While chocolate cake may always be a crowd pleaser at dinner parties or other celebrations, it can also feel like a cop-out to a creative host or hostess. If you’re tired of presenting the same old chocolate cakes, puddings, or ice creams to your guests for dessert, try these suggestions for some unexpected chocolate dessert recipes. Don’t be afraid to be adventurous. Dessert is all about having fun!

Revamp Other Dessert Recipes with Chocolate

An easy way to make a fun, new dessert is to incorporate chocolate into other familiar dessert recipes. Try putting dark chocolate chips and walnuts into a berry cobbler, or spruce up after dinner coffee with some chocolate liqueur then top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. If you’re going light, add some extra life to an angel food cake with some natural unsweetened cocoa powder and serve with fresh raspberries on top.

Leave the Chocolate to The Whim Guests

A really simple chocolate dessert recipe is chocolate fondue. Let your guests go to town dipping an assortment of fruits, cakes, cookies, and nuts into a nice fondue. Spread out a few different fondue pots and play with flavors. Try a spicy chocolate fondue by adding just a touch of chili powder, or some peanut butter for a heavenly treat. Don’t limit your dippings to fruit. Cut up an assortment of bite-sized bits of cakes, brownies, candies, marshmallows, even cheesecakes.

Spicing Up Some Favorites

If you do like the idea of a cake, but want to get away from traditional recipes, spice things up a little with a modern chocolate cake dessert recipe. Add some fruit or berries to the bottom of your bake pan and create a chocolate-upside-down cake with a nice coffee or caramel glaze. Create a layered chocolate cake, alternating layers of caramel sauce and homemade whipped peanut butter topping, served with vanilla ice cream.

Frozen Chocolate Dessert Recipes

Plan ahead and whip up a frozen chocolate dessert recipe. Try a banana split with frozen chocolate covered bananas. If you have an ice cream maker, try a nice chocolate and fruit sorbet. If you’re a fan of Smores, don’t worry about the fire, try a frozen version instead. Spread some melted chocolate and marshmallow cream between two graham crackers, wrap each smore in foil, and stick in the freezer. This is an easy chocolate dessert recipe that is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

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The Worlds # 1 Chocolate Cake. Recipe For The Worlds # 1 Chocolate Cake.

People today are very health conscious and eating sugar is avoided or kept to a minimum either due to health conditions like diabetes or, in some cases, from the simple desire to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Chocolates, on the other hand, are the favorite food item of many people and it is very likely you’ll come across individuals where these two contradictory conditions are at loggerheads with each other. That is to say a person likes chocolates but cannot eat them due to the large amounts of sugar that go into the making of mainstream chocolates.

Guide - Choose quality over quantity. If you are going to eat chocolate, eat really good chocolate.

As they say, “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” therefore it is not surprising that an alternative exists for such people, namely the sugarless chocolate. Although the name is self explanatory, that does not mean that such chocolates are not sweet (which would defeat the primary goal of your palette and your love for munching them).

There are several artificial sweetening agents commercially available which can be used to simulate the affect of sweetness on the tongue, but do not have the harmful affects associated with table sugar. Although there is a certain level of uncertainly regarding the safety of such products like saccharin (which was demonstrated to produce cancerous affects under laboratory conditions). Despite the doubts, there does exist several types of sugar alternatives in the market, and these alternatives are being used by manufacturers of food products, including chocolate.

Guide - ‘It’s not that chocolates are a substitute for love. Love is a substitute for chocolate.

Lucky for most of us wishing to be slim and fit, many of the major producers of chocolate have their sugarless chocolate alternative apart from their mainstream sugared counterparts. The consumer is now given the ability to use their own discretion when deciding which type of chocolate to consume.

Chocolate has a long and illustrious history and people will continue to be drawn to everything chocolate! For diabetics or people with weight problems, chocolate is no longer out of their reach. With care and proper research fine foods once forbidden to many can go back on their diets. From holidays to just a relaxing part of anyone’s day, sugarless products are making it possible for everyone to be happy!

Guide - In genearl, the shelf life for chocolate is a year. Chocolate that is refrigerated may not melt as readily.

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Guide - My favorite thing in the world is a box of fine European chocolates.

What do you do when you love chocolate but are concerned about the calories, caffeine, and other harmful substances it contains?

That is the question with which my mother dealt while I was growing up. My father is border-line sugar diabetic, but he has a sweet tooth, particularly when it comes to chocolate. His all-time favorite cake is still German chocolate cake. Mom checked into healthy alternatives for chocolate and discovered carob powder.

The Worlds # 1 Chocolate Cake. Recipe For The Worlds # 1 Chocolate Cake.

Because they taste very similar, carob powder is a great substitute for cocoa, and it’s a breeze to use: just replace the cocoa powder prescribed in any recipe with the same amount of carob powder. By so doing, you will get the chocolate taste you crave without putting your health at risk.

UCLA Professor Arthur C. Gibson teaches a course on economic botany and has written the manual used as a textbook for the course. In his informative essay on carob located on UCLA’s botanical garden web site, Professor Gibson describes the nutritional advantages of carob powder when compared with cocoa powder:

Guide - Several medical studies show that eating chocolate in moderation can actually prolong your life by reducing risk of blood clots and fighting bad cholestorol.

“Although this product has a slightly different taste than chocolate, it has only one-third the calories (total 1595 calories per pound), is virtually fat-free (chocolate is half fat), is rich in pectin, is non-allergenic, has abundant protein, and has no oxalic acid, which interferes with absorption of calcium. Consequently, carob flour is widely used in health foods for chocolate-like flavoring.”

Carob powder is generally available from health food stores and can also be purchased over the Internet.

Guide - Children are more likely to prefer chocolate when they reach 10-11 years old than when they are younger.

Here is a recipe from Barry Farm Foods to start you on your path to guilt-free indulgence:

CHOCOLATE FUDGE
2 c. sugar
6 T. Carob powder
2 T. butter
2/3 c. milk
Pinch of salt
1 t. vanilla

Combine sugar, milk, salt and carob powder. Bring mixture to boil, not stirring. Boil to soft ball stage (234-238°F). Add butter and vanilla and cool without stirring ’til butter melts. Beat mixture ’til creamy and thickening and shine disappears. Pour into well-buttered pan. Cut into squares.

NOTE: If you want nutty fudge, add 1/2 c. chopped nuts when you add the vanilla.

Enjoy your guilt-free “chocolate” indulgence!

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