The Most Overlooked People Who Most Deserve the Gift of Chocolate

• Nursing Staff at a local hospital or nursing home. People often think of bringing gifts to patients or residents...but how about to the dedicated staffers who have been taking care of your loved one(s) 24/7? Let's face it, giving a box of gourmet truffles to your friend who just had knee surgery is a nice gesture, but she most likely will have to wait a long time to enjoy it based on dietary restrictions and recovery time. But bringing a large box to the nurses' station for all to share will show appreciation to the quality of care they've been providing your friend.

• Support Staff at your child's school. It's the end of the school year and of course you'd like to give your child's teacher a gift. But how about extending the generosity to the office workers, guidance counselors, school nurse and custodial staff? Why? Because without them, the school would crumble. These are the folks who make sure your kid gets on the right bus, apply a bandage after that monkey-bar-playground mishap, serve up lunch every day and clean up after your little one uses the restroom. Spread a little joy to these seriously underpaid workers.

• Vendors that you deal with regularly. Yes, you're going to show appreciation to your clients for their business. But it's your vendors who ensure you actually have a business to run. Without suppliers or professional consultants, you wouldn't be able to fulfill your clients' needs. True, you pay them well, but a little extra token of appreciation will not only make their day, but will ensure you are put at the head of the queue when they become overwhelmingly busy.

• The Neighbor You Don't Like. In the perfect world, our neighborhood would be one big block party with residents participating in sing-a-longs and planting a community garden. But if your community is more like Wisteria Lane rather than a Norman Rockwell painting, you will most likely have that one neighbor who makes you want to put up a 20 foot-high concrete fence around your yard. Maybe she's nosy or tries to use you for free babysitting on a daily basis. Sometimes, the only way to fight rudeness is with kindness. What better way to disarm an explosive personality than to spray it with generosity?

• Volunteers at a non-profit organization nearest to your heart & home. This doesn't even need explaining, but I'll do it anyway. Volunteers spend countless hours working without pay simply because they want to. How often have you used your local library without so much as a passing thought about the person who walks around re-stacking the shelves all day long? Or the one who sorts through the countless cans of beans you donate to the local food pantry? A little bit of chocolate goes a long way in showing thanks for such altruistic behavior.
  

Sure there are lots of gifts that can be given to show appreciation...but nothing is quite so intimate and luxurious as a decadent box of chocolate. It screams, "You're Worth It!" way more than a cheese platter or another scented candle.

Screwing up Chocolate Big Time

A familiar scenario:

You pick up your latest issue of Taste of Home/Bon Appetit/Rachel Ray magazine and actually take the time to cut out that amazing white chocolate cheesecake recipe. You make a list of ingredients, as you vow that this time, no matter how rare or expensive, you will purchase every one in the recipe. You actually remember to bring the list to the store, and you bring everything home with you.

You prep your recipe. It calls for 8-ounces of melted white chocolate. So you put it in the microwave and wait. But something happens...as it melts...it hardens. So you think, "I'll heat it up again," but it becomes even more unmanageable. Two expensive baking bars trashed. Your recipe ruined. You cancel your subscription and drown your sorrows in the brick of cream cheese and granulated sugar you never got to use.

There are a few things at play here. First, the darker the chocolate, the higher the cacao content, the easier it is to melt. Dark chocolate is a dream to melt, will rarely burn, and will hold its consistency for a long time. Milk chocolate is OK, and white chocolate is simply a nightmare. White chocolate is only allowed to use the word "chocolate" because it contains cocoa butter. No cacao required. Cocoa butter shouldn't be a problem to melt, except that there's probably more in that bar of white chocolate than you anticipated. If cocoa butter isn't the first ingredient, then you don't stand a chance of melting it effectively. Next, if any moisture gets into your chocolate, like from your double-boiler should you choose that method, or condensation within the microwave, the chocolate seizes up immediately. This is true if you add water to any kind of chocolate, but white chocolate is particularly sensitive.

The best advice is to melt the chocolate at 50% power in your microwave at 20 second intervals, stirring in between. This will prevent it from burning. Once the chocolate has lost its form, stop melting it. You won't get it to be as smooth as dark chocolate, and for most recipes, just getting the chocolate soft is enough to mix it thoroughly into your recipe.

White chocolate sold at your local supermarket will pose this challenge more frequently than high-end white chocolate the professionals use. High quality white chocolate (AKA: expensive) will be easier to work with because it will contain fewer ingredients (like vegetable fats and oils - cheap substitutes) to get in the way. But most grocery stores will only give you a selection of 2-3 brands to choose from, making it difficult to find the best chocolate to use in your recipe.

If you are using the white chocolate for dipping or coating, then adding a little bit of butter to the mixture will help smooth it out. Think 1 tbsp. for every 3-4 ounces of chocolate. Of course, the irony is that you will be adding more ingredients - but sometimes that's the only way to get the white chocolate to work with you.

If all of this still frustrates you, then try making a white-chocolate-CHIP-cheesecake instead. Enjoy!