Sure, I shop at the farmer's market and grow my own food. But since ingredients like sugar, cocoa and vanilla don't grow anywhere near our home, I don't feel guilty buying them at Costco, where the prices keep me in high-quality baking supplies even in the leanest times. I wouldn't buy just any old ingredient at a mega-discount store, but their fair-trade organic sugar, Dutch process cocoa and plump Madagascar vanilla beans won my approval this summer when I was developing recipes for my cookbook. They now command a prime spot on our pantry. With Valentine's Day just around the corner, they deserve a spot in yours too. Here's the scoop:
Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Organic Sugar: It's not very often you can find "certified fair trade" and "organic" in the same product. Made from canes in South America, this is my all-purpose baking and sweetening sugar. Replace your refined white sugar one for one in cookies, cakes, icings and on top of your morning latte.
Rodelle Dutch Process Cocoa: Dutch process cocoa {think
Valhrona} is deeper and darker than
natural cocoa {think
Hershey's} which gives it what I like to call a
grown-up cocoa flavor. Sourced "responsibly" {according to Rodelle's website} from West Africa, this is my go-to deep-flavored cocoa, perfect for anything you want an intense chocolate flavor to shine in, like cakes, pudding and of course, hot cocoa. Be sure to check recipes that include leaveners {like baking soda or baking powder}.
Dutch process cocoa reacts differently than natural in these recipes {
read more here}, so follow those recipes to a T.
Rodelle Vanilla Beans: Vanilla beans or pods come from an orchid plant indigenous to South Eastern Mexico, and later
migrated to Madagascar where today's best beans are grown. These plump pods pack enough vanillin to scrape into sweets and stir into frostings for a vanilla flecked flavor that extracts rarely achieve. You can sometimes find vanilla beans in the baking aisle of the grocery store, but they are
often thin and dry and not worth the pretty penny they cost. {Sorry
McCormick, your vanilla beans having nothing on these chubsters}. If you've never used a vanilla bean before, check out
Rodelle's how-to-video for how to split and scrape a bean {
here}. Be sure to save your leftover beans to dry and store in a jar of sugar for DIY vanilla sugar.
Since not everyone {sorry mom!} has a Costco, I also found these goodies on Amazon for a
not-quite-Costco-cheap-but-fair price too. Here's a shortcut for you: sugar {
click here} cocoa {
click here} and vanilla beans {
click here}.
No excuses now, time to bake something sweet for the one you love.
