When caramel is enveloped with chocolate…
“Chocolate happens, dear.”
you’ve got my full attention.
The Drawing
I’ve done cartoons on chocolate from the very beginning of my cartoon career, even before chocolate became acceptable and not shameful! So I had a nice little stash of them before I signed a contract for my book on chocolate, but once I added them up, it was only about 30 or 40. And I needed 120 cartoons for the book, which is a fat hardback! I always planned that the book wouldn’t be just candy – kind of dry – but would include any dessert that had chocolate as the main ingredient. Still, that meant a hell of a lot of new cartoons
This is one I did just for the book, but it turned out lovely. I like the simplicity of the solid black and white, with just enough detail to make it interesting. I love the little plants in the window to get the morning sun! And the cookbooks on the shelf behind her. Plus this was SO much fun, drawing little miniature versions of all these dark delicacies.
His expression is priceless! You know he really has no interest in the food, but he is tolerant, and realizes these will probably be at the dinner table for a while.
Plus, this caption is so much more pleasant than that other nasty one. (Hey, great one to kick off my not yet set up Cafe Press store! What a t-shirt!)
To get back to caramel, I’ve had the opportunity to try this a couple of different ways lately. At the California Restaurant Association Show here recently, I picked up a Ghirardelli Milk and Caramel bar. It has a very glammed up but attractive photo on the gold box. Nicely designed. The milk chocolate is a little sweeter than usual, but works well with the tangier taste of the caramel. The caramel’s a nice texture, too, all fluid and melty. Thumbs up.
Eat me.
I also found Haagen Dazs “Reserve” ice cream on sale at Gelson’s for $4. (I only buy pints when they’re on sale.) and got Fleur de sel Caramel. They describe it as having sea salt on some kind of special candies in the ice cream. What’s with the Reserve and Rare, HD? I liked the texture, and it’s good, but nothing special, and not worth the extra dollar.
NeedCoffee.com liked it better than I did, although they thought it was too sweet. What does “too sweet” mean?
Okay, I admit, Haagen Dazs is on my annoyed list, because they had this one flavor last year, Belgian Chocolate, that was completely unique, and utterly addicting. It had a simple chocolate base, but with flakes of chocolate inside (Belgian, I presume) that literally melted on your tongue.
Now, it’s easy to make warm chocolate chip cookies that have melted chocolate, but to have a type of chocolate that melts in your mouth WHILE SURROUNDED WITH COLD ICE CREAM? Wowzie! But it was a Limited edition, and even though I wrote to them 3 times, they gave vague nothing answers, and I never found it more than twice. (If you have found a stash, let me know!)
