Adventures in chocolate...

[Dreamstalker]

I've been the only one on our grocery team taking home the broken dark chocolate bunnies (sadly, the promised nightmare Easter display never materialized--I just didn't give myself enough lead time)...in yet another effort to figure out what to do with them, I had an idea. The store sells some chocolate with unique flavor combos, so I figured why not try that with what I can find in the spice cabinet?

Right now I'm using a silicone ice cube tray for the finished product, and my experiments are:
--Makrut Lime Sea Salt (done, I think it could use a bit more or maybe if I can locate the straight lime powder I have someplace...)
--Sesame Ginger seasoning (done, haven't tasted the cooled version yet, but couldn't really taste much)

And my future plans (when I get some 'real' supplies so I can stop using mom's ramekins):
--Urfa Chile powder
--Mole Verde (not sure how that will turn out)
--Curry
--Red sea salt
--Cinnamon vanilla spiced sugar
--Chai powder
--Dried cherries and chipotle chile
--Ghost pepper salt
--Berbere (Ethiopian seasoning)
--The aforementioned lime powder and some sort of chile (I do have a chile-lime blend, but don't know how the other ingredients would taste)
--Ginger and chile?

...so yeah, this is what I come up with when faced with a sudden overabundance of good chocolate, too much free time and a directive to organize the spice cabinet

[Pixelated]

"Ghost pepper salt"? What is that? It sounds fascinating.

[dalesys]

"Ghost pepper salt"? What is that? It sounds fascinating.

Ghost Peppers? Fascinating in the sense of "Hold my beer!' maybe. TYVM, but I'll settle for washing my mouth out with soap.

[EricKei]

My guess would be salt mixed with the real world analogue to this bad boy: http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2000/ga000917.gif

Ghost peppers, aka Bhut Jolokia, are the hottest peppers currently known to exist (over 1 million Scoville units; 400x hotter than tabasco)

[dalesys]

My guess would be salt mixed with the real world analogue to this bad boy: http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2000/ga000917.gif...

As in "You didn't need those lips. Or that a__s. Or anything in between.

Shades of Aunt Polly, Peter the cat, and Tom Sawyer, "He didn't have an aunt to burn the bowels out of him!"

[Aria]

If I saw dark chocolate with ghost pepper salt I would absolutely buy it. I would actually suggest to make sure it's good and hot. Nothing more annoying than 'ghost pepper' products that are only mildly spicy. I had a burrito like that once and I was so disappointed.

[Dreamstalker]

The sesame ginger seasoning one actually came out quite good...of course I don't remember how much I used.

IMO, the ghost pepper salt isn't all that spicy, but I can get pure powder. I do have some ghost pepper curry seasoning that's got a pretty good kick, and I just found some dried scorpion peppers that have on the package "Wear gloves when handling"

(I did have a scorpion pepper plant lurking quietly in mom's garden last summer, but I think either the turkeys got it or the landscapers did something--a lot of the plants on a certain side of her garden ended up dying that year)

[wolfie]

I did have a scorpion pepper plant lurking quietly in mom's garden last summer, but I think either the turkeys got it or the landscapers did something

Fun fact: Birds aren't affected by organic capiscasum because they don't have the receptors. Peppers in the wild have their seeds spread by fruit-eating birds, with the seeds passing intact through their digestive tracts. Rodents which would go for the plant's fruit would eat the seeds rather than the flesh of the fruit - a dead loss for the plant. With the OC, birds (which benefit the plant) don't notice anything, but if a mouse comes along "OUCH! My tongue is burning!".

Fun fact #2: A plant's chemical defences (whether OC, opium, digitalin, THC, or something else) are concentrated in the fruit/seedhead, since this is the part of the plant which is nutritionally most dense, and therefore the biggest target for animals eating the plant. This is why instructions for adding peppers to a recipe say to get rid of the seeds and veins - those are the hottest part of the pepper.

[lordlundar]

IMO, the ghost pepper salt isn't all that spicy,

Well the salt helps. It gets into the receptors that the capsaicin usually goes into and blocks it.