Did you know … ? To be considered milk chocolate in the EU, it needs to be at least 25% cocoa solids. Chocolate is only considered dark at 70%.

Recently, I got a chocolate lesson, plus a whole lot of sweet – and fizzy – stuff at Hotel Chocolat in Victoria, London.

In between samples, we learned about the recent history of chocolate, and how tastes have changed and changed back again.

Historically, chocolate was very different – and by that I mean more bitter – than your average chocolate bar is today. Speaking of, chocolate bars came to be in 1847, in Bristol, England. Did you know chocolate bars were English? Neither did I. (So is the internet – no matter what Al Gore says.)

Until the 20th century, chocolate was considered a luxury, and it was generally heavy on the cocoa solids. It all really changed because of World War I.

Food supplies were a concern, and importing was much more difficult, so chocolate had to change. Companies like Rowntree’s and Cadbury got creative and stretched their cocoa further. Maybe you’ve heard of some inventions from that era, like Snickers, Kit Kats and Rolos.

But little by little, the chocolate experimentation has gone the other way, to more chocolatey dark chocolate, with a higher cocoa percentage.

Which leads right into Hotel Chocolat, where I snapped a piece of chocolate next to my ear, and was offered more samples than I could eat. And they didn’t even ask me to write this post – seriously.

Hotel Chocolat have been making chocolate for 28 years from their factory in Cambridge (how great must that neighborhood smell…) and they are in charge of the whole process, from bean to bar.

Their dark chocolate is heady. Rich and lightly bitter, the taste lingers. Everything about it feels luxurious. Break it in to pieces and listen to the snap. It’s completely different from the average chocolate bar. It fights back against you, just a little, before melting down into chocolately bliss.

Milk chocolate? Still rich. Sweet and creamy. Still snaps. So luxurious that you don’t even need a whole bar before you’re satisfied. Does that make it lighter calorie? Let’s say yes.

White chocolate, meanwhile – still not my favorite, but Hotel Chocolat’s contains 36% cocoa, which is the same amount as in a bar of Dairy Milk. Yep.

Oh and before I forget. Did you know you could get a cocoa pesto? And a cocoa gin? When you’re out picking up bars of chili chocolate and Mississippi mud pie, don’t forget the cocoa bitters for your cocktails.

Soon enough, I’ll be turning some 100% chocolate into a Mexican mole sauce. Wish me luck. And if I can get it right – you might just see it turn up here.

Cranachan (pronounced cran-ock – apparently). It’s a lightly creamy, slightly crunchy, sweetly tart Scottish dessert. It’s built for summer. The thing is – it’s definitely not summer, and it’s absolutely not raspberry season. But with Burns Night around the corner, I’m not letting that stop me. This is my Winterised Cranachan.

If you know what I mean by Burns Night, you’re welcome to just skip on down the post. It’s a celebration of the life and work of Scottish poet Robert Burns, whose birthday is on January 25. Dinner usually involves haggis, Scottish whisky, poetry and dessert (obviously).

A traditional cranachan combines fresh raspberries, whipped cream and toasted oats. For Burns Night, I’ve combined a few of my favorite Scottish things into a seasonally appropriate, rich and boozy version. It combines a whisky-spiked custard, macerated frozen raspberries and crumbled shortbread cookies into a winter cranachan fit for a chilly evening.

You don’t have to use whisky for the custard but … why wouldn’t you? My preference is Glenmorangie 10 year. Its floral, delicate flavor doesn’t overpower the creaminess of the custard or the tartness of the raspberries. Even though I love everything smoky, in this case I would steer clear of a peated whisky, as you risk the taste of barbecued dessert.

You can make everything in advance and construct it just before serving.

Note: I know a few people who can’t eat eggs (understandable) or hate custard (not understandable), so I’ve included a little note about a substitution if you fall into either of those categories.

Winter cranachan

Serves: 2-4, depending on how generous your portions are

Whisky-soaked raspberries
100 grams frozen raspberries
1 tsp honey (heather honey if you have it)
20 mL (just over 1 tbsp) Scottish (non-peated) whisky

Mix the raspberries, honey and whisky in a jar and let it sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour and up to 1 day. After the first 30 minutes, crush the raspberries down to ensure they’re all sitting in liquid.

Whisky custard*
2 egg yolks
30 g (2 tbsp) granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
120 mL double (heavy) cream
1 tsp Scottish (non-peated) whisky (optional)

Set a small, heavy bottomed sauce pan on to very low heat. Add the cream and vanilla, and heat it until bubbles start to form or it starts to noticeably thicken. This will take a few minutes, but don’t walk away!

Meanwhile, in a medium sized bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar together until smooth.

Once your cream is ready, take the pan off the heat. Very slowly pour a thin stream of warm cream into the egg, occasionally whisking, until about half the cream is incorporated into the egg.

Still off the heat, slowly pour the egg/cream mix back into the saucepan and whisk them together.

Put the pan back on the heat and keep whisking.

It’s ready when it coats the back of a spoon, but you can keep cooking for longer for a thicker custard. (It will thicken even more in the refrigerator.)

Off the heat, stir in the whisky and refrigerate until you’re ready to construct.

Construction

50 g shortbread cookies

Crush up the shortbread cookies until you have rough pieces. Don’t turn them into dust.

In dessert dishes or lowball drinking glasses, alternate layers of raspberries, custard and crushed shortbread. Save your bigger pieces of shortbread for the topping.

* Whisky whipped cream
120 mL double/heavy cream
2 tbsp caster (superfine) sugar
1 tsp Scottish whisky
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Combine the cream, sugar, whisky and vanilla. Whisk by hand or use an electric mixer, until you get stiff peaks.

Happy 2016! My resolution for the first week of this year is to share this post, so I’m going to start the year on a high note.

Blogging is fun, but it can also be tough sometimes.

I could have started one of those stream-of-consciousness sites where people write about whatever it is they’ve done over the weekend, with photos of a soap dispenser in a restaurant bathroom, or deep insights into their favorite Instagram memes.

But I didn’t, so here I am.

The reason I’m even getting blog-osophical is that I ended 2015 with blogger’s block. Cooking is still happening, and some of it has been fun and very successful (some less so) but it just doesn’t make it online. No photos (ok maybe a few), no testing, no tweaking.

Instead I’m going to round up some of my favorite recent recipes from the big sites like BBC Good Food (seriously the best) and fellow bloggers.

Here’s what I’ve been making lately:

Cod with Lemon and Tarragon (Nigel Slater)

I found this recipe in Eat, a Nigel Slater cookbook, but lots of his recipes are published in the Observer/Guardian. It’s really easy but looks and tastes much more complex. I got the best cod I could. It makes a difference.

Char Siu (Burp Appetit)

When it was time to release the pork belly from its freezer hibernation, I tried this. I had no idea char siu could be so easy at home! Next time, there will also be buns.

Vegan White Bean Chili (Bon Appetit)

Warm and full of winter veggies. I add a lot less water so it’s less like soup, and use canned beans instead of dried, because I am not organized enough to soak beans a day in advance.

Blueberry Crumble Traybake (Holy Crabness)

This one first came into play for a summer barbecue, back when blueberries were in season. Though mine weren’t nearly as pretty as Emma’s, they were gobbled up without any hesitation.

Apple Cider Doughnuts (NY Times)

There is no craving like a homeland craving, and I decided I wanted cider doughnuts. Keep in mind cider doesn’t even mean the same thing here as it does in the Northeast US, and I’d never made doughnuts before…

But doughnuts I got. Delicious, cidery, imperfect doughnuts. (Props to Brambletye Farms, who make an unfiltered apple juice that worked so well in this.)

Summer! It has been hot here in London the last few weeks. Hot like a Northeast summer, but without the air conditioning and functioning trains. I love every moment of it, though 3 previous European summers have changed me. Humidity is rough, man. On the other hand, there’s no better excuse for overindulging in ice cream, not that I need much reason.

In other news, I have my first UK library card! Cause for celebration. The first thing to come home with me was a cookbook that I’ve been thinking about for a while. I have 3 weeks to leaf through it, take notes and try recipes. Since I love eating at Polpo so much, I’m expecting a lot from this book! Most of the ingredients are easy to find, and the recipes aren’t a million steps and 7 different cooking methods.

So when you put a hot summer together with a new cookbook, something is bound to happen. This time, that something is called sgroppino. It’s from Venice, and it’s a grown up version of a slushie. It’s sweet, tart and refreshing. The word sgroppino comes from the word to ‘loosen’ in Venetian – and if you have a few you might be more loosened than you expect.

To be honest, it barely deserves a full recipe, it’s so easy, but I love organization so here you go:

Serves: 1

On the Counter

1 generous scoop of lemon sorbet
100 mL (3.5 oz) of prosecco

What to Do

Whisk the sorbet and prosecco together and serve in a chilled glass.

If you want it to be more like a dessert and less like a drink, you can split the sorbet and add half back as a scoop after whisking.

Does 2 years make something a tradition? I’m going to say it does. This year, the gentleman and I continued our tradition of having another couple over for a joint-effort Easter meal. We tend to eat and drink a fair amount, in the most relaxing and comfortable way.

This year we took a break for the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race, which was happening about 10 minutes away, by the River Thames. I’m still surprised they held it on Easter Sunday, but I guess they have a tradition to uphold, too. We probably could have gotten there earlier, but settled for seeing the boats start and nearly-seeing the big screen.

Our Sunday meal (a lunch-dinner-late night snack hybrid of all day eating) was so much fun to make, and even more fun to eat. It was a combined effort from all 4 of us, as I think the best shared meals are.

We started with pesto palmiers…

and parmesan and roasted garlic ones, too. 

Plus, my favorite starter, herbed crepes with creme fraiche, cucumber and salmon.

And then, of course, the roasted lamb…

And for dessert: Meringues filled with lemon posset, home-whipped cream and fresh berries. A preview of spring on a plate. 

And finally… the late night snack. Caramel peanut butter popcorn.

Oh, but how could I forget? Spike the Belgian Chocolate Hedgehog.

For me, this cake was a lot more than just a cake. It was a bit like a test. And an attack of nerves. And an attempt to prove that I can cook, even though no one asked me to prove it. This was especially trying because I don’t really bake much, and this cake most certainly requires baking.

The gentleman and I took a trip up to his hometown, Edinburgh, to meet a new member of his family. There was a family lunch to celebrate her, even though she’s too young to eat anything we had at the table. As a surprise, and a gesture of good guestliness (or something), I decided to bring a dessert. Two of the guests were lactose intolerant, so this needed to be a pretty specific dessert. Enter: Angel-food-inspired cake.

Having never made this cake, or any angel food cake before, I decided to test this magical dairy-free cake out on myself and some willing coworkers. Thankfully, it was a big hit, and I didn’t have to spend the Friday night before our trip frantically and nervously trying to plan something new. Instead, I spent it frantically and nervously baking the cake I’d first done two days before.

And then it went to Edinburgh, packed carefully into my carry-on bag, still in its springform pan, through security, onto the plane and then around town for a bit. And it stayed in one piece, no problem. Worth noting, then, that this cake is pretty hearty in travel situations.

Finally, the cake hit the table, and it was a big hit! Dairy eaters and non really enjoyed it, and I proved not only to myself, but to others that I could … bake. (I’ll save the actual cooking for next time.)

And finally, to the recipe.

Adapted from Big Girls, Small Kitchen

Serves: 10, depending how big your slices are.

On The Counter

10 oz (280 g)almonds, chopped roughly or pre-sliced
1 1/4 cups (125 g) granulated sugar
8 egg whites
1/4 teaspoon (1 g) salt
1/4 teaspoon (1 g) cream of tartar
zest of 2 lemons
6 tbsp (90 g) flour
dairy free spread or oil for greasing the pan

What To Do

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Generously grease an 8 inch (20 cm) springform pan and set aside.

In a food processor, pulse the almonds and sugar until almonds are finely chopped. The almonds can be larger pieces; don’t over-process. You don’t want nut butter! Mix in the lemon zest and set aside.

Add salt and cream of tartar  to egg whites and beat until they form stiff peaks.

Sprinkle the lemon almond sugar onto to egg whites, a bit at a time. Fold it in gently. You want to keep as much volume as possible in the whites.

Once the almond mix is almost completely combined, sift the flour on top, and fold it in gently. Stop when all the dry ingredients are incorporated.

Pour the batter into the springform pan, and spread it evenly.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. To test the cake’s doneness, stick a toothpick into the center. If it comes out clean, your cake is finished. If it does not, bake in 5 minute increments until it does.

Cool your cake for at least 20 minutes before unlocking the pan and removing it. It will store fine in the pan, if you’d like to transport it somewhere.

In all the serving, eating and chatting, I completely forgot to take a photo of the cake on a plate! Instead, I’ll end with a photo of the cake before it hit the oven.