bump n grind: chocolate peanut butter cups + americanos

bump n grind
corner of commercial + venables, vancouver

i've always kind of hated the name of this place, so i never ever went in. but this past summer i tried it out... and honestly i've been missing out. their americanos are pretty great, but the best thing they have is their chocolate peanut butter cups. and what better then to pair chocolate with coffee? not much, i tell you.

so go. go now and eat a chocolate peanut butter cup. with an americano. thank your barista. then come back here and thank me (and my sister who introduced me to them).


bump n grind cafe
916 commercial drive
mon - fri 7-7
sat + sun 8-7
@bumpngrindcafe

thursday thrift: chocolate hazelnut spread (soo much better than nutella)

i have to admit, homemade chocolate hazelnut spread may not be the best topic for a thursday thrift. it may end up being a tiny bit more expensive than buying nutella, but i swear it will be worth it.

i also have to apologize for my absence from the interwebs, or specifically this blog, for the last couple weeks. i got really sick a week and a half ago, and became mentally drained as well as physically incapable of much. the flu really knocks you out. i'm still not feeling 100%. i also just started a new job today, so much has been happening, and i'm exhausted, so i'll keep this short. i'm making myself post this blog, even though i want to sleep so very badly.

right, so back to this nutella knock-off. the recipes i've found call for whole hazelnuts, but i cheated a bit and bought a jar of hazelnut butter (which is just from hazelnuts). incidentally, i bought this jar a loooong time ago for the intent and purpose of making chocolate-hazelnut-spreadable-goodness, but i got lazy and forgot. one day, however, i remembered i had it and got to work. and it was super easy. super. easy. you can also do the whole hazelnut thing - probably cheaper than the hazelnut butter, but a bit of extra work too. extra work doesn't hurt you though. that's what they say....

here's what i did:

• 1 250 gram jar of hazelnut butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• up to 1/4 cup nut oil (i used walnut, i'm sure hazelnut oil would be divine, but canola may work if you're in a pinch)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

and i just mixed it all together with a hand-mixer until it was smooth enough for me, and i poured it into pretty jars and refrigerated.

if you want to use whole hazelnuts, you will need a food processor, or a good blender (or be okay with chunkiness). use this recipe here. it looks really well thought out.

do try this at home. its not as sweet as nutella, but it tastes richer, and realer. it is realer, really.

say YES to chocolate

a few weeks ago i posted about a hot chocolate festival happening in vancouver right now until february 14. i tried to go to the choclaterie on main & 21st last week, but got there just as they closed. sadness. however! this past sunday, my sister and i made the trek over to cocoa nymph in kitsilano, where we met our cousin for some hot chocolate. best sunday afternoon i've had this year (it was right after a lovely breakfast of bacon, eggs & hashbrowns, too).



my cousin had a white drinking chocolate with raspberry marshmallows. it looked delicious, but i'm not a fan of white chocolate myself.


the featured drinking chocolate of the day was a black pepper dark drinking chocolate, with salted caramel marshmallows on top. sinful & heavenly all at the same time - perfect combination. they make all their marshmallows in store, and they have a variety of flavors - vanilla, chocolate, raspberry to name a few.


don't be fooled by the angry-pouty face i'm making. i'm not upset at the hot chocolate at all, it was quite the opposite, in fact. i could have married that cup of cocoa right there and then.

say YES to chocolate.

at cocoa nymph chocolates & confections
3739 w 10 ave (at alma)
mon-sat: 11-7
sun: 1-5

vancouver hot chocolate festival - now until valentines day

apparently there is a hot chocolate festival going on in vancouver. from now until the 13th of february.

the contributing cafes are:
bella gelateria (1001 w cordova)
campagnolo cafe (1020 main)
cocoa nymph (3739 w 10th @ alma)
mink chocolates (863 w hastings @ hornby)
chocolaterie de la nouvelle france (198 e 21st @ main)
schokolade (2263 e hastings @ garden)
thomas haas (n van: 998 harbourside dr, unit 128; kits: 2539 w broadway)

i've been to mink, chocolaterie de la nouvelle france, and schokolade and i have to say i love them all. schokolade is right in my neighbourhood, too. you should definitely check out at least one of these hot chocolate lovelies in the following month! and if you do, let me know how you like it.

40 homemade gift ideas

it's that time of year again: christmas time. don't know about you, but my budget is tight this year, which means... homemade gifts! it also means that i am a couple months behind on planning, but there's still 2.5 weeks left to figure something out. :) those of you expecting gifts from me, keep your expectations low so i can exceed them.

want that homemade gift to say 'i made this with SO MUCH LOVE and lots of thought' and not also say 'it took me 2 minutes to put this together'? make something from the kitchen, and package it in style:

like this peppermint hot fudge sauce, a gift idea from the kitchn's 40 homemade gifts guide (photo also from the kitchn)

a baking re-incarnation

a couple days ago i had a craving for chocolate. i made some sort of mini chocolate cake, essentially cupcakes. i didn't like them. at all. i still stuffed my face, but i thought they tasted horrible, and not chocolatey at all.

do i eat them? do i throw them away? no! i make them into another kind of dessert! a trifle! i chopped the cupcakes up, and layered them in a container with whipped cream, chopped chocolate, and raspberries. problem solved. next time i might add some chocolate sauce in there though, moisten it up a bit. wait... next time i won't make those cupcakes, that's what!

anyone else have a disaster-averted story? or a re-incarnation of something that didn't initially turn out?

flourless chocolate cake

this loveliness is a flourless chocolate cake. (although i did use flour to dust the pan before i poured the batter in) it gets its texture from the whipped egg whites. subtle and not too sweet, the chocolate in this cake is just right to be a dessert following a rich, heavy meal. which i did last weekend when i took this cake to a thanksgiving dinner. cut up into 16 tiny slices, the serving size was just enough to satisfy but not overload.



i got the recipe from bread & honey. i won't bore you with the recipe, i'll just let you follow it from the link.

for those of you who don't care to follow the recipe, here's some more pretty pictures! (i'm really happy with how these photos turned out)

chocolate cake, photoshoots, and indian music

i've been terrible at blogging lately and i don't even have an excuse. or a good one, anyways.

i have even been baking a lot. i've just been too unmotivated to try to take decent, well-lit photos, or to upload the photos i do have.

this past week i baked a couple chocolate cakes. in a sad twist of fate, the beautiful photo below is the cake that didn't really turn out and i will probably never bake again. and then the amazing cake i baked i didn't manage to get a shot of. good thing i loved it, cause that means i will bake it again and hopefully get a photo next time.


the good chocolate cake was a flourless cake, and i got the recipe from bread & honey. you can find the recipe here.

but the best part of my week (other than lots of chocolate cake) was a fun photoshoot i did with eileen. i wrote about it in detail over at my other blog: everybody is a photographer. the blog needs a lot of work (so does this one), so please be gentle :)

here's a sneak peak photo:


and while i am blabbing about non-food stuff, i may as well mention my reoccurring obsession of indian/bollywood music. recently watched monsoon wedding again this week and proceeded to buy the soundtrack, since the music is gorgeous. loving this song:

my my

i'm sure i have over 50 pictures waiting to be posted and written about. in the last 2 months of my absence from blogging, i have baked so much, and eaten so many good things. its a shame i'm just too damn lazy.

this:
is a chocolate from mink. mink is where i go to when i need to indulge and want to have a party in my mouth. and my sister (who is awesome - i know she reads this so i have to say that) knows it too and left me a box of some chocolates wrapped in cute wrapping paper when i came home from my trip last weekend. mink not only makes their own chocolate, and comes up with amazing chocolate combinations (chocolate + mint + bourbon; chocolate + rosemary + fleur de sel + caramel; chocolate + chai + spices; etc etc), but they do coffee too. and hot chocolates. and hot chocolates with peppermint. and hot chocolates with pepper and spices. and they donate all their tips to charities.

the chocolate pictured has got a dark chocolate ganache filling with subtle honey and blackberry in it.

brilliant. now i am craving chocolate. at 12:40am when i should be sleeping. hooray for the stat tomorrow!

this:

is the apple pie i made today. well, the last slice of it. which is resting happily in my belly currently. what can i say about pie? its fantastic. this one is a conglomerate of spices with apples. i used cinnamon, cardamon, and vanilla beans. and sugar. never forget the sugar. for the crust, i used the recipe at simply recipes and its worked well for me nearly every time. if you are patient with the dough and let it sit in the fridge a while before rolling, and don't tear it up by rolling it while its still cold, then its a beauty and becomes a wonderfully rich flaky crust that you want to be best friends with forever. i use butter only, no other shortening, and i don't care how many people rant about how better shortening is in pie crust... butter is best. firstly, because butter is natural. secondly, its not hydrogenated. thirdly, it just tastes better.

sadly, i can't really give a recipe for the pie filling. i kind of made it up. but i can give a general overview:
i spent hours peeling, coring, cutting apples.
i dumped them in some lemon water to sit and wait patiently.
i drained the lemon juice off, but kept the teensiest amount of lemon juice with the apples.
i added: lemon zest, cinnamon, sugar, flour, cardamon, vanilla beans (scraped from a split pod), vanilla extract, sugar.

i was inspired by the milk eggs chocolate blog and her vanilla cardamom pear pie.

and that's enough writing for one night.

old bread and chocolate

this is not news to me, but i am really slack when it comes to actually posting things i take pictures of.


i made this focaccia bread in october. and i only just ate it today. wow, i'm disgusting. just kidding. well.. anyway, the picture is from october also. i do not keep bread for 5 months before i eat it. maybe i used to keep food for that long (halloween candy, anyone?) but i am maturing and am learning to eat what i have instead of 'saving up' for a special moment in the future that doesn't exist. so now when i buy a bar of chocolate, i just eat it all in one sitting. this is a much better solution. :) speaking of chocolate...

chewy wheat-free vegan chocolate chip cookies

i had a desire to make chocolate chip cookies yesterday. but if i made them just for me, they would end up sitting on the counter for days & i'd eventually throw them out. i seem to have a weird thing about not liking too much of the same thing. or leftovers. so i made my cookies 'andrea friendly,' which is wheat free, dairy free, egg free, yeast free... basically they are vegan. but they are yummy!

i used the base recipe of Chewy Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies from RecipeZaar, but i didn't use wheat & i cut the amount of sugar in half.




my recipe:

ingredients

• 3/4 cup canola oil
• 2/3 cups sugar
• 1/3 cup maple syrup (or honey or molasses)
  
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon flax seed
• 1/2 cup rice milk (or soy milk)
  
• 2 cups flour (chickpea flour, rice flour, 1/2 teaspoon guar gum)
  
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup semisweet non-dairy chocolate chips/chunks

directions

• preheat oven: 350 F
• grind flax seeds in a blender until powdered; add the milk and blend for about 30 seconds more and set aside.
• in a large bowl, sift together dry stuff: cocoa, flour, baking soda and salt.
• cream the sugar and oil in a separate large bowl.
• add the flax/milk mixture to wet stuff and mix well.
• stir in the vanilla to wet mixture.
  
• slowly mix in the dry ingredients.
• mix in the chocolate chips.
• roll or spoon out dough into 1" balls and flatten
  
• place on a cookie sheet about 1" apart and bake for 10 minutes. (original recipe said ungreased sheet, but i think i would grease my cookie sheet next time)