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Chocolate Desserts to Die For: Beautiful Cookbook with Mouthwatering Recipes and Pictures

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Chocolate Desserts to Die For! Cookbook Recipe
The links in this post are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small amount when you click through and make a purchase. This (of course) costs you nothing extra – it simply allows me to support my cat in the lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to!

As a chocoholic, my cookbook collection includes plenty of cookbooks with one thing in mind – chocolate! A received a new one recently (Chocolate Desserts to Die For!) to review and I’d love to tell you all about it.

Now that Halloween has come and gone, thoughts are turning rapidly to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’m featuring cookbooks (such as this one and Celebrations) on the food blog recently that pull double duty:

  1. They’ll be invaluable to you when you’re cooking your holiday meals.
  2. They make excellent gift ideas for cooks and foodies in your life.

Chocolate Desserts to Die For! actually pulls triple duty as it adds this to its resume: This cookbook is filled with beautiful and delicious gifts you can make for people in your life – after all, gifts don’t get any better than chocolate!

{Review Continued Below the Mini Chocolate Turnover…}

Chocolate Desserts to Die For! Cookbook Recipe

Chocolate Desserts to Die For! (Mini Chocolate Turnovers)

This is not a “Gluten Free” cookbook, obviously, but its recipes are either gluten free in the first place (such as the candies) or can be made gluten free with easy substitutions.

Some of the Recipes Include:

  • Not My Momma’s Rice Pudding with Cranberry Compote (would make a GORGEOUS Christmas dessert!)
  • Chocolate Cranberry Oat Cookies (again, perfect for Christmas)
  • Bev’s Hot Fudge Sauce
  • Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting
  • Chocolate Chocolate Chipotle Fudge Milkshake
  • Strawberry Saute’
  • Warm Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake (when I make it, I substitute the chocolate cake with a gluten free cake mix.. can you say easy?!)
  • The Kid in All Adults Marshmallow Truffles
  • Triple-Decker Chocolate Cookies
  • Fudgy Goes Latin Bars
  • And many, many, many more chocolate recipes.

Take a closer look at Chocolate Desserts to Die For! by clicking the link.

Chocolate Desserts to Die For! Cookbook Recipe

Three of the Best Apps for Chocolate Lovers

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Mocha Icing Cake with Hersheys
The following is a contributed post… and since it involves chocolate,  it’s a post after my own heart!

Honestly, is there anything better than chocolate? It’s good for you, alleviates stress, and fills the home with good aromas. If you love cooking and eating dishes with chocolate, you’ll love tinkering with the apps below we have found online.

iChocolate ($0.99)

There’s a huge difference between people who love eating chocolate and those who know their chocolate. If you want to become a true chocolate connoisseur, reading the information this app has to offer is a good start. iChocolate; is more than just a cookbook, as it teaches everything a cook needs to know about chocolate’s quality, texture, appearance, and aroma. Saying that iChocolate is the ultimate guide to baking desserts as it even includes historical facts about the ingredient and masterful techniques used to produce it.

Cookulus: Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie (Free)

Are you a fan of chocolate chip cookies? Impress your friends and family by making the perfect batch with the Cookulus: Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie app. The app teaches cooks how to bake with 4 types of dough to make cookies soft, chewy, crispy, or crumbly. It has over 120 recipes for chocolate chip cookies, which are more than enough to satisfy even the cravings of the most hardcore chocolate lovers.
Chocolate Travel ($2.99) 

If you have the resources, why not go on a sweet adventure? Chocolate Travel is a great guide in helping people find chocolate-related establishments. The app has a curated collection of worldwide festivals, stores, themed events, and even spas. Going to different places where chocolates are being baked, or sold, is a dream come true for all the die-hard chocolate lovers out there.

It is remarkable how today’s apps are developing from being just outlets for gaming to very useful resources for home cooks. It’s not all shocking, really, as everyone is getting a slice of the mobile market because of its huge potential as a business tool, as asserted by the company that runs the recreational site Spin Genie. Mobile is changing the way the world works and proof of that is in the form of these small-sized apps that contain so much useful information.

If you’re using any of the apps mentioned above, share with us your experience in the comments section below!

You may also be interested in: 14 Health Benefits for Chocolate Lovers

See Also: Hershey’s Chocolate Frosting Recipe


Muesli Chocolate Banana Cookies with Vi-Shape Mix

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Muesli Chocolate Banana Cookies

As I mentioned in my Vi-Shape Nutritional Drink Mix Review, I don’t JUST use the delicious mix for smoothies. I throw it into homemade granola bars, cookies, muffins, and more.

With a lot of young people around the house, I try valiantly to have as many healthy snacks and foods available for them as possible.  While my husband and I look at granola bars and wheat muffins with great affection, most of the younger crowd just walk right pass them.

I’ve even seen a few shield their eyes from wheat muffins before!

When trying to think of creative ways to use my beloved Vi-Shape mix in a new way, I came up with a few goals:

  • include a few healthy ingredients, along with the Vi-Shape mix
  • come up with something people of all ages could enjoy
  • see if I could come up with a cookie that could be enjoyed EVEN at Christmas and other holidays
  • incorporate chocolate (always a goal)
  • use mostly simple ingredients
  • keep the process as simple as possible

I came up with the recipe below. A chocolate cookie including Muesli (HEALTY!), self-rising flour (knocking out a few extra ingredients), bananas (healthy), and Vi-Shape drink mix. The recipe, as is, has a strong banana flavor. I’m wild about bananas, so this was right in my wheelhouse. If you aren’t wild about bananas, substitute them with 2/3 cup applesauce or just go with one banana and 1/3 cup applesauce.

Muesli Chocolate Banana Cookies

2 bananas, mashed
2 cups Muesli (I use Bob’s Red Mill Old Country Style Muesli)
1 cup Self Rising Flour
1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
3 scoops Vi-Shape Mix
2 tablespoons Natural Cane Turbinado Sugar (this one’s the reason “mostly” is italicized above)
1 egg
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 cup vegetable oil

  1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Prepare your cookie pan by spraying lightly with oil.
  3. After mashing (or, as I actually call it when not trying to sound professional, smushing) the bananas, simply add all of the other ingredients.
  4. Mix with a wooden spoon.
  5. Place the cookie mix onto the cookie sheet by rounded tablespoons – I use a little scoop I swear by.
  6. Bake for 10 minutes.

Optional: After the cookies cool off, drizzle a little icing on top.  I simply combined 2 scoops of Vi-Shape Mix with enough Heavy Whipping Cream to produce a “drizzling” consistency.  I should have used milk – in keeping with the “healthier” theme, but what can I say? I went rogue.

 Cookie Ingredients

Pecan and Chocolate Chip Cookies

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This book review and recipe were written and posted before I had to give up gluten and wheat and before I dedicated the food blog to gluten-free recipes. I feel it’s only fair to leave the post up since they were kind enough to send me the book! It is not a gluten-free cookbook, however, and the recipe below is certainly not gluten-free. I normally substitute gluten-free flour and other ingredients when dealing with traditional recipes but cannot personally vouch (not yet anyway!) for how these would turn out with gluten-free flour.

Make the most amazing Christmas cookies ever this year! Many of these cookies would also make exceptional gifts or additions to Thanksgiving or Holiday gift baskets.

My inner cookie monster recently had cause to celebrate and did so by eating a chocolate chip cookie.  I was sent a gorgeous cookbook called One Sweet Cookie: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes and it’s my pleasure to do so now.

This beautiful cookie cookbook features cookie recipes that are probably already some of your favorite types of cookies:

  • Snickerdoodles
  • Orange Cookies
  • Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • Monster Cookies
  • Sandys
  • Peanut Butter Cookies
  • Thumbprint Cookies
  • Sugar Cookies

However, they’re sure to be the BEST recipe you’ve ever tried for each of these cookies.  You see, the cookie recipes in this book are from extraordinary chefs, pastry chefs and bakers – the best the world has to offer. These include Lidia Bastianich, Terrance Brennan, Laurent Tourondel, Jacques Torres, Mario Batali, and others. Cream of the crop!

In addition to cookies you’ve no doubt heard of, there are MANY amazing cookie recipes that will literally blow your mind before you ever even bake them:

  • Pecan and Chocolate Cookies
  • Pink Swirl and Dusted Meringues
  • Wicked Chocolate Biscotti
  • Coconut-Nutella-Almond Macaroons (one look at the picture and I wanted to weep with joy)
  • Petits Fours De Noel
  • City Bakery Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
  • Crazy Cowboy Cookies (from Chef Batali and his son)
  • Raspberry Granola Bars
  • Fig Squares (think Fig Newtons from a Culinary Institute)
  • Cheesecake Brownies
  • Cheesecake Brownies
  • Cheesecake Brownies… Sorry, but the concept of chocolate AND cheesecake teaming up is worth mentioning more than once. Or twice.
  • Red Velvet Whoopie Pies
  • …. and many more, but I’m getting too weak in the knees to go on!

Pecan and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes About 18 Large or 36 Small Cookies

11 ounces 66 percent chocolate (such as Valrhona Caraibe)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 large eggs
1 cup plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup 70 percent chocolate chips (such as Valrhona Caraibe) (optional)
1/2 cup pecan pieces (optional)

Pre-heat the oven to 325 degrees.  Line two half-sheet pans with parchment paper.

In the top of a double boiler over low heat, melt the 66 percent chocolate and butter.  Remove the mixture from the heat and set aside to cool for a few minutes.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs and sugar.  Add the chocolate mixture, then the flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix just until combined.

Remove the bowl from the mixer, and fold in the chocolate chips and pecans (if using).

Shape the batter into balls the size of golf balls, and arrange them on the prepared pans.  Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of each cookie.  The edges will feel done, but the centers will feel slightly undone.  Cool completely on wire racks.

Read more about One Sweet Cookie: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes by clicking the link.