Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Chocolate Covered Bacon in the News!

One of our recent guests, Aimee from Shake Your Bon Bons, is also a writter for the Cincinnati Examiner. Aimee was kind enough to write a great article on the show. Letting all her readers know about our great show. Please head on over to the Examiner and let her know how much we appreciate it.

While your there check out some of her other articles. She shares with us some great recipes. They will make your mouth water just looking at them. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading each of her articles.

Thank you Aimee, we enjoyed having you on the show!

--James~The Closet Creature

Home Experiment!

That's right I'm trying something new at home! Not to sound conceded or anything, but I am a great cook/chef. I may not be great enough to win Top Chef or another competition, but I can sure cook. Baking on the other hand, that's not one of my strong points.

Tonight we are making homemade pizza. We bought all the ingredients to make the dough from scratch and everything. So here we go! Let's try this puppy out! I will be sure to let you all know how it turns out! The recipe is from the site below. Check them out for you foodie needs!

Pizza Crust on Foodista


--James~The Closet Creature

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

This Week's Guest: Foodzie.com

Looking for great independent food finds? Well we aim to bring them to you each week and the site that helps us more than any is Foodzie.com. They have been the venue for many of our past guest and many of our future guests. So we decided, why not bring them on the show and tell our listeners about what they do? Coming up this Thursday, June 11th, we will have Emily from Foodzie. She will share with you what Foodzie is about and why it's unique.

Don't forget to tune in each and every Thursday on Blockhead Radio at 6 PM EST, to find what our latest independent food find will be! If you have a company or producer you want to know more about, just let us know! You can email us at ccb@fromagier.com and let us know who you want to hear from!

--James~The ClosetCreature, your Host

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Don't You Feel Like Shakin Your Bon Bons

Almost everyone loves chocolate right? Well I have gone out of my way to find a great new sweet place for you to discover with me today! Shake Your Bon Bons has some of the most amazing bon bons you have ever seen. Aimee from Shake Your Bon Bons was kind enough to join us on the show, where we were able to discuss what inspired her to start creating these wonderful delights.

Aimee was raised in a family that enjoyed baking together. For each holiday they would bake and distribute their great foods, and she discovered her true joy in baking. Once she had kids, she really wanted to find away to stay at home with them, but still generate an income. Shake Your Bon Bons was thus created, bringing together her need to stay home and her love of making wonderful treats.

Starting from a simple recipe that Aimee had found calling for bon bons made from little cake balls coated in frosting and then dipped in chocolate, she found she was able to craft new and unique flavors to satisfy a variety of taste buds. Aimee spread from just the plain chocolate cake, chocolate frosting and dipped in plain chocolate, to making red velvet and carrot cake flavors. Then with inspiration from her first job, she expanded into new flavors that mocked ice cream flavors. This line of unique flavors she calls SnowBall Bon Bons uses great and unique old time ice cream flavors. The Black Raspberry Chip was the first one that started it all, inspired from a local ice cream shop near where she lives. These lighter and more intricate flavors remind most of the ice cream they got as a kid from the local homemade ice cream shop down the street, bringing back fond memories of their childhood.

Among her favorites to make are her Dark Mocha Bon Bons, which combines two of her favorite flavors, dark chocolate and coffee. Aimee selects the best coffee that is hand roasted by a local roaster, who makes each batch in small quantities, to ensure the best quality. Aimee describes the scent of these as “rich and decadent”. Her current favorite treat to snack on is her Cookies And Cream Fudge, which is available in very limited supplies and will be back up on her site soon. This is a white chocolate fudge with cookie pieces blended into it. I myself am more fond of white chocolate and the really dark chocolates, more so than the milk chocolate. It has only been recently that I my tastes have changed to this, so I find the idea of the cookies and cream fudge absolutely divine.

Shake Your Bon Bons is not just about the bon bons though, Aimee has some wonderful glass candies, and even some great chocolate boxes. She describes these as a take on traditional gift boxes, but with a twist. They are solid chocolate and can be filled with either more of her sweet treats, or with what ever you may want to give. There are several styles to choose from, but my favorite is the blooming rose, how wonderful would it be to give someone a gift surrounded by that wonderful treat!


Aimee also helps organize a local bake sale each year as a part of the Great American Bake Sale. It is organized nationally by a group called Share Our Strength’s. Aimee told us about how the increase in attendance and participation each year has really made her feel proud of all the work that has gone in. She also described to us how the first year was not as she had planned. As we all know heat, sun, and chocolate are not good friends. Aimee got involved in this event in part due to her own misfortunes growing up. When her father lost her job when she was young there was a time that she and her family had to rely on the food bank to get by. When the opportunity came up for her to be able to return the aid, she jumped on it. If you would like more information on the Great American Bake sale you can visit Aimee’s page about it on her website. What a great way to give back to the community that has helped to support you.

It was such great fun talking to Aimee, and I continue to look at all her items on an almost daily basis. Please stop by and check her out on her website, her Artfire Shop and her blog. You can also keep up with her on several other sites such as Myspace, Plurk and twitter. She also contributes to the Belly Garnish Blog and she is the Cincinnati Baking Examiner. Be sure to tell her how much you enjoyed the show!

Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds, airs Thursday’s at 6 PM EST on Blockhead Radio. If you missed one of our past shows you can listen to them in the Podcast On Demand section of the website. Tune in each week as we bring you the best that we can find in independent food.

--James~The Closet Creature, your Host

Strawberry Cake Balls, Coated With A Bitterschweet Dark Chocolate on Foodista

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Do You Feel Like Shakin' Your Bon Bon?

We have a great guest on today that I'm sure you will love. Aimee from Shake Your Bon Bon's is on with us to talk all about her wonderful bites. Please tune into Blockhead Radio at 6PM EST to listen in with our newest guest! You'll get a great look at some wonderful delights. You can also sign up and join us in chat, where we discuss the items we find that will make you want to Shake Your Bon Bon's!

--James, ClosetCreature, your host

Strawberry Cake Balls, Coated With A Bitterschweet Dark Chocolate on Foodista

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Urban Cheese Craft on Chocolate Covered Bacon

Do you love cheese? Have you ever thought of making your own mozzarella or how about Paneer, or Cheve? You probably though it would be too difficult to do, and too expensive, right? Well no, not really, we found a great small company that makes DIY cheese kits. That’s right you can make some of your favorite cheese in less than and hour! Claudia from Urban Cheese Craft is the brains behind the operation and she joined us today on Chocolate Covered Bacon-The best in independent food finds.

Claudia was kind enough to share her inspiration behind creating these wonderful kits. While attending meetings and get togethers, she would bring some of her homemade cheese. She told us, “I kept getting the questions of how I made cheese, where I got the ingredients etc. I was literally being asked for entire processes at parties!!” With most cheese making ingredients only being sold in amounts large enough to make incredibly large batches, Claudia set out to break them down and make them into smaller kits. Each kit includes all the items you need to make cheese with 2 exceptions, the milk and the pot. You get the instructions that describe how to make the cheese that you have purchased the kit for, cheese cloth, rennet (vegetable based), citric acid, cheese salt and a cheese thermometer. There is enough in each kit to make 10 batches of cheese. She recommends that you find a great milk vendor that does not ultra-pasteurize the milk. Most commercial milk companies use this process, because it is faster. The difficulty comes with the high heat that they use to pasteurize the milk. When milk gets to hot it kills off some of the good things in the milk that makes it possible to make good cheese. So you want milk that has been slow pasteurized if possible, also known as batch pasteurized. You can go to MilkFacts.info for more information on the pasteurization of milk, if you would like to learn more.

Once you have created your first cheese, and tried it out, you can check out her blog and get some great recipes for some different takes on the cheese. There is nothing like fresh mozzarella in a caprese salad or on top of some chicken parmesan, but if you want to try some great snacking recipes she has some great ideas for you to try out. Claudia likes to update her blog with new ideas that she or her customers have come up with, which helps all of us enjoy the fruits of each others labor.

There are so many kinds of cheese that you can make from home, but Claudia has decided to start you off with just the basic cheese, the ones that you can complete in just a few hours. However she has begun to experiment with making Feta and some other aged cheese which you can also learn about on her blog. So be sure to check up on her often, as you never know what she may be coming up with next.

Please take some time and stop by Urban Cheese Craft to discover what you can make in your own home. If you’re running short on supplies, but want to make more cheese, you can always order extra supplies from Urban Cheese Craft too. This makes it a convenient stop for both the new and slightly more experience cheese crafter. Be sure to tune in again next week when we have some wonderful sweets to curb your cravings from Shake Your Bon Bon’s.

--James, ClosetCreature, your host

Paneer on Foodista
Mozzarella Cheese on Foodista Chavrie Fresh Goat Cheese on Foodista Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese on Foodista

Monday, May 18, 2009

Amaretti Cookies

For those that have not had the chance to get to know me too well yet, I was raised in a military family. As such we moved around a lot. I remember when I was very young moving every year and a half or so. As I got older it slowed to moving every three years, but once I got to high school, and until 2 years after I moved every year. Many times this was just moving houses or across town, but the summer before my senior year we had the chance to finally go over seas! We were so excited, because we had not had this chance in the past. Where to you may ask? Well EGYPT! Can you imagine your senior year going to Egypt to go to school! We were just over joyed with this opportunity. It was by far one of my best years in my life.

This trip to Egypt really helped me get to know food better. There are many of my favorite restaurants in the world, still there. I cannot afford to visit them, but they were amazing. We were able to try real food from around the world, the way it is intended to be made. The down fall is that now I have been spoiled and there are so many foods that I cannot get here that I would love to have again.

Amaretti on Foodista

Enter these cookies. One of my favorite treats while I was there were Amaretti Cookies. Wonderful little drops of almond heaven, that just seem to make you want to savor every little bite. I have found some in places around the US, but they are not as easy to find as they were there, at least not the ones I love. So while on this great food site I stumbled across a recipe that i just might have to give a try one day. I love to cook, but I love to eat WAY more!