Entries tagged with 'Serious Chocolate'
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"I liked Fox's U-Bet best...but the homemade syrup is on an entirely different level. [Flickr: hleo] Chocolate Syrup and Milk View the complete recipe here » Pavlov rang bells to make dogs salivate. I imagine the bells sounded like spoons stirring thick chocolate syrup into glasses of ice-cold milk. It's not difficult to make a glass of chocolate milk. After all, it's a two-ingredient drink and the recipe is in the name. But a great glass of chocolate milk—well, that takes talent, hard work, and a little bit of luck. Luckily, I spent an entire evening testing varieties of chocolate syrup and milk, to find the right combination of ingredients. (A tough job, I know.) What's the secret to a...
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[Flickr: oskay] See that brown chalky disc second from the bottom? That is a chocolate Necco Wafer, aka the Kevlar vest of candies. Virtually indestructible, the Necco Wafer was sent into battle with troops during World War II because it wouldn't melt or break during transit. Packs of Neccos have traveled with Admiral Byrd to the South Pole and with Donald MacMillan to the Arctic. It can withstand extreme temperatures and harsh terrain. It is, perhaps, our nation's greatest militarized fat free wafer. You either love 'em or think they taste like a chalky hot mess. Which is why, I think, there are two distinct thoughts regarding Necco Wafers: You either love 'em or think they taste like a...
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"As long as you stay on this side of the sweet-savory line, the meat and chocolate trend is a great one." Chocolate-covered bacon from Roni-Sue's. [Photographs: Robyn Lee] Chocolate and meat may have started with the Aztecs (in their thick, chocolate-tinged mole sauce) but the food marriage has been spreading to the artisanal candy aisle and non-Mexican restaurants like Blue Hill in New York. At first I was very wary of this combination but knew I'd have to give in—if for no other reason than to say I’d at least tried it. My first foray into chocolaty meat, probably like many others, was the Vosges bacon chocolate bar. I picked it up about a year ago and my impression was...
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Note: Please give a warm welcome to Heather Rawlinson, our new chocolate correspondent. She kicks things off with ooey-gooey chocolate chip cookie analysis—which chips are best? You might want to grab a cold glass of milk for this one. Take it away, Heather! [Photograph: Heather Rawlinson] Like so many other great discoveries, the chocolate-chip cookie supposedly started out as a mistake. According to the story, which seems to border on myth, Ruth Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts intended to make chocolate cookies for her guests one day. After running out of her usual baking chocolate, she improvised with some Nestle chocolate morsels instead. To her surprise, the chocolate chips didn't melt and combined with the dough just...
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I just got back from a trip to the Dominican Republic, where I was doing research with a client. When traveling to cocoa-producing countries such as the Dominican Republic, one thing I always look for is how locals consume cocoa and chocolate, and manifestations of this "native" form. Generally, cocoa farmers around the world don't make the kind of chocolate we're used to eating in the United States, in large part because highly refined chocolate requires lots of power and nearly ubiquitous air conditioning and refrigeration. This may work in big cities, but not out on the farm. For this reason, most chocolate made by farmers in cocoa-producing countries like the Dominican Republic, is consumed as a beverage, not eaten....
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In November, Serious Eats ran my optimistic interview with Seneca Klassen of Bittersweet, who described the cacao-growing industry as "fundamentally organic." It wasn't long before Sam Madell—a spirited bean-to-bar chocolate producer at Tava in Australia—sent us an intricate, itemized response, dismissing Seneca's take on the situation as "blatant misinformation." "For your information," Sam wrote, "a wide range of pesticides—many of which are banned in Europe because they are unsafe—are used on cocoa trees and beans in many countries, including Ecuador, Venezuela, and Ghana, as well as the USA, where highly toxic methyl bromide is used on cocoa beans in storage." I thought it would be a good idea to ring in the new year with a new take on organics...
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We Americans used to believe that all chocolate came from France (or possibly from Belgium or Switzerland). Now we know that it comes from asymmetrical pod-laden trees that grow in the jungles of Côte D'Ivoire, New Guinea, Brazil, Venezuela, the Caribbean, and Central America. But the French are still in charge of the Chocolate Show. Francophone couple Sylvie Douce and François Jeantet founded the show in Paris in 1995 (they got 40,000 visitors on the first try), and they brought the event to New York ten years ago. At this weekend's New York Chocolate Show, France's chocolate artisans offer some healthy competition to their American counterparts....
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Even on October 31, some of us would just as well pass on the Hershey's Miniatures. Luckily, there are some other options: High-Art Trick or Treat: Bay Area superstar Michael Recchiuti is known for blending five or six chocolate couvertures to achieve the right flavor profile for his confections, and for the savvy designs that he applies to his bon bons using transfer sheets painted with colored cocoa butter. This season, he's whipped up fresh cinnamon-malt-chocolate bon bons and topped them with bats, ghosts, menacing pumpkins, and black cats. Border-Crossing Trick or Treat: Mexican customs for acknowledging departed souls are simultaneously more grown-up and more spooky than their American counterparts. Instead of dressing up like ghosts and goblins on October...
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Web-based food reporting outlet TasteTV is in the chocolate show business. Its first San Francisco Chocolate Salon over the summer awarded gold medals to chocolatiers such as L'Artisan du Chocolat, Poco Dolce, and Lillie Belle Farms, as well as chocolate-makers like Amano and Divine. (I'm happy with that lineup, but, then, I was one of the judges). The second TasteTV-sponsored event in San Francisco (called a "Single's Chocolate Salon") followed so quickly on the heels of the first that we missed it completely (it was last week). Luckily, TasteTV has a couple more West Coast events planned. In addition to a Los Angeles Chocolate Salon planned for December, TasteTV is hosting a kinky Halloween event called the Dark Dining Dinner...
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A new set of distinctive hand-painted bon bon designs will debut along with the new branch of MarieBelle this Friday. In New York, the chocolate race uptown from SoHo is on, and Maribel Lieberman is a lap ahead of Jacques Torres. Torres has been making noise about a new location on Amsterdam Avenue for months, but the grand opening won't come before November. Meanwhile, Lieberman (who's also been busy planting cacao trees in her native Honduras and selling Blackberries on the web) will open a branch of her MarieBelle chocolate boutique at 762 Madison Avenue this Friday. The MarieBelle aesthetic is Latin sass trimmed in Parisian frill, and the brand includes chocolate bon bons in flavors like White Kona...
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