Visual Traveler & Chocolate Blog

                         Wishing everyone a wonderful start to the New Year!

I definitely appreciate rich desserts - full of butter, cream cheese, sugar, whole eggs and, of course chocolate. And I've had a ball making many of them throughout My Chocolate Season 2025.

But after our multi-day Christmas celebration and all of the delicious 'excess' that abounded in our desserts, this five star-rated Chocolate Granita seemed like a perfect way to finish this year. With only four primary ingredients - cocoa powder, sugar, salt and warm water - and no fat content, it's also a perfect vehicle for finishing up the last of the season's whipped cream.

Deep chocolate flavor is a perfect way to describe this completed dessert. And that dressed up individual serving of completed granita (above) is far prettier than the freezing pan of granita is. VOE: Despite the suggested dusting of salt on top I opted for another sprinkle of finely grated chocolate.

Has this recipe grabbed you as much as it grabbed me? Just be sure to carve out availability for stirring the granita each half hour for about three hours. Quick errands or a walk, anyone?

Above: Combining ingredients in warmed water.

​Above: When the pan is filled for the first freezer round. VOE: As is typical when I'm asked to pour liquid during recipe prep, I used my trusty ladle to transfer this mixture from saucepan to 'freezer pan,' until very little remained.

VOE: From the first time I removed the granita pan from my freezer, I knew my hands couldn't handle the cold. Pulling on my kitchen gloves solved the problem throughout recipe prep. See multiple stages of freezing/stirring, below.

French Silk Pie has long had many enthusiastic fans - including our son-in-law. But for a super-chocolatey, super-creamy pie option, give this recipe a try! When it comes to pre-baking your pie crust (VOE: I use a store bought version. We all have our favorite baking shortcuts, don't we?), pie weights are very helpful and easy to clean as needed. And when it comes to choosing your cocoa powder, check out this story I wrote several years ago for The Chocolate Professor. 

VOE: This is a very tasty pie. However, I may not have stirred the saucepan mixture long enough to reach desired thickness before adding the butter, because the final texture of my cooled pie was almost runny.

Either way, this recipe creates another highly addictive chocolate dessert! Especially when topped with whipped cream and the chocolate shavings I had on hand from another recent dessert.

Falling in love with this recipe was easy for me. It incorporates olive oil and I've been selling 'the good stuff' at a locally owned store for 15 years. Some of its sweetness comes from honey and I love opportunities to use minimally processed ingredients.

VOE: The chilled dough was easy to work with and my organic sugar - which has bigger crystals than more highly processed sugar does  - was the perfect stand-in for turbinado or sanding sugar. 

VOE: I never have owned a sifter, but my trusty old sieve worked great to minimize cocoa granules. 

Above: I do love the color of yolks from free range eggs! And adding the blended dry ingredients to the egg/sugar/honey/vanilla mixture was a breeze when using a large spoon. 

VOE: I cooled the fully combined dough for about an hour and was very pleased with how easily it transformed into small chocolatey balls. I also learned my silicone baking mats work as well as parchment paper does, reducing trash from making these cookies. 

However, the size of my balls turned out larger than the recipe suggested, yielding about 32 servings versus the anticipated 54 servings. Yet the ones I crafted turned into wonderful cookies just the same - full of delicious chocolate flavor and a sweetness that wasn't the least bit overpowering. I will definitely make this recipe again.

I had previously heard about Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake and vaguely remembered one that Kansas City, Missouri, Chef Jasper J. Mirabile, Jr. had shared long ago. He was kind enough to share it with me directly, for this post.

Jasper says his mom came up with this recipe during the Great Depression when oil and eggs were being rationed. During 2016, he wrote about the dessert and its origins, for the Kansas City Star (readable with a newspaper subscription)

​The recipe then went viral. Hellmann's Mayonnaise put it on their website and many magazines - including Good Housekeeping - later published it.  And Jasper says Mama Josephine was so happy at that time!

VOE: If you're curious about the topping in the above photo, see instructions below the main recipe. 
 
Mama Josephine Mirabile's Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake
Source: Courtesy of Hellman’s Mayonnaise

2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
1 2/3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mayonnaise
1 1/3 cups water
 
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and lightly flour two 9-inch round cake pans; set aside. VOE: I used olive oil to grease my pans. 

VOE: I considered making a traditional buttercream frosting but decided to avoid using butter, as Mama Josephine did.

​Instead I melted 1/2 cup of bittersweet chocolate before 'painting' it across the first cake layer and then drizzling it on the top and sides. Though crunchy as a topping, moisture from the cake softens this filling in the middle. See what you think!

This Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cheesecake with Chocolate Glaze comes from the kitchen of Martha Stewart. Very tasty and pretty to look at, this recipe - nevertheless - required plenty of patience + far more time needed for prep than Stewart suggested + dirty-ing 'everything but the kitchen sink.'

VOE - DO exhaustively read the cheesecake recipe before you begin, to make sure you have the right equipment on-hand. Here's what I used during my culinary adventure with the primary recipe: 

Food processor (including one use and one reuse)
Foil
Parchment paper
Springform pan
Roasting pan (that fitted the circumference of my springform pan) 
2 large stainless steel bowls
2 flexible spatulas
2 measuring cups
1 large spoon
1 medium saucepan with lid plus a stainless steel bowl that easily rested at the top (for melting chocolate)
Measuring spoons

VOE - I don't own an offset spatula so used my regular spatula, instead.

Above: Prepared springform pan.
VOE: I used melted butter on the pan surface and parchment paper, as I don't keep cooking spray on-hand.

VOE: I did my best to completely cover each of the previous filling layers. But I ended up with less of the peanut butter filling in my bowl than the optimal amount needed for complete coverage.