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We'll be tackling those novelties later this week. But first up: the chocolate dip itself.
The 'Magic' in the Shell
Both chocolate dip and Magic Shell get their magic instant-hardening ability from oils like coconut and sunflower that are high in saturated fat. As temperature drops, saturated fats harden, and coconut oil in particular turns firm, almost glassy, when cold. What's more, it doesn't take much to turn coconut oil solid—it can firm up at room temperature and turn rock-solid in the fridge.
When you emulsify coconut oil with melted chocolate, the mixture remains a stable liquid at room temperature. But as soon as you drizzle it over ice cream it chills down fast, and within 30 seconds it hardens into a snappy shell.
The food scientists at Smucker's have put a lot of hard work into making their Magic Shell especially snappy and fast-freezing. Let's give them credit for that, because every homemade version I've tested takes longer to harden—about 30 seconds instead of five. But the guiding principle is the same: Magic Shell and chocolate dip are all about saturated fat. And the best fat for your chocolate dip is fast-hardening coconut oil.
How to Make It
Coconut oil is our magic ingredient, and the more of it you use, the snappier and faster-freezing your chocolate dip will become. Stick to refined coconut oil (it's often labeled as "for high heat") instead of unrefined or virgin; refined coconut oil has a more neutral, chocolate-friendly flavor.
The best reason to make your own chocolate dip is to use higher quality chocolate. Dark chocolate's flavor holds up best to all that coconut oil, and it makes for a snappier coating compared to milk chocolate. For a sweeter dip, go with a chocolate in the 65% range; for some bitterness, a 72% bar is perfect.
Since the chocolate's sweetness gets a little lost with all that oil, I add some sugar in the form of corn syrup. Why not plain table sugar? Because sugar won't dissolve in chocolate and oil alone; it'll remain coarse and gritty. Corn syrup, on the other hand, emulsifies seamlessly into the dip, and it adds some fudge-like body as a bonus.
Chocolate dip recipes on the web use all sorts of ratios of chocolate to coconut oil. In my tests, the best formula, measured by weight, came to ten parts chocolate, eight parts coconut oil, and five parts corn syrup. To make two cups of chocolate dip you'll need 250 grams (half a pound) of chocolate, 200 grams (about one cup) of coconut oil, and 125 grams (a little more than half a cup) of corn syrup.
Chop your chocolate fine to ensure fast, even melting, then stir it together with the corn syrup and coconut oil in a microwave-safe bowl. I nuke my chocolate in small doses—15 seconds on half power—stirring with a spoon in between. Three or four zaps should be enough to completely melt the chocolate. Don't have a microwave? A metal bowl set over a pot of simmering water works just as well.
And that's it: you have chocolate dip. If you heat your chocolate too quickly it might break, forming harmless but unsightly brown speckles in your dip. To re-emulsify the dip, blend it at high speed for 30 seconds and the spots should disappear.
Using Your Dip
Looking to replicate the Magic Shell squeeze bottle experience? A plastic one can be yours for 50 cents at a restaurant supply store. If you're planning to dip whole scoops of ice cream instead, keep your dip in a tall, narrow container to get maximum dip coverage. Either way there's no need to refrigerate your dip, which will keep for months at room temperature. Just give it a quick stir before using because the ingredients will separate over time, and if it's been a while since your last chocolate dipping, warm up the dip in a microwave to melt any solidified coconut oil crystals.
For best results, let your dip harden on ice cream for 30 seconds before digging in. You'll know it's ready when the surface turns from glossy to completely matte and a light tap with a spoon gives you a knocking sound.
After that, all that's left to do is make enough ice cream bars to put the Good Humor truck out of business. Stay tuned for more magic shell uses later this week.
This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.<|endoftext|>Why should you be bound by your Kindle’s restraints? If you’ve got the know-how your Kindle can be a virtual newspaper, its own reading light, compatible with a Bluetooth keyboard, and can even run Linux. Read on to see how, and prepare to bin that warranty.
Now we should state from the start that tinkering with your gear will invalidate your warranty, and unless you know what you’re doing, could actually damage your Kindle, so do so at your own risk. But speaking to the Seattle Times back in 2007, Charlie Tritschler, director of Kindle, admitted that while Amazon wasn’t opening up the Kindle for users to tweak, “all devices can be hacked. That’s something people can do.” When asked if there would be APIs and software developers to write Kindle applications, he said, “That’s an important future direction for us.”
Well some hackers didn’t want to wait, and so got busy with their Kindles. Here are 10 of the best hacks.
1. Bluetooth keyboard
Hacker Darron was fed up using a keyboard with keys the size of Tic Tacs, and so set about hooking up a wireless QWERTY to his Kindle DX for easier typing. He attached a Sparkfun Bluetooth Mate under the back cover, and modified it to take only 3.3 volts instead of the 4 coming off the Kindle to stop it from overloading. And hey presto – typing with a full size wireless keyboard straight onto your Kindle.
2. Reading light
The beauty of e-ink is that it looks natural and is as easy on the eyes as a regular printed page because of the lack of backlight. The downside is that you can’t read in the dark unless you’re willing to spend on a portable light. Or, as another hacker did, you could make your own. Using the power from the pockets in the top of the Kindle (they run the regular clip-on lamps you can buy), he attached his own brass hooks mounted on a piece of basswood. Then he housed the LEDs in another piece of basswood; these draw their power from the hooks and illuminate the screen. And there you have it, minimal expenditure required.
3. Use your own screen savers
If you’d like your favourite album cover, or a family photo as your screensaver on your Kindle, all you need to do is jailbreak it with a .zip file, then run an update. Then simply connect the Kindle to your computer, and drag which photos you’d like as screen savers into the folder that the hack has created. You’ll need to restart then, either using the auto reboot feature, or by just restarting manually. You can even set your screen savers to random – just create a blank file called random in the linkss folder and then do a full restart.
4. Use your own fonts
Another one from Mobileread. Again, your Kindle will need to be jailbroken, unplugged, then restarted. Upload fonts from the hack into the linkfonts/fonts directory, restart, and you’ll have a load more fonts to choose from, making reading that much more interesting than thousands of words in Times New Roman.
5. Web browsing over USB
This is a pretty strange hack for the second generation Kindle, but quite cool nonetheless. There’s actually a debug setting that enables browsing over USB, so you’ll need to hook your Kindle up to your Mac and then you can use the internet on it using your computer’s connection. It’s the work of renowned Kindle hacker Jesse Vincent. And it’s slightly pointless, we know, as it’d make much more sense to use your computer for the internet, but still, always fun to experiment with these things.
6. Virtual newspaper
Yes, you can use the Kindle 3’s improved browser as a news feed thanks to Google Reader, as Wired reader Ron Winters pointed out. Open the browser, start Google Reader, and hit ‘right’ cursor to enter the news articles. Then just press ‘f’ to enter full screen mode and turn your Kindle into a personalised virtual newspaper, scrolling through pages using the page turn buttons. Which, in our view, beats The Daily hands down.
7. Kindle 2 ePub and PDF support
The Kindle now supports PDFs but still not ePub documents, but back before even PDFs were a possibility, Jesse Vincent wanted to expand his Kindle’s abilities. He wrote a program called Savory that converts DRM files on the fly from PDF and ePub and Mobipocket, so they’re readable on the second generation Kindle. But as ever, there is a risk, so beware before you download it. As Vincent says on his website: “Installing Savory or any other third-party update on your Kindle may destroy your Kindle. If that happens, you will have a $360 paper weight. DO NOT INSTALL SAVORY UNLESS YOU’RE WILLING TO END UP WITH A DEAD KINDLE.” So that’s pretty clear then.
8. Linux Ubuntu
My, hasn’t Jesse Vincent been busy with his Kindle 2. Not content with making it compatible with ePub and PDFs, or getting online on it using his computer’s internet connection, he also installed a version of the open source Linux operating system. And again, he used the debug mode to do it. This opens up the Kindle to all sorts of possibilities to take third party applications; just don’t expect iPad-like performance from its specs.
9. Kindle DRM broken
Fed up with the kind of DRM last seen on iTunes, hacker I Love Cabbages came up with a program called unswindle which removes the Kindle’s rights restrictions, letting you do what you want with your e-books, such as read them on a different device. unswindle converts Amazon e-books into the open Mobipocket format, effectively making them DRM-free, as opposed to Savory which just makes readable previously unreadable formats.
10. Ebook Text Formatter
If you like reading long pages from the web, this is the hack for you. It reformats web pages so they’re easier to read on the Kindle, reformatting paragraph breaks, replaces html tags with white space, etc., so they look a lot more like text from a book. Check out the Blog Kindle for full instructions and a download.<|endoftext|>Ah, the old vicious Internet cycle.
Too many of us end up trapped here. Heck, you might even be trapped right now.
How many times have you been caught in the endless cycle of clicking from email to Facebook and back again?
Ready to put all that screen time to good use?
Then it’s time to learn French online!
You might already be watching French TV online every once in a while, and your French Internet slang might be improving by leaps and bounds, but get your clicking finger ready: French websites are where it’s at for mastering the French language.
When choosing a website for learning French, bear in mind that not all websites are created equal. Choosing a website is just as important as learning how to use each individual website. Luckily, we’ve got you covered in both cases.
The 10 Best Websites to Learn French for All Occasions
Whether you’re a beginner just setting out on your voyage to understanding French grammar or you’re a French pro looking to brush up on a few less familiar topics like that ever-elusive simple past, a website can be a great place to start.
Websites for Learning French Grammar
This is a fantastic resource for all levels, including grammar lessons and exercises to practice what you’ve learned. We love it because you can start using it as a beginner, and it can then accompany you all throughout the French learning process.
This British site uses the European scale of French level: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. For those who would like to add a dose of French immersion to their repertoire, it’s interesting to note that a certificate proving a level of at least B2 is required for French university, while C1 is required for a French Masters degree. Knowing your level on this scale can also be important if you decide to take French classes in Europe.