The Chocolate Bar Hawaii

Nostalgia

As a kid, the perfect cure for a hot summer's day was sitting outside on a curb and having sweet sticky sugar drip down to your elbow from your cone filled with ice cream.

 

...Whaddya kidding me?  As a kid, I'd be on a wooden bench trying to eat my shave ice before all the syrup settled to the bottom.  Welcome to Hawai`i baby!

  

Okay okay, don't tell anyone, but I actually preferred the ice cream.  And I was lucky enough to have an Ice Cream Man in my neighborhood.  More like an Ice Cream Couple.  If you're from the 94 block, you probably know the red Jeep with white cooler in the back, covered with various stickers of delicious frozen treats, small American flag in the front, driven by the cutest old Japanese couple.  The ring of their old-fashioned bell was music to everyone's ears.

 

My all-time favorite?  The Drumstick.  My favorite part?  The awesome chocolatey nugget at the bottom of the waffle cone!  You know that's your favorite part too.  Did you know that they spray the waffle cone with chocolate to retain its crispiness?  That's what cable TV will teach ya, hurray for Unwrapped!

 

And while on a bit of a cupcake spree, a lightbulb went off in the ol' noggin.  Why not turn the Drumstick into a cupcake?

 

Pretty ingenious even if I say so myself.  And I came up with the following translation:

Vanilla bean cupcke = Vanilla ice cream

Chocolate-dipped butter waffle cookie pieces = Chocolate-spritzed waffle cone

Chocolate buttercrem with nut topping = Chocolate shell with crushed peanuts

 

Adriana, this one's for you.

 

First, start off with a box of these lovelies, Trader Joe's Butter Waffle Cookies.

 
 

Make sure you have a reliable taste tester around.

 
 
Baby J said they were delicious.  Crunchy, just-perfectly sweet, and highly addictive, this box has been known to disappear within half a day.  I always have to hoard a box for myself away from the vultures.  Don't make Adriana's mistake of not walking into Trader Joe's for 10 years and miss out on these delectables!

 

 

Grab two baking sheets and line them with waxed paper.  Arrange 10 cookies on each sheet.  I didn't think my bowl was big enough to dip the entire cookie, so I broke each one in half.

 

 
Don't they look like hungry Pac-Mans?  Ready to devous little blobs of chocolate.  Lucky little boogers.

 

• In a microwave-proof bowl, measure 1 cup or 8 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
• Add 2 Tablespoons or 1 ounce of shortening.  This will help the melting process and make a smooth mixture.  (I actually only used 1 Tablespoon, thinking it was enough, ooh and it wasn't.)
• Microwave for 30 seconds.  Stir.  It will still be lumpy, but you need to stir it!
• Microwave for 30 seconds.  Stir.  Do not ever ever be tempted to go for a full minute without stirring.  You will be sorry.  And have burnt chocolate bits.  And a gritty mixture.  And you will be sad that you wasted so much chocolate.  Please learn from my misery!
• If still not completely smooth, microwave in additional 10-second increments, stirring well after each heating.

 

And you should have this:

 

Velvety smooth chocolate lovin.  Don't you just wanna bathe in it?

 

I wish I could tell you that I swiftly dunked each cookie in the chocolate, shook off the excess, and placed it on the waxed paper.  No such luck.  After dunking the first two, I knew I should have added more shortening.  I still had to scrape off the excess with a fork.  Then I just spooned on the chocolate, then scraped it off.  It turned into quite a messy affair.

 

See?

 

I'm sure you can find something to do with this chocolate... or someone to help you get it off ;)

 

After coating all the cookies, place them in the freezer for at least 2 hours.  In small batches, chop them up into small pieces.

Like this:

 

Put them in a quart-sized freezer bag and place them in the freezer.

 

Next, make your favorite batch of vanilla bean cupcakes.  I love using the one Cheryl Porro of Cupcake Blog uses for her Grape Cupcakes.  Because this was an experiment, I did half the recipe and got about 21 cupcakes.

 

Fold in your chopped-up chocolate-dipped butter waffle cookies.  Scoop them into lined cupcake tins and bake according to your recipe.

 

While the cupcakes cool, make your favorite chocolate buttercream.  Food.com, formerly RecipeZaar, is my favorite recipe website.  KittenCal has never failed me yet, and I like to use her Chocolate Buttercream recipe, using 3/4 c. of Cocoa as I love dark chocolate.  I also like to use heavy whipping cream instead of milk, as it makes the frosting richer and creamier.

 

To emulate the look of a real Drumstick, I had to use the same size ice cream scooper for the frosting as I did for my cupcakes.  It turned out to be a lot more frosting than I thought it would be!

 

Because I'm a bit anal like that, I smoothed out the tops a little.  Then I realized it wasn't necessary because it was going to be covered with chopped nuts anyway.  Dork.

 

Cover each mound of frosting with chopped nuts (I used a package of Nut Topping, a mixture of peanuts and walnuts).  Slightly press them into the frosting so they don't fall off too much when you bite into them.

 

 

Take a bite of your childhood! =)

Stoplight...

 
 
I got this shot on my way home from school last week.

Even while sitting in traffic, waiting at a light that takes forever to turn green...

Lucky we live Hawai`i!

Meat Rice

I know, I know.  Some of you are thinking, What the heck is Meat Rice?  It is the lovechild between a runaway cow who spent the night in a rice field.  The next morning, Meat Rice was born and has been a culinary secret for the last few years, and now, I’m sharing the secret with you.

 

Hahaha!  What a great love story huh?  Anyways, my dear friend Brandon dubbed my version of fried rice as “Meat Rice,” because of the trifecta of meats that I include in it:  Bacon, Portuguese sausage, and Hawaii’s favorite protein, Spam.  I guess no one else puts as much meat as I do?  I dunno.  I make mine a colorful dish with white and green onions, scrambled eggs, and strips of pink and white kamaboko amidst the brown of the meats and oyster sauce-flavored rice.

 

Some of you might wonder, What is Portuguese sausage?  It is also called linguica, a Portuguese (duh) cured pork sausage seasoned with garlic and other spices.  This sausage is a beloved staple across Hawaii, with many different brands available at the supermarket, also comes in mild and hot, special brands used as fundraisers, and you can even buy em in bulk at your favorite membership warehouse.

 

And then you might ask, What is kamaboko?  Kamaboko is Japanese fishcake, but there are two kinds.  There is a brown one, the one that my boyfriend's grandma buys is gobo tempura, a mixture of fish and burdock root that has been shaped into a log or circles and fried.  And then there is a pretty pink and white one, kamaboko.  It is a type of surimi, which is what’s used to make imitation crab.

 

What started out as a way to use up leftover rice, meats, and vegetables, has turned into an all-or-nothing event for me.  If I don’t have all the ingredients, I don’t make it.  Simple as that.  Otherwise, it’s not my Meat Rice.

 

•  Start with some BACON.  Good bacon.  This is the secret to my fried rice, it’s all cooked in bacon drippings!  My absolute favorite is Farmer John’s Maple Bacon, the perfect blend of sweet and savory.  Cut strips into 1” pieces.  Fry in a pan over medium-high heat until crisp.  Remove and drain on a paper towel-lined bowl.  (I like to save some for garnish, and always make more than I need because I like to snack on them as I cook)  Leave about 1 Tablespoon of drippings in the pan.

 

•  Sautee diced SWEET ONIONS and minced GARLIC until tender.

 

• Add chopped PORTUGUESE SAUSAGE and SPAM.  Cook until browned and heated through.

 

• Add old RICE and fold in other ingredients.  I like to keep rice in a Ziploc bag in the refrigerator, it’s easier to break up the lumps when cold.

 

• Time for seasoning!  Add OYSTER SAUCE and fresh cracked BLACK PEPPER to taste, and mix well.  Turn off the heat.

 

• Fold in scrambled EGGS (that have been cooked in a separate pan), sliced KAMABOKO, the cooked bacon bits, and chopped GREEN ONION.

 

And you should have this:

 

Welcome!

I'm a simple girl with simple needs.  I guess I live up to my name, Jane.  Plain Jane.  I don't need things to be fancy, frilly, lacy, complicated... but I do love the definitions on UrbanDictionary.com.  Makes me wanna believe that there was a Jane who was so magnificent, someone was envious of her so much that she came up with this term.  Well, a girl can dream right?

I love food, I love to eat, I love to bake.  I guess that all goes hand in hand huh?  Here in my blog, I'll share my food adventures, pictures, recipes, and sometimes just random thoughts.

I wish I could tell you that all of my recipes came from my grandma, handed to me on stained and tattered index cards, after spending hours messing up her kitchen making cookies and cupcakes, and getting flour on my nose and my cute little apron... but I can't.  My grandma's Filipino.  The closest thing that comes to a cupcake in the Philippines is mamon, a light fluffy yellow spongecake.  Their idea of frosting is a sprinkle of cheese... yes, I said cheese.  On a cake.  Don't knock it til you try it.

However, I can tell you that I did learn how to bake in the kitchen of my Apo, my grandma.  I spent many of my childhood days in her downstairs kitchen, pretending to mix in bowls, wash dishes, and then actually cooking food, like rice and eggs.  When I was about 7 years old, I found a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix.  It was chocolate, in a box, I needed to get it out.  So I turned it over, followed the directions, and less than an hour later, voila!  My first cake!

And my lifelong passion began...