Thursday
Did not make progress of truffles because I had house buying mischief. Closing date is set to January 31st.

Mortgage rate would be 5%, which is higher than I’d hoped. Apparently rates went up right before the holidays. Do you think it would be weird/too late to shop around more?

I still don’t believe that the sellers will have all the repairs done in time, but I’m starting ye olde boxe collection of moving.

Gah!

Then met up with Hugh for dinner and socializing at Cheesecake Factory. I think they secretly add crack to their food because it’s bizarrely tasty.

And then I conned him into running errands with me: dropped of sewing machine for repair and bought rubber caps for the bottoms of my kitchen chairs (because it’s only okay for them to cut into the rented flooring.

Whee! Good times.

Friday
Made 5 batches of vegan ganache to be the center of truffles. Also made Smitten Kitchen’s buckeye filling.

And then I was wooed out of my kitchen by book group and potential movie watching, and I packed up my goods and rolled some chocolate balls that night. I even dipped some of them.

And then Smittywing showed up! I’d… erm… sort of forgotten having invited her up a couple months ago, but luckily my apartment was in decent shape and able to accommodate a guest with barely a hiccup. Plus I put her to work on the chocolate front. :)

Went home, went to bed, and resolved to wake up early to complete the truffle process.

Saturday
OMG - so nuts.

Breakfast of freshly baked bread while covering kitchen in chocolate as part of the frantic truffle making process.

Smittywing was kind enough to take orders and make labels for all the truffles. And a sign to post by the farmers market. And add signature garnishes to the tops for identification. Yay sous chefing!

And then I got a call reminding me that I hadn’t left the key with Lulu last night at book group, so I ran over quickly to open the door to the site before heading back home to finish making stuff and putting on clothing.

Ended up completing the following truffles: laurel, earl grey, peanut butter, and thai-inspired

Spent some time helping sell. Spent some time out front with Bitmonger doing a dance with the sign and encouraging people to come in and sample our wares.

And then we were running out of chocolate, and we were only a small fraction of the way into the bake sale… so I headed off back home to make more truffles (though as I was heading out, I did see more people with baked goods headed in). Smittywing came with me to review the shocking news of the day on her computer, and I twisted her arm into making a batch of (amazing!) cookies, too.

So we rolled chocolate in chocolate and talked politics of OMG.

Oh, and there was also experimental orange peel candying. Is there a trick to getting them dry enough not to make syrup?

completed truffles: masala and green tea
completed cookies: mexican hot chocolate snickerdoodles

Went back. Rendezvoused with MeriSunshine , who had made black cocoa brownies that were all light and fluffy.

More chocolate was sold, and a significant profit was made - another year’s worth of BiUnity’s operating expenses covered. Whee!

Geeksdoitbetter showed up, looking glorious, just in time for final call and the wrap up auction.

And then we went back to Lulu’s and Bitmonger’s place and had dinner. Much gratitude to Geeksdoitbetter for making dinner of infinite amounts of pizza go. I had no idea how much I needed that until it happened.

Sadly, we still didn’t watch Memento (which had been an option for both book group and tonight) - maybe next Thursday?

We did spontaneously schedule a dim sum brunch for next week.

And as I left, I surreptitiously snuck both Smittywing and D into the prospective house for a looksee.

Sunday
There was sleeping in on Sunday!

And then I started on cleaning the kitchen… and it was bad enough that I used the technique of just picking an edge and working along methodically. Then a round of dishes… then more cleaning… And we got it all in decent shape by noon (well, aside from some spots on the floor…). And that was good because I’d had a moment of insanity the previous week of inviting SCA people over for crafting at 1pm! Way to overbook my weekends.

There was still time, in the midst of the cleaning, for a fancipants breakfast. Bagels. Fried eggs. Potatoes. Scallion cream cheese made just that morning from scallions picked from the pot on my porch. An orange.

So then Smittywing departed and the SCA people started arriving.

The first one brought rosemary and garlic bread, for which I made some honey butter, and a kumihimo project (I think). We spent some time talking calligraphy and bookmaking, and I sent her home with a pen nib that I acquired in the Great Bryn Mawr Paste Room pillage of ‘02.

The second person showed up with a bar of good chocolate, some yarn to ball, and a sewing project.

We ended up discussing garden plans, and it looks like I’ll have a set of 4 large raised beds to plant in next summer! Whoooo!

That makes my next summer diversified gardening plan up to:

• 2 small vining vegetables in Lulu’s front bed
• hot peppers, maybe a squash, maybe some other vegetable not tomatoes in Jen’s back yard
• tomatoes, hot peppers, and some things not susceptible to late blight yet tasty to my parents in (you guessed it) my parents’ back yard
• And raised beds of awesome, too!
• And I think I’ll still pursue negotiations with the funeral home next to the prospective house to see if I can garden on the roof of their garage

I made a dinner out of random things hanging around in my fridge:

• ground meat (beef, veal, pork) cooked down very thoroughly with some onions. Sauced up with some sheep’s milk version of gorgonzola. And then mellowed with some light, fluffy ricotta. Tossed with whole wheat penne. Topped with parsley.
• Side dish of Dandelion greens wilted down in olive oil with ground savory, parsley, clove, red wine, fish sauce, and a lot of pepper.

I sewed a wee coptic book with a 2 needle version. I am not sure I did it correctly, but it worked. Next step will be gluing the covers together and trimming them to size, and then I’ll decide whether it needs a book or some sort of closure.

Monday
And I have almost all of the dishes done and everything! Whee!

And still had time for a brag-worthy breakfast. I minced the last of the ghost chilies (saving the seeds) and cooked that down with a portabella in bacon fat. Once that was thoroughly cooked and seasoned, I mixed that with the very last of the ricotta and used that as the filling for an omelet. Toasted up a bagel and had more of the scallion cheese. And a bit of tea. \o/!

Tags: chocolate, Death Bi Chocolate

I have two charity things going for which I am offering truffles: The Purple Dove - raising money to support LGBT youth and Death Bi Chocolate.

The latter had a call for vegan things, so the first round will be vegan - that just means I have spices steeping in coconut milk, instead of heavy cream.

Earl Grey - 3 tea bags. Steeping so slow. - ganache made

Thai-ish - lemon grass, galangal, and green cardamom, Demerara sugar - ganache made

Green Tea - matcha, wasabi powder (will add black sesame later and maybe grated fresh ginger), Demerara sugar, buckwheat honey - ganache made

Masala - Penzey’s Rogan Josh, Garam Masala, and Kala Jeera (a favorite from last year), brown sugar

Laurel - Bay leaves, pink salt, buckwheat honey

Now I need to start on breaking up the chocolate.

Tags: chocolate, Death Bi Chocolate

Back in February, I tried making brownies for the first time (yes, I’m including any potential boxed mixes).

What changed my mind? Well, two things: Michael Ruhlan’s Ratio and it’s very persuasive argument in favor of weighed ingredients and inspiration grounded in math; and the accidental acquisition of a pound of Black Cocoa due to kind customer service after a box with an combined order with several friends was damaged.

And then into that willingness to bake brownies, Smitten Kitchen offered up a recipe she claimed to be the Best cocoa brownies ever, and she should know from brownies. (and SK found/adapted the recipe from Alice Mendrich’s Bittersweet)

Right, so brownies.

Now some people would know enough about cocoa powder to be a little intimidated by having the wrong (more alkali processed) kind, but this did not deter me as this was the kind of cocoa powder I had to experiment with. Or they might be intimidated by not having a brownie pan… but I had a casserole dish that looked to be of good dimensions for brownies. And I didn’t line it with parchment paper, just greased it with butter.

But other than that, I totally followed the recipe exactly. Probably.

Black Cocoa Brownies with Orange and Clove

Go ahead and preheat the oven to 325F

And bring out your double boiler. Okay, so SK admits that this step can probably be done in the microwave, but I have a double boiler that has been sitting unused since I acquired it for free about 4 years ago, so I used a double boiler. Put water in the bottom, but not too much - simmer.

Dump 141 grams (if I’ve got the scale out and the author is kind with the measurements, hell yes I’m going to use them ~g~) of butter (1 1/4 sticks) into the double boiler. Top with 280 grams of sugar. She used all white sugar; I did about 100 grams of brownulated sugar and 180 grams of white. Add a generous 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt. And add your cocoa powder (82 grams) - black, in this case. Stir it from time to time, breaking up the butter, until it’s an evenly grainy base.

Then pour in 1/2 tsp vanilla extract I scraped in some vanila seed from about half a bean. Because that’s what I had in my apartment.

Add 2 eggs, one at a time, beating them in well, but without splashing because that black cocoa powder is really hard to clean up. The mixture should look nice and shiney when you’re through.

Add 66 grams of all purpose flour, stirring it in so that it is thoroughly incorporated. And then even more stirring for good measure (she says 40 strokes). (Oh, and she also has everything off the heat by this point. I was enamored of my double boiler enough that I just turned the burner off and did not separate the top from the water.)

At this point, I tasted the batter - because batter is delicious. And it was very dark in flavor as well as appearance. So I took and orange and zested the entire rind into the batter. And then I crushed the heads of about 15 cloves into the batter (tasting/smelling at intervals to see whether the flavor seemed right).

And then I added a bunch of broken walnuts into the mix and stirred it up thoroughly.

Pour into my greased casserole dish of shame…

And bake.

And here’s where I ran into difficulty. The original recipe called for 20-25 minutes. SK’s ran about 35 minutes. Mine ran about 45 minutes, even with (because of?) enthusiastic toothpick testing.

The first batch wasn’t so good.

It went almost immediately from gooey pudding to a brownie impersonating a brick rather quickly. Actually, it was sort of like biscotti, so the overcooking did not stop me from eating almost half of the pan by myself.

So I appealed for help on Twitter. And I called friends. And my mom. And in general I did not take it well because everything had seemed to be going so well until those last nail-biting 20 minutes.

And apparently you should take it out still a bit moist and just trust in it cooking further… or eating it with a spoon.

So I made a second batch. And it was much improved. My co-workers gave my baking the seal of approval. And my foodie co-worker approved this recipe as my entry into the… wait for it…

Philadelphia Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share Our Strength
April 17, 2010, 10am - 3pm
A Full Plate Cafe, on Liberties Walk (1009 N. Bodine St Philadelphia, PA 19123)

Here’s some of the explanatory text from foodaphilia/Baker E’s launch post:

On April 17th Food Bloggers from Philadelphia will be gathered with goodies for sale from their home kitchens in order to raise money for Share Our Strength. Funds raised through Great American Bake Sale support Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger in America. Nearly 17 million— almost one in four—children in America face hunger. Despite the efforts of governments, private-sector institutions and everyday Americans, millions of our children still don’t have daily access to the nutritious meals they need to live active, healthy lives. Click for more information on Share Our Strength.

Philadelphia’s Great American Bake Sale is being held on April 17th from 10am till 3pm at A Full Plate Cafe on Liberties Walk (1009 N. Bodine St Philadelphia, PA 19123) in Northern Liberties (yes, this is the restaurant where I bake full-time) and snag goodies made by some of Philly’s most beloved food bloggers! I’m donating some Cookies ‘n Cream Whoopie Pies to the event and I know Sabrina of Rhodey Girl Tests is going to whip up some of her delectable chocolate and candy covered pretzel rods.

So, if you’re a fan of food blogs, or just want to do your part to ensure kids across the country are getting the nutritious food they need, come on out to the National Food Bloggers Bake Sale and spend some money! All proceeds benefit Share Our Strength. If you can’t make it to the bake sale, but would like to donate to the cause, please visit this link to make a safe and secure donation.

If you’re a food blogger in Philly or the surrounding area and would like to donate a goodie to the bake sale, please contact Julie at jmdenouden@gmail.com and visit her post of the Great American Bake Sale here.

AND That will be a convenient break from the other amazing thing happening in the city that weekend -

The Free Library Festival!
Saturday & Sunday, April 17 & 18, 2010

Tags: chocolate

About a month ago (at the start of December) Marx Foods ran a promotion where they’d offer esoteric food items to food bloggers willing to write up reviews. And, honestly, this was my first ever shot at free food just because I have this hobby, so I gleefully bopped on over and signed up.

And also for full disclosure, I found out about the company in the first place because my friend, Meghan, had been to their site and entered a photo contest that had scored her some vanilla beans, of which she spoke highly.

So of three choices, I asked to try the Black Garlic because earlier in the year there had been a wave of food bloggers trying out this ingredient, too, and it’s appeal seemed to come from its flavor as well as its novelty value.

And right away I had to change my shipping address and had to try out their customer service - and received prompt emails back from Justin Marx on a weekend. Wow! And he was very supportive of my little amateur blog and every welcoming even though many of the things he sells just seem way out of my league / price range. So I am very impressed by them.

But how impressive is the black garlic?

Scent - I had it shipped to my work address, and I could not resist opening the package and poking at it right away. At first it didn’t seem to have much scent, but then I left the office to do something, and I came back to realize that there was quite a strong, dark garlic scent all through my office. Oh, yeah. I am full of professionalism. Luckily, no one has to share the office with me. But it made me very hungry for the rest of the day.

It ended up arriving at a fairly busy time for me, and the first recipe I made from it was born of a need for simplicity. That Friday, was the Philadelphia Food Bloggers pot luck, and I’d been planning to make stuffed dates… and then just didn’t have any time to assemble them. So I went with an incredibly easy cream cheese dip instead.

Recipe 1 - flavored cream cheese with crackers
I made two side-by-side bowls of dip.

Garlic & Parsley Cream Cheese
Garlic (3 cloves minced black garlic in one, 5 cloves mashed roasted garlic in the other)
12 ounces neuchatel cheese
large bunch of flat leaf parsley, minced (the last from the summer garden)
2 Tablespoons finely minced purple onion
pinch of salt

So with exactly the same recipe, I set out to see what people thought the differences were.

First off - after a full day at work, the cream cheese with the black garlic needed to be mixed up with a fork again to be presentable because the brown color had seeped out into the surrounding cheese. (And with the leftovers, it continued to spread and blend into the cream cheese until there was an even mocha color - I might recommend making this 2-3 days ahead for maximum joy)

No one thought there was a licorice flavor to the black garlic spread. Descriptions tended more toward round and dark and complex, but no one could quite name the difference. That said, people loved them both equally, but separately. They were not interchangeable at all.

Recipe #2 - flavored butter
So since it melted to well into the cream cheese, I figured I’d try mixing it with butter, too.

Now, I’d already read Diane’s entry from White on Rice where she found that it didn’t infuse well into oil, but I figured it would not only be useful to confirm her results, but also be useful for extending the experiment - since I’d only acquired 2 heads of garlic.

And, no, the garlic didn’t melt into the butter at all. But it was still tasty spread on bread. My favorite experiment at this stage was making toast with the black garlic butter and a thin smear of thick, smooth Frontera salsa.

Texture: The reason so many descriptions of black garlic evoke licorice is that’s exactly what it looks like coming out of the papery husk. The paper skin is so thin, there’s not more than a single layer between you and the clove, but the clove has shrunk down to a thick black nub. It’s dry and squishy and a bit sticky/tacky as you but into it. Putting it in the freezer doesn’t change its texture much at all and doesn’t make it easier to slice. I ended up resenting the fine layer it would leave behind on my knife because I had so little to work with.

Experiment #3 - Black garlic in mushroom barley
I’d been trying to hold out against a Black Garlic Risotto recipe because that would be too ridiculously easy. How could black garlic not be tasty in that set up? But I caved because the taste matched exactly a Roman barley recipe, which I made for my last Roman cooking workshop (and, huh, never got around to writing up) and had promised myself I would revisit. So a cold night and much starch and there was a tasty, garlicy meal of joy. Guaranteed crowd pleaser. I’ll get my copy of Apicius and try to remember to make a separate entry for that one, but trust me - it’s a lot like risotto.

Taste: So it doesn’t taste quite like garlic, so what does it taste like? Well, darker and rounder and definitely umami… but that’s not helpful. The best description is that it tastes like garlic breath - everything around the flavor of garlic, without the obvious front taste. It’s dark and musky, but it’s all around the edges of flavor without confronting you directly.

Experiment #4 - Chocolate Truffles
Now I was a little dubious about this from the start, but the Marx Food people has promised this would be useful for savories or sweets. And they had even offered up a chocolate truffle recipe. Having read it, I’m kind of dubious about their preparation - which has a regular truffle center, rolled in minced black garlic. I think the garlic would end up too chewy and right there on your tongue.

So I set about to make the garlic part of the filling. I mixed together butter and garlic again, and I added as much chocolate as necessary to keep it from being overwhelmingly butter. I added enough sugar to make it feel like dessert, but I also added some salt and smoked paprika to bring out the smokier notes. I chilled this and dipped it in a pretty dark chocolate coating (a ratio of 2 squares unsweetened to 1 square semi-sweet Ghirardelli chocolate) and then garnished with a dusting a regular paprika.

And… it turned out bad. Not devastatingly bad, but not something I want to eat. Other people who tried it described it as a flavor explosion. But it wasn’t a pleasing one by my call, and I threw out the untried ones, instead of taking them home with me. (right, and I also need to write up the other, more sucessful, truffle recipes)

Experiment #5 - Black Garlic omelet
So I had just one clove left, and I decided to go with something I knew would be good. I sliced it very thinly, and I fried them crisp in a teaspoon and a half of bacon fat.

note: it was hard to track their cooking progress because they were already black. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to me before, but yeah worth pointing out.

And then I scrambled together an egg and almost an equal quantity of light cream. Poured in just enough to coat the pan, pulled the garlic slices back into the pan so they were evenly distributed, and rolled out a soft, luscious omelet of pure bliss!

(Note: this same trick of frying slices of garlic was also used in Steamy Kitchen’s experiment, where she made Scallops with Black Garlic)

Conclusion: This was a lot of fun to try, and I’d definitely use them again… but I’m not sure it’s something I’ll feel the need to seek out.

Tags: allia, barley, chocolate, cream cheese, egg

I’m taking off work tomorrow, and I have vague plans to make truffles all day. I suspect I lack most of the useful knowledge, skills, and tools - but I have about 4 pounds of chocolate, and how bad can that be?

So I’m pondering possible flavor combinations. Let me know what you think.

1) Black Garlic. I got some as a free sample from Marx Foods to review on my blog. So far I’ve made three savory things, and I should make a sweet for comparison. Even the sweet recipe sample on their blog is a truffle - only they just roll the chocolate in a coating of garlic, and that sounds nasty.

So here’s the plan - make garlic butter, add extra salt and maybe some hard cheese. Swirl enough semi-melted chocolate into the butter to make it more like a buttery chocolate center than a center of butter. Make rounds, cool. Dip in dark chocolate

Topping to distinguish them from all others: I’m torn between a quarter of a pecan or some sweet paprika.

2) Earl Grey truffles

She recommends enrobing in a dark milk chocolate, so I’d need to buy more chocolate to make that happen. La la la!

If my skill is up to it, I think I want to decorate these with a drippy swirly, rather than a coating.

3) Masala truffles - I have black cardamom, instead of green. So I think I’ll crush a couple instead of steeping them whole.

Dust with curry powder (and toasted mustard seeds?)

4) vegan coconut truffles

I’d need to buy coconut… and then figure out what to do with the rest of the bag.

5) Almonds - smash some almonds, mix them with the filling

dark coating? milk coating?

dust in cinnamon/confectioners sugar

6) Spicy - center with chipotle, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

milk coating

decoration - If I stud it with a clove, do you think people will know not to eat it? Probably not. Ummm… I could tie it with a strip of cayenne pepper like raffia, but that’s still not tasty. Demerara sugar! And the extra sweet will help moderate the spicy.

7) ginger - I have ginger juice and powdered ginger. Does this also need candied ginger?

decoration - I think powdered ginger on the outside might be too strong, so how about these be the ones rolled in cocoa powder?

to buy:

• candy thermometer
• good milk chocolate
• heavy cream
• coconut?
• little paper cups

Tags: chocolate, Death Bi Chocolate

Oh, right - there’s more chocolate from last weekend.

So one of the things I had been delighted to note when I was planning the trip to New York was that there was a Vosges store near my aunt’s apartment. But, hey, I figured I’d see them at the Chocolate Show anyway - only they weren’t there. (I found out later that they were in the other side of the convention area in the Food & Wine section… and once I finished the Chocolate Show I did stop by the ticket counter to see how much it would cost to upgrade my ticket, but there was no way I was paying an additional $50 when I was already stretching my limits with just the chocolate.)

So I stopped by the store on Sunday. And while my favorite local purveyors of fine chocolate (and excellent coffees and teas), Walnut Bridge Coffee House (I am biased because I was dating someone who lived in the same building as the owners when the shop opened, and so there was the whole introduction and the hearing about their hopes and dreams and quest for amazing chocolate, but still - it’s run by a wonderful couple) have introduced me to their bar chocolates, I have never tried their truffles.

So I popped into the store, chatted up the people behind the counter, and was introduced to the truffles they had in stock.

I left with

• Gianduia
  • store description: Crunchy hazelnut praline + milk chocolate + praline bits
  • my description - I’m not even sure that this is the right one… my receipt says I left with a Jazz truffle, and I’m sure I did not buy anything with any flavor of coffee. So this is my next best guess. Anyway, this was the one that was a pretty standard chocolate truffle with no distinguishing flavors at all.
• Dulch de Leche
  • store description - Argentinean dulce de leche + milk chocolate + Costa Rican cashews. A creamy caramel-like spread, Dulce de Leche is a staple among Argentinean breakfast fare and desserts. Our Dulce de Leche truffle combines Argentinean caramel, milk chocolate and Costa Rican cashews to reference a truly Latin tradition.
  • my description - truffle. with creamy caramel inside. I had a better one at the show
• Balsamico
  • store description - Twelve-year-aged balsamic vinegar from Modena blushes with dark chocolate and roasted hazelnuts
  • I had to really strain to catch the faint notes of the vinegar. This was very modest and dainty, and I far prefer the unapologetic (but well chosen and balanced) flavors in their bars.
• Olio d’Oliva
  • store description - First press extra virgin olive oil + white chocolate + dried kalamata olives
  • my description - Okay, finally, one with a little boldness. The olive oil flavor was very pronounced. Now I was a little tentative choosing this one since I am not a fan of olives… but I think it was just strengthening the oil flavor because I was not put off by the olives at all (and I probably should have had to work a little harder to like it because and olive fan might be disappointed).

And when I went to the counter, the Rooster (Taleggio cheese + organic walnuts + Tahitian vanilla bean + bittersweet dark chocolate) caught my eye as it popped up in a proud little mountain, but they hadn’t gotten a proper shipment at this location, so I didn’t get to try that one.

Conclusion: I’m sticking with their candy bars.

~*~

And then I walked over to the 92nd Street Y to see Neil Gaiman be interviewed by Chip Kidd, and I figured I’d ooze into a sexy coffeeshop somewhere along the way and pick up some hot tea. Only the Upper East Side seems to be a vast wasteland for coffeeshops. There are corner diners and fancy restaurants, but I don’t think I passed a single coffeeshop. When I got to the Y, I asked the guys manning the desk, and they waved me over to the Dunkin Donuts across the street. Now I have nothing against Dunkin Donuts, but there’s one across the street from where I work, and I’m not going there when I’m in New York City. So I saw two properly urbane-looking women conversing on the steps, so I asked them if they were local enough to offer a recommendation - and it worked!

They pointed me up a block to a cupcake shop called Crumbs!

So one hot chocolate (ghirardelli powder, I think) and a lemon poppyseed muffin later, I was camped out on the steps myself waiting for a line. And then right before we started queuing to be let in (no real line because there was assigned seating), I popped back over for a second hot chocolate - because the beverage and the service was just that good.

Tags: chocolate, hot chocolate

So it started off with hearing Neil Gaiman was doing a thing (being interviewed for the 20th anniversary of Sandman) in New York. And then it involved bopping around the internet to see what else was interesting that weekend. And I ended up with a weekend full of chocolate and goodness -

So I didn’t go to any of the scheduled events. I was just in and tasting the chocolate. Booth by booth.

Chocolat Moderne: Seems to specialize in fancy decorated bon bons, but they were offering cookies for samples (which do not appear on their website for ordering at all). I tried one called Snake Charmer. It was a spice cookie that was less sweet than usual and had a touch of chocolate. It was good enough to wish a friend had the recipe, but I was generally unimpressed by their selections. The card they were handing out had a promotional code for their online ordering - FRIENDF426 for 15% off an online purchase of $30 or more.

Amedei: SO I only picked up a program book as I was on my way out so I could write this up better, so I didn’t read that it was the Gold Award Winner at the World Chocolate Awards for the last 3 years running. All I knew was that they weren’t offering any samples.

Christopher Michael: truffles and bon bons all made from from single origin Venezuelan chocolate. They were offering samples of a honey & chipotle truffle. Nice, clear flavors that popped, but it was near the beginning, and there was a lot yet to come. Still - honey and chipotle - that combination would work well with my usual cooking repertoire.

Roni-Sue’s: Looked charming, but I didn’t hit them when they were offering samples. I’m mentioning them, anyway, because a quick googling led me to this nice write up of their storefront.

Sendall Chocolates: Has one product, and one product only - Toffee Taboo. Now it’s a good product with almonds and cashews being bright and salty in a bed of dark chocolate all drizzled over with white. It was busy, but it all balanced nicely. But I am just fascinated by them only making one thing and then just marketing it in various shapes and sizes.

serendipiTea: They had 5 teas available for unlimited tasting with the purchase of a $1 cup. And, honestly, I suspect that I didn’t like their teas, but it was delightful to have something not chocolate in between the chocolates that I went back every 5 booths or so and even enjoyed their chai despite not being a chai fan. They and the Susan G. Komen people selling teensy bottles of water were very important parts of this show. I was charmed that they would combine rooibos with black teas, since that’s unusual and implies that they are willing to sacrifice tradition for flavor… but all I can tell you is that it made an excellent palate cleanser. -

• Buccaneer - Coconut, Chocolate Bits, Vanilla, Rooibos, Nilgiri
• Holiday Cheer - Peppermint, Mint, Cloves, Cardamom, Ginger, Spearmint, Orange Peel, Chinese Black
• Once Upon a Tea - Peppermint, Chocolate Bits, Vanilla, Mint, Rooibos
• Strawberry Kisses - Chocolate Bits, Vanilla, Strawberry, Rooibos
• Xocatlatl Chai - Chocolate Bits, Vanilla, Mint, Cloves, Cardamom, Ginger, Pepper, Cinnamon, Rooibos, Assam, Indian Black

Lily O’Briens was staffed by very sweet people who were willing to let me steal their pen to take notes (though I returned it once the Fairytale Brownies people were giving free pens away). Their sample was a filled chocolate with some of the richest, butteriest “sticky” toffee filling. But not any stickier than your average gooey caramel. Still - nice people, tasty sample. And the card they were giving out has an offer for a Buy One hot beverage Get One free. Their cafe is at 36 W. 40th Street (Bryant Park), and I’ll mail the card to the first person who promises to go there and use it (and try a bon bon).

Fairytale Brownies: Had the best giveaway all day - a pen with which I look all of these notes to share with you. Just for that I would say nice things about them, but they were also sampling a new addition to their brownie line: Cream Cheese Brownies. And you know how I feel about cream cheese. MMmmmm! They were all rich and creamy and yet not a bit of chocolate was sacrificed for the addition of cream cheese. They also offered blondie brownies, but whatever, they had cream cheese ones. Also, starting in 1992 was good for something - they managed to snag the brownies.com URL, lucky bastards.

Christopher Norman: Sat there looking all fancipants as if they didn’t need to offer samples to let people know just how artistic their message of chocolate might be. But I have no idea.

Quady Winery: specializes in dessert wines. I tasted 2 of the 4 they were offering (because, oddly, there was a crowd for this booth *g*). The wines were too sweet, the names too clever, and on the whole just a little too self-impressed.

• Essensia, Orange Muscat - Yes, yes it was. Very sweet and very candied orange rind. It wasn’t something I’d drink, but I could see someone using this in a chocolate.
• Elysium, Black Muscat - Now I like me some Manischewitz, but this was too sweet for me. Seriously, the write up in the guidebook gives tasting notes of rose and litchi. And so I left after just two.

Romanicos: These were the people advertising diet chocolate. Though, honestly, I have no idea how caloric your standard dark chocolate truffle would be to compare. They don’t use butter. And so their truffles are 38 calories each. But despite that, I tasted them anyway. And they were good! I would totally eat a whole box of the original sin ones. Melty, luscious dark chocolate rolled in little nibs to give it a nice, crunchy (gluten free) shell. I’m finding it hard to get away from the health claims, but really, they were tasty.

Green & Black’s: I don’t know if it was the way the booth was tucked into a niche or because it was a well-known name, but I ended up feeling guilty taking up space in front of the booth and fighting to reach the samples, so I grabbed ones near the ends and didn’t try their whole offerings. What I did try:

• Dark 85% - dark, bitter, not much to mellow it out. Prefect for those who consider chocolate a way to express machismo (i.e. not me)
• Maya Gold - no hot peppers, but it does have orange, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Tasty, but it also managed to not stand out in the midst of the chocolate show. It was just a decent bar chocolate.
• Mint - filled squares. Urgh! It just tasted artificial and too strong… and from the write up on their web page, they know that this is a problem and have tried to tone down the mint… and, yeah, no.

Peanut Butter & Co: had a whole bunch of interesting peanut flavors out to try, but I kept having to elbow little kids out of the way to try them… besides, I am loyal to Skippy and am only thinking of cheating on them for something a little more organic and separated… so I only tried their spicy one with the warning that it really was quite spicy. And it was - with also a good peanut flavor. In fact, their peanut butter reminded me quite a lot of my beloved Skippy, so no complaints from me… but also no need to seek them out unless you want someone to mix up exciting flavors for you so you don’t have to. They also had peanut butter filled pretzel snacks that looked very tempting, but they weren’t free. But they did look very promising and possibly superior to similar products.

Charles Chocolate: Had these mojito chocolates. You bit in and out gushed fresh lime and mint - and it wasn’t too sweet. It was quite refreshing and exciting, and while I was there someone was dragged over my her friend because she just had to try get the friend to try them.

Republica del Cacao: this was the only booth where I bought chocolate. Just saying - I paid money for this chocolate. And I should have bought more of it. it’s all single origin from places in Ecuador.

• 67% from the El Oro province - totally the one I bought. It has layers of flavor. The floral notes are interesting instead of cloying, the fruitiness is rich and luxurious.
• 75% from Manabi - I just jotted down that it was mild for that concentration and creamy
• 75% from Los Rios - had a smoky undertone that was quite nice.

Lindt: Yeah, I know Lindt. I have adored them ever since I discovered them in Switzerland in 1987. But that also meant that I just pocketed the Excellence 70% they were handing instead of trying it right there. I already know this isn’t the chocolate bar for me. My favorites are their milk chocolates (esp with hazelnuts) and their extra dark (black wrapped) truffles. But their real strength is in their creaminess (and I have long suspected that it’s secretly creamier when you buy it abroad). So I’ll be keeping the sample as a bribe instead of eating it.

Mary Chocolate: had a huge booth and used it all as an open kitchen where you could watch them filling bon bons and decorating them ever so daintily. But I’d have had to elbow people with cameras out of the way to get all the way over to the side where they might (or might not) have had samples, so I have no idea how it tastes. Definitely pretty, and (at least for show) hand decorated.

TCHO: TCHO (why all caps?) is all about innovating the way you think about chocolate.

No longer do you need to rely on unhelpful descriptors like “percentage cacao,” “varietal,” or “origin” to select your chocolate.”

So it is not, as I first guessed, a clever ploy to mask their supply chain so they could distract you from fair trade issues - because while their site does not specifically claim they buy fair trade cacao, they still have statements and goals toward social justice. Instead, I think it’s just a marketing ploy so they can use their snazzy color wheel. I mean, didn’t chocolate always have varying flavors? Anyway, so I tasted their four options: Chocolatey, Citrus, Fruity, and Nutty. And they were all very bitter, except for the nutty one. I couldn’t tell what flavor note they were highlighting as more citrusy than the others. And the Chocolatey one was distinct to me as having a bit of a coffee aftertaste… and I am not a coffee fan. Of their upcoming flavors (Earthy and Floral), I was curious about what made Earthy more so than any of the others, but the guy behind the counter just shrugged. Meh.

Barry Callebaut had some lovely humongous bars of chocolate, but the booth was rather spare and staffed by one harried woman on the phone to someone asking where were the other people who were supposed to show off. The display was geared toward the chocolate chef, and the samples were lozenges for cooking. I have no idea how to judge what will temper well or any of that, but it tasted like straight forward chocolate with neither bitterness nor complication.

Jacques Torres: There were these gorgeous square bon bons with ginger. It wasn’t too sweet - so the ginger in the chocolate wasn’t too candied, and it was dusted on top with powdered ginger. And it was just delightful and different. And not sold individually on the website at all, so you’d have to go to the store. I had a brief look at his cookbook, and I’d recommend a longer look to anyone who enjoys making chocolate preparations, but I can’t actually recommend the book because I know too little about the craft side of things.

Berkshire Bark: yeah, I don’t know. It’s just not my thing, but it seemed well made and full of interesting combinations.

Valrhona: I think they had something to taste, but I think I was thinking I’d remember it because I don’t have any notes on this booth. Sorry.

Chocolove: I did my best to taste through the whole line, but I ended up giving up through lack of interest:

• Milk - a nice, creamy kind of milk chocolate
• toffee & almonds eh - my little piece didn’t have much of either. It was a bit crunchy, though (might just be a sample problem, but I was just selecting at random)
• orange peel - it sounds like such a good combination, but I don’t think anyone at the show had a tasty one.
• ginger - the ginger taste was mild, but it was still refreshing
• Chilies & Cherries - I was a bit nervous trying this since I don’t like cherries, but I didn’t notice any. The chilies were also mild. But, hey, that means it’s not a challenging bar to eat… Yeah, I was bored, too.

Cotton Tree Lodge: Yes, it sounds like a hotel instead of chocolate, but they had free flowing chocolate, so I gave it a try - and it was very tasty, nutty stuff. And then they had the sweetest person ever behind the table, the woman in charge of their sales and marketing, and we ended up conversing about how I was taking notes for a blog entry and she tried to give me a full press kit before I told her I was completely amateur. But - let me tell you how awesome this place looks. Well, have a look at the website - you get to go down to the Belize jungle and stay for fairly reasonable rates doing nifty/relaxing ecotourism. They have a Chocolate Week where you harvest and make chocolate from scratch… and get to keep it. I am seriously thinking about doing this someday. The only odd bits are that on their FAQ, there are two separate questions about shampoo, and neither one is coming up with an answer for me.

ETA: The people from Cotton Tree Lodge stopped by to comment, and they are offering a 10% discount off their published rates with the code SHAMPOO - and you can see how sweet they are in the comments below.

Divalicious looked like a fun booth with its chocolate fountains… but since it looked like a quantity over quality kind of thing and I was more than halfway though, I didn’t step up to try it. But it looked like the people organizing the booth were having fun with it.

Guittard: these people had the most complete and most generous tasting selection of the show. And it was a really well set up booth with lots of information density, too.

• Bar Chocolates
  • Nocturne - 91% dark, blend of 7 different beans. Sadly, too dark for me to appreciate.
  • Quetzalcoatl most other offerings with this name have had spices or peppers, but this was just rich, tasty chocolate. They are calling it bittersweet, but it was dark and smooth to me.
  • Tsaratana - 61% wonderfully rich. Seriously, my notes just say, “\o/!”
  • Orinoco - 38% milk - good, but not exceptional in the land of milk chocolates
  • Chucuri - 65% Columbian - Another \o/ - melty & sexy
  • Ambajana - 65% Madagascar, Criollo cacao beans - did not stand out to me
  • Sur del Lago - 65% Venezuela, Criollo and Trinitario beans - I really liked the complexity of this one
  • Quevedo - 65% from centuries-old, Ecuadorean Nacional cacao beans - tasted mildly flowery to me. not my favorite.
• Baking Wafers
  • I tried the bittersweet and the semisweet - and both were okay. No off notes, but no special ones either.
• fancy fancy - chocolate too fancy to be listed on their website (yeah, I have no idea how to categorize it.
  • Columbian 65% - \o/!
  • Peruvian, single bean, 65% - so smooth it almost tasted like milk chocolate - yum!
  • kokoleka - actually was milk. It goes up there with some of the best milk chocolate I’ve tried. I don’t know why this was so good and the bar wasn’t, but hey

Bloomsberry & Co.: Looked like a chocolate company, but there were really only two chocolates - dark and milk. I only tasted the dark, and it was pretty standard for chocolate. The specialty here was charming and cute boxes for the chocolate. Stop by the website and peruse. Did I mention cute?

Eclat - Huh - if I’d noticed that it’s one single location was in my hometown, I would have gushed to the people at the booth. But, hey, I’ll have to stop by and try some. I didn’t try any at the show because it was $2/truffle to sample them. But local! Woooo!

Chuao - Nice, generous people. But these were the chocolates that almost made me hurl. I don’t know if it’s because they were at the end, but I tried their chocolate pods - Banana: and my mouth was awash with syrupy sweet banana and caramel flavor. I mean, it was a very clear flavor and well done, but very sweet. So I swallowed it down and decided to give them a decent second chance - Modena, strawberry and balsamic vinegar - shouldn’t be too sweet, right? Urgh - wrong. And, really, I don’t know if I would have liked it, if I’d started here. But, anyway, I gave it one more try because I didn’t want to have nothing good to say. So I figured the pods were bad news right then, what with their reservoirs of sweet - so I went for a truffle - Firecracker. And I’m listening to the description as I put it in my mouth - chipotle, yay!; salt - woo!; and pop rocks… erm. So, yeah, that one wasn’t a success, either.

So I sat down for a break with some bracing SeredipiTea (thank you!) and then set out to conquer the rest.

Pralus: don’t have their own store, but they are carried by chocosphere.com and Dean & DeLuca. They had an assortment from their specified origin collection

• Venezuela & Ghana - 80% - possibly the darkest chocolate I liked. It had a good flavor and coated the tongue nicely.
• Trinidad - clean flavor
• Melissa - 45% - smooth (yeah, sorry my notes aren’t more detailed here)
• Tanzanie - 75% - very nice
• Equateur - complex and tasty, not bitter
• Brut de Sao Tome - 75% - meh

sweetriot - An activist candy company! Very active! And young! And full of exclamation points! And they made their chocolate into Tic Tac/Nerds kind of mini shape so you can eat it on the go! And after a closer look, I just walked on without trying it.

Crossings Importers of French Epicurean Specialities - representing three groups, but I think I only have notes for two of them:

• Bonnat
  • Java 65% - bitter
  • Asfarth 65% - meh
  • Hacienda el Rosario - manages to be both bitter and floral all in one bar, not my thing
• Mademoiselle de Margaux chocolate twigs
  • orange twigs - still not appreciating the orange selections at this show. Decidedly meh
  • toffee - YAY! Delicious (and I think the note that it was salty went with this one even though it’s next to cappuccino because I would have passed on something coffee flavored)
  • mint - tastes like real, fresh mint on a twig! Delightful.

Campagnia del Cioccolato - another group table, but this is an Italian association going around finding the finest Italian chocolatiers. And they found some delicious and charmingly amateur people. I just wanted to be sweet to them all.

• First, there was the Dolceria Donna Elvira - and when I asked for a card on which to make notes, as I’d been doing at all the booths, the guy offered me this beautiful spiral bound book with laid paper and I felt horribly guilty making notes in it with my crappy ballpoint pen. And I felt even worse when I didn’t like the chocolate. Well, at least I didn’t like the chocolate bars they had on offer, the dolceria makes other things, too. I know! I was sad. But maybe it will be your thing. So these chocolate bars, they weren’t creamy at all. They were granular. Like crystals of chocolate. It was hard to tell if the bars themselves were sweet or if it just seemed as though they should be because the texture was so much like gnawing at a sugar cube.
  • limone - this one went best with the crunch, and the lemon flavor was very intense. Like nothing else
  • Chili peppers - not that spicy, but it was really hard to get a handle on this one
  • vaniglia - felt very sweet even though I don’t think it actually was. Probably the second best
  • Cannella - possibly the most disappointing because at this point I had figured out the granular part and was expecting it would go well with a strong cinnamon taste, but it ended up being a subtle cinnamon taste that disappeared in the rest of the experience
• L’Artigiana di Gardini was offering Chocolate with the sweet sea salt of Cervia with liquorice… and I don’t like liquorice in general, but it blended nicely with the dark chocolate and the salt and made for an amazingly layered and different taste. And the salt was just wonderful. YAY!
• Guido Gobino offered for tasting Cremini al Sale: refined gianduja paste with integral sea salt grains and Extra-Virgin Olive Oil. It very rich and very smooth and melty and an absolutely delightful way to finish the show.

Tags: chocolate

For breakfast this morning, I had spelt bread from Metropolitan Bakery. I had expected it to suck, but it didn’t.

Question A: If you thought it would suck, why did you buy it?
Answer Q: Because they were sold out of the one bread I know I like - pumpernickel - and that one was oddly tempting. It’s a grain Romans might have used, you see, so it’s like academic curiosity. Plus there was a cute guy behind the counter who was lobbying for me to try that one (after I flat out turned down the raisin walnut bread). And it was the only one that came nested in a cute wooden cradle probably made the the same people as my friend bought for the favors at her wedding. So irresistible, really.

Question 2: Why did you think it would suck?
Answer: Well, it just sounded a bit like lead. And possibly dry. And unbearably healthy. The kind of thing that would leave my colon scoured clean - and knowing it. And so Metropolitan Bakery isn’t reliable about providing satisfying bread. Their semolina bread (one of my favorite breads elsewhere) is a bit dense and dry and healthy tasting, and does not have the special semolina flavor that, say, Di Bruno Brothers’ does.

I should not have doubted. Because, apparently, the one thing Metropolitan Bakery does really well with their bread is make dense, healthy breads. But it was also a soft, squishy, and rich bread. It was nutty and delicious on its own, but it was even better topped with honey butter (softened butter that I thoroughly mixed with Buckwheat honey [scroll down on that page to get to the entry on Stagecoach Apiary]).

~*~

After I finished that tasty breakfast, I did laundry - and figured that since it had all fit in one load, instead of two, I’d pop over to the new coffee shop next door and check it out.

Hot Chocolate: Ghirardelli intense dark chocolate syrup, steamed milk, topped with whipped cream, and swirled with more syrup.

This guy understands fancipants hot chocolate.

And he was all sweet about me only having $2.50 instead of the $2.75 for the small (since I just had what I didn’t need to convert to quarters for laundry - I’d just been planning on looking).

Aside from several exciting coffees, they also have Cuban Tapas - which means they’ll heat you up an empanada, but they looked like very good empanadas.

And then as I was leaving, the name of the coffee shop registered - Cafe Clavé.

Hey, wait a minute, back when I first moved into my apartment, this location was called Cafe Clavé. It was run by the son (Gooch) of the owner of the building. So I went back and asked if it really were the same place and if he were the same guy - and it is! and he is! This’ll be awesome!

It will be especially awesome since I have missed the occasional drum circle they’d have outside the coffee house that I’d be able to hear from my apartment (Not everyone likes that kind of thing, but I thought it was wonderful and kept hoping the Green Line would attract some of the same drummers).

Tags: bread, chocolate

So I’ve been sampling local hot chocolates. Well, today I went to Starbucks because a co-worker had a coupon for free coffee. And I’m afraid their hot chocolate might be the best of the lot. It was the least sweet and possibly the most flavourful. A medium, however, was $2.94

And then I had three 30g chocolate bars from Dolfin:

• Dark w/ pink peppercorns from Brazil - I’d had this one before and adored it. One of the things I like is the occasional crunch of a piece of peppercorn. It’s a nice balance of spicy and intriguing flavor.
• Dark - white pepper & cardamom from Guatemala - surprisingly tasty. This one was a bit of a risk for me, since I’ve had bad cardamom experiences in my past, but it ended up being quite tasty; it did not taste at all like chai to me. Sorry to get poetic, but it kind of tasted like dancing.
• Milk w/ green tea and jasmin from Morocco - I love how people have discovered that the bitterness of the tea makes it go better with these dark milk chocolates instead of with dark chocolate. It makes these (by which I mean this one and the Vosges bar) incredibly sensuous, and it makes me unwilling to eat them with any restraint at all. As for the Jasmine? That flavor was subtly there, but I didn’t think it changed the character of the bar much.

Tags: chocolate, hot chocolate