Chocolate chocolate-chip pancakes

Yes, sometimes breakfast gets a little extra indulgent and borders on dessert.  I can think of no better excuse (though who needs one) to indulge than Valentine's Day so the weekend beforehand, we did just that as I served up these chocolate pancakes for breakfast.  

These chocolate pancakes are made with buttermilk - tender, fluffy, and light, chock full of chocolate flavor from cocoa powder as well as mini chocolate chips that I folded into the batter.  I substituted some of the all-purpose flour with white whole wheat flour and I think these pancakes can really handle it.  In fact, I think chocolate and whole wheat flour work really well together in general, often giving the finished product a subtle nutty flavor and texture.  

It's a little like eating a light and fluffy chocolate cake.  Think of it as an alternative to chocolate muffins.  I'd like to think I showed some restraint in not topping the pancakes with chocolate sauce like you often see.  As tempting as that may be, some berries and a few extra sprinkles of mini chocolate chips does the trick.

Looking at these pancakes is helping me deal with Valentine's Day withdrawals.  I hope you had a lovely one, filled with love and plenty of chocolate!  Lucky for me, there's Chinese New Year to continue the celebrations and the feasting on sweets.  I can't complain at all!

Chocolate profiteroles with vanilla fudge ripple ice cream

I made chocolate crepes so why not make some chocolate cream puffs this time.  You definitely don't need to twist my arm to try chocolate versions of our favorite desserts - in fact, I look for every opportunity to do it.  

So this time, it's the cream puff's turn to make a chocolate transformation.  It's amazing what a tablespoon and a half of cocoa powder will do.  It makes regular cream puffs into chocolate ones that you can do many things with.  

You can split them and fill them with some type of whipped cream for chocolate cream puffs, pipe the choux pastry dough in "finger" length shapes and make truly chocolate eclairs, or do like I did here and make profiteroles for dessert.  

I think "cream puffs" and "profiteroles" are sometimes used interchangeably but for me, profiteroles are choux pastry puffs filled with ice cream.  I tend to think vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce (just like I made them here before).  But this time, instead of topping the profiteroles with a fudge sauce, I imbedded the fudge right in the profiteroles by filling them with homemade vanilla fudge ripple ice cream!

Philadelphia-style (no-egg) vanilla bean ice cream with swirls of fudge ripple

This was an easy leap for me.  I've been making vanilla fudge ripple ice cream - it's one of my family's favorites and it's nostalgic for me because I used to buy these little plastic cups of vanilla ice cream with fudge at the corner grocery store growing up. I'd eat them with a wooden spoon and dig into the fudge pockets and be in a very happy place.  Homemade vanilla fudge ripple ice cream seems to put everyone in my family in a happy place so I've been making it and I thought it would be a good idea to set some aside for these profiteroles.  

I think this ice cream is such a compatible filling for the profiteroles.  The Philadelphia-style (no eggs) vanilla bean ice cream has a very clean, dominant vanilla flavor coming through.  I make the fudge ripple separately and layer it into the ice cream as I transfer it to the container after churning.  When you scoop into it, you get these delicious swirls of fudge mixed with that pure vanilla flavor.  It packs a lot of flavor into each profiterole.  For comparison purposes, I tried the profiteroles with plain store-bought vanilla ice cream and while it was good, it cried out for some chocolate sauce whereas you don't miss it with the vanilla fudge ripple. 

I think this is not only a fun dessert but a great marriage of chocolate and vanilla together.

Double chocolate banana bread

I'll try to keep this one short and sweet because it's a no-brainer.  When I saw double chocolate banana bread pop up on Smitten Kitchen recently, I knew I had to make it asap.  I'm guessing there's a good chance you might also be a fan of the site and felt a similar urge if you saw it too.  

My husband and I already have a favorite banana bread recipe, one I slightly adapted from Molly Wizenberg's book.  As nearly perfect as that banana bread with chocolate is, I've wanted to make a double-chocolate version because I naturally feel the urge to add more chocolate to things!  I thought about taking that recipe and tinkering with it to incorporate cocoa but my ideas were vague ones that floated around in my head without a clear direction.  Well, the answer came with this concrete recipe from Smitten Kitchen; not only did it look scrumptious but you just know you can trust Deb.  

She didn't let me down.  This double-chocolate banana bread was as good as I expected and I had high expectations.  It's chocolate cake, it's banana bread, it's both melded together but still standing individually on its own.  This is moist, dark, rich, delicious chocolate-banana cake.  Make it, enjoy it, and let's thank Deb together.