Ride Or Dine With Thelma & Louise (#119)

 

Our September film this year was Thelma & Louise, a movie about a couple best friends who accidentally become outlaws after a series of troubling events.

This film starts in a diner, so I decided to do a classic dinner for breakfast setup with typical diner foods. I fixed up beef bacon (since I don't eat pork), chicken sausage, eggs, pancakes, hashbrowns and biscuits. There was nothing particular interesting in the way that I cooked it. Since I was making so many components, I kept it as simple as possible, using premade and box mix options when I could. It ended up being a pretty good spread.

Since dinner was fairly straightforward and simple, I knew that I wanted to go crazier with dessert. Since a lot of this film takes place on the road, I got to thinking about different snacks that you might pick up at a gas station or eat on a road trip. My brain went to beef jerky. Then the question became "How do you make a beef jerky dessert?"

Chocolate Jerky

For this dessert, I didn't want to actually use beef, but rather make a dessert that looked like beef jerky. I quickly decided that chocolate would be the easiest route. Rather that just making plain chocolate though, I wanted to Mike stuff into it to give more texture and flavor. Essentially, I would be creating chocolate bars that looked like jerky.

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces 70% dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup of chopped dehydrated tart cherries
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika (plus optional pinch of cayenne)
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• Unsweetened cocoa for dusting

Directions:

1. Start melting the chocolate with a double boiler set up.
2. Set up some parchment paper on a baking sheet.
3. Once the chocolate is well melted, stir in about half of the cherries, the salt, and paprika.
   
   
   
4. Now, use a spoon to make irregular swooshes of chocolate on the parchment paper.
5. Sprinkle the remaining cherries and just a little kosher salt over the chocolate swooshes and allow them time to cool and harden.
   
   
   
6. When it's not quite fully hardened but seems to be getting close, use pastry or basting brush to brush long ways along the chocolate swooshes to form ridges like meat fibers. Then, let it finish cooling.
   
   
   
7. Carefully remove the chocolate from the parchment paper.
8. Use cocoa powder to lightly dust the chocolate pieces. Rub or brush the powder into the ridges and cracks. This will reduce the chocolate's shine and give it more of a meat look.
9. Store at room temperature.

These little chocolate jerky bars were very thin and fragile but tasted great. My guests took some extras home with them. If you don't want to use cherries you can use cranberries or something else. You can also use more or stronger of a spice. I only used the smoked paprika, because I didn't want the spice to overpower the sweetness.

Overall, I would say this movie night was a success!