Box of chocolates from Bouchon Bakery in New York City. Photograph taken by Robyn Lee. What makes a great chocolate great? Taste? Texture? Aroma? Snap? Marketing? Beans? Fermentation? Roasting? Something else? All of the above? Identifying great chocolate is sort of like knowing art when you see it. It's hard to describe but instantly recognizable. And answering the question of what attributes constitute a great chocolate brings us no closer to an understanding of what it takes to actually make a great chocolate (bar or confection). It is my belief that while selecting a "best" chocolate is a personal and subjective decision—it's all about individual taste preferences—identifying great chocolates is objective in the sense that a group of trained...
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The staff at the Vancouver Four Seasons have been known stock VIP suites with chocolate-coated vanilla and smoked Hawaiian sea salt caramels and Earl Grey and blue cornflower bon bons from favorite local chocolatier Thomas Haas (the hotel's former pastry chef). Guests can also call down to the concierge to arrange an "Urban Bites" culinary tour of the Canadian city, which leads through the dim sum parlors of Chinatown and the local produce markets on Granville Island before making a final stop at Haas's headquarters in North Vancouver. Alternatively, industrious chocolate fiends can their own way around Vancouver, where the mild Pacific Coastal climate is incredibly inviting to chocolatiers. A few places to consider:...
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Cosmic Chocolate's Carly Baumann knows how to groove with the best of them. Her lips—and her chocolates—are always sparkling, and her candymaking goal, in her own words, is to "create luscious bites of elation and share with you our feelings of desire, expectancy, and satisfaction." So, no, Baumann didn't just pour melted chocolate into heart-shape molds, pop them out, and tie them up with red ribbons this Valentine's Day. Instead, she developed the Cosmic Bliss Heart Collection, whose flavors—Espresso Cognac, Lemon Basil, Black Current Violet, "Gianduya," Peanut Butter Honey, Passion Fruit, Red Hot Cinnamon, Sea Salt Caramel, and Strawberry Champagne—anticipate the full range of libidinous urges. The entire nine-piece collection costs $20. And in case you want to experiment elsewhere,...
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Growing up in New York our local boxed chocolate of choice was either Barton's or Barricini's. That was what my grandmother would have at her apartment in the Bronx. I don't know if either of them was any better than Whitman's or Russell Stover, but they were my grandmother's choice and she doted on me, so I loved those chocolates. When I moved out to Los Angeles for my senior year of high school I was crushed to find no boxed candy I recognized. There was See's right near our house, but out of loyalty to my grandmother's choices, I never went in. Fast forward almost 40 years later. A month ago I found myself searching for a reasonably priced...
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Chocolate malt balls from Jacques Torres Valentine's Day is fast approaching and you've got to deliver the goods. You cannot go wrong ordering from any chocolatier I mention below—each one on my list represents fair value when it comes to chocolate. Good chocolate is made with high-quality expensive ingredients by people with know-how and experience. When it comes to chocolate, you don't always get what you pay for, but with these particular makers that is indeed the case. This isn't the first time I have tried to come to your aid chocolatewise. Holiday time in 2006 I tried to get people to give chocolate every day of the 12 days of Christmas by renaming the holiday Chocomas—alas, nobody embraced this...
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One of the fascinating things about the candy industry is that it's rather like fashion. The are the couture confectioners and the mass marketers. The coutures start the trends, create the flavor combinations, and drive the interest in the market by being daring, and, of course, the huge factories take what's up-and-coming and turn out the lowest-common-denominator versions. The difference, however, is that although people may be interested in trying new things, for the most part they eat the same thing they've eaten since childhood, the same things their grandparents may have eaten. If you look at the top ten candy bars, every one of them has been around for 40 years or more. I sat in on a session...
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