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All through my delicious life, I have observed an interesting and regular phenomenon. I call it the Special Dark Effect. It has to do with Hershey’s Miniatures chocolates.
A bag of Hershey’s Miniatures probably has a fairly even ratio of the four different types of chocolate. In alphabetical order, to show no bias toward any single one, they are Krackel, Milk Chocolate, Mr. Goodbar, and Special Dark. The bag that holds these four chocolates in an even ratio is clear plastic.
What if, hypothetically, the bag that holds the Hershey’s Miniatures were not clear plastic, but were actually opaque?
What if, for the sake of argument, people had to blindly put their hand into the opaque bag holding the Hershey’s Miniatures? What if, theoretically, people had to randomly pick a piece out of the bag like a bingo number and they were not allowed to put G-27 back in the bag and pick again until they came out with Krackel? Then, of course, we could surmise that the fairly even ratio of each of the different types of chocolates with which we started this little experiment would stay the same until the bag was empty, and you’d have some very pissed off senior citizens at the nursing home on Sunday night. The ratio’s consistency has something to do with chance and randomness in a theoretically perfect world of probability, statistics and opaque bags.
But that is theoretical, and in the real world, the bag is, as we have already stated and know just because we’ve seen it a bazillion times in aisle 11, is clear.
And who the hell picks Hershey’s Miniatures randomly?
When you open a bag of Hershey’s Miniatures, these four different types of chocolate get eaten at all different rates so that one type is always long gone before the others, and one type lingers in the bag until someone opens one up, recoils from its full bloom and throws them all away.
Don’t pretend like you don’t know.
Don’t pretend like you don’t hold the bag up to the light and shove your hand down through all the other chocolates to get to the last two Krackels left in the bag. That’s right, Krackel always goes first. Sometimes, Mr. Goodbar edges out Krackel, but very rarely, like when some invisible cosmic force aligns the moon and Lohan actually eats something. Milk Chocolate is third, and dead last all the time, it’s the seven or eight Special Darks that, as mentioned earlier, will bloom pristine white into next Easter until someone finally decides to throw them away, bag and all.
This is the Special Dark Effect. It is undeniable evidence that not too many people like dark chocolate. It is also undeniable evidence that after elimination, I have too much time to think.
princesses don’t do peanut butter
I am one of those “not too many people” who likes dark chocolate. I love dark chocolate. I am the antidote to the Special Dark Effect. In fact, I love dark chocolate so much that when the responsibility of providing dessert was imparted to me by the BS committee (that’s the new BS committee for Baby Shower, not bridal, though not necessarily not bull s – — oh never mind), I was more than happy to act like it would be an enormous burden to get to Sprinkles, but secretly rejoice at the prospect of baking itty bitty dark chocolate babycakes myself.
These are dark chocolate babycakes with crunchy peanut butter frosting and chocolate drizzle. They are – I can’t feign modesty here – they are awesome. Unfortunately, they don’t quite match with the already planned strawberries and cream that are perfectly pink for the little princess to be. *sigh* I’ll have to save this Reese’s combination for a bake sale or Halloween party or something I guess. We’re going to lose the peanut butter and re-accessorize with fluffy, prissy, white chocolate frosting. We all know how I feel about fluffy prissy pristine gag white and if you didn’t, now you do.
Oh, alright, it’s still frosting.
Baby shower cupcake practice also happened to coincide with Sugar High Friday. The cupcakes are a little late for the no. 13 Dark Chocolate edition, but this is LA, so I don’t know how to be anything but fashionably late. ;)
Next month, next baby, better planning, I swear. And maybe a short lesson on the extension of the Special Dark Effect that I call…the Fritos Phenomenon. I bet you can’t figure out what that’s all about.
Dark Chocolate Cupcake Recipes Around the World(wide web):
~ Straight from the source! Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Cake recipe that actually uses Special Dark Cocoa Powder!
~ Food & Wine’s Double Dark Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Filling has 232 5-star ratings
~ Dark Chocolate Cake recipe at AllRecipes.com has over 600 reviews, with an avergae 4½ stars (out of 5) rating
** this post originally published on 10.22.05 **
tags :: food : and drink : cooking : baking : events
