Recipe - Perfect Chocolate Curls

1 (or more) chocolate bars,
semisweet, white, milk or
bittersweet, each
3 ounce To 4 ounce and about One fourth inch
thick, unwrapped

FROM: Shelley Rodgers (Jolly Rodgers:the Portuguese Pirate!
(1:161/202))

Perfect chocolate curls? You need patience and the right tool. Have
perfect chocolate curls eluded you? With these tricks, success is assured.

The secrets are the tool a standard flexibleblade vegetable peeler and
the technique getting chocolate to just the right temperature. White and
milk chocolate curl most readily; dark chocolate can be finicky, though not
too difficult to work with.

~= Easy Chocolate Curls For a quantity of curls, warm each bar as you need
it. Use a regular oven if your microwave is 500 watts or less;
lowerwattage microwaves can heat unevenly.

Place chocolate, scored side down, on a sheet of cooking parchment or foil,
uncovered, at full power (100%) until edges of chocolate give slightly to
gentle fingertip pressure. Warm for 15 seconds, check, then warm for 5
seconds at a time until chocolate tests as indicated. Total time will be
1540 seconds, depending on oven's wattage and the kind of chocolate.

In a conventional oven, place chocolate on foil on oven rack in a 150~ oven
until edges give slightly to gentle fingertip pressure, 1 to 1One half minutes.

If chocolate gets too soft, let it cool for a few minutes.

Set chocolate on paper or foil on a counter, aligning a long sdie of bar
with counter edge; let paper or foil hang over edge. Stnad with your hip to
the counter. With 1 hand, gently hold end of chocolate bar closest to you.
With the other, hold peeler perpendicular to edge and rest blade on
opoosite end of bar. Firmly and evenly, pull peeler toward you along bar,
peeling off chocolate to make a curl.

If chocolate strip splays out instead of curling, neaten it up with your
fingers. Some curls will wrap around themselves; other break off in short
sections.

With tip of peeler, lift each curl to a flat surface tocool and firm. Turn
paper 180~ and repeat to make curls from poopsite long side of bar. As
chocoalte bar gets thin, it's inclined to break; just pull peeler over
smaller pieces.

If chocolate is too firm to curl smoothly, or if it firms as you work,
rewarm in a microwave oven on full power (100%) for 510 seconds at a time,
or in a conventional oven at 150~ for 30 seconds.

Save chocolate scraps for other uses. [Note: I really can't believe they
*really* put that last sentence in. *Scraps*? of chocolate??? Get real.] If
made ahead, store curls airthight up to 1 week. A 3ounce bar makes 13/4
to 2One fourth ounces (1One half to 2 cups) of curls. [ Sunset magazine, sometime
1991 Perfect Chocolate Cake

** = this comes from the bottom of the files of Shelley Rodgers =

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini