a calorie-free food, I’m still excited about another sugar substitute. With any luck, this will soon find its way into reduced-calorie chocolate bars and sodas (Spleda-based chocolate still doesn’t quite taste like the real thing). However, it appears that the tagatose folks don’t have quite the marketing arm of their Splenda counterparts; so, I have a hunch that it may be a while before tagatose becomes widespread.
Recipe: Double-Chocolate Walnut & Marshmallow Creme Fudge
I brought along some fudge to Ru’s party on Saturday and I thought I’d post it here in case anyone would like the recipe. I had in mind that I could bake a dessert and something with nuts & chocolate sounded good. So, I decided on fudge and headed to AllRecipes for an appropriate recipe.
I searched for “fudge” and found my way to their fudge section. From there, I navigated to the Fudge with Nuts recipes and on to the recipes for Chocolate Fudge [with Nuts]. There were about a dozen recipes there and I concetrated on those recipes which already had many reviews (recipes that are highly rated tend to garner more reviews, which leads to more reviews and so on).
I settled on Aunt Teen’s Creamy Chocolate Fudge. It had 343 reviews and still had an average 5-star rating. What I also liked about it — in addition to its inclusion of two types of chocolate along with marshmallow creme — was that it required no fancy candy thermometers (as some fudge recipes do). Here’s the recipe:
Aunt Teen’s Creamy Chocolate Fudge
Ingredients:
- 1 (7 ounce) jar marshmallow creme
- 1 ½ cups white sugar [see notes below on alterations]
- ⅔ cup evaporated milk [a 5 oz can]
- ¼ cup butter
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips [one full 12 oz bag]
- 1 cup milk chocolate chips [half a 12 oz bag]
- ½ cup chopped nuts [walnuts work very well here, though pecans would probably also be good]
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the nuts in an even layer. Toast them for 4 minutes, rotate pan, and continue to toast until fragrant and color deepens slightly, about 4 minutes longer. Then set them aside to slightly cool until they’re needed.
Line an 8×8 inch pan with aluminum foil. Set aside.
In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine half the jar of marshmallow creme, sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt. Bring to a full boil, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and pour in semisweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in nuts and vanilla; lightly fold in remaining marshmallow creme. Pour into prepared pan. Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours or until firm.
Recipe notes and alterations:
Though the recipe calls for 1 ½ cups of sugar, some of the reviews suggested trying just 1 cup of sugar instead. Since I didn’t want an overly-sweet fudge, I went with that suggestion (which worked out well). On a later batch, I tried using just ⅔ cup of sugar and that seemed to further improved the chocolatiness-to-sweetness ratio.
At one point, I also thought about using Splenda in lieu of sugar altogether. But I decided not to take a chance on that as fudge recipes tend to rely on the crystalline nature of sugar for the proper chemical reactions (unlike many other baked goods which only use sugar for its sweetening properties).
Dijon, You’re All Right With Me
Back when I learned of Good Eats’ grilled cheese recipe, I wasn’t terribly enthused about the Dijon mustard called for in the recipe. Really, I haven’t liked Dijon mustard for some time. But, after thinking it over, I realized that maybe it was just me — maybe it was just the particular Dijon that I had been exposed to over the years.
Growing up, my parents enjoyed Grey Poupon with various dishes. And, I tried it several times over the years but didn’t quite like it. But, after seeing Dijon mustard used by so many television chefs, I got to thinking that maybe I should give Dijon another chance. And, I also came to realize that Grey Poupon isn’t the “gourmet French mustard” that it pretended to be — it’s made by Kraft!
So, the next time the grilled cheese episode of Good Eats aired, I paid special attention to the mustard that Alton used (I trust his views on food, after all). I didn’t get that good a look, but I noticed its black label and made a mental note of the jar’s approximate size.
Next time I visited Target, I strolled down their mustard aisle to see what I could find. Sure enough, I found a couple likely candidates from Maille. Their labels are black and their jars looked about right size. There were two varieties: original Dijon and wholegrain. Figuring that the wholegrain version might have more Dijon essence, I decided to go for that one. And, besides, at $2.50, it wasn’t a big investment in case it turned out that I didn’t like it.
That evening, I prepared my tuna sandwiches for the following day (typically, I would have a tuna sandwich for breakfast and lunch, though I’ve been having omelettes for breakfast recently). And, I decided to give the new Maille Wholegrain Dijon a try. So, I slathered on a layer to each of the sandwiches. I prepared the tuna and completed the sandwiches.
Though I made the Dijon-tuna sandwiches last night, I only had a chance to try one today. And, to my pleasant surprise, it was rather tasty. There wasn’t any of that weird Grey Poupon-esque aftertaste and the Maille Dijon was also more flavorful (yet somehow more subtle) than the brown mustards I was used to. As an unexpected bonus, the wholegrain nature of the mustard also created little “flavor pockets” of mustard that burst in each bite.
I’m guessing that Grey Poupon may still not be my cup of tea, but I’m satisfied with my $2.50 investment into Maille. Perhaps I’ll even try the original Dijon next time, just to see how its flavor profile compares to the wholegrain.
Gina’s Chocolate-Tar Squares
Roger threw a housewarming party on Saturday — it was a lot of fun and there was plenty of food & beverages. In particular, Gina made what she called “chocolate-tar squares”. From what she tells me, she initially thought about making some brownies but then realized that she didn’t have the necessary accessories to the brownie mix (an egg, oil and so on).
So, she instead decided to make some brownie-shaped bars out of packaged cookie dough. I can only guess that she already had the cookie dough on hand since, if she were going to the store for it, she could have just as easily bought some eggs and oil while she was there ;). In any case, in a moment of recipe freestyling, Gina decided on the tar squares.
Simply, she placed the cookie dough across the bottom of a standard 8x8 pan — it was if she was making brownies, only not really. She baked them for the recommended 15 minutes or so, but found that they were still uncooked after that time. Since she had taken them out of the oven anyway (to test their doneness), she drizzled on some caramel before returning them to the oven (hey, why not?).
Apparently, these pseudo-brownies took almost a hour to cook through. Perhaps when sized into cookies, the dough is heated from all sides and bakes faster that way (?). After cooking, Gina sliced the chocolate-tar into squares for serving. All of this baking & preparation is from what Gina told me — I can only speak first-hand on the eating part ;).
As you may have already guessed, the caramel didn’t really form a layer on top of the squares but rather infused itself into them. And, as the dough is chewy to begin with, Gina coined the “tar” moniker. Perhaps “chocolate goo squares” or even “chocolate chewy squares” would have also worked.
As I can’t resist homemade treats, I soon tried one of the chocolate-tar squares. Sure enough, it was both chewy and square. And, the caramel made for a pleasant sidekick to the chocolate chips. In all, they were very tasty, especially considering that the recipe didn’t exist before that evening.
Being the chocolate aficionado that I am, I wonder if they could be made even better with a layer of chopped dark chocolate to accompany the caramel layer. Or, the chopped chocolate could be substituted for the caramel for an even-chocolatier treat. Perhaps some day I’ll have to give that a try.