Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Delectable Chocolate Cake with Loacker Rose of the Dolomites

December 23, 2015 by Mary 10 Comments

A Rose is a rose is a rose? Not so with these decadent chocolates from Italy. The Loacker family makes these beautiful chocolates to mimic the rose of the Dolomites – which grows wild right by their factory at the foot of the Alps. Oh my, they are totally yummy in dark chocolate and winter white.

And these are not just chocolate. In staying true to their wafer roots, (they make the number one wafer cookie in the world) there is a small wafer and a hazelnut cream center in every pretty rose. I think that’s so clever and also great for reinforcing their brand.

So how can I possibly improve on them with some sort of recipe?

Let them melt on cake!!

Here’s the thing. When you make a cake, to me, it’s always a big deal because not only do you have to make and then bake the cake, but then you have to make a frosting and ice the darn thing. My suggestion here is to use the Rose of the Dolomites as a decoration and the frosting!

Brilliant, right?

You need to put these babies on gently, as soon as your cake comes out of the oven so they melt a little and adhere. Position evenly and nicely and voila! You’re done!!

Here is the most delicious, decadent chocolate cake recipe. Sour cream makes it moist and the fresh brewed coffee adds depth to the chocolate. This is not too time consuming and well worth the effort.

I think you will enjoy adding this to your repertoire of holiday treats as this one’s easy peasy.

DELECTABLE CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH LOACKER ROSE OF THE DOLOMITES – serves 16

Unsalted butter, for greasing
Flour for dusting cake pan
1.5 cups of cake flour
4.5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup hot brewed coffee
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 large eggs at room temperature
½ cup canola oil
½ cup sour cream at room temperature
1 ¼ cups of sugar
¾ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. fine sea salt
8 Loacker White Chocolate Rose of the Dolomites
8 Loacker Dark Chocolate Rose of the Dolomites

Preheat the oven to 350° and position the rack in the center. Butter a 9”-by- 9” square cake pan and dust the pan with flour, tapping out the excess.

In a medium bowl, combine the finely chopped chocolate with the hot coffee and vanilla and let stand for 2 minutes, then stir until the chocolate is melted. In another medium bowl, whisk the eggs with the oil until pale yellow, then whisk in the sour cream. Gradually whisk in the melted chocolate mixture until smooth.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, combine the 1.5 cups of flour with the sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and mix well. At medium speed, beat in the wet ingredients in 3 batches until just incorporated. Scrape down the bowl and beat until the batter is smooth.

Pour the batter evenly into the prepared cake pan. Gently tap the pans on the counter to release any air bubbles. Bake for about 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

When cake is out of the oven, wait 1 minute, then gently place the Loacker Rose of the Dolemites evenly on the top of the cake as shown in the photo.

Let cake cool completely. The bottom of the chocolates should melt a little and adhere to the cake. Cut into 16 pieces and serve with LOVE.

Discover other unique, gourmet products in our upcoming spring box – mails March 25th! Our box subscriptions make a great last minute holiday gift. You can download a gift card at check-out to put under the tree.

MARY’s secret ingredients Food Subscription Box Revealed – Winter 2015

December 17, 2015 by Mary 6 Comments

Our sell-out, MARY’s secret ingredients food subscription box for winter, 2015 was a real treat. Filled with all things sweet and spicy, it’s sure to add to your holiday festivities.

All of these products are unusual, wholesome and do not contain any processed ingredients. Nothing is unpronounceable. Some products have only 3 or 5 ingredients! With these items you can snack or give yourself a little treat while knowing that everything is still good for you and your body.

If you missed out on this box, take a look at this video and all the descriptions below. As we gain momentum and our MSI community continues to grow, our boxes are selling more quickly and we only have a limited supply each season. So get your order in now and help us in our fight against worldwide hunger with our partnership with Feed The Children.

Did you know that nearly 15 million children in the US alone go to bed hungry at night or experience food scarcity every day? This is a crime. We aim to help eliminate this while we show you how you can eat well with products that are non-processed and good for you. All recipes using each of these products will be coming up in the next two weeks.

HERBED COFFEE RUB from JUST COOK FOODS

Their products are all natural, locally created in San Francisco, and deliver unique flavors to the home chef. Their packaging is sophisticated, sleek and looks like no other product line.

This herb rub has the richness of coffee along with oregano, cumin and chipotle to add a new dimension to the flavors of pork, beef and lamb.

LAIKI RED RICE & BLACK RICE CRACKERS

Laiki believes food should be simple and nutritious. It should satisfy from the time you read the label to the last crunch. They created Laiki Crackers because they wanted to offer the world the option to not have to read a label or feel guilty about treating yourself.

Laiki is a unique rice cracker with a satisfying crunch and only three ingredients: rice, oil, salt. Nothing else! No labels to read, no ingredients to worry about, 100% wholegrain, vegan, gluten-free, and non-GMO. The 100 calorie snack packs have about 16 satisfying crackers, packed with flavor and nutrients from red or black rice. Perfect for an afternoon snack, a school lunch, or a refuel after the gym.

LOACKER ROSE of the DOLOMITES in white and dark chocolate

There’s a place in the heart of the Alps, where the air and water are fresh and pure. At an altitude of 3,000 feet, surrounded by the Dolomite Mountains, the Loacker family selects only the best and finest ingredients from around the world: the best Italian hazelnuts, Bourbon vanilla pods, pure chocolate, the highest quality milk and fresh mountain water. This pure goodness goes into creating all of their delicious flavored-wafer and chocolate specialties, as it has since 1925. No matter which you choose from their family of snacks, you have the quality made famous by the Loacker family in every bite.

A rose by any other name would not taste as sweet. The shape of their premium praline is inspired by the beautiful Alpine Rose of the Dolomites, but the taste of this exquisite chocolate with the cream center is why you’ll pick it. They offer the perfect arrangement: genuine high-quality ingredients and a sublime blend of exquisite cream, crunchy hazelnut pieces, and smooth petals made out of dark or white chocolate. A rose is a rose is a rose. Until you’ve tasted one of theirs.

MICHEL et AUGUSTIN COOKIE SQUARES in MILK CHOCOLATE, CARAMEL & DARK CHOCOLATE with a pinch of sea salt

Their dream at the Banana Farm is to make the world smile, by whipping up delicious yet healthy products made from simple, quality ingredients found in your very own kitchen…and by sharing their true-to-the-last-drop adventure with you. In the very VERY beginning – before becoming butter-cookie big shots – they started out testing (and tasting) more than 400 recipes in Augustin’s little kitchen and Michel’s mother’s slightly larger kitchen. They did everything themselves, from choosing and buying the ingredients, to creating the recipes, to baking and delivering the cookies.

Half a chocolate bar. Half a delicious shortbread. Made with fresh butter, a pinch of sea salt, and an intense chocolate.

NUTRAW SNACKS PISTACHIO RAWBAR

They set out to create naturally healthy snacks without compromising taste, nutrition and quality. Their products are the representation of this purpose to create real foods, from real ingredients, for real people. They do this by harnessing the natural antioxidants, phytonutrients, protein, and omega-3’s that are found abundantly in raw fruits, nuts and seeds. Nutraw® Snacks are ALWAYS made with 5 or less organic ingredients without any artificial additives or preservatives.

They’re able to maintain their commitment by establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships with USDA Certified Organic California farmers who practice innovative farming methods. In addition to being held to higher farming standards, this also ensures that the produce grown on these farms has not been treated with persistent pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, which are harmful for us and our environment.

They are the purveyors of specialty pistachio and nut products and have created the first and only 100% raw pistachio bar. Their delicious pistachio bar is made with just 5 organic raw ingredients. Pistachios, dates, almonds, coconut oil and cardamom. That’s it!

RawSpiceBar WINTER HERB BLEND

RawSpiceBar creates freshly ground, global spice blends each month for creating dishes from around the world. Direct to your door for $6 a month.

RawSpiceBar’s Winter Herb Blend is a delicious mix of white peppercorns, thyme, oregano, savory, tarragon, sage and a few other spices. Use on chicken as well as on veggies.

It is the season to splurge a bit so we have some decadence with chocolate in the form of candies and cookies that I know you’ll adore. Winter white and dark chocolate Rose of the Dolemites that are to die for from Loacker, the Italian cookie and chocolate giant that only makes things from wholesome ingredients. Then, heralding from France, we have the most amazing shortbread cookies that each have a little pool of either dark chocolate or milk chocolate with caramel, both kissed with a little sea salt. The raw nut pistachio bar is good-for-you protein disguised as a wholesome snack that I have put to other uses in my upcoming recipes. Snack away on the three ingredients rice crackers packed with crunch and just the right amount of salt and rub to your hearts content with the herbed coffee rub and winter herb blend.

Have fun!!

And if you missed this box, you can order a subscription for next year and place a beautiful gift certificate under the tree, that you can download at checkout. Next box mails on March 25th!

And remember, always cook with LOVE and your food will taste scrumptious!

Food Waste

September 25, 2015 by Mary 17 Comments

I have to step up on a soapbox now. Most of you know of my desire to tackle the hunger problem in the United States and the world at large. That’s one reason I started the MARY’s secret ingredients subscription box business, as we are donating 10% of our profits to Feed The Children in their work to support a wide range of services to empower communities and wipeout hunger worldwide. No one should go hungry. In the US alone, over 48 million people suffer from food scarcity and over 15 million children go to bed hungry every night. In our super rich country, this is an atrocity. On the other side of the coin, the amount of food waste is horrendous.

Take a look at this John Oliver video:

Clearly this is a distribution problem. How can we get surpluses of food to the folks who need it?

And apparently many expiration dates on food are arbitrary at best. Maybe they’re put on to increase sales earlier as no decent grocery store will sell expired products and of course, they must restock.

When we lived in Summit, NJ, I made a discovery late one night at Kings, an upscale grocery store, with headquarters in the UK. I was in the store shopping a little before their 10 pm closing time and the woman in the bakery and bread department was going around filling shopping carts with loaves of bread and other bakery items. The bread was mounded high, the carts were overflowing.

I asked her what she was going to do with that. She said she couldn’t tell me.

I said, “Aw come on, please tell me.”

She said, “No I can’t.”

I pleaded, “Pleeeaase.”

She moved closer to me, cupped her hand near her mouth and whispered, “We throw it away.”

I was speechless.

She was embarrassed.

It was perfectly good bread, just not at its very freshest peak and Kings was such a high-class store, they didn’t even want to have a day-old rack. So they just threw it away.

At that point, after numerous letters written to the store’s corporate offices to get permission, I started a pick-up program twice a week for bread and once a week for the gently bruised fruits they also threw away. So three times a week, I filled our station wagon with food and delivered it to organizations that fed the hungry. It was a tiny bit I could do then. I hope to do more with MARY’s secret ingredients.

Today is the last day to purchase a fall box. We still have a few left. Buy one and surprise yourself with healthy ingredients and help us in our cause to feed the hungry.

Having enough to eat should not be a privilege. It is a basic human right.

Also, we’re having a TWITTER PARTY today (9/25) at 1 pm EST!! You can ask me cooking questions and I’ll ask you some too. Should be loads of fun! Join us!!

MARY’s secret ingredients is moving forward with crowdfunding

February 28, 2015 by Mary 14 Comments

I want to eradicate hunger on this earth.

I know, a pretty big, bold, audacious statement. But I think we can do it with your help, using MARY’s secret ingredients.

We’re on a mission – by supporting new natural food manufacturers and giving them an outlet to showcase their products AND giving you the opportunity to sample and try while I suggest new recipes to inspire your cooking, we can make enough money to give back to Feed The Children to tackle this hunger problem. Hunger is not about a total lack of food. It’s a distribution problem. It’s a poverty problem. It’s an education problem. Money is needed to solve these problems. We are now on a crowdfunding mission.

Did you know that we, in the United States, have the highest percentage of hungry people of any developed nation, a rate closer to that of Indonesia than that of Britain?

The simple fact that anyone, anyone in our country should go to bed hungry or any child not be able to concentrate in school due to hunger is an absolute crime in my book.

We need to fix it.

Did you also know that many obese people, of whom there are plenty of in this nation, are actually malnourished? Yes, they’re eating just a ton of fatty, processed crap with no nutrients. They are actually starving. They don’t cook or eat real food.

So MARY’s secret ingredients seeks to solve both problems, by introducing new natural food products from our box to add excitement to your cooking, including the crazy recipes that I create, and then also donating a percentage of profits to Feed The Children.

We have been growing rapidly but we’d really like to ramp it up to solve the hunger problem so we can give oodles of money to Feed The Children. In order to enlarge our community and prove just how big this concept can be to our investors, we have launched a crowdfunding campaign. You can make an investment in exchange for an exclusive gift from us.

Please visit and invest what you can. Besides, I’d love to meet you in person and have you over for a cooking lesson, a brunch or even a dinner. Here is the link: http://smallknot.com/marys-secret-ingredients-1

Please tell all your friends and share on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to get the word out.
Thank you for all that you do. 🙂 Let’s have fun while we all tackle this problem together!!

MARY’s secret ingredients Giveaway Winners announced!

December 18, 2014 by Mary 3 Comments

To all of you who participated in my MARY’s secret ingredients Giveaway, thank you for making it a huge success! Everyone’s responses were just wonderful, and I’m so happy to announce our winners today.

A little background: I wanted to make sure that the winner was picked completely at random so I had Marie, my MSI Project Manager (and resident opera singer), input everyone’s names into this Random Name Picker. First, we chose our Grand Prize Winner who will receive a full year’s subscription to MARY’s secret ingredients, followed by our two runners-up who will each receive a Spring 2015 box!

And The Winners Are:

Grand Prize: Anne Maxfield!!!

Runners-up: Shaunie and Bill Bryan!

Congratulations Anne, I’m thrilled to be sending you a whole year of my specially curated ingredients. To Shaunie, and Bill, thank you so much for sharing your lovely holiday dishes, I’m delighted to be sending you each a Spring box.

Here are our winners’ favorite holiday dishes:

Anne cooks recipes to put into beautifully packed gifts with her friend. This year they made a wonderful Crunchy Granola (you can get the recipe on her blog here: http://wp.me/p2SJwY-1y). Shaunie makes her Great Aunt’s broccoli casserole recipe, and Bill make a special bison chili with 3 different kinds of beans!

Once again thank you to everyone who participated, including our international friends who shared with us even though they weren’t eligible to enter because we can’t ship outside the continental US, yet. You ALL are winners in my book!

Stay tuned for more recipes using the ingredients from my winter box!

Chili Chocolate Pork Chops with Apple Aplenty

December 12, 2014 by Mary 5 Comments

The first item I want to introduce to you from our MARY’s secret ingredients winter box is Apple Aplenty from Peeled Snacks. It is a totally delicious, organic, all natural trail mix with dried fruits, nuts, peanuts and chocolate pieces. Of course it’s terrific right out of the bag. However, these Chili Chocolate Pork Chops with Apple Aplenty really take this mix to another level. I reached back to Mexican cooking for inspiration. Think mole sauce, then, think about how delicious apples and raisins are with pork. Can’t go wrong with some red wine thrown in and garnishing it with cilantro kept it in the Mexican theme.

This dish was so very scrumptious and satisfying. I woke up the next morning still remembering every bite and feeling all nice and yummy inside. I think it was the chocolate in the sauce. It was all deliciousness!

Noha Waibsnaider started this Peeled Snacks company in 2004, when she noticed that the snack aisle was only filled with processed food. She set out to develop healthy, tasty and nourishing snacks using gently dried fruits combined with nuts and sometimes chocolate for a nutritious snack you could feel good about eating. She believes we all should be mindful of what we eat. That is certainly my philosophy here at LOVE.

Try this recipe – it is just so good!!!

CHILI CHOCOLATE PORK CHOPS WITH APPLE APLENTY – serves 2

1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. butter
2 one-inch thick pork loin chops
Salt
Pepper, fresh ground
1/4 tsp. sweet smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 cup dry red wine – preferably a Syrah
1 scant cup of Apple Aplenty
1/8 tsp. red chili pepper flakes
1 heaping Tbs. of chopped cilantro

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Wash and dry your chops. Salt and pepper one side and sprinkle the smoked paprika evenly over both chops on the same side. Rub the seasonings in a bit.

Warm olive oil in a small skillet. Add butter and turn up heat to medium-high. When butter stops sizzling, add the chops, seasoned side down. Brown the chops on that side for about 3 minutes. While the chops are browning, season the top side with salt and pepper.

Turn chops over. After 2 minutes, drain grease, add the wine and sprinkle the Apple Aplenty on top along with the red chili flakes, distributing evenly. Put the skillet in the preheated oven for 10 – 16 minutes. Test with an instant meat thermometer – it should be at 145 – 150 degrees. Remove the chops to a platter, scraping all the goodness on top. Let sit for 5 -10 minutes and the temperature will gain to the perfect degree of doneness.

Garnish with the cilantro and serve with LOVE!

Chili Chocolate Pork Chops with Apple Aplenty on two plates on table

I served these Chili Chocolate Pork Chops with Apple Aplenty alongside roasted zucchini topped with a green salsa. Delish!