Food Journal: When Coffee made love to Chocolate.

Eating is a ritual for some people and several cultures around the world.

Family traditions are built around the notion of food, making it, eating it, sharing it. Spicy, savory, sweet, sweet and sour, exotic, dangerous, (like blowfish which is poisonous but some restaurants are licensed to serve this dish) there's no difference for all of us who enjoy everything that revolves around food.

Now, for me when it comes to food, I enjoy almost all of it, at least all I have tried, with very few exceptions, like sardines. Despite that, I enjoy eating as much as I enjoy cooking and treating my family and friends with delicious dishes and desserts. And just so happens that this last Sunday, preparing for receiving Valentine's Day, I decided to make my own Valentine, well, our own Valentine, since we are all girls in this house, I decided to make a Moka Marquise.

What could go wrong here? It combines two of my favorite things in the world: Coffee and Chocolate.

I remember one time I ate so much chocolate that the mere sight of it made me gag, and this was for about two years until one day someone gave me one, and when I ate it nothing happened so I was back in the game and haven't had an episode like that since.

Coffee however I can't recall when I started drinking it, I can't remember my first cup of coffee, what did it taste like, how I got it in the first place, all I know is since that first cup, coffee is an essential part of my day, and no matter how ill I feel, physically or emotionally, coffee is there.

Back to our Valentine's Day Marquise. It's a simple recipe, one that I have made several times in the past with just chocolate and Maria Cookies. I have made it also with white chocolate and if I recall correctly, I made it once with lemon.

A Marquise is just layers of cream and milk-soaked cookies decorated with just cream or several sweets like chocolate pieces, cookie crumbs, caramel syrup, m&m's, etc. The cream can be pastry cream or ganache if you want a bit of a fancier dessert, but over time I have made my own variations according to my own taste and budget.

One of the variations is that instead of milk, I use coffee to soak the cookies, and this time I didn't use cookies, so, where could I put the coffee? Well, I made a Moka Pastry Cream, using coffee as a base and both cocoa powder and dark chocolate to make it richer and more decadent. Also, I changed the Maria cookies for my tartlet cookie crust, using just toasted wheat flour, butter, and sugar, which is less expensive and equally tasty.

Let's go to the recipe 💞

For the Moka Cream

1 Cup of very strong freshly brewed Coffee

3/4 of a Cup of Caster Sugar

1/4 of a Cup of Powder Milk

1/8 of a Cup of Cocoa Powder

3 tablespoons of Corn Starch.

1 teaspoon of Vanilla Essence.

50grms of Dark Chocolate.

For this, you take a pot and add everything in it except the dark chocolate. Give it a stir and take it to the stove at medium-high, until it has a thick consistency. At this point add the dark chocolate and keep stirring until it melts completely. Set it aside.

For the Cookie Crumbs

1 and a half Cups of All-Purpose Flour

Half a Cup of Caster Sugar.

80 grams of butter.

1 teaspoon of Vanilla Essence.

Toast the flour in a big pan at low heat. Always stir to avoid burning it. While that's happening, melt the butter with the sugar and vanilla. When the flour is brown, turn off the heat and add the melted butter and mix it up until you have loose crumbs.

The assembly.

I used a refractory recipient, 15cm diameter 8cm high. You want to have layers of this starting with the Cookie crumbs. For the first layer, you press it down with a spoon or your fingers.

Then add a layer of the Moka Cream and I added some chopped dark chocolate.

Keep doing this and finish with a layer of cream and decorate to taste. I used some Dark Chocolate and cookies.

Gigi wanted to do a special assembly for mom, so she and I got a wine glass and made a portion just for herself, a special presentation for a very special lady.

She wouldn't wait the fridge time and binge in after just one hour on the fridge and she was thrilled! She loved it and took some pics to share with her friends.

On Monday, when we were supposed to eat it as a Valentine's Day sort of food date, we decided instead to take it to the rehearsal we had that day to celebrate one of our friend's birthday. The result, 15 people went crazy over that dessert after we sang Happy Birthday; me? I barely got to taste it, but it was so fun seeing the boys and girls binging on that treat.

But hey! I did get to taste the cream and the crumbs. The mixture was an extasis of flavors, for coffee and chocolate are all-time lovers, they complement each other in such a way, that one can imagine that, if they were to be people, their love story would be for ages, inspiring and showing new generations that true love does exist.

Disclaimer

This recipe was previously posted by me on my Hive.Blog page.

To see the original post, tap me!

Check out my wonderful sponsors and their awesome content! Special thanks to @Janz for renewing her sponsorship. Thank you!!

This is 100% Original Content.

The images are my property and taken with a Techno Spark 6GO.

See you next time.

✨✨Blessings✨✨

@rebeysa85

February 18th, 2022.