It's National Chocolate Day! With Recipes

Gross I know, but it doesn't taste the same in a glass.

I hadn't planned on blogging today - I have been busy working on several projects and assignments related to a volunteer job I have at my church.  I was looking through my emails to find one in particular and up popped an email from the Huffington Post announcing that it was National Chocolate Day and they had 48 chocolate recipes!  Of course that got my attention and I scrolled through each one and then suddenly I knew I had to stop what I was doing and bake.  I yelled out to my husband "it's National Chocolate Day and I'm going to bake, do you mind?"  He laughed like I was out of my mind but yelled back, "oh please!"  I decided on two recipes from my own collection; one is quite appropriate for autumn.  Before I made the decision to bake, I had thought I should just have a bit of chocolate to celebrate the day, just a tiny piece and that would be that.  Taken from the chocolate tin.  So I did.  Then, after I scrolled through the 48 recipes, I decided to take greater action for celebration.

Let me explain the drinking out of the carton picture.  I don't drink out of any of the milk or juice cartons in our refrigerator, ever, only the Hood Calorie Countdown Chocolate Milk.  This is my own personal carton.  No other lips ever touch it.  And I have 3 more downstairs in another refrigerator if someone else wants some.  Since that milk came out in about 2004, I have been hooked. It's sugar free, thick, creamy, and better than any chocolate milk I have ever had.  And 80 calories a glass!! And no sugar!  The first thing I do everyday as soon as I come downstairs in the morning, dressed and made up, hair done, is open the fridge and take 5 swallows.  No more, no less.  I have done this for 10 years.  Up until 2 1/2 years ago when I stopped working outside the home, I took 5 more swallows every day as soon as I walked in the door from work.  That held me over until dinner. When I moved to California for a year with my new husband, he asked me one day if I was happy.  I told him I was almost perfectly happy but I could not be perfectly happy because I was not drinking my Hood chocolate milk.  I said it in jest but deep inside it was true, though not critical by any means.  Hood milk is based in Chelsea, Massachusetts and sold mainly on the eastern seaboard.  I searched high and low when I moved to CA, every store I could find; nada.  One day when I was missing it so, I did a google search for it and found it listed as a food item in six Walmart Superstores in CA, two of them in the Bay Area; one in Napa and the other in Fairfield.  Fairfield!  That's only 40 miles away!  So once a month I made a field trip to that small city and bought 4 cartons of my chocolate milk.  I had become perfectly happy.  I don't know what I'll do if they ever quit making it.  I did write Hood a few years ago to request that they never stop - ever.

So here are two wonderful chocolate treats I made tonight - we tasted them both and now they are safely in the freezer to keep us from ruining all the healthy eating we did today.

Decadent Double Chocolate Autumn Brownies (one saucepan)

1 stick unsalted butter
3 oz. bittersweet chocolate chopped
1/2 cup white and 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cloves
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup chocolate chips

Melt butter and chocolate over low heat in medium large saucepan.  Add sugar and cocoa powder and stir well.  Stir in eggs til smooth.  Add everything else but the flour.  Then stir in flour until almost combined and then the chocolate chips and then really mix it well.  Pour in to greased 8 or 9 inch square or round metal pan.  I put foil or parchment paper in the bottom and grease again so removal is easy.  Bake at 325 for 25 minutes.  Don't over bake.  These are better the next day when the spices have mellowed.  Keep chilled.  These are subtly spiced, not overwhelmingly gingery or spicy.  They are also incredibly rich and dense and moist.  And super good with pumpkin ice cream!!

Drink this

I use this fresh ginger in a tube - when I buy the tubers, they decay before I use them up

Real purty

Outrageous Super Chocolately Cookies (adapted from a recipe I found in Martha Stewart a long time ago)

8 oz semisweet chocolate broken up
1/2 stick unsalted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 12 oz package bittersweet chocolate chips like Ghiradelli 60%

Preheat oven to 350 (in my case I just turned my oven up 25 degrees for this next recipe going on).  Melt chocolate and butter together in saucepan.  Stir well and set aside.  Beat eggs, vanilla and brown sugar in a mixing bowl.  Beat in chocolate batter.  Add dry ingredients and beat until just barely combined.  Mix in chocolate chips until just combined.  Drop by large spoonfuls on parchment lined or ungreased cookie sheets 2-3 inches apart.  Bake 12 minutes.  When they cool, break one in half; they are dense and meaty on the inside with melty chocolate.  It was so hard to just split one with my hubby.  

The texture of the prepared dough 

I ate two like this one Sunday (sugar day) with Richardson's Death by Chocolate ice cream - the cookie is darker and thinner than the ones I made today because I chilled today's dough due to a meeting I had to run to and cold dough always bakes higher; spreads less.  Both are killer.

I hope you ate chocolate today to celebrate.  It's the respectful thing to do.  ;)