What Are You Doing Labor Day Weekend?

I was just wondering, because I'm judging the International Chili Society's regional cookoff in San Antonio! If you live near the area (or if you don't... hello! Road trip!), come on out and taste some chili! There will be plenty of beer, food, live music, and everything goes to charity. (www.soldiersangels.org)

Saturday September 5
Cowboys Dance Hall
3030 NE Loop 410 @ I-35
10:00 am- 5:00 pm

The cookoff continues on Sunday, but I'll only be judging (and harshly, might I add) on Saturday. Come out and say hi to me! If you've got the cajones to enter the contest and submit your own chili (hey, I helped you out on that last chili blog), you can still enter by going to www.chilicookoff.com.

The Scary Comfort of Mall-Sized Cookies

Dear Tricia, Thank you for your blog about comfort food, however when I need comfort food, I look for something like chocolate cake, a mall sized chocolate chip cookie, or anything slathered in Nutella. Any help?


If I'm going with the basis of my last comfort food blog and assuming that you want something that won't add cellulite to your butt cheeks, then yes I can help you. The Nutella thing throws a wrench in my research, but we'll get to that later.
Welcome to my office. I'm sorry you are currently in need of comfort and its namesake food. Please come in and make a white wine spritzer: I'm already one ahead of you.
Mall size chocolate chip cookies are indeed a comfort when you're in need. And I'm sorry, but Its just plain mean to put up those Great American Cookie kiosks in the middle of the mall so that there's no escape when your blood sugar plummets while shopping, you get a whiff of chocolate chip heaven, and somehow levitate and then float over to the cookies without any recollection of it whatsoever. Those cookie guys deserve to be punished. Or maybe they deserve a medal, I'm not sure. So, what I've found is a recipe for an olive oil cookie that you can bake at home into your own mall sized cookie. Its lower in fat, and the fat is unsaturated and actually good for you. The cookie dough doesn't include chocolate because most of my readers are looking for quick and convenient recipes, and the olive oil chocolate chip cookie recipes all have about 26 ingredients in them. I'm pretty sure if you're in need of comfort food you're not in the mood to go grocery shopping for 26 ingredients. So, its a sugar cookie. We'll get to the chocolate chips after.
Here's your ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon vanilla
Two egg whites
2-1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup skim milk

Mix up the first four ingredients in a bowl.
Mix up the flour, salt, and baking soda. Add half of them to the bowl and stir it up.
Add half of the milk and stir it up.
Add the other half of the flour, salt, and baking soda. Stir it up.
Add the rest of the milk, stir it up.

(I know the whole stirring in half the flour and half the milk, etc., seems like a pain in the ass. You want to just dump it all in there, right? Well I promise you this saves you time, elbow grease, and extra cleaning up. Trust me. Or don't. But when you waste your precious time that could be spent at Happy Hour, and 12 Clorox cleaning wipes, I'll be the first one to say I told you so.)

Take the dough out of the bowl and wrap it up in plastic wrap. Put it in the refrigerator for about half an hour before you roll it out. While you're doing that, make another white wine spritzer and preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out the dough about 1/4" thick. If you don't have a rolling pin, just use a can of pan spray or a bottle of liquor. You probably have at least one of those, right? Don't use a can of something inedible (like hairspray) just in case you have bad hand-eye coordination and might get it on the food. No one likes AquaNet cookies.

Here's the fun part: Don't cut the dough. Transfer it on to a buttered cookie sheet and bake it as a mall-sized cookie. Bake it for about 10-12 minutes, or until the edges start to turn brown. Beautiful.

To top your comfort cookie, get an 8 oz container of fat free cream cheese. Beat it real good, like the domestic abuse guys say in the back of the squad car on C.O.P.S., and add about a 1/4 cup of sugar. Beat it until its light and fluffy and spread it on top of your mall sized cookie. And on top of that, you're going to sprinkle MINI chocolate chips. The reason why you want to buy mini chocolate chips is because you get chocolate in every bite but don't have to use as many because they're not as big as regular sized chocolate chips. The portion size is naturally smaller... so try not to use the entire bag, okay? Even in your state of distress, remember this blog and try to resist.
Okay, so what you have there is a mall sized cookie, a basic fat free cream cheese frosting, and your precious little chocolate chips. It's not calorie-free or sugar-free, but come on... I'm not God.
Now for your Nutella request... at 100 calories per tablespoon, this stuff is NOT healthy. Delicious, I know... but it has serious potential to take you on an express train to Cellulite City. So here's what I say when it comes to needing a vehicle for a fatty topping to your mouth: use fruit. It has natural sugar instead of processed high fructose death wish, and it has lots of fiber so you'll feel full faster, along with lots of good vitamins and minerals. When you're buying the ingredients for your mall-sized comfort cookie, go buy a pint of strawberries for dipping into Nutella. Or some bananas, or maybe a mango. Whatever suits your fancy, Fancy Pants.
I hope this helps your need of comfort food! If it doesn't, I'm always ready for another challenge in the battle against big butt cheeks. Just try me...

Dark, Milk, and White: Three Chocolate Races Divided

Dear Tricia, How is white chocolate different than dark and milk chocolate? And why does it seize faster than dark and milk chocolate?

Chocolate is one of those awesome things that people either absolutely love, or absolutely get sick from. I LOVE things like that- nothing says awesome more than being able to only spark a love/hate relationship with someone.
Let's start by talking about what exactly makes up chocolate, aside from magic, which no one lists on the ingredient list but I'm pretty sure its in there. The actual taste of chocolate comes from the cocoa liquor. Don't get your hopes up... there's no booze in it. And on its own, it doesn't taste great: its like chocolate with no sugar in it, and no melt-in-your-mouth feel. But without the cocoa liquor, chocolate wouldn't taste like chocolate. The second ingredient that makes up chocolate is the cocoa butter, which is what gives it its smooth, melty texture. So cocoa liquor (you'll also hear people refer to it as "cocoa solids"), cocoa butter, and the addition of sugar is what makes up dark, or bittersweet chocolate.
What's added to dark chocolate to turn it into milk chocolate is.... da da da dum... MILK. You hear that, vegans? Milk chocolate is yet another thing you're depriving yourself of, you crazies! Milk powder can also be used, and vanilla is often an added flavor.
White chocolate isn't actually chocolate at all: its a confection with a big fat liar of a name. White chocolate is made of cocoa butter, milk, sugar, and vanilla. The cocoa liquor is missing, which is what keeps it out of the "chocolate" category. Sorry, whitey.
So lets break this down:
Dark chocolate- cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar
Milk chocolate- cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, milk, vanilla
White chocolate- cocoa butter, sugar, milk, vanilla

Moving on to your next question: why does white chocolate seize faster? First let me explain to the non-experts what seizing means. When you melt chocolate and add water to it, it turns into a gloppy, thick mess that is impossible to melt again. That's called "seizing." Water and chocolate are mortal enemies- they're like the Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders of the chocolate world. When you start adding extra ingredients to dark chocolate, (like sugar, milk, and vanilla), it makes the chocolate less stable, which is a nice way of saying it gets fussy and temperamental. So, if you've got a bowl of dark chocolate melting over a pot of simmering water, some of the condensation from the bowl might get into the chocolate and it could be fine. But if any moisture at all gets into a bowl of melting white or milk chocolate, it will seize up immediately. And that's just because it has all the extra added ingredients that make it less stable.
If you ruin a batch of white or milk chocolate that has seized up, luckily you don't have throw it out. That would be stupid and financially irresponsible, and people, we're in a recession! Just add lots of hot milk, stir it up, and voila: hot chocolate. Keep it in the fridge for when you get your late night chocolate craving. (I don't get those cravings... mine are usually for white wine spritzers.)
When you're trying to figure out what kind of chocolate you want to buy, good chocolate will usually have the cocoa liquor content on the label. A higher number means it has more cocoa liquor, and thus, less sugar. So if you're a bigger fan of sweet chocolate and are comparing two labels that say 56% and 70%, go for the one that says 56%.
If you've heard any of the hype about dark chocolate being good for you, yes, it is indeed true. Dark chocolate contains polyphenols- the antioxidants that keep things like cancer and premature aging away. So if you're going to try to eat chocolate for the health benefits, make sure its not milk or white. The higher the cocoa liquor content, the higher the level of polyphenols. I like to think that for every bite of chocolate I eat, it erases one of the martinis I've consumed in my lifetime. I should take stock in Hershey's....