Swirls in the Mix

During the Christmas holidays my wife was determined to make a particular chocolate treat that was featured in Southern Living magazine. Determined, I say, because she didn’t give up after I bought the wrong type of chocolate at the grocery store. She tried to improvise using what I bought to create the same beautiful, swirling chocolate treats that she saw in the pictures. But it didn’t work. The recipe called for chocolate bars not the chocolate chips that I bought. Undiscouraged though, she trashed the failed first attempt and immediately set her mind on getting the Ghirardelli chocolate bars herself. Knowing exactly what she needed, my wife was off to grocery store

The recipe uses both dark and white chocolate squares laid out carefully in a checker board pattern on a cookie sheet lined with non-stick parchment paper. Heated for only a short time in the oven, the individual squares melt and bond themselves together forming a solid black and white checker-board. And that’s when the fun begins. 

While the chocolate is still hot and gooey, use a toothpick to make random swirls in the checker-board. Let the artist in you come out and watch as the curves of white and dark chocolate intersect the straight lines of the squares, creating the wonderful holiday merger. Sprinkle chopped pecans on the chocolate before it cools and you’re done -- but for one last step.  Just like peanut brittle, the cool chocolate must be broken, leaving the wonderful patterns of lines and curves on the individual pieces. They’re almost too pretty to eat.

Day 2 Guide

How do you open the pathways to beauty? Are you determined? Make it your plan this year to elevate the importance of unlocking the treasures of Joyous Gard.

© 2008, Levi Hill