Based in Manila, Philippines, Dessert Comes First is a chronicle of the food-obsessed food writer, Lori Baltazar. This website is all about desserts, restaurants, coffee, and the pleasures of homebaking. Read more about me Brownies on the Brain
Mon, October13th of 2008
12:42 pm
I’m popping squares of bitter chocolate into my mouth in an attempt to gratify/sate/satiate what feels – to me – like an insurmountable yearning for chocolate. And in a seemingly cruel trick that fate plays on me, I quickly discover that there’s no milk chocolate to be found in the house.
Egads.
“Milk chocolate’s for kids, you know,” I remember an acquaintance once telling me with an imperious sniff. Maybe, but nothing beats milk chocolate for its almost ethereal texture – cocoa butter melting at body temperature. And I like milk chocolate for its full milk taste, its creaminess playing alongside notes of caramel and vanilla brought about by a light roasting. That’s not something I experience with dark chocolate with its wa-pak! in-my-face flavor resounding through my mouth as it disintegrates into chalky little granules. Don’t get me wrong – I like dark chocolate in desserts and when making hot chocolate but I prefer milk chocolate for straight up eating. After all, when eating (milk!) chocolate, wretched excess is just barely enough.
- photo from my 2005 post Café Xocolat
And then I remember the brownies from Xocolat that I picked up a few days back. Xocolat, that paean to chocolate in all of its inviting incarnations, is where I go when I throw my dietary virtue out the window. Their Taza de Xocolat (above) is the lodestar of liquid chocolate – any thicker and it’d be pudding. Their churros are awesome as well.
But today I have the brownies. Up until some months back, Xocolat displayed them unwrapped in the store displays – glittering blocks of deep, dark chocolate – their immense mass comparable only to their heft: brownies for the macho. But now they’re displayed wrapped in plastic; not as appealing but it keeps the moisture in. I’m told that the Citrus brownie is the least popular – people can’t seem to wrap their heads around the zesty-chocolatey pairing. But it’s my favorite, probably because I love lemons. The brownies also seem to have a problem with consistency: sometimes moist enough to make me swoon, other times, they’re brown bricks.
But today they’re a dream and my craving and appetite blurs as I alternate between nibbling and gnawing and then going back to the brownie variants I like. It’s quiet where I am, only the sounds of my lips smacking together and muted sighs of contentment interrupt the sanctity of this chocolate moment.
Chocolate craving terminated.
Café Xocolat locations at
-Ground Floor Serendra Piazza Mckinley Parkway Road, Bonifacio Global City. 856-2146.
-Promenade, Greenhills Shopping Center, San Juan
-Eastwood City, Libis
-Casa Xocolat is located at 172 B. Gonzales St. Loyola Heights.
7 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
Leave a comment
Submit your comment once. It will not show up right away.
For other RSS readers
Hi Lori! I’m not sure if you remember me. I used to correspond with you about food during your getasia.net days. I’m justine’s sister, Mercedes. Your sister Charley, was my batchmate at the Ateneo.
I totally agree with you about milk chocolate satiating deep chocolate cravings – my weapon of choice is See’s chocolate
The past year when i studied Baking and Pastry Arts at Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco, all my pastry chef instructors frowned upon Milk Chocolate (and white chocolate..which isn’t really chocolate because it’s pure cocoa butter) save for one..Alice Medrich who was our guest Pastry Chef instuctor for 3 days. And those were 3 glorious days of pure chocolate – she respects all types of chocolate and included white chocolate and milk chocolate in her repertoire. Even if she sits on the board of Scharfen Berger, she sings praises for milk and white chocolate!:) The one pastry recipe she taught which I won’t forget was her Tiger Cake – an olive oil based marbled cake (looks like Tiger stripes!) but also gives a rowr because it has white pepper in it !:) Alice Medrich is dubbed the first lady of chocolate because she brought Truffles to the US..her epiphany came in the form of truffles that her French landlady gifted her when she was studying pastry in Paris as a young bride. That’s when she met chocolate for the first time. When she went back to the US she sold her golf ball sized truffles (serendipitously a mistake!) at a charcuterie. She became so popular she set up her own shop called Cocolat in Berkeley. If you love chocolate, you have to get hold of her book BITTERSWEET which is a tribute to her career as a pastry chef and her love for chocolate 
My favorite brownie which I make is the Blackbottom Pecan brownie which I make with Valrhona (supplied by my two maternal aunts who live in France 
She has an entire chapter devoted to Brownies!
I love the way Xocolat packages their brownies! I saw them at the US Embassy Shoppers Day bazaar two weeks ago. Have you tried their Chocolate Martinis? You’ll forget your name
Lori, I adore your website. You inspire me to keep on baking and perfecting my pastries and my little homebased “Petite Patisserie”. I specialize in Petit Fours. I will be teaching an advanced baking demo at the Maya Kitchen this Nov 8th at the Maya Kithen dubbed “Baking for Profit and Health”. I will be teaching step by step how to make traditional French petit fours (also petits fours) with a twist – instead of using pricey almond paste I will be using indigenous nuts like Cashew and Pili and making marzipan decorations using those nuts!. In the course will also be teaching the art of making french macarons using Pili
Since I have diabetic parents I’ve learned to perfect the use of Cocosugar in pastries…I will be featuring Petite French Apple pies with crumbled topping using cocosugar 
Cheers!
Mercedes
[Reply]
Comment by maria mercedes camacho — October 13, 2008 @ 9:34 pm
brownies are the best! can’t wait to try these… love the packaging too:-)
[Reply]
Comment by chinkee — October 14, 2008 @ 11:23 am
*drools…
the brownies look enticing..I need to try that when I get back..nice shoots!
[Reply]
Comment by diana — October 15, 2008 @ 10:53 am
I tried the Cafe Xocolat (Eastwood branch) brownies in the peanut butter variant and I must say I was very unhappy with it. It was really dry and cakey
[Reply]
Comment by Mai — October 17, 2008 @ 10:34 am
I want to sink my teeth into one of those bars!:) Now!
[Reply]
Comment by Shalum — October 20, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
Oh man, those look crazy good! My wife and I just had a baby so we’ll be in the house quite a bit for the next couple months. Think we’re going to need some brownies to get through it!
[Reply]
Comment by The Doctors Chocolate — October 21, 2008 @ 9:27 am
I bought 3 of their brownies yesterday–original sin, the peanut butter variant and the belgian one. The peanut butter didn’t taste good at all. The others were better, but still not great. I also got their Old fashioned Milk chocolate. I have yet to try it. Finally, I tried one of their cold drinks, chunky Xocolat. It was alright but not special enough for me to go back. I do want to try the chocolate cakes in Xavierville you featured previously. Yes, I am a chocoholic.
Have you tried Heavenly Chocolates in QC? http://www.shopcrazy.com.ph/2008/10/haven-for-chocolate-lovers/ Looks heavenly!! 
[Reply]
Comment by jas — October 26, 2008 @ 11:27 am