Last weekend, Drew and I went to Surfas, this restaurant supply store. To us, it was like being kids in a candy store. We walked up and down every aisle, and we even ate lunch in the café. In addition to selling merchandise such as dishes, pots, and pans, Surfas also sold gourmet food products that aren't found in normal grocery stores. We found fancy pastas, cheeses, spices, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.
We splurged on Vahlrona cocoa powder and Callebaut semi sweet chocolate. All the different brands and types of chocolate are sold as cocoa powder, discs, chips, and blocks. Even 10 pound blocks.
We were sensible and did not purchase 10 pounds of chocolate, and instead we got the more reasonable one pound block.
When we got home, I immediately made brownies. The recipe is from Baking Illustrated (from the geniuses behind the magazine Cooks Illustrated), and it calls for 3 kinds of chocolate: unsweetened, semi sweet, and cocoa powder.
These are quite possibly the best brownies ever. They're nice and fudgy, and they have a perfectly crackly top. Drew and I decided that splurging on good quality chocolate was totally worth it. Though we could not detect an appreciable difference between the Callebaut chocolate and the blocks we get from Trader Joe's, we could easily tell that the Vahlrona cocoa powder, which smelled almost smoky when I opened it, not surprisingly proved to be much better than Hershey's or Trader Joe's (which is probably the same thing anyway).
In 10 days, Drew is leaving tp spend a year in China. Until then, I will be baking with chocolate. Lots of it.
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