Chocolate

Cherry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

March 3, 2013 by The Partial Ingredients

Oatmeal raisin cookies got a bad rep when I was a kid. They weren’t very sweet, had a dry crumbly texture and just couldn’t stand up to classic chocolate chip cookies. These cookies give chocolate chip a run for it’s money. The cherries and chocolate go so well together and the texture was soft and not too crumbly. The cherries really take this cookie to the next level because they added a little bit of tartness to balance the sweet. I will definitely be making these again! The recipe makes 5 1/2 dozen so I cut the recipe in half. If you wanted to make the larger amount, just double the measurements below.

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Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

February 24, 2013 by The Partial Ingredients

Peanut butter and chocolate is just a perfect combination. It brings together sweet, salty and chocolatey so what’s not to like? My boyfriend recently made homemade peanut butter so he wanted to try making a dessert out of it. He made these fantastic peanut butter cups based on Reese’s candy only with dark chocolate. The only complication was melting the chocolate chips smoothly, but he was able to figure out a way to mimic a double boiler by using a flat bowl and a sauce pot. It melted the chocolate smoothly without risking burning the chocolate or creating a lumpy consistency. The peanut butter cups were ridiculously good. The chocolate was just a basic semi-sweet chocolate chip and the hero was the homemade peanut butter. If you have a food processor, it’s one of the best things to try making at home. You can use store bought peanut butter for this recipe, but if you have time to make your own for it I would highly recommend it!

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Salted Caramel Stuffed Chocolate Cookies

December 19, 2012 by The Partial Ingredients

As far as decadent Holiday cookies go this recipe ranks pretty far up there in the decadence and the deliciousness! I am a big fan of salted caramel and combining it inside of a cookie sounded too good to be true. The cookie’s name makes it sound more complicated than it is and the recipe is really simple and doesn’t take long to throw together. These cookies remind me a little of chocolate lava cake especially when eaten soon after they’re taken out of the oven. The gooey caramel oozes out of the center and mixes with the outer chocolate cookie layer. The cookie just looks festive and almost snow covered from the powdered sugar on top.

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Thanksgiving Desserts

November 18, 2012 by The Partial Ingredients

And now for the real main course–dessert! Here are some delicious options perfect for your Thanksgiving table:

Pumpkin Pie

Golden Delicious Apple Crisp

Vanilla Custard Pie

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mint Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Gingersnap Cookies

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

November 10, 2012 by The Partial Ingredients

Sadly my favorite month of the year has been over ten days but I am still celebrating Fall with new pumpkin recipes! These muffins would like to pretend they are for breakfast, but they are so delicious they seem more like a dessert. The inside is light and fluffy with gooey bits of chocolate chips all over. The flavor of the pumpkin is mild, but definitely present. I added some yogurt into the batter which gave the muffins a fluffier, creamier texture. This recipe has lots of possibilities for variation–adding nuts or raisins would work well as a substitute for the chocolate. If you wanted to replace the yogurt with apple sauce that would work fine too.

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Chocolate Zucchini Bread

August 5, 2012 by The Partial Ingredients

I’ve come across quite a few recipes for chocolate zucchini bread and I’ve always been intrigued by this recipe. I had two leftover zucchini wasting away in my refrigerator so I thought I would give this a shot. Turns out you can’t taste the zucchini at all! I’m not really sure why but chocolate and zucchini can both be a little bit bitter so maybe the flavors complimented each other. The bread uses two blocks of unsweetened baker’s chocolate which gives it a very rich chocolate flavor. I used plain yogurt to give it an extra bit of creaminess. The result was a really moist, chocolatey bread with the added benefit of 2 cups of veggies! Plus the kitchen smelled amazing while the bread baked so I look forward to making this again.

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Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

March 17, 2012 by The Partial Ingredients

One of my favorite combinations is mint and chocolate. For St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to make some green chocolate chip cookies and to give the recipe a little kick I added mint extract to the batter. The chocolate and the mint were great together and it was even tastier dipping the cookies into milk. For whatever reason dipping the cookies in milk caused the mint flavor to be more pronounced. This was an easy and tasty recipe for St. Patty’s day!

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Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

January 1, 2012 by The Partial Ingredients

Cherries and chocolate are a perfect food combination. The tanginess and sweetness of the cherries combined with dark chocolate is one of my favorite desserts. I had never tried making a cherry and chocolate cookie before and when I came across a recipe for this cookie I knew I had to try it. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips, but the chips can easily be substituted for chocolate chunks from a good chocolate bar. The recipe begins as a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe which is very easy to throw together. The steps that deviate from that recipe comes from adding the cocoa powder and the dried cherries. I like chocolate chip cookies to be crispy on the outside and chewy/soft on the inside and these were pretty much the perfect texture in every way. The tangy cherries and chocolate were perfectly balanced. I’m sure you could exchange the dried cherries for some other dried fruit that pairs well with chocolate so I can’t wait to play around more with this recipe!
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Nutella Pumpkin Bread

November 12, 2011 by The Partial Ingredients

If you like pumpkin and chocolate you just might like this recipe which combines two great flavors into one delicious bread. The bread is also seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger which produces amazing aromas in the kitchen as the bread bakes. The chocolate hazelnut flavor from the nutella and the pumpkin puree mixes well together, creating an excellent fall bread recipe. I mixed the batter well, resulting in a dark brown batter. Another option is to fold in the nutella at the end, creating a swirl of chocolate in the middle.

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