Sweet Testing: S'more Nut Bars with Smoked Chocolate Chips

Nothing says summer like grilling. Traditionally a meat centered event, grilling has expanded over the years to include everything from lettuce to pizza to chocolate. Chocolate? Yep, that's right. Autumn Martin from Hot Cakes Molten Chocolate Cakery in Seattle has created her own line of smoked chocolate chips! The semisweet chips, which are cold smoked over alder wood for ten hours, actually taste and smell like a campfire. After I finally managed to get my hands on some, I couldn't stop opening the jar and inhaling the warm woodsy aroma inside. What was I going to make with my new discovery? S'more bars, of course! There are many creative ways you could use these chips, but I felt that a dessert that is already known for being smoky would be the perfect way to showcase the chocolate.

You can order Smoked Chocolate Chips via the Hot Cakes website, right here. If you would like to try making the chips on your own, check out Autumn's cookbook, Malts and Milkshakes, which contains instructions on how to smoke the chips, along with tons of unusual milkshake recipes, including Smoked Chocolate and Scotch Shake, Salted Black Licorice Shake, Tamarind Shake, Passion Fruit Creamsicle Shake, and Blackberry Lavender Shake.

You can find the complete recipe for the S'more Bars after the jump.

Blast From the Past: Pistachio Cake

I have been fixated on all things pistachio ever since I had a delicious pistachio cupcake at Sugar Sweet Sunshine last month. I always loved pistachio-flavored treats as kid (pistachio ice cream was my favorite flavor!), but somewhere along the line I stopped eating it. This may be, in part, because I grew up and started to become interested in trying new things, but also, I think, maybe, pistachio fell off the flavor charts in the dessert world. You really don't see pistachio ice cream that much anymore. Anyhoo, ever since I had that cupcake, I am all about the pistachio again! The mere thought of it makes me drool! Not pretty. So, in order to help curb my pistachio cravings, I decided to make an old school pistachio cake. You know, the kind that requires one box of cake mix and one box of instant Jello pudding mix.

The ingredients and the simplicity of the recipe totally brought me back to being a kid, especially when I smelled that pudding mix for the first time in ages. Such a wonderful, heavenly scent. It was definitely one of those scent/memory moments for me. I will say that making this cake was a bit surreal, not only because of the pistachio flashbacks, but because it required a boxed mix. I really, really, really, don't like boxed mixes. Don't get me wrong. They're yummy and all, but there are just too many ingredients in those things for my taste. I did manage to find a relatively harmless cake mix though, that was also gluten free: Betty Crocker's Gluten-free Cake Mix. The ingredient list on the box is short and recognizable and it was really good! You wouldn't even have known that it was gluten free! So moist and yummy! There could have been a bit more pistachio flavor in my opinion, although everyone else liked it. I've heard that you can buy pistachio paste for more intense flavor. Has anyone tried that?


You can find the complete recipe after the jump.

The Mixing Bowl: Blok by Katarzyna Bogucka

I was first introduced to Kasia's portfolio last month, after running across her work on the Polish design site/store Pan Tu Nie Stal and have been smitten ever since! I really love her ability to move in between the sweetly retro and the slightly odd with such ease. Her work is full of so many humorous and colorful details that you don't even need to speak Polish in order to understand the images. The illustrations tell their own story.


I’ll let Kasia take it from here, but I wanted to first thank her for sending such an interesting story and recipe, one that I'm sure you'll want to try at home!

From Kasia: "Blok" (cake) was made in my early childhood, when there was nothing to buy in Polish shops! People dreamt about chocolate, and one day someone cooked up BLOK! It's one of my favourite memories! I'm not sure if it will taste as good for people who are not devoted emotionally to it, but I hope you like it!


You can find Kasia's books on various Polish Web sites, like this one. You can also see more of her illustrations by clicking here. Thanks, Kasia! There are more illustrations after the jump.