blpeders's Profile

No, there's NO difference between an easy dessert and just dumping out a carton of ice cream, because that's exactly what it is: easy.

It may not be "tasteful" or quite what you were expecting, but it is extremely easy to do.

I love dark chocolate, but beyond about 70% [for me] it just gets too much and you loose out on the benefit that chocolate gets from adding a sweetness. Darker chocolate, really only works for me when it's used to coat something that's already sweet. I just need that sweet/bitter mix for it to be really successful.

Regular milk chocolate has it's place, but I tend to eat it less "straight up" like I do with dark chocolate.

You skipped the most important part as to why it works.

You got that salt lowers the freezing/melting point of ice, but didn't indicate as to why this was significant. In order for ice to melt it needs heat, so it steals the heat from any source nearby, this has the effect of decreasing the temperature of everything around it. This seems counter-intuitive, but melting is in fact a cooling process. Thus what's really freezing the ice cream is the melting of the water, specifically to melt the ice is stealing the heat from the ice cream mixture causing it to freeze and create ice crystals and all that fun stuff that makes ice cream so gosh darn yummy.

I hear applying a spoon and consuming it directly works well.

Seriously here! you don't need an excuse to eat chocolate! Dig in!

Alternatively, purchase puff pastry from the store if you don't want to go through the overly complex steps of making your own, cuz seriously, who enjoys that kind of thing?

Man, this is an easy question. Medium-raw over a fire!

And yes, definitely, let it rest!

Wow, so that's the hard way PERIOD.

Chocolate is really cool, if you never get it above the "breaking point" (where the fats separate) you don't have to temper it that way at all.

As long as the temperature never gets above ~86-90 degrees to begin with, the initial temper of the chocolate will never go away. But as the melting point of chocolate is around 96 degrees you have to go slowly. The trick is that parts of the chocolate will melt before the others, so as long as you don't melt more than about 75% of your chocolate you can use the unmelted chocolate as a seed as you just stir it all to get melted.

Do like plumeria said above, stick it in the microwave, heat it for 30 seconds at a time until it's 75% melted, then stir like crazy for the next few minutes until it's all melted and smooth.

Voila, tempered chocolate...in about 5 minutes

Melt chocolate correctly and you don't have this problem.

Most people don't temper chocolate, so it breaks down really easily, just melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30-45 second bursts until ~75-80% of the chocolate is melted, and then just stir it until the rest is melted, then dip away, the chocolate will stay properly tempered and will melt at it's normal temperature (roughly 98 degrees, that's why M&M keeps saying it melts in your mouth not in your hand, external body temperature is closer to 95 or 96 degrees and won't melt chocolate as quickly).

Biggest problem you're gonna run into with frozen potatoes is all the water in them. They're going to form big ice crystals and shred the cell walls in the potatoes, so when you reheat them they're going to have a very crumbly or mealy texture to them. This may or may not be bad depending on what you're going to cook them in. Otherwise though, just stick 'em in a freezer bag and throw them in, though it wouldn't hurt to "squeeze" them out as it were (stick them in a paper towel for example to wick away excess moisture)

Frozen potatoes that you buy in the store are flash frozen so they don't get this problem. If you're planning on making them into hash browns or the like in the future, personally I suggest cooking them somewhat beforehand to remove moisture as much as possible.