On the Chocolate Trail

Here’s another easy bread requiring no oven, no mixer and no braiding. Also, no fussy flour needed. Perfect for summer, though delicious all year long. My story about dabo and its use in Ethiopian Jewish practice may be seen at the Jewish Week, Bless This Bread. adapted from The Sephardic Kitchen by Copeland Marks Prep

Heading into October and its culmination in Halloween, I find myself hankering for Devil’s Food Cake, despite its initially derogatory name. Supposedly in 1690 Pilgrims traveled to Plymouth Rock via Amsterdam. They stayed in a house near the city’s biggest chocolate houses and called that chocolate “the Devil’s food.” Later, a chocolate cake, perhaps simply

 On the Chocolate Trail, I found amazing stories of mothers and chocolate from World War II. Immigrant Lisa Hoffman reminisced about how her mother insured she had the skills, including chocolate making, to survive. “I carried inside of me all of the lessons my mother had worked so hard to get for me. I could make

As temperatures drop, these three historical recipes for drinking chocolate beckon with rich warmth. Bicerin: This very unusual, rich, layered drink of chocolate, coffee and cream, a specialty of Turin, Italy, connects us with memories of the earlier days of women drinking chocolate at the time of Mass. Bicerin is still served at a café

Try these super-easy-to-make chocolate treats for Super Bowl Sunday. They are especially appropriate since they include the super food, cocoa nibs. Your guests and family will happily dip into these savory and sweet temptations. The recipes are easily adaptable for small gatherings or large parties and will appeal to all ages. Prepped days ahead, these

Fathers, Dominicans that is, helped bridge the New World’s chocolate to the Old World. In 1544 Padres tantalized the Spanish court with chocolate prepared and presented by a Kekchi Maya delegation of New World natives. Fatherly faith indeed aided in spreading chocolate to new regions of the world, to new religious contexts, and to new

Several publications picked up my pieces about chocolate and Passover recently — Huffington Post, Jewish Journal and Jewish Telegraphic Agency — and I share them here, along with A Haggadah for a Socially Responsible Chocolate Seder and related rabbinic texts from responsa literature: A Haggadah for a Socially Responsible Chocolate Seder (free download!) This Haggadah

Not only was it fun to share content from On the Chocolate Trail, West End Synagogue, NYC, made an entire evening and successful fundraiser out of it. Hot chocolate, chocolate beer and peppered-chocolate bits welcomed and warmed the guests. I shared nuggets about Jews and chocolate with a very responsive audience. And then there was