Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Almonds

Is there nothing Trader Joe's can't do? You already know my feelings regarding their chocolate-covered peanut butter-filled pretzels. Turns out their dark chocolate almonds are every bit as amazing.



As you can see on the packaging, these bite-sized babies are sprinkled with sea salt and turbinado sugar, and that makes them highly, highly addictive. As I sit here writing about them, I just want to keep eating them, but I have already eaten about a dozen tonight, plus it's past midnight, so I know I shouldn't. But I want to.

Chocolate-covered almonds are one of those foods that can really run the gamut. Some are very good. Some are waxy and kind of gross. These ones are spectacular.

BOTTOM LINE: Trader Joe's comes through on the chocolate front once again.

Wedding Swag: Savoia cookies and Nut House bonbons in Rochester

So I went to a wedding in Rochester, and they gave out a goodie bag.  Let me be clear: they gave out a Wegman's goodie bag.  Obviously.  But in it were some chocolate items:

The Savoia cookies were actually nice.  Obviously not chocolatey enough, but if you ate the chocolatey ends of the dipped ones, you were doing pretty well.  The frosting-topped ones weren't as good.  The Nut House bon bons were surprisingly good, though.  You're not going to mistake these for fancy french bon bons, but they taste like good, old-fashioned, hand-made bon bons.  

Bottom Line: I should go to weddings more often.  Oh wait, I go every weekend.

More Peacefoods

I went to dinner with some family friends.  We brought Peacefoods desserts for dessert:

I've already discussed how much I love Peacefoods brownies.  We also brought some chocolate cake and a chocolate mousse pie -- all vegan.  All were good, but the brownie was still the standout.  The mousse cake wasn't as chocolatey as it looks -- it seems to be made with avocado and dates.  

Bottom Line: Generally recommended for vegans, and the brownies are excellent for anyone.

Farm on Adderley Chocolate Bread with Sea Salt

Leila and I took a trip to Ditmas Park to visit the Adderley Farm.  There was really only one reason to to do this: the chocolate bread toast.

Honestly, the idea of chocolate toast has limited appeal to me.  I mean, I like bread and chocolate, but couldn't it do without the bread?  Wouldn't the salt distract?

No.  And no.  This is actually worth a trip to Ditmas Park.  Though Ditmas Park is lovely, and pretty much worth a trip to itself.  Which may be why we started looking around at the mansions and fantasizing about buying one.

Bottom Line: Go to Ditmas Park, and eat this food product.  Those may or may not be related thoughts.

LaGuardia Airport Cibo Express: Pure Organic Chocolate Brownie and Cibo Express 72% by OTG

I was at LaGuardia, and I was hungry.  And bored.  I got these:

So the Pure Organnic protein bar is ok.  It's never going to compete with a chocolate bar.  It's mostly dates, and some walnuts.  It's pretty chocolatey, but the idea is that this is "real food."  Well, for me at least.  As far as that goes, it passes.

The Cibo Express-branded, OTG-manufactured bar of 72% chocolate was suprisingly good.  It was very unfancy, but it was "real" chocolate -- just chocolate, sugar, soy lecithin, and vanilla.  It was obviously made from West African beans, because there were no complicated flavor notes.  But my dear readers know that this is no problem for me, because a rich chocolatey taste was all I ever really wanted.

Bottom Line: This is how you keep your promise to your mother to eat a meal before dessert while keeping your promise to yourself to eat nothing but chocolate.  While at the airport.

Hardcore Sweet Cupcakes' Black Flag Cupcake

So I went to this in Philadelphia.  There were foodtrucks out back.  Hardcore Sweet Cupcakes had this vegan chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting:

It was actually excellent.  Vegan cakes usually have to choose between being dry and falling apart.  These guys made the right choice -- falling apart.  I was about two bites in before my full face was covered in chocolate.  If you've read this blog before, you know I didn't mind.

Bottom Line: Let's all cover our faces in chocolate.  The only thing that will be covered will be giant smiles.

Recipe: Blended Chocolate Frappuccino

As you may know, I have a disproportionate fondness for Starbucks Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino". One day, as I was paying $5 for one of those bad boys, it occurred to me, "Hey, I could make this!"

Is that true? Read on. I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Here were my ingredients:

1) ice
2) milk
3) chocolate chips (I used a bag of Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet)

4) chocolate sauce (I used Dilettante Dark Chocolate Truffle Topping, which my friend Kendra gave me for my birthday and which I love)


I put some arbitrary quantity of each of these in the blender, and I drank the final product. It looked like this:



The taste was very similar to Starbucks'. I was pleased. It was cold and chocolatey and refreshing and not too milky.

The texture gave me some trouble. There were sips that tasted just like they ought to (a little crunch of chocolate chip, a little crunch of ice, and a lot of fluid). But there were also huge clumps of unblended ice at the bottom and for the life of me I could not figure out how to make them blend. Was there too much milk in the blender with them? Too little milk? I'm sure there are basic rules to using kitchen appliances that would make this really easy to figure out, but I am not very handy in a kitchen. Maybe you have already figured this out.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent chocolate beverage for a warm summer's day. If you make it, and you figure out how to work a blender, please comment below.