Home » Sweets for the sweet: chocolate and its rivals

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Sweets for the sweet: chocolate and its rivals — 9 Comments

  1. Hi #NAME#. Just found your site via toys. Although I was looking for toys I was glad i came upon your site. Thanks for the read!

  2. I once went several years without chocolate. Still rarely eat it. Don’t drink coffee, either.

  3. I think that, if necessary, I too could live with out chocolate. After all there is a myriad of other delicious delights for the belly.

    Let’s not forget about pie. Dutch Apple with Vanilla Ice Cream – yummy.

    But the one thing that I wouldn’t live without is that little brown been magic called coffee. Of course it’s not just the taste, but the aroma alone can ispire the consciousness and animate the senses.

    There is no substitute for a rich cup of coffee, especially after a heavy meal.

    “The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

  4. I seem to remember reading somewhere (and it was recently) the chocolate affects the same pleasure centers in the brain as alcohol. To follow up on Ben-David’s notes on the complexity of flavors, maybe you should try a good single-malt. I’m partitial to The Glenlivet, French Oak Finish, not too expensive with floral and soft fruity tones that finishes with a mellow touch of spice.

    It’s enough of a treat (cost wise) to be special and prevent over-consumption, to pervent an ‘expanding’ head the next day, or an expanding waist-line (from the high calories) over time.

  5. I know you are somewhere in New England, so I will recommend Lalas’ (Hungarian Pastries) in Manchester, NH to you. It is as good as Ruzswurm’s in Budapest.

    Ladi’s got a pretty good story about walking out of Communist Hungary, too.

  6. Halvah?
    What is Halvah? It used to be an object of derision of MAD Magazine during MAD’s golden era. I always thought it was mined deep underground in Turkey and Armenia, but appatently it’s the Middle Eastern answer to fruitcake.

  7. Thanks for quoting me, neo – and better your waistline than mine!

    You’re right about chocolate’s complexity. This is also the appeal of coffee.

    Both of these have been further layered with other aromatics in different cultures – from Mexican mole sauce to Pennsylvania-Dutch chocolate-spice cookies to Middle-Eastern coffee with cardamom (my current boss’s favorite, and a very common and pleasant aroma here in Israel’s cafes).

    This is also part of the magic of your caramel sauce – which I also love: simple sugar takes on a complex mix of sweet and bitter flavors as it browns.

    So a creme brulee and a chocolate bar share the same “pattern” or flavor orchestration – bitter and sweet smoothed with creamy.

    So here’s a non-chocolate dessert recipe along these lines that I first met in a special feature in Good Housekeeping magazine – and was happy to find on the internet… a taste of the Middle East via Paris and New York. Enjoy:

    http://danielnyc.com/recipes/coffeecard.html

  8. My friend once attended a dinner party which was quite luxurious: several courses, several wines. At the end the hostess served everyone a large flower for dessert – I can’t remember what type. Supposedly, ancient kings ate flowers for dessert. Then the host brought out cigars, and everyone, men and women, sat around and puffed. Ever since, I’ve always had in mind to do that: serve guests a flower for dessert – then cigars for everyone. It seems quite fun.

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