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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Guide - When you begin eating chocolate, make sure you do it one bite at a time. This is important.

Luscious Drinking Chocolate is growing in popularity!

Welcome to the luxurious world of drinking chocolates. Drinking or sipping chocolate is the Next Big Thing for coffee shops, elegant buffets and caterers. The reason? Drinking Chocolate is a cozy comfort food that makes us feel like we’re floating on air. A true cup of thick drinking cocoa is an experience all its own.

If you’re thinking about the hot cocoa mixes you’re used to - think again. True drinking chocolates are very different. Cocoa mixes are made with cocoa powder, sugar and powdered milk. Even gourmet powdered cocoa mixes don’t count as true drinking chocolate. True drinking chocolates are made with real dark chocolate with over 50% chocolate solids.

For a truly elegant party or family get together, you can add spices and flavorings to the setting and allow your guests to create their own individual blends. A chocolate fountain is another way to add a special treat to your gathering.

Guide - The largest chocolate bar ever made weighed over 5,000 pounds and was made in Italy in 2000. The largest slab of fudge was over 2,000 pounds and was made in Canada.

Recipe for Luscious Drinking Chocolate

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups whole milk
1/4 cup water
1/4 generous cup of superfine Baker’s Sugar
1 3.5 ounce bar of bittersweet chocolate-at least 70% cacao, chop finely
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa loosely packed.

Directions

Combine milk, water and sugar In a medium saucepan. Heat mixture over medium until it reaches a rolling boil. Add the chopped chocolate and cocoa powder. Whisk these ingredients into milk mixture and return to rolling boil.

Mixture will thicken. Reduce heat to very low.

Blend for 5 minutes with an immersion blender or in a regular blender for 1/2 minute or until drinking chocolate is thick and foamy.

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.

Hints for the best cup of Drinking Chocolate

Use premium quality dark chocolate that you also enjoy eating. The best drinking chocolate contains about 70 percent cocoa solids.

Types of chocolate:

Columbian is knows for its berry and spice notes
Ecuadorian for earth hint of licorice
Venezuelan is deep and fruity

Guide - In 1842 Cadbury’s in England created the worlds first chocolate bar.

Look for chocolate that is smooth, not gritty and has a very long aftertaste

Use a chef’s knife or serrated bread knife to slice the chocolate bar into slivers.

Use whole milk as it softens the chocolate’s earthy intensity. If your cup of chocolate is too bittersweet and strong, add more milk or stir in cream or half and half to soften the taste.

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

Whip drinking chocolate with a blender or immersion blender for a frothy cup of rich drinking chocolate.

Make drinking chocolate ahead and refrigerate if you would like the flavors to develop and blend. Gently reheat before serving and whisk it or use a blender to froth it up.

Add Flavorings to Drinking Chocolate for Variety

To add variety to your drinking chocolate, use the same syrups that coffee shops use to flavor coffee. These are readily available in flavors like hazelnut, cinnamon or amaretto. You need only about a tablespoon per cup of hot drinking chocolate. Chocolate absorbs flavors and aromas so only a small amount is needed.

Guide - ‘Nine out of ten people like chocolate. The tenth person always tells a little white lie.

Try seasonings such as cinnamon, cayenne or ancho chili pepper or a pinch of salt or drop of vanilla.

For variation, add a pinch of grated orange zest before serving

Serve in pretty demitasse cups for an elegant end to any meal.

Add Elegance with a Chocolate Fountain or Chocolate Shot Machine

For your next get-together serve drinking chocolate as a dessert or aperitif with a chocolate shot machine or a chocolate fountain. Provide flavored syrups so guests can choose their own. Even liquors such as amaretto can be added to these cups of drinking chocolate. Provide coffee as well so guests can make a steaming cup of Irish coffee with chocolate.

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

Want some recipes to add nutritious coffee to your diet? Go to http://www.Path2HealthyLiving.com/HealthBenefitsChocolate.html/

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

Can you imagine a better way to warm up than with a big mug of hot chocolate on a cold windy winter’s night? Things sure have changed from the xocolatl as it was known by the Mayans.

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

The Origins of Hot Chocolate

Xocolatl when it was transported to Europe by the conquistadors, was the reserve of the rich who first called the drink itself chocolate. Later, when solid bars of chocolate became more common, the term “hot chocolate” was used to avoid confusion. In fact at first the beverage was consumed cold and had a spicy flavor and was valued as much for its healing properties as much as an exclusive treat.

Guide - ‘Life is like a box of chocolates..

Originally, chili was a key ingredient of the drink hence the spicy overtones. It is only today that chili is making reappearance in chocolate as an enhancer of the cacao bean base of all good chocolate.

The xocolatl was first boiled then allowed to rest and was later drunk cold as a frothy but bitter concoction. The Europeans initially did not find the drink in its original from to suit their palate and made numerous changes, including using milk instead of water and adding sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. The Europeans also preferred their drink hot instead of cold, leading to what we now know as hot chocolate.

Varieties Available Today

Guide - ‘The superiority of chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.

Hot chocolate or hot cocoa, which came first? The Europeans were the first to melt chocolate bars in milk and called it hot chocolate. Cocoa powder became the base of a very different drink with a more bitter flavor. But the two drinks eventually malted into each other and the term hot chocolate was adopted as a generic term for both methods. The only real common ingredient however was milk and at least one form of a cacao bean!

You will quickly find a shop that will make your chocolate drink “just right”. You can take the same ingredients for every drink but it’s how you use them that matters. A little bit like coffee. If you don’t treat the ingredients right, you’ll ruin the drink. Of course there are a thousand and one varieties open to you, from frozen hot chocolate to fruit and herb infused varieties. It seems that there is no end in sight.

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.

You can look at online services and find plenty of home delivery services. Several pre mixed powdered versions of all the latest drinks are just waiting for your pleasure!

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