![\"chocolate](\"\/mahanandi\/images\/chocolatecake\/minisimagecopyrighted2.jpg\")
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To the naive palate, cheese is mind numbingly bland. But with few tries, one would know that there are many subtle flavors even in cheese blandness. Same thing with chillies. They are hot, but there is remarkable variation of “heat” among chillies and within any given chilli type. When added to taste, chillies would bring incredible flavor to all types of foods. One example that I recently found out is chocolate. The South and Central American culture<\/a> often combine cocoa and chillies in recipes and their cuisine is famous for this terrific combination for centuries.<\/p>\n Last weekend, I tried this ancient tradition at my home and baked some little cakes of chocolate-chilli-pecan combination. I went as far as I could go to follow the tradition:). I couldn’t get pure (or good quality) chocolate but was able to buy few bars of dark chocolate. I experimented by adding half teaspoon of pure chilli powder from India, to the melted chocolate. The recipe I followed is from “Bittersweet” by Alice Medrich<\/a>, is actually for cookies. Recipe title is “bittersweet decadence cookies”, and in her introduction to these cookies she wrote “Ultrachocolatey and richer than sin, slightly crunchy on the outside with a divinely soft center, these are not delicate or subtle, but the jolt of bittersweet is irresistible.”<\/em> <\/p>\n They were all that and more. Trembling with anticipation, that is how I felt while preparing these little dark delights. The taste was purely out of this world and I give full credit to the recipe<\/a> that I followed (adapted) and of course to the almighty, all-powerful chilli.<\/p>\n Recipe:<\/strong><\/p>\n Flour and chilli: <\/u><\/small><\/font> Sugar and Eggs:<\/u><\/small><\/font> Chocolate and Butter:<\/u><\/small><\/font> Mixing and Baking:<\/u><\/small><\/font> I, on the otherhand scooped the batter into tiny aluminum cake pans that I bought recently<\/a> and baked them for about 20 minutes at 350 F. <\/p>\n End result looked like this and tasted really good.<\/p>\n Recipe adapted from Bittersweet by Alice Medrich<\/a> To the naive palate, cheese is mind numbingly bland. But with few tries, one would know that there are many subtle flavors even in cheese blandness. Same thing with chillies. They are hot, but there is remarkable variation of “heat” among chillies and within any given chilli type. When added to taste, chillies would bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,124,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caffienechicorycocoa","category-chocolate","category-sugar-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandyala.org\/mahanandi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"\/mahanandi\/images\/chocolatecake\/minisimagecopyrighted5.jpg\")
\nChocolate, Chilli Powder and Pecan – Ingredients for the mini cakes (cookies)<\/small><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/mahanandi\/images\/chocolatecake\/minisimagecopyrighted1.jpg\")
\nMini Cakes Ready for Baking<\/small><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n
\nAll-purpose flour – ¼ cup
\nPecans – roasted and finely chopped about 2 cups
\nChilli Powder – ½ tsp
\nBaking Powder – ¼ tsp
\nSalt – ¼tsp
\nSift the flour in a vessel and stir in the remaining ingredients.<\/p>\n
\nEggs – 2
\nSugar – ½ cup
\nVanilla extract – 1 tsp
\nBreak eggs in a vessel (I have removed yellows, my preference). Stir in sugar and vanilla. Whisk for atleast 2 minutes.<\/p>\n
\nBittersweet or semi sweet chocolate – 8 Oz (2 chocolate bars)
\nUnsalted butter – 2 tablespoons
\nBreak chocolate bars and chop them finely to small pieces. Take them in a microwavable bowl and add butter. I microwaved the bowl for about 1 minute. After stirring once, I put it in the microwave for another minute. Chocolate melted to smooth and was warm but not hot. (I waited few more minutes for warm chocolate to cool little bit and then added the egg mixture. This is done to prevent egg curdling.)<\/p>\n
\nAdd the egg mixture to chocolate and combine. Stir in the flour and nut mixture. Mix thoroughly.
\nPreheat the oven to 350 F.
\nThis recipe is actually for cookies and the cookbook author<\/a> instructed to line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper and scoop the batter into small rounds and place them 1½ inches apart. And bake for about 12 to 14 minutes, until the surface of the cookies looks dry and set. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/mahanandi\/images\/chocolatecake\/minisimagecopyrighted3.jpg\")
\nMini Chocolate-Chilli-Pecan Cake ~ My Entry to Barbara’s<\/a> “Spice is Right – Chilli”<\/a><\/strong> Event<\/small><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n
\nEbay Listing for mini cake pans – Here<\/a> <\/small><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"