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The next recipe I want to post is for my Italian tomato sauce, but for that recipe, you need these meatballs. To make these meatballs, you need to make tomato sauce, so this meatball recipe and this tomato sauce recipe go hand in hand. You could of course make these meatballs with a different sauce, or no sauce, or make the tomato sauce with different meatballs or no meatballs, but that would be just so wrong! I know there is no one right way to make things, but there are certainly wrong ways, and this recipe is one of the sacred ones in my repertoire. If too much is changed about either one, they cease to be MY sauce and MY meatballs, and one of the laws about my sauce and my meatballs is that they are made together. The meatballs are enhanced by the sauce and the sauce is enhanced by the meatballs. One without the other is only half a completed recipe.

This meatball recipe is an adaption of my mother’s meatballs recipe, which she learned from my grandmother. I’m not sure just how far back it goes but it is one of those classic beloved family recipes that have changed slightly with each generation. I know, I know, everyone’s family recipe for meatballs and sauce is the best, so who am I to claim that this is really any better than anyone else’s? I am not claiming that at all except I will say that, to my palate, this is the final word in Italian meatballs and tomato sauce. Other recipes can be delicious, but when I taste this recipe, I taste home. As I have mentioned, I have changed my mother’s recipe slightly, but she approves of my changes and absolutely loves my version. Italian-American cuisine just seems to come naturally to the cooks in my family. We have only a little Italian blood, but we have a lot of Italian American cultural influence in our family history. My grandmother had a successful Italian restaurant in Florida for a number of years which featured only her own recipes and she did a lot of the cooking, so I think that our cooking style is something to be proud of.

This recipe will yield anywhere from 10 to 20 meatballs depending on how large you like them, or about 6 servings. If you desire left overs, or are cooking for more than three people I recommend doubling this recipe.

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Lots of things are awesome when coated in chocolate. Whatever you are coating, the process is more or less the same. I wanted to post a recipe to show the tempering and coating process step by step and could have used anything, but I decided to go with blueberries. Not many people think about coating blueberries in chocolate. It is not as obvious as strawberries, bananas, or nuts, but it is really delicious. Chocolate covered blueberries is one of my favourite treats.

This article is not exactly a recipe. It is more of a “how to”, but I will treat it like a recipe post to make the process clear and easy to follow. You can follow this guide to coat just about anything. Keep in mind that I am using dark chocolate. You can use any kind of chocolate you want by aiming for slightly different temperatures, but everything else about the process is the same. In this post I will not go into great technical detail but if you would like to know more about what is going on, or use a different kind of chocolate (milk or white), please visit this article, where you will find all of the information that you should need. That article also describes other techniques that I do not perform here. Also, in order to proceed, you must have a food thermometer. Just about any kind should be fine. I am actually using one of the worst kinds (a digital meat thermometer)for this type of job yet I manage, so whatever you use, you should not have too much trouble.

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This cake is really special. For people who love dark chocolate, it doesn’t get much better than this. Now, the most important thing to keep in mind when making this is to use amazing chocolate. I’m serious. If you make this with cheap chocolate you will completely miss the point. The purpose of this cake is to emphasize the flavour of the chocolate, so if a chocolate with a flat flavour is used then the final product will also taste flat.

Now, I found this recipe on a package of Ghirardelli Chocolate 72% Cacao Extra Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Chips and, to be honest, the recipe was on that package for a reason. This chocolate is incredible. Unfortunately, Ghirardelli is a fairly small company based in California and not all of their products are widely available. When I discovered this chocolate, and this recipe, I was living in Pennsylvania. At that time this package of baking chips was available in the grocery store that I frequented. I have since moved to Canada, and depressingly, Ghirardelli is only a distant fantasy here. Why Ghirardelli!? WHY!!!? Due to immigration issues, I was unable to leave Canada for about two years and during that time I attempted to find a replacement chocolate with which to make this cake. I did research and tried a number of what are supposed to be the best chocolates available in Canada, and the world in some cases, and I was so disappointed. Nothing matched the complex, bitter, full flavour of Ghirardelli. This is the only chocolate that I deem worthy of this cake. Now when I visit family in the States, or when someone comes to visit me, I almost always make sure some of this amazing chocolate travels across the border and lands in my cupboard. It really is worth the trouble in my opinion. I know that I sound like a commercial and I know that everyone’s tastes are different but I stress this because without a great chocolate, this cake is just good. With the right chocolate it is orgasmic, and I know that this is a safe bet. Feel free to experiment, however, especially if you live somewhere where you do not have access to this stuff. I challenge you, dear readers, to find another chocolate equally worthy of this recipe. I would love to find an alternative, given the difficulty of obtaining Ghirardelli.

I sincerely apologize for the rant. It was a necessary evil. Moving along now…

This is not a quick recipe. Typically you will need to start this cake the night before the day you want it to be finished because it requires a long cooling period in the refrigerator to set. I just wanted to give you that warning before venturing to begin this recipe. It is a lot of work and takes a long time, but it is worth it!

This recipe will yield one cake that will provide about eight servings.