Ahhhh chocolate! One of our favorite flavors. My memories are full of chocolate. Mom would bake a beautiful, rich, dark devil's food cake. Usually a three layer creation and then it needed frosting. Her chocolate cakes always had a 7 minute boiled frosting on them. She would stand over the stove with her makeshift double boiler and beat this satiny, soft, voluminous frosting until it stood in peaks...7 minutes. She would take a wide spatula and fill and frost the cake. Taking the spatula, she would touch the cake all over to make peaks standing tall. The cake was always put on a fostoria cake stand and placed in the center of the dining room table. I would come home from school and there was this beautiful creation. We didn't cut into it until my Dad came to the dinner table. Mom was known for her fudge. She made the old fashioned kind and it always turned out for her. It was always poured into an 8 inch pyrex pie pan. I have that pan today. It isn't clear anymore...sort of tan in color. I like to think that some of her fudge is still here. Chocolate chip cookies were big at our house to, but those were my creations. Mom never liked making cookies, so the job was given to me at an early age.
I have been blogging about herb gardens...now what does this chocolate have to do with that? There are some chocolate plants that you can plant in your garden. One of them is Chocolate Mint. This is a very strong mint used for teas. Has a smell similar to a peppermint patty. Great dried and added to black tea or used by itself, Chocolate Mint also makes a nice addition to chocolate desserts or a surprise addition to breakfast breads. Easy to grow, spreads rapidly. You may want to grow this one in a container!
Another chocolate plant is Chocolate Cosmos. Chocolate cosmos is both nose and eye candy for your garden. When it’s in full bloom, mature blossoms on long, slender stems look like candy kisses on a stick and fill the late afternoon with the sweet scent of vanilla tinged chocolate. New blossoms hug the foliage of the plant, nearly concealing it with their numbers! Add to that the sweet chocolate fragrance and you end up with something very special. I thought these would be interesting additions to an herb garden. I found information about Chocolate Cosomos at http://www.bonsaigardener.org/How_to_grow_Chocolate_Cosmos.html
For geranium fans, there is a chocolate peppermint variety.The aroma from these leaves is worth planting alone, smelling like a York peppermint patty (one of my favorite candy bars...and low fat too!) A speedy grower with a chocolate center and a scent to match.
Maybe I'll add some chocolate to my garden this year. It reminds me of the year I used cocoa mulch around my beds and I couldn't keep my Cocker, Maggie out of it. She loved it and starting eating it. I had to remove every bit of it, so she wouldn't get sick. I'll not be adding that to my garden again.
Balisha
