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I love, love, love Guittard chocolate for baking, especially their semi-sweet. If ya wanna get all fancy order their semi sweet, milk and bittersweet and experiment with mixing them. Sooo good! It is slightly less expensive than SB ($12 per lb) and the flavor in my opinion is superior.

For pure chocolate flavor, I like Valrhona chocolate. But my preferred baking chocolate is Scharffen Berger, because of it's amazing chocolate taste and fruitiness. I'm a little biased because I'm from San Francisco and Scharffen Berger is in Berkeley.

Every 6 months, I buy a 2.2 kg box of Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate. It's a little cheaper buying in bulk and the chocolate is in approx. 1 oz pieces. I highly recommend taking their chocolate factory tour, if you are in the Bay Area.

Mmmm! I love brownies.

But I have to point out that the fancy baking chocolate you used is dark chocolate and well, being a fan of dark chocolate no other kind of chocolate stands a chance against the dark. And I always use dark in my baking.

I think I'll go home and bake something!

Good to see you here Ree.

Cool. I've now determined that you can write about any topic in an entertaining way. I think someone could ask you to write on a labor and delivery blog about the joys of the episiotomy and you would probably have us rolling in our desk chairs with laughter. And now that I said the "e" word on a food blog, I think I may have just sealed my fate -- I will probably soon be banned.

I have no doubt the super good baker's chocolate would be better... but sheesh. How much money do I have to spend on a sinful (no matter how cheap it is) treat that will soon make its way through my digestive system and land directly on my tush? I'm thinking I probably wouldn't want to make a regular practice of it at all for the sake of my tush... but especially not if I'm going to have to sell my cows in order to do it.

Now if I'm going out to eat, that's another thing... or if I'm receiving it as a gift from the neighbor or if I am being involved in a highly publicized taste test... well, I'd prefer the higher quality any day! Okay... and I guess if I was having someone super dooper special over for dinner... I might go for the gold (and hock all of mine) and get the expensive stuff.

Thanks for the read Ree. You know you are someone's dedicated fan when you join a new website just to make a silly rambling comment...
:^D

I totally agree with Kater.. I too live in a small southern town without a lot of access to fancy schmancy chocolates (and a whole lot of canned and boxed foods!) I do try to get as creative and fresh as possible... but shopping at the piggly wiggly it ain't always possible. My husband is so picky as well that, he'd probably only eat the betty crocker! And absolutely there is no shame in enjoying what you cook with what you have! Necessity is after all the mother of invention... and she's gotta be down here!!

Great post Ree! I love anything to do with food and being a loyal reader of your's, I followed you here! I'm in heaven! Two of my favorite things - food and Ree. I'm happy.

p.s. My hubby said to me last night, "I love you when you're cookin'." Sound familiar??

This is so ironic! I just made a batch of brownies tonight using Sharffen Berger chocolate and then I find this post. I hate to admit it, but I am usually a box brownie girl. They take no time to make and the kids love them. When I do make them from scratch, I use Ina Garten's recipe. Those are great! I saw a nice recipe in my new Cook's Illustrated today and decided to give it a try. I'm sorry to say, I tossed them out. I don't know why, but I didn't care for them at all. They just didn't have a rich chocolate taste even though I followed the recipe exactly. Maybe it was the recipe. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed! I really enjoyed your post, though.

Nice to meet you, Ree! I definitely deviate from this brownie debate because my recipe uses cocoa... but wait, are there differences in that too?

I'm with watchforbears. I can tell from the pics that I'd prefer the Betty Crocker brownies. Brownies should be chewy otherwise they're just cake.

So glad to see you here! The "Marlboro Man's Favorite Sandwich' is one of my husband's most requested meals these days. He tends to look at food as fuel so anything that gets him to actually notice what he's eating is a major plus.

I make the nestle one bowl brownies with butter, organic sugar and fresh chopped walnuts (double the amount listed). Served the same day you make them, I've had picky men weep with joy.

So, while I'm sure expensive is even nicer, as long as I can get my nestles, I'm a pretty happy gal.

(I'd wondered about Bakers and now, thanks to you, I'll wonder no more!)

Ree, remember me? It was not the grated cheese food product I thought was "different" it was the breakfast sausage and the cottage cheese. (covering my mouth so I do not scream out loud) I promised myself this year I would stop being a huge food snob and just be a quiet one. I am italian and things like that make me crazy. Aside of that I want to welcome you to SE and assure you that we agree to disagree often.
I use Nick Malgieri's supernatural brownies http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/dining/111brex.html?_r=1&oref=slogin,
and Ina's outrageous recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_23629,00.html.
As for chocolate I use what I have which can be Scharffen Berger, Callebaut, Ghirardelli, Valrhona or Trader Joe's. My brownies are famous for their addictive quality and that is solely from the intensity of the chocolate.
I will give you a meme and props (as I did on your blog) for your cinnamon roll recipe. The dough part of the recipe was the dough recipe I have been looking for forever. It was easy, it was forgiving and it worshipped the icing recipe I used which had cream cheese. I did do a different filling with brown sugar. The dough was magnificent and I recommend that everyone try your recipe for cinnamon rolls regardless of what you fill them with or ice them with.
As for the lasagne I say make my recipe for Marlboro man as The King (my husband) says it the best he has ever had.