When Heather visited a few weeks ago, we made a pound of cocoa liqueur from some Barinas cocoa beans that I had roasted up a couple of days earlier. As I did not have my CrankandStein mill yet, we just ran the whole cocoa bean through the Champion, letting it separate the husk. The resulting cocoa liqueur I poured into 1" x 1" ice cube trays. This gave me 16 very convenient cubes of "baker's chocolate". That is all cocoa liqueur really is. So, for those of you not ready to jump into full Artisan Chocolate, might I suggest just making up your own varietal baker's chocolate and using it where ever you would use that stale bitter stuff from the store. I and my daughter did just that last night for a nice batch of brownies. She even tasted the mix before the sugar was added. I warned her it was not sweet yet. (Remember how bad it was when you did that as a kid :-( It was fine. She said "It's ok papa (patting my arm), it's good". There you have it, from the mouth of babes. Give it a try.
Artisan Brownies
3 oz Cocoa liqueur 1/2 c butter 1 c sugar 3 eggs 1/2 t vanilla 3/4 c flour 1/4 t salt 1/2 c walnuts
Melt the cocoa and butter in a saucepan. Mix in all the other ingredients.
Pour into a buttered 8" square pan. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes. Enjoy.