Chocolate Crunch Granola for the Non-Breakfaster

Nutritionists do their best to spread one of their favorite mantras to start the day with a balanced breakfast and never leave the house with an empty stomach. It just doesn’t work for me. I’m rarely hungry in the early morning and I don’t see the necessity to force myself to eat when I’d rather not. Weekends excluded, they are a whole different chapter: after a stroll over the local market I can’t wait to scramble some fresh eggs and devor a brioche with homemade jam. Yet, if – against all odds – hunger does strike before lunchtime during the week, homemade chocolate crunch granola is my rescue!

This recipe for chocolate crunch granola is from my latest cookbook and it’s been one of my favorite food-gifts for friends over the last years: it requires only a few minutes active work, puts every store-bought chocolate granola to shame and is so highly addictive, that we even started to have it with ice cream. Oh, and in the event you have a thing for those little clusters in your granola, those which a lot of granola recipes promise and only very few actually deliver? Yes, they are in there and plenty so! When mixing dry and liquid ingredients, you even get to decide about the cluster size, just break them apart how you like them best – the granolarity is up to you.

This recipe is also featured on Valentinas Kochbuch, alongside a comprehensive interview with Coco & truly yours about the work on Geschenkideen aus der Küche (in German language).
Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Line a baking sheet (preferably with extra high rim) with parchment paper, so that the parchment paper overlaps the rim. Chop the chocolate.
Add 125 ml water and sugar into a small pot and bring to a boil until the sugar has dissolved, then remove from heat. Stir in oil, maple syrup and lastly the chopped chocolate until well blended.
Mix the remaining ingredients together in a huge (!) bowl, then pour the liquid chocolate syrup over it. Stir well (either with a large spoon or with your hands) and make sure all oats are well covered with the dark syrup. Break down larger clusters to your liking. Spread evenly onto the prepared baking sheet and bake in the middle of the oven for 30 to 40 minutes (to make sure that the granola bakes evenly, take out the sheet every 10 minutes and stir).
Take it out of the oven as soon as the granola is baked through and let cool completely on the baking sheet – it develops its crunchiness as it cools. Serve with milk, yogurt or even ice cream and some fruit. Keeps in an airtight container for weeks.

When I was little, there was one job

When I was little, there was one job I imagined to be the coolest of all and it had to do with my addiction of having to try every new chocolate or ice cream flavor available. I kept wondering about that person who would be in charge of coming up with all those great new flavors? Somebody with nothing else on the agenda but experimenting with chocolate day in and day out!
Today, looking at the shelves in our grocery stores gives me the impression that my former dream job – chocolate flavor creator – is more popular than ever, or how would one explain the incredible amount of new flavors popping up everywhere? And while new brands or flavors would have immediately triggered my pavlov reflex in the past, over time the letdowns accumulated. The Cheese-walnut-raisin-combo was quite a disappointment. Who would have thought? Right. Now I am back to more basic flavors.

Well until… I came about this recipe by pure coincidence. Albeit I tend to be a bit cautious about trying recipes from a source I yet haven’t verified “culinary trustworthy”, having had all the ingredients at hand, the risk seemed minimal. Clearly more on the skeptical end, I was quite intrigued by the chocolate & olive oil combo. And stepping on uncertain ground once more paid off, I was very positively surprised by the recipe’s outcome. Wonderful silky mouth-feel, airy, but definitely not light – mind you, we just added olive oil AND eggs AND sugar AND whipped cream! My olive oil of choice was a delicate and mild one, with low acidity and a nutty note, which was the perfect counterpart, still perceivable in the chocolate mousse, but not overpowering.

Yet not everything about the recipe was gold: Let me quote some of the amazingly poorly written instructions: Brush the inside of four rings with melted chocolate, then chill. [...] Fill the chocolate into the rings and chill for 2 hours. Remove the rings, sprinkle with cocoa and serve on a plate.
First question, what kind of rings? What size? As I only own metal dessert rings I used those, but the “brush the inside with melted chocolate” gave me a headache and brought up question number two: how was I supposed to detach the rings from the chilled chocolate later on? How about lining the rings with stripes of parchment paper before brushing? Considering all the unknowns I only sacrificed one metal ring and filled the rest of the mousse into neat little bowls. Thank god. The miracle I was hoping for – of course – didn’t happen, there is no way you can easily separate this mousse from a metal ring, NO WAY. What you get is a mess par excellence, what can I say, I should have known better… anyway, despite the great outcome, badly written recipes suck!

Slowly melt the chopped chocolate in a bain-marie while continuously stirring, then add the olive oil until evenly combined. Put aside and let cool slightly.
Beat the egg yolks and white sugar (50g) until the cream turns pale and thick.
In a separate bowl beat the egg whites and white sugar (50g) until stiff.
In another bowl whip heavy cream until stiff.
Take the bowl with the chocolate/olive oil mix and carefully fold in one after another: start with the creamy egg yolks, then the stiff egg whites and lastly the whipped cream. Fill in nice serving bowls, cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours, better over night.

How much jam can a person handle?

How much jam can a person handle? If you ask me, quite a lot! Three new jams stepped into my kitchen, unexpected yes but certainly not uninvited… Jam, part I: SHF is not only a fun and inspiring event, it – SHF no. 10 to be specific – also was the starting point for an email correspondence with dear Fatemeh, creator of Gastronomie. She was on the hunt for the coconut honey we featured. The idea was born in an instant, to swap and send some local delicacies on a voyage.

Oblivious to what I was up for, I received a generous and huge food package! Besides wonderful food magazines, Hawaiian sea salt, unknown (to me) spices for Fatemeh’s favorite Persian dish, fruit leather and luscious grape seed oil,… I found something, I have been wanting to try for ages, ever since I had read about it on various occasions: June Taylor jam! Yummm!! All the praise I have read is true, the jam (Santa Rosa Plum) is sweet (just a little), a bit tartish, has a natural color, smooth consistency and totally leaves a “homemade” impression. A perfect ten – if it was only available here in Germany ;) Jam, part II: Last Wednesday, a regular day at work: While in the midst of tedious, not-so-out-of-my-socks-knocking fine-tuning of presentations, our company’s cleaning lady poked her head in the door and asked if she may interrupt for a second. Presentations versus distraction, it took me 0.0001 seconds to make the call – Suuure thing! She approached my desk and handed me a little jar of jam: “Because you’re always so nice to me.” Besides some guttural sounds, I was speechless. She told me that she loves to make jam for her family and thought she’d surprise me with some as well. What a lovely gesture! But her words also made me think about the whole scene. Usually when I run into her in the hallway we always have a little chat about this, that and the other (she is so into cooking…) – sadly, a lot of people completely ignore her, at best. She is a very friendly and polite lady in her late fifties, working hard for her money. A little respect, is that too much to ask for…? Please, don’t let me ever get that snobby and uptight! Jam, part III: Sometimes I just forget about a dish, recipe or ingredient, temporarily cached by my subconsciousness so to speak. In this specific case for almost 21 years, I’d say! Pursuing my daily blog reading, I came across this post from David Lebovitz, a dedicated food blogger. As soon as my eyes caught sight of the Reine Claude plums I instantaneously felt overwhelmed by a wealth of renewed memories. Me and the-best-(-and-most patient)- grandparents-ever on holiday near Strasbourg, discovering Reine Claudes for the first time. Grandpa relentlessly on the search for more Reine Claudes for his dear (and bugging) grandchild ;) As unexpected as they entered my young culinary life, as quickly they vanished again – just to be re-discovered last week. Needless to say, I tasked myself to find some of these oh-so-delicious plums on my next visit to Viktualienmarkt, and I was lucky! I bought almost a kilo and ate the first, unwashed on my way home (I told myself that rubbing them a little on my jeans would do the job). How can a little green plum (green to me always meant SOUR) be so sweet and yummy? Earlier I was talking to the stand owner, weighing arguments for and against making a cake or alternatively jam. She fully supported the jam concept, and with the “Mirabellen Liqueur” I already had at home – which she highly recommended for the Reine Claude jam – I gave it a go. The result: Amazing, rather unusual jam-color, sweet and smooth, almost velvet-like texture, with a certain tang of the liqueur. I think I have to make some more, to stock up for the cold winter months… 1 Wash Reine Claude plums thoroughly under water, cut them in halves, remove pits and mince them coarsely. 2 Take a large pot, add the plums, the sugar and a generous shot of Mirabellen-Liqueur. For the sugar I chose the 1plus2 type (1 part sugar used with 2 parts fruit), because the plums themselves are quite sweet. Bring the mix to a boil rapidly, while stirring. When it begins to bubble vigorously, let boil for about 5 minutes. As the mixture thickens, keep stirring to prevent sticking. Puree the mixture directly in the pot, using a hand blender. Carefully sample the jam, you may want to add some more liqueur. 3 Sterilizing the jam jars: keep empty jars with screw lids in boiling water for few minutes. Carefully take them out (I use my BBQ tongs), place them on clean kitchen towels and fill them with the boiling hot jam immediately. Try not to spill any jam on the edges, because it’s really important to work as scrupulously clean as possible! Make sure to leave a little less than a centimeter of margin, close it with the lid (use a clean towel to prevent burning your fingers) and let them rest upside down for about 10 minutes (and then back in the normal position ;). This will create a vacuum and make the jam jars perishable for about 4-6 months. Allow to cool down for a few hours.