Third Annual Chocolate Dinner

Since my February chocolate dinners were such successes over the past two years, it seemed only logical to invite some of my local friends to what has become known as the Third Annual Chocolate Dinner. I deliberately kept the group under ten people so that I didn’t have to stress about preparing enough food for a buffet table. And I also wanted to be able to set a table with some very pretty new Kate Spade plates from Marshalls.

Of course, the challenge with chocolate dinner is to plan each course, from appetizers to desserts, to include some form of chocolate. Last year, I did some extensive online research to develop what turned out to be a better menu than the year before. So, as the time for the dinner approached, I realized that I had not only already used my best ideas, but also my best resources. This realization was reinforced in extensive conversation with my really good friend and her crew over dinner in late January. Almost every idea they suggested – including a baked brie with chocolate appetizer and Caprese salad with dark chocolate vinegar – had already been done in the past two years. By the end of the conversation, we all decided that it would not be a bad thing if some of the recipes were repeated from the past years’ dinners.

The Research

Although I could put together a great menu using the best recipes from the past years’ dinners, I really didn’t want to do that. Fortunately, I had set up my Eat Your Books account over the July 4th holiday, so that provided me with a new resource to tap. In addition to providing indexes for the vast majority of the cookbooks that I loaded into my library, Eat Your Books also consolidates and indexes the recipes from the three food blogs that I like. Therefore, I had almost 36,500 recipes to start from. Selecting Valentine’s Day/Romantic narrowed that list to about 100 recipes; adding “chocolate” as a search term further narrowed that list to about 30 recipes, which was a manageable two-page scroll. Unfortunately, all those recipes were just for desserts. I didn’t need any of them because I promised my gluten free friend that I would make chocolate mousse for dessert.

A few days later, I had another thought: maybe if I searched Eat Your Books for “cocoa,” I would come up with better results. Sure enough, that returned an unwieldy 957 results! Any recipe containing cocoa butter, cocoa nibs, and/or cocoa powder in its ingredient list was captured in the search results. I scrolled through about ten pages of results before I truly appreciated the wide variety of recipes that were returned. It seemed that I could easily plan three or four good four course menus from the recipes listed, so I needed a game plan to make those choices manageable. Since Eat Your Books has an extremely robust filter capability, I decided that I would use that to narrow the recipes down to cocktails, appetizers, meat, side dishes, and desserts.

Cocktails

First up was the search for cocktails. Somewhere in the ten pages of search results I had seen a recipe for a homemade chocolate liqueur that really looked good. In hopes of finding that again, I narrowed my cocoa search down to “Cocktails/Drinks (Alcohol),” which returned 21 recipes. There was everything from spiked hot chocolate (including a recipe for Guinness hot chocolate from Serious Eats) to do it yourself mole bitters. Unfortunately, the lovely recipe that I had seen in my scanning was not listed. There was, however, a recipe for do it yourself chocolate liqueur that seemed to be an acceptable substitute. It would take about nine days to complete, but that wasn’t a problem because the Chocolate Dinner was at least ten days away. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any good vodka to use in the recipe; however, I was headed out to the gym and could stop at the small local liquor store on the way home. After I acquired some good gluten free vodka, the next challenge was to locate the package of cacao nibs in the Horde Cabinet. They were extra tricky to find because I had transferred them from their original distinctive brown package to a ziploc bag. All I had to do next was to measure the cacao nibs into a sealable glass jar, add the vodka, shake well, and set aside for eight days.

Once I finished that project, I had the bright idea to go back into Eat Your Books, remove the filter, and add “liqueur” to the search terms. That came back with 98 results, the second of which was the recipe that I had been looking for. It was from the Cook the Book series on the Serious Eats website. The recipe was very simple and straightforward: dissolve cocoa powder in boiling water; make a simple syrup; mix together the dissolved cocoa powder, simple syrup, and vodka; refrigerate overnight. But it was late at night, so I decided to postpone that project to another day.

Appetizers

When it came time to look for appetizer recipes, I again employed the filter capability to limit the cocoa recipes to “Appetizers/Starters.” The three results were disappointing: chili with chipotle and chocolate, turkey chili with white beans, and coffee and chipotle rubbed steak kabobs with stout molasses pan sauce. So, I undid that filter and applied the filter for “Dips, Spreads & Salsas.” More uninspiring results: caramelized black bean butter and homemade crunchy nutella. All that made me want to do was channel my lovely nieces and take a spoon to the jar of commercial Nutella hiding behind my coffee pot.

Eventually, I remembered that I had seen a recipe for raspberry cocoa jam while scanning the cocoa recipes. If I could find enough raspberries to make the jam, that might be good on baked brie tartlets. Fortunately, the recipe was super easy to find again – all I had to do was filter the cocoa results by “Preserving.” And since the recipe was on the Serious Eats website, I just clicked on the link to check it out. The amount of raspberries seemed reasonable for the dead of winter, but I would have to go to the grocery store (again) to see what was possible.

Main Dish

Since everyone loved the Chicken Mole that I served at both preceding Chocolate Dinners, I decided that I was definitely making that as a main course for the Third Annual Chocolate Dinner. However, my really good friend and her crew had already announced their intention to attempt a white chocolate risotto as their contribution to the dinner. So I still needed to find a second main dish that would complement their risotto.

Applying the “Main Course” filter to the cocoa search returned a very manageable 29 results. My guests and I were really pleased with the cocoa rubbed baby back ribs from the Saveur website last year, so I thinking that I might want to do another rubbed meat this year. Narrowing down the filtered results to “cocoa rub” yielded recipes for espresso, cocoa and chili rubbed baby back ribs, coffee rubbed ribs, ancho rubbed turkey breast, and barbecue rubbed pork shoulder. I was pretty excited about the first recipe, but then discovered that it was 2 teaspoons of cocoa powder to ¼ cup of ground espresso and ¼ cup of ground ancho chile. That didn’t seem like a lot of cocoa flavor at all! When I removed the “Main Course” filter, another two recipes popped up: one for steak kabobs from Serious Eats and one for an ancho-cocoa dry rub from my Jim Tarantino book. Since I knew where the book was, it was no big deal to pull it and look up the recipe. The ancho-cocoa rub was a variation on the recipe for an ancho-espresso rub, although the author suggested the possibility of making them both and combining for an ancho-mocha rub. The recipes looked solid: ½ cup packed brown sugar, 1/3 cup espresso or cocoa powder, ¼ cup ancho chile powder, and a bunch more spices. The only challenge was to decide which of the three variants to make.

Side Dishes

Much to my surprise (and somewhat to my dismay), one of the teams I was working with at the office asked that I arrange four days of negotiations the week before Chocolate Dinner. Between making the arrangements and leading the meetings, I never really had the time (or energy) to finish my research for the menu. I knew I wanted to have some type of vegetable with the meal, but I wasn’t sure what kind would be appropriate. My thoughts were of either a Caprese salad with a chocolate balsamic drizzle or a Sicilian salad with a chocolate balsamic vinaigrette. I figured if the tomatoes looked really good, I would go with the Caprese rather than the Sicilian. I wrote both down on the menu, but then forgot to look at the tomatoes while I was at Whole Foods and again at the local grocery store. So as of Friday night, the menu had nothing green included in it.

Dessert

Because of the long and draining work schedule, I also did no research into new and exciting desserts for the dinner party. Of course, I knew I was going to make a chocolate mousse because my gluten free friend loves it and because another guest also specifically requested it. But would the chocolate mousse alone be enough for dessert? I thought so. That is until I checked to see what ingredients I had left over from the Holiday Dessert Party. I found that I still had hazelnuts, sweetened condensed milk, bittersweet chocolate, and another giant jar of Nutella - all the makings for chocolate hazelnut fudge! Since that was such a simple recipe, it was a definite add to the menu. And then, I was driving into work on Friday morning, I realized that I had an adorable Nordic Ware bunny pan that made six little bunny cakelets, which would be enough to provide one to each guest. So I made a hasty change to my grocery shopping list to accommodate making a gluten free chocolate cake batter for the bunny pan.

Saturday Morning

I woke up Saturday morning in a bit of a fog, so, before I put my feet on the floor, I wrote myself a plan of attack in order to stay focused and get everything accomplished. First, I would rub the spare ribs with the ancho-cocoa rub that I had mixed before going to bed. According to the limited cooking instructions that accompanied the recipe, it was recommended that the meat sit with the rub for four to six hours before cooking. So that would be an easy task to start with. Then I would start the raspberry cocoa jam because that needed to set for a minimum of six hours. While the jam jars were processing in their hot water bath, I would make the second chocolate liqueur and the chocolate-chili goat cheese. After all that was done, I would prepare the mole sauce for the chicken. That took a while to make, but could be set aside until time to bake the dish. I figured that had to be done early enough to clear the house of the toasted chile smell. After the mole sauce, I would make the chocolate mousse and set that in the refrigerator to chill. Making the bunny cakelets was the last item on my list. I figured it would probably only take me until 2pm to get all that accomplished. Alongside of the list of kitchen tasks, I quickly jotted a list of six or so house tasks that I would like to have accomplished prior to my guests’ arrival. But everyone coming was a frequent guest to my dinner parties, so it wouldn’t be too tragic if I didn’t finish that list by 5pm.

I toddled downstairs with my plan in hand, made a fresh pot of coffee, and got to work. Everything went swimmingly until around 10am. I got the ribs rubbed with the ancho-cocoa rub, sealed in plastic, and returned to the refrigerator. I also completed the raspberry-cocoa jam. I made one big mistake in making the jam: the cocoa and pectin powder were supposed to be mixed together in a small bowl and then added to the pot with the raspberries to simmer for a few minutes before adding almost seven cups of sugar. What did I do? I accidentally misread the instructions and added the cocoa and pectin powder to the bowl with all the sugar. Since there was no way to separate the cocoa and pectin powder from the sugar, I just added it all at once. Since the recipe gave no critical temperature or test for determining that the jam was finished, I checked the instructions in a jam recipe that I trusted. Once the mixture hit 220F, I turned off the heat, ladled the jam into jars, sealed up the jars, and began water process canning. As expected, I was able to finish both the second chocolate liqueur and the chocolate-chili goat cheese while the jam jars were processing in the water bath. Although the second chocolate liqueur came together quite easily, the chocolate-chili goat cheese posed a minor issue. I couldn’t remember how much chocolate-chili spice to mix into four ounces of room temperature goat cheese, so I started small with one teaspoon. Well, the resulting mixture tasted more like chile than chocolate, which was not what I was going for. So I mashed in one teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powder to try to balance the flavors. It seemed to work, but I wouldn’t be able to tell for certain until it refrigerated for a bit to meld the flavors.

After all the jam jars were processed through the water bath, I started on the chocolate hazelnut fudge. Again, I hit a minor roadblock: the bowl that I needed was sitting in the refrigerator filled with aspic for Pork Soup Dumplings. Therefore, I went back to the method that was written with. Rather than melting the butter and bittersweet chocolate together in a double boiler, I mixed together the sweetened condensed milk, the butter, and the bittersweet chocolate in a large saucepan over direct low heat. As soon as the chocolate and butter had melted, I turned off the heat and set to skinning and chopping the hazelnuts. I thought I had ruined the recipe because the chocolate mixture had cooled and solidified significantly before I finished chopping the hazelnuts. However, by adding a little bit more elbow grease than usual, I got the chopped hazelnuts mixed well into the chocolate and then got the whole mixture spread neatly into the appropriate silicone pan to cool completely.

I decided to take a break from the kitchen a little after 10am. While I was hanging out on the couch, I decided to call my parents just to catch up. Almost immediately, I was advised to postpone my party because of a change in the weather forecast. I had seen that for my area the snow was supposed to begin between 8pm and 9pm, so I figured that we could wrap up a little earlier than usual so folks could get home safely. Apparently, the new forecast called for the snow to begin at 4pm and be at its most intense between 8pm and 9pm. As soon as I finished talking with my parents, I texted my guests to see what their preferences were. Within short order, we had all agreed to move the dinner party to Sunday at 5pm. And since that was settled, I decided to take a short nap before moving on to other projects.

Sunday Morning

At some point after the schedule change, I realized that I needed to go back to the grocery store because I couldn’t find any raisins in the Horde Cabinet. I was dead in the water on the mole until I rectified that deficiency. Going back to the grocery store would also give me a second chance to evaluate the tomatoes and decide whether I would offer a Caprese salad, a Sicilian salad, or no salad at all. Since I had to leave the house to go to Mass, I figured that I could schedule the grocery store trip for immediately after that and use the morning to make the mousse, bake the cake, take a shower, and maybe tick off some of the household tasks.

Sure enough, Sunday morning I was up early because I had set an alarm (or two) to ensure that I would have enough time to get everything done. Since I got such an early start, I was able to haul out all the bags of various flours required for the gluten free dark chocolate cake and mix up the dry ingredients. But I had to stop on the cake because the only spray that I had for my pan was a butter and flour spray, which would defeat the purpose of making a gluten free cake. So I took the time to unstack and restack the dishwasher, and then decided to take a hot shower rather than run the dishwasher. That way I could go to the grocery store before Mass, and have more of the afternoon to cook.

By the time I reached the grocery store checkout line, I had amassed the oddest basket of groceries. Chinese oyster sauce, ripe red tomatoes, two containers of mozzarella cheese from the olive bar, several pounds of white sugar, labels for jam jars, lids for jam jars, vegetable oil spray, olive oil spray. And a box of golden raisins for the mole.

As soon as I had finished unloading the groceries, it was time to leave for the late Mass. When I got back, I figured I had to hustle a little bit. The mole would take about an hour, the cake would take about an hour, and the mousse about an hour, which would put me finishing all three around 4pm. And the guests were supposed to arrive at 5pm. So I immediately started on the mole sauce. It came together very quickly because I had pulled together the rest of the ingredients the day before. The biggest hurdle was trying to keep the house from smelling like chiles again. Mole is really a simple recipe: sauté onions until translucent, add a bunch of odd ingredients, sauté until fragrant, add chicken stock and another batch of odd ingredients, simmer until thick, transfer to a blender, and blend until smooth. Who ever originally thought of mole was definitely an adventurous eater. Ingredients include two different types of toasted dried chiles, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, bittersweet chocolate, garlic, diced tomatoes, raisins, sesame seeds, and almond butter. Nothing that really should go together, but it is so good when blended into a smoothie!

Once the mole sauce was done, I put the blender pitcher aside to cool and put the blender base away in the cabinet. Now that I had vegetable oil spray, I could grease the bunny cakelet pan and generously coat it with cocoa powder. It made a huge mess in my sink, and I decided to ignore that until later. Since I had already accomplished the tedious tasks of hauling out four different flours, measuring them, and shoving them back into the Horde Cabinet, the cake came together quickly. At least until I realized that I needed melted butter and melted semisweet chocolate for it. That put a little hiccup in my process, but I conducted an experiment to see if could save myself some time and mess by melting the butter and chocolate in the same bowl in my toaster oven. And it actually worked! Unfortunately, the bunny cakelet pan only fit half the batter so I needed a second pan. An eight-inch round would have been perfect, but it was so boring. I decided to take a look at my wall of fun cast aluminum cake pans. Sure enough, on the lower left corner of the wall, there was a shortcake basket cakelet pan. Would my gluten free friend like to put her chocolate mousse into a chocolate cake basket? Absolutely! The second pan was greased, filled, and popped in the oven in no time.

While the cakes were baking, I set about making the mousse. It is always such a challenge to find the right equipment for it! My large mixing bowl was still filled with aspic in the refrigerator, so I used a much smaller cranberry glass bowl. After I found the right bowls for whipping the cream and for beating the egg whites, I kind of went on auto pilot. Separate half a dozen eggs, melt the chocolate, beat the yolks with water and espresso to form a hollandaise sauce, beat in the chocolate, whip the cream, fold in the cream, beat the egg whites, fold in the meringue, seal, and refrigerate. Much to my surprise, it turned out perfectly – not with chunks of chocolate like last year’s mousse

Unfortunately, my success with the mousse was countered by a huge fail with the cakes. Not that the cakes turned out badly – they were delicious – but they filled my house with smoke. I neglected to put a baking tin underneath the basket cakelet pan, which then overflowed onto the floor of the oven. So an hour before the dinner party, my house smelled like burnt chocolate cake!

The Verdict

Despite the lack of time to plan, shop, and execute, I was really pleased with the final menu for the party:

• Caprese salad with dark chocolate balsamic vinegar and blood orange olive oil
• Chocolate chili goat cheese
• Raspberry cocoa jam
• Sourdough bread (from the bakery at the grocery store)
• Baked brie phyllo shells with Nutella

• White chocolate risotto with shaved chocolate and blackberries (brought by my really good friend and her sister)
• Chicken mole
• Ancho-cocoa rubbed pork ribs
• Steamed string beans (no chocolate!)

• Two types of chocolate liqueur
• Gluten free chocolate cake
• Chocolate mousse
• Bittersweet chocolate hazelnut fudge
• Fruit kebabs with white chocolate drizzle (brought by my really good friend and her sister)
• Gluten free chickpea blondies (also brought by my really good friend and her sister)





I think everyone had a good time, and enjoyed both the company and the food. All that despite the smoky house! I only had five guests, so it was a very manageable intimate party. Perfect for the Third Annual Chocolate Dinner!

The Recipes

Chocolate Mousse
The original recipe calls for German Sweet Chocolate, which yields a sweeter dessert.

½ lb semisweet chocolate
6 eggs, separated
3 tbsp water
¼ cup liqueur (kirsch, crème de menthe, kahlua, grand marnier)
2 cups heavy cream
6 tbsp sugar

1. Melt chocolate and let cool in a large mixing bowl
2. In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolks and water until thick
3. Add liqueur and beat to a hollandaise sauce
4. Add the hollandaise sauce to the melted chocolate and blend thoroughly
5. In a separate bowl, beat the heavy cream until almost stiff.
6. Add 2 tbsp sugar and beat until stiff (Be careful not to turn the cream into butter)
7. Fold beaten cream into the chocolate mixture, taking care not to deflate too much
8. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff, gradually adding 4 tbsp sugar
9. Fold beaten whites into chocolate mixture, taking care not to deflate too much
10. Chill before serving.
11. Smaller portions can be frozen. Just be sure to set out an hour or two before serving.