Have you ever used chocolate chips other than in chocolate chips cookies? Many people have not, simply because chocolate chips have been a bake sale standard since decades, and what most people believe is that they must involve baking.
However, there are plenty of other ways to use chocolate chips. From eating them out of the bag (because, why not?) to stuffing them into things, here is how to get creative with chocolate chips.
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- Make chocolate butter.
Buttered bread is a typical breakfast item consumed around the world and it’s not even all that unhealthy as people assume. A slice of bread with a pat of butter can be a great snack when the bread is whole grain and the butter is a little.
To make breakfast more interesting, prepare chocolate butter to serve on warm toast or with croissants. The recipe requires that you mix with the electric mixer ½ cup unsalted butter at room temperature with ½ cup melted semisweet chocolate chips, 1 tablespoon cocoa powder, and a pinch of salt for about a minute.
- Make mole sauce.
The name mole refers to a number of Mexican sauces, which in Mexico includes a variety of them, but outside Mexico mostly mole poblano.
The traditional recipe for mole poblano contains about 20 ingredients, including chocolate. You can make this aromatic sauce using:
- 1 small yellow onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoons adobo sauce
- 1 canned chipotle chile
- 8 ounces tomato puree
- 3 heaping tablespoons semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 ½ teaspoons cumin
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoons all spice
- ½ teaspoon dried oregano
- pinch of salt and pepper
With the onion finely chopped and the garlic minced, sauté these in garlic oil over medium heat until they turn soft. Next add the adobo sauce, the chipotle chile, the tomato puree, the chocolate chips, the cumin, the cinnamon, the all spice, and oregano and stir until melted completely. Now lower heat and let simmer for about 5 minutes, then season with salt and pepper.
The chocolate is added to mole sauce to counteract the chipotle’s heat and for color and is not a dominating ingredient, which makes this a perfect sauce for chicken dinner. Chicken mole is a very popular dish.
- Write words on cakes.
Instead of frosting, you could use chocolate chips to spell out words and messages on cakes. This is a good alternative for when you want to deliver a happy birthday message, but you don’t want to use frosting.
Forming letters with mini chocolate chips may take you a while, but the results will be worth it.
- Add to trail mixes.
Snack mixes, particularly trail mixes are usually a combination of dried fruit, nuts and granola, with only sometimes chocolate added to them. However, when you add chocolate chips to snack mix you get double the energy boost and if you make it dark chocolate chips, a handful of benefits.
Scientists have been able to prove that dark chocolate improves health because it’s loaded with nutrients. Dark chocolate with 85% cocoa contains fiber, iron, magnesium, copper, manganese, selenium, potassium and zinc in very good amounts.
- Melt down and cover everything.
The best way to melt down chocolate chips is over a bain marie. How you’re supposed to do it is you place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water, but without the bottom of the bowl touching the water.
And it’s important that the water doesn’t get too hot because the chocolate could burn and split as a result.