Fruit Puddings

These fruit puddings are fairly popular in Asia, they are essentially flavoured puddings with coconut jelly chunks. The mango was the better tasting of the two, the other being taro, though neither really tasted like I imagined they should.

Vivani Organic Dark Chocolate with Green Tea

I came across this new vegan store in Kitchener the other week, it has lots of interesting products, and I came across this German company, Vivani, which has several Organic chocolate products. The range of products sold in Germany is much more extensive than those sold in North America, but there are some interesting chocolate bars, including this one, made with 70% cacao content, and flavoured with real matcha green tea powder. The ingredient listing looks good, cocoa mass, raw cane sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa powder and green tea, all certified Organic under German laws. I always think that cane sugar leaves an odd taste in my mouth, but I didn't find this one to have that, though it could be that I was rather tasting the oddness of the matcha green tea, an unusual combination that I had not tried before. I'm still not quite sure that I like the flavour. My beautiful Thai friend told me that she didn't really taste the green tea; I definitely did. I don't know that I would buy this chocolate bar again.

Thai Green Tangerines

The tangerines that I had seen and bought, and enjoyed, before, all have had orange skins, though I have seen and tasted oranges with green skins. When I came across these green tangerines from Thailand in the local Chinese supermarket, I had to try and see if they tasted different, for one, and whether they lived up to their label of being sweet, for another. My beautiful Thai friend told me, when I asked her about them, that the tangerines with green skin in Thailand were not sweet, and to try them myself, and I would see. Well, I found them to be about as sweet as other tangerines that I have tasted before, there was nothing really special about them that I could see, other than being unusual.

President's Choice Pineapple Juice

My brother especially likes pineapple juice, often when we go out for a meal, he will order it. I was intrigued then to find this new product by President's choice, that contained the juice of three Costa Rican pineapples, and purported to taste freshly squeezed. I am always leery of claims like that, it rarely lives up to the hype. I have tried juicing pineapples before, it tastes great that way, but you need to drink it fairly quickly, as it will begin to go brown. The container of juice is priced at just under four dollars, which is far less than what it would cost to buy three pineapples and juice them, let alone getting rid of the pulp and waste. Did it live up to its marketing hype? I would say yes! Quite fresh tasting, very sweet, without the underlying slight bitterness you can get from juice that is old.

Naan Chicken Pizza

My best friend bought a convection toaster oven recently, and it came with a pizza stone, so he suggested when I visited him on the weekend, that we try and make pizzas. Having seen the new President's Choice Naan Chicken Pizza and not yet tried it, it is sitting in my freezer currently, I thought that we could do something similar. I suggested that we buy some naan, the delicious Indian bread, and cover it with sauce, he suggested black bean salsa instead, which worked, some pre-cooked chicken, some feta cheese, some cut-up cherry tomatoes, and some asiago cheese. The toaster oven cooked this in about 8 minutes at 450C, on convection bake. They turned out quite tasty, though you have to make sure to drain the salsa a little bit, otherwise they turn out soggy.

Chocolate Ginger Honey Cake

Yet another variation on the theme that is the Devonshire Honey Cake, this one features the wonderful combination of chocolate and ginger. There are three forms of ginger within - ground ginger, grated fresh ginger, and crystallized ginger. Sitting far away from my kitchen, I could still smell that combo, wafting wonderfully throughout my place.

Chocolate Ginger Honey Cake
225 g sweet butter
250 g runny honey
100 g dark muscovado sugar
175 g good dark chocolate
3 large eggs
300 g (2-1/4 cups) self-rising flour
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1-3/4 tsp ground ginger
1-1/2 Tbsp freshly grated peeled ginger
1/4 cup crystallized ginger
2 Tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 300F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan. Line bottom with parchment paper.

Melt butter, honey, and sugar slowly in a saucepan. Boil for one minute. Leave to cool (caramel will thicken).

Add chocolate to hot caramel and stir till melted and mixed through.

Whisk flour, cocoa and ground ginger together till mixed.

Beat in eggs one at a time in the saucepan. Whisk in flour into egg caramel mixture in two batches. Whisk freshly grated ginger into batter. Whisk crystallized ginger into batter.

Pour into the greased pan and bake for 55-60 minutes or until cake is golden brown and spring back when pressed.

Turn out the cake onto a wire rack. Warm 2 Tbsp honey in a small saucepan and brush over the top of the cake to glaze. Leave to cool.

Green Tea Red Bean Bun

This sweet bun is another offering of the Grape Vine Bakery at the Victoria Park Business Centre. I was a little disappointed at the amount of green tea, it seemed to be mostly a sweet white bun with green tea swirled in, and red beans decorating the outside.

Lindt Grand Hazelnuts Dark

Lindt and Sprüngli AG makes some good chocolate, not wonderful, but good and tasty. Easy on the palate. This offering is no different. Again, it is an unusual chocolate bar, in that most times hazelnuts are paired with milk chocolate. I think it just fits the rather broad category of dark chocolate, however, as it lists sugar as its first ingredient, followed by hazelnuts (comprising 34% of the total), cocoa mass, cocoa butter, milk ingredients, soya lecithin and artificial flavour. Some of the hazelnuts are whole, while others have been transformed into caramelized slivers. Still, despite its not so good ingredient listing, the taste is quite good, but rather expensive, $5 and above, to have very often.

I missed a wonderful Food Holiday!

Apparently, June 1st in the United States is National Hazelnut Cake Day. Who knew? I'll have to mark it down for next year, so as to make a hazelnut cake on that day. Not that I need an excuse to celebrate hazelnuts!

Dark Chocolate M&Ms

I disagree with the packaging, that these M&Ms are new, I remember the 'Go to the Dark Side' tie-in with the third Star Wars Episode, where Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. Those were hard to find, I remember going to several stores before I found a package. Like most dark chocolate versions of a product, the main more established and well-liked milk chocolate version comes in far greater numbers than its darker cousin, so I can see why they were not easy to find. In fact, these are not 100% dark chocolate, they are 70% dark chocolate, with milk chocolate mixed in. The candy coating is the same. They taste not bad, better than the milk chocolate version.