Krystina Castella - Crazy About Chocolate: More than 200 Delicious Recipes to Enjoy and Share

crazy about

chocolate

More than 200 Delicious Recipes
to Enjoy and Share

Krystina Castella

STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

2013 by Krystina Castella
Photography by Teri Lyn Fisher
Designed by Rachel Maloney

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4027-9887-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Castella, Krystina.
Crazy about chocolate : more than 2000 delicious recipes to enjoy and share / Krystina Castella.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4027-9884-9
1. Cooking (Chocolate) I. Title.
TX767.C5C37 2013
641.6374--dc23

2013004182

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For Dawn, Vince, and Madison Fiore.
Heres to a sweet life.

Acknowledgments
Thank you to a great team:
Jennifer Williams, editor
Sasha Tropp, assistant editor
Kimberly Marini, production editor
Teri Lyn Fisher, photographer
Jennifer Park, food stylist
Larena Faretta, baking assistant
Rachel Maloney, design director
Elizabeth Mihaltse, cover art director
Jason Chow, cover designer

When asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? kids know that some answers get a better response than others. I realized that a doctor or a lawyer received oohs and aahs, and I was a kid who liked positive feedback, so those were my standard answers even though I had my own secret ambition: to grow up and own a chocolate factoryone that boasted conveyer belts with truffles speeding by and big mixers whipping up vats of fudge, where chocolate candy bars were assembled layer by layer and packed with caramel. I would dip everything that was already greatincluding potato chips and fortune cookiesin chocolate, making it even better. At the chocolate factory I would toil happily all day in a chocolate-scented environment, and then, at the end of the workday, I would treat myself to a reward: a piece of free chocolate, whichever one I liked best.

I first got this idea from my role model at the time, Lucille Ball. She was funny and everyone loved her, and when it was time for her to get a job she knew how to choose a good oneone where you work side by side with your best friend and hide chocolate under your hat! I explored life in a chocolate factory further in the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where I learned that there was more to it than simply making chocolatethere were golden tickets, chocolate rivers, and gigantic machines. And spy-like secrecy was very important (after all, chocolate is a serious subject, not to be discussed lightly). The movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which was based on the book, was even darker and scarier than I had imagined, but that did not change my mind. I knew I could be fearless enough to take on the job and whip the place into shape. At school, when everyone in my class chose to write their history papers on the United States, I opted to study the history of chocolate: its evolution from the Mayan and Aztec food of the gods to the socially popular European beverage to its current ubiquity as mass-consumed candy bars. To me, this was so much more interesting than other topics not affecting my daily life. Chocolate was important. I soon gained popularity as the go-to person for anything chocolate.

My sister, Dawn, and a group of girls on Genesee Avenue in Staten Island, New York, where I grew up, all agreed with everything I believed in regarding chocolate (i.e., that it was by far not only the best food but also the best thing on this planet). Being the oldest of the group, I would organize and lead our Saturday bike rides to the corner candy store, where we would buy our favorite chocolate bars and then hang out outside the store, eating and talking about whatever grade school girls talk about.

In the summer, my family would visit the New Jersey shore. Although I loved the ocean and the beach, what I loved even more were the old-fashioned boardwalk candy shops that sold homemade fudge, chocolate-covered apples, and caramel-and-pecan-filled turtles. Visiting these mini chocolate factories, where I got to see real people making chocolate by hand and even some of the machines in action, I realized I did not need a big factory with a chocolate river. Here by the seaside, I could focus on making the best chocolate in the world and play in the sand on my days off. I looked forward to these chocolate outings, which filled up the year between the chocolate holidays.

Luckily for me, there are many holidays that involve chocolate big-time. On Valentines Day, the first big one of the year, my sister and I would sit by the front door waiting for our dad to come home with a big box of crme- and cordial-filled chocolates for each of us. These were fancier than the candy bars we ate on Saturdays and were to be savored slowly. Easter was all about the chocolate bunnies waiting for me in my basket; Christmas had its peppermint bark. I would craft my own holiday sweets by melting chocolate in a mold, assembling the confections, and decorating with even more chocolate.

Out of all the chocolate holidays, I anticipated Halloween the most. I had trick-or-treating down to a science. My goal each year was to collect 365 pieces of candy, crossing my fingers that most of it was chocolate, with some candy corn and lollipops thrown in. As soon as school let out on Halloween day, I started going door-to-door, my trek lasting until about nine at nighta full six hours. I collected my loot in a plastic jack-o-lantern that fit fifty to fifty-five pieces of candy. This meant about seven rounds of trick-or-treating. Every time my container filled up and I couldnt stuff another treat into it, I would return home, empty the contents onto my bed, and then head out in a different direction to start again. Once I finished my seven excursions, I sorted the candy by type into four large pilespile 1: chocolate; pile 2: lollipops; pile 3: candy corn; pile 4: miscellaneous candy I considered just okay. I then created packages of seven pieces, taking one or two from each pile and placing them into fifty-two separate plastsic bags. I put these in a box and stored them in a cool, dark place that only I knew about. Each week I removed one plastic bag from the box, hiding it in my sock drawer, and indulged in one treat a day per week. With my system, the plastic bags lasted the entire year until next Halloween. Any extra candy over the 365 mark (or 366 if it was a leap year) went to Grandma Lucarelli, who shared my love of chocolate and always visited from Brooklyn on Halloween to join the excitement. Little did I know then that my practice of enjoying one piece of candy a day taught me something very important: Eating chocolate every day is the secret to happiness. For more than twenty years, my husband, Brian, and I have each savored a one-ounce piece of dark chocolate after every dinner as the ultimate indulgence to end the day.