Chocolate

making brownies. We're making actually, Stephanie Bannis is um very fuggy brownie recipe. I love this recipe. So Stephanie with my colleague for my whole life years, I mean, I don't even know, maybe longer. Um. But she has left to go live in Montana. We won't we won't give her exact locations. We don't want people brushing her for her for her brownies. But she's now living in a cool place in Montana and loving her life. But she

left behind her brownie recipe, thank god. So we we have some bitter sweet and we have some unsweetened chocolate, and you know, there's a lot of fancy chocolate recipes I'm using. I'm making brownies, So it tells you everything about my chocolate chocolate workability. Right, Okay, wait, you've got something going on over on the stove here. Yeah. So we have butter and the two chocolates and we're gonna

melt them. This isn't this isn't a double boiler. So it's a it's a pan on top of a pot that has some some steaming water on top of it. This is like the best way to melt chocolate, the best way to meld chocolate because it um, it won't sort of separate the chocolate. Would you just put on top of the butter. This is espresso powder. This is an instant espresso powder one of the things that you'll see in a lot of recipes, especially like chocolate recipes,

brownie recipes. Is a espresso instant. I So it just brings out the flavor of the chocolate. It's got a great affinity for it. Cool that part, I know. Yeah. All right, So we're gonna let the butter and the two chocolates and the espresso powder melt, okay, and then in another bowl, we have some sugar and some brown sugar. Don't forget the chocolates we're using and basically have no sugar in. And then a couple of teaspoons of vanilla. How many eggs, whole eggs? Four whole eggs. This is

a really good brownie, reste. I mean, this is not a cakey brownie. This is a fudgy brown Yeah. It tastes like chocolate, which is like one of the things I want to talk to you about when it comes to chocolate, because how do you feelbout chocolate? It's very important to me, really, I love chocolate. When you when you look at a bar of chocolate and you reverse the process of where it came from, you would never believe that what was gonna what was gonna look like.

So it starts with this fruit called the cocow plant.

And then inside the cocow plant there are seeds that are like they look like they're covered in some like some white blaze of some sort, you know, and you know, basically what you do is you take the seeds out and then you ferment them, and then you roast them, and then you crack them, and then you separate them from you know, from the from the nibs, and then you take the nibs of the chocolate and then you crunch them, you crush them into into basically into into chocolate,

and um, you know, the cocoa bean is cut is it's like half cocoa butter, half um cocoa butter cocoa powder, you know what I'm saying. You know. So then like then there's different grades of chocolate in terms of like sweetness, etcetera. You know, you start with milk chocolate and that has like either powdered milk or liquid milk or condensed milk in it. You know, it's it's more it's east of

the wall, of course. And then there's dark chocolate, and it's based on you know, it's a very high percentage of cocoa um and fat content is the is used for you know, from from the cocoa butter. And then white chocolate really isn't classically chocolate at all. It's basically sugar, milk and cocoa butter. And then have you seen this

ruby chocolate lately. Yeah, it's made from a from a from a ruby cocoa bean, and it's got like this son of like ruby color ruby, yeah, ruby chocolate, and it's got like kind of a sweet and sour flavor to it. It's really beautiful. You can you can find it cool. It's like pink almost. So basically the processes. You take the cocoa pods, you crack it open. Um. I mean you you take the cocoa bean, you crack it open, you get the pods. It's like these fruits.

You know, the seeds, the seeds inside, You ferment them. Then you you separate the shells from the cocoa nibs. Then you grind the cocoa nibs into this you know, chocolate, and you temper the chocolate. Then you add sugar and then it's like semi sweet, bittersweet. It all depends on how much sugar versus the first of the cocoa. But like when you look at a cocoa bean, you would never think that you'd get like a chocolate bar out

of it. At that point, it's insane, it's totally nuts. Um. So, what are some of your favorite chocolate things to eat? Some of my favorite chocolate things, well this is now one of them. Um. But I mean, you know my favorite chocolates I do that you always give me for Christmas roche Oh yeah, oh my god, so those have their hazelnuts, right, it's hazel nuts and chocolate. Yeah, it's like a new teller piece of chocolate. Basically my favor. Those are my favorite. But I love a chocolate cake.

See I don't. I have a I have a I have a kind of uh like a love and hate thing about chocolate. Let me tell you about this. What if you talk to chocolate aficionados, they will tell you that dark chocolate is the only chocolate wrong. What do you mean wrong? In my opinion, I mean I'm getting I'm getting to that. You know, people who are really like, you know, true chocolate aficionados really believe that, you know, for chocolate to have quality has to be very dark,

deep bitter chocolate. And I and and coffee drinkers say the same thing. I say, No, I want I want to enjoy what I'm eating. And a lot of times you'll like, I'll eat chocolate that's so dark and bitter, and I'm like, I don't even like this. But but also like, um, I feel the same thing about coffee. You know, you go, you go to some coffee shop and it's like, you know, they have these most exotic beans and they roast them in a certain way, and on and on and on, and they're like they're brewed

for a really long time. Like I don't like that, and and it's just like it doesn't it's not satisfying. So you know, maybe I'm just like Woos when it comes to like chocolate and coffee. But I just I don't know. I want I want a pleasurable experience. I agree, And like if I'm eating, if I'm eating like a piece of chocolate that has like a caramel, like a caramel piece of chocolate, then I can I can do the dark chocolate because I think it's a nice balance.

But if it's just a plain piece of chocolate, like I'm it's milk. Yeah, so but that but like chocolate purists will tell you that we're not right. But that's okay, that's fine. So we have the we have the white sugar, the brown sugar, and some eggs and some vanilla salt. Nice. We're just gonna melt this and then we're gonna get a baking pan with some parchment paper. You're using chocolate bars for this instead of chocolate chips. Does that matter?

It doesn't really matter because you're gonna melt it. Anyway, do you make brown soopie? No? Actually, I'm not really that big of a brownie fan because usually it's too cakey. Yeah. Yeah, I'm liking the sound of these brownies. This is like the extent of my chocoate work. Really good. I mean, you know, I can like, I like making like those malted chocolate cakes where they you know who invented that, John George. Yeah, I remember when it first came out,

we were like basically had just opened. He was doing it at Jojo Basic Grill and Jojo open the same year. It was the year like nothing opened in New York was We're in the middle of recession, so Basic Real open and Jojo open, and we got the two of those two restaurants. Got a lot of attention to the meeting because nothing else opened. And he came out with

this chocolate cake. And I told my patiu chef at the time, Wayne Brackman, Remember Wayne, I was like, we have to do our mastic girl version of this cake. So we made like an ancho chili chocolate version of it. Was so good. If I'm going to eat something chocolate, I wanted to taste like chocolate. Okay, Well yeah, so like some like a lot of chocolate ice cream doesn't taste like chocolate. It tastes very deluded. It's almost like vanilla that's kind of has like a brownish color to it,

you know, it doesn't it doesn't taste like chocolate. So like I want, like when I eat a latto, I want a dark chocolate cholatto. Now that said, there's a lot of sugar in there, and you know, there's you know, there's you know, cream, et cetera. So it's sort of chilling out the bitterness of it all. But the deep, rich flavor of the chocolate is what I'm looking for.

There was a place, a steakhouse made me sure if they're if they're still there, but it's called the Strip House on Twelfth Street, and you have this they had They had a chocolate layer cake there. It had four thousand layers. Yea, so good. It was ridiculous, and I tried to get my Pactiy chef to make it. It never really got to the point where I was completely satisfied with it. I mean, we we got we got like we just couldn't make enough layers of it. But it was so so good. But it had like that

deep rich chocolate flavor. I mean also like when I when I'm eating like hot chocolate, like I want to taste good quality cocoa powder. And I wanted to taste Yes, I wanted to be like basically like liquid chocolate. Yeah, I agree, But I also is there a dog in here? Wait?

Did not you bring home a friend? We? You know what's interesting is there was a meme that was going around during the holidays that was like, like, if you make hot chocolate with like hot chocolate with Walt, if you're making hotocolate with water, like you should be locked up or something like that, Like you no, you have to make it with milk. I made, so I make mine with milk. Christina wants oat milk? It works? Is

it good? I don't know. You wouldn't know. But you know what I really loved when I was younger was chocolate mouse. I was going to talk to you about that. I loved chocolate mouse. Alex Goanna Shelley and I talked about this all the time. She lived in a building in New York City where a friend of mine lived when we were with teenagers. We didn't know each other then, and I remember going to that this my friend's house we had it was like a bunch of kids there

and I made chocolate moose. I was like seventeen years old. Yeah, and um chocolate mouse again. You're right, like you need a deep rich chocolate because you're gonna put cream and egg whites in it. It's got to fight through all that fat richness. But if you don't use, you know, a good quality, deep dark chocolate, then you can't taste it right. Then it just tastes like whipped cream. No. I love chocolate moose so much. How about chocolate cream pie? Yeah?

So do you like chocolate pudding? I like homemade chocolate pudding. Well, what do you think I was talking about? Well, most people don't make their own homemade chocolate pudding, buy chocolate pudding. So like I feel like I used to have, like chocolate pudding, like storebought chocolate pudding. Putt in like my lunch box. So we have something so we call it's

called bundino. Putting is is bundino in Italian. So we have we have a chocolate bundino in a maufie and we were making like, you know, I wanted this on the menu. And while we were making it, I had my Paci chef make it like thirty five times because it's just not it was not getting enough chocolate flavor. And she kept saying to me, like, you have to

be kidding me. I'm like, no, when you stick your fork, when you stick your spoon in this thing, I want you to like close your eyes and taste chocolate in the most incredible way. And I think that that's really important. A lot of times people miss that, Like it's almost like they think chocolate's gonna take care of itself, doesn't um same thing with gelato and sorbet. Yeah. I like chocolate sorbet a lot. It's one of my favorite things. But it's got again, it's got to have a deep ridge.

So the butter and the chocolate are making this beautiful melted goodness. And you know you do it over a double boiler, so that so that's so that the melting process is gentle. If you do this right in the pan, it's a chance it would break or burn scorts the chocolate. Okay, so we're gonna pour the chocolate into the sugar and egg mixture and half the flower and the other half of the flower. What does that semi sweet chocolate. So basically using three kinds of chocolate unsweetened. It is sweet,

and there's some semi sweet chocolate that we're gonna use. Um, we're just gonna cut it into cut into shards and then fold it into the chocolate batter and that's the brownie batter and then three fifty degrees minutes and then you have to let him cool for like four hours because it's really dense chocolate. You wanted to set it would parch my paper lines baking dish, and we want to smooth it outside even big seapingly pretty easy. Yeah, definitely.

I've never made brownies like this. Yeah, and you get some vanilla gelato brownie Sunday. Put some nuts on. These people who says you can't bake a lot of people put in the appisode. Okay, so we used to do it upside down. Chocolate cream pie. Do you remember this is so good? Yeah? American where the crust was a thin layer on top and then the chocolate pudding was in the bottom. It was so good. I had it every time I was there. Here's one of my other

favorite chocolate dishes, chocolate and coconut bread pudding. Mm hmm okay, never had that so good. I mean basically, make like a chocolate custard with stale bread. You let it steep, You put like you know, a little coconut milk in there, some coconut flakes, etcetera. Bake it. It's amazing. And your notes over there. Do you have the chocolate eggs? What's that? The doctors used to make me chocolate eggs. Ginormous chocolate

eggs for Easter. No, no, no no, he used to make you a life size bunny and eggs they were huge and there were there was chocolate in them. I have to write. So that was when How old were you? That made me believe in the Easter bunny? That is

for sure. I took so Jacques Terrez, who was one of the great chocolate tears ever and also pastry chefs and nicest, one of the nicest men um he was when I met Jock, he was the pastry chef Atles Cirque, Okay, years ago, and then he went on his own and he was like the wooly Wonka of he had you. You were I mean you were so will be four media like six or seven, but he had you. He had me bring you to his Brooklyn in Dumbo, and he made chocolate with you, like he made stuff with you,

but there was he had. He has like this chocolate fountain that's constantly tempering the chocolate. And I remember you just sticking your finger in the under the frosts of the chocolate. I was like, Sophie, come on, that's not very sanitary. But he's like he is like he has like that magic to him, like as a person, like you feel like he really is like a Willie Walk in his sense. Yeah, for sure. I also like using chocolate and savory dishes like I I love making mole sauces.

I think it's, you know, a great use of chocolate to finish the sauce, especially a spicy sauce that has all these chilies kind of running through it. It's one of those things that people think of mola as a chocolate sauce. It's not. It's a sauce that is sometimes finished with chocolate, especially if it's if it's a deep red red or almost black mole. And um, it's really used that to sort of be a good counterbalance and a foil to all the chili peppers that are running

through the sauce. Just kind of gives it a nice coating. Yeah, when I was studying abroad in London, Um, we went to the Cadbury factory. It was so it's because they they've turned it into like a museum. Um. Also like so you can like walk through and see all the steps and whatnot. And I love Cadburry chocolate. I thought it was it was so cool to see the whole process. Well also, you know there's there's this whole art form

of what they what they call chocolate work. And you see these chocolate tears like making like the most amazing things that chocolate. They use it as like they use it as like paint or and or like to create sculptures. You know. It's like, um, that's that's a business that I'm not in. Um, I can tell you that much. That's not that's not for me. But but I just love where they manipulated chocolates. They and like you'll see like you know, they'll make blue chocolates and red chocolates.

You know, they take white they usually take white chocolate and put some kind of food coloring. But then you know, everything is chocolate, but it has different colors and textures and shapes, and sizes. It's amazing for your restaurants. Do you think it's important to always have something chocolate on the dessert menu? A million percent. Absolutely. I'm not. I'm not a restaurateur, but I also feel that way. Well, right now we have that chocolate Bundino, which is very

rich and deep in chocolate flavor. For sure. I mean it's it's um, yeah, it's it's imperative for sure. Yeah, I'm always looking for the chocolate item on the menu. Yeah. I mean, look, I mean people there were there were people that are just obsessed with chocolate, and I get it. Yeah. I used to make chocolate fundu a lot when I was little with my with my friends, we used to make and stuff like that, or like marshmallows. Yeah that works. Um, have you ever made your own hot fudge? It's like

sweet and condensed milk and melted chocolate. So sure you have. I have. I'm a Sunday expert, exactly. I like a good I like a good chocolate. I'm not just saying this. This is the best brownie I've ever had. You can thank Stephanie Bangs. It is. I love that. It's the consistency is more fudge like, yeah, I mean, I think there's two kind of brownies in the world. A brownie

that is cakey and a brownie that's fudgie. And I think, like, I'm just on the side of yours, which is that I wanted to taste like very chocolate foote and and I can't taste It's it's like it's not overpowering, but I can't taste the espresso. And I love that. Well, the espresso brings out the chocolate flavor and it gives it a little bit of bitterness that that is really nice. It's a it's a good bidder. Exactly is red velvet chocolate?

So red velvet is actually the original red velvet. And I'm gonna get this wrong so some I'm sure I'll be corrected on the internet in five seconds. But from what I was told, Red Velvet happened by mistake really because for whatever the situation was, they were doing something with cocoa powder and some vinegar and the chemical reaction turned it this sort of deep red color and that's

that's how it was born. So it's really it's a cake that's based on coco in some in some ways, you know, it's um it's it's really a weird concept because you know, it hasn't it doesn't really have a ton of flavor. Um, but it's a cool thing to look at. You know, we red velvet cake yesterday, I know at the I V. But they had but they're but they're but they're cream cheese filling. What was pink? Yeah? I like the kind of contrast of like the bright white. Yeah. Yeah,

me too. Oh you know what else I love that. I'm pretty sure it was that Bar American. Was the chocolate the German chocolate cake that was sick? Yeah, so you know it's it's actually, um, it's actually Germans chocolate cake. Oh, it's not a German chocolate cake. It's German. No, it's it's possessive. It's Germans chocolate. Interesting, Okay, it's a brand or a kind of chocolate and so and basically I think it's like I think it's like chocolate and coconut

and p cons is what a German chocolate cake is. Yeah, well it was so good where a Bar America? Yeah, absolutely good. At first, we um, we didn't have it on the menu, and then I did a throw down with it. Oh really, yeah, we have to like get this cake going. Yeah, it's so good. I like a chocolate cake for my birthday. What does it look like? Chocolate? I don't know, but I like a light, like layered with what like a three layer cake. I like like

crunchy chocolate in the middle, basically chocolate and chocolate. Wait, what is when you're eating an ice cream cake and it's like chocolate crunch in the middle? What is that? I have no idea, no idea. Come on, you're the ice cream man. It's probably like fiatine or something like that. What is that? It's like a very thin, crispy like um pastry. Oh, okay, that you know, it's like, um, it's very crunchy. Okay. I don't know. I really don't know.

I don't make ice cream cakes, not anymore, make ace cream Sundays. What about chocolate chip cookies? I mean, probably the one of the best inventions of all time. Do you use my recipe? Yeah? Your recipe is so good, but you have to let it rest one night. Do you do that? Yeah? Unless I come and just steal some dough from you that you already have in the freezer. I've done that before, I know, But I think that chocolate chip cookies, Like, what's the what kind of chocolate

is in those cookies? Again? I think it's semi sweet. I believe you have your cookbook right. Actually, one of my favorite chocolate chip cookies is Jacqueturrez's cookie. Well, I'm sure because it has shards of chocolate running through it, which is so good, big shards. Oh yeah, you mentioned Jock in this. It's semi sweet and milk chocolate. What

is read the read the paragraph, this paragraph. This is my favorite chocolate chip cookie, well, other than Jock dorres Is, and I always have the dough in my fridge or freezer for me to take. Did you know that the longer the dose sits, the better the cookie is. If you're making these and planning on eating them right away, start at least one day. Start at least one day and perfectly up to three days in advance, and let the dose sit in the fridge so the flavors intensify. Yeah,

they're good, They're really good. The brown sugar is also a well you asked me that the other day about you know, brown sugar versus you know, white granulated sugar. It definitely hasn't much Fritcher flavor to it. Oh, this is so good. The chocolate hazelnut crema catalana. Oh, so, crema carta llana is where was this that gatto? So the crema carta llana is a it's a custard. It's like Spain's version of you know, crembroulet. So good, it's so good. What kind of chocar is in that one?

Bitter sweet? Yes? So it's a deep it's a deep richer chocolate. Oh my god, that's so good. I can't believe I forgot about that one. I always ordered that too. Oh what about a what about a chocolate martini? What about it? Grandma's specialty? That was my that was my mother's move. Should we go to the bar Atlantic City at my restaurant in order chocolate martinis? Like one after the other? Chocolate syrup? Could dive a dark chocolate liqueur

vodka three sixty double chocolate vodka. Oh man, all right, there's a vodka for every situation, for sure. Cheers to that. I think what I'm gonna do is get you a for your birthday coming up. I'm gonna get you a chocolate sink, a chocolate fountain. Perfect, so you can just have the chocolate like just kind of rotating through all night. I think that's a great idea. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flay. Our executive producer is

Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungry is produced, edited, and mixed by Jonathan Honks Dressler. Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more podcast in my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.