I was reminded while doing some grocery shopping recently just how important it is to pay attention to what you put in your cart and how you can't always trust your old stand-by brands, especially when those brands start showing up on products outside the area the company built its reputation on.
Case in point: Land O'Lakes®. I've always thought pretty highly of their dairy products and it really didn’t surprise me when I noticed their name on some bags of powdered hot chocolate mixes. What did surprise me was the phrase on the front of a bag of Land O'Lakes Triple Chocolate International Drinking Cocoa™ ... "Brimming With Chocolatey Flakes."
Just between you, me, and everyone else who is going to read this–chocolatey is shorthand for faux-chocolate. Even though the FDA legalized white chocolate in 2002 (a crime against chocolate according to most chocolate lovers) they actually doregulate the use of the word chocolate very closely; a food or ingredient must contain a minimum percentage of ingredients that actually come from a cocoa bean in order to call itself chocolate.
So, when Land O'Lakes says that their Triple Chocolate International Drinking Cocoa is Brimming With Chocolatey Flakes what they're really telling you is not to expect much actual chocolate in the product. A glance at the lengthy list of ingredients reveals just how true this is.
Consider this fact for a moment: more than 90 percent of Americans consume chocolate in some form every day.
Americans are obviously fascinated by chocolate. The retail chocolate business in the United States is more than $15 billion annually. That makes the United States the largest market for chocolate in the world. While it is true that Americans might not eat as much chocolate per capita as other countries, the fact that there are over 300 million chocolate eaters in the US compared with only 7.5 million in Switzerland, the country with the highest per capita consumption, lets the United States take the overall crown by a wide margin.
I have been writing about chocolate and giving chocolate appreciation classes for a decade now. One question that Americans obsess about when it comes to chocolate also happens to be one of the major differences that separates Americans from the rest of the world when it comes to appreciating fine chocolate: "What's the best way to store chocolate?" The answer I now invariably give is, "The best place to store chocolate is in your mouth."
While at Baja Fresh last week, I noticed a basket of saran-wrapped cookies near the register. Each label said "Aztec Chocolate Chunk Cookie" and the lady who just rang up my steak tostada looked at me and swore, "They are really, really good." The ingredients didn't look too 13th century Aztec: enriched bleached wheat flour, dextrose, palm oil, high fructose corn syrup. There was one mention of "spices" near the bottom, but nothing specific about chili peppers or aromatic flowers, an integral part of the original Aztec recipe.
Cinnamony and buttery, the cookie was good—the lady was right—but not necessarily Aztec-y. According to folklore, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl descended from heaven with a cocoa plant and since sugar wasn't around, the Mesoamericans used hot chili peppers to zazz up the otherwise dull brown beans. Baja Fresh, on the other hand, embraces modern sugar availability (both brown and white are listed), and the chili pepper content is questionable. Would Quetzalcoatl be ashamed of this and other packaged renditions of his ancient treat?
Scientists in the UK are seeking 150 women to eat chocolate every day for a year in the cause of medical research.
Women taking part in the study must eat one bar of chocolate a day. The trial, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, eastern England, will test whether a natural compound found in cocoa, the main ingredient of chocolate, could cut the risk of heart disease among women with diabetes.
Qualified applicants will be post-menopausal and under 70 years of age.
I've been procrastinating a lot this month. There are two things that I do when I procrastinate: eat chocolate and fixate on stuff I find online. And that's how I found myself unwrapping about a dozen five-gram chocolate squares (each one with a funky cacao-pod design indented in it along with the words STARBUCKS CHOCOLATE) while watching a PR video.
The new Starbucks Chocolate line is old chocolate news by now: Cybele at Candy Blog rated everything in the lineup on a scale from one to ten, and Chocophiliac Clay Gordon tried to untangle the complicated corporate web that is Artisan Confections (that is, the confederacy of Hershey-owned subsidiaries Scharffen Berger, Joseph Schmidt, and Dagoba) to figure out who's actually making this stuff. But I wanted to conduct an in-depth analysis myself. So I poured myself a glass of water and cut up some crusty white bread (good palate cleansers) and sat down in front of my laptop with my Starbuck's samples.
April 12th's Saturday Night Live featured three clips of Ashton Kutcher dressed up as a giant chocolate bar with a killer instinct, cute mime clown face and all. Clip after the jump.
Brownies aren't merely my preferred dessert; they're one of my all-time favorite foods. Over the years I've learned to bake some pretty amazing varieties, from Susan Spungen's Saucepans to Nigella Lawson's Triple Chocolates. Just stir together some butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and chocolate, and what emerges from the oven is confectionery heaven, decadent and familiar. Nothing could be simpler.
This is a true story: when I was about five years old, I asked my mother how Moses and his friends had time to stop in the middle of the desert to dip their matzo in chocolate. Turns out I wasn't the only curious kid. This Passover season marks the 20th anniversary of Chuck Siegel's (the Charles of Charles Chocolates) matzo-dipping party. But the whole scene got started with apples—not dipped in honey, but in caramel. Chuck, then owner of Attivo Confections, was vacuum-sealing his candied Granny Smith apples with heavy-duty equipment. "The guy we bought the bags and the machines from was Jewish, and still is Jewish," Siegel said. "And he said, 'my daughter really wants to make some chocolate-covered matzo—can we come over and put some matzo through the enrobing line?'"
Plague-themed Peeps, candy molds, and chocolates: they're perfect for Passover!
The ten Passover Plagues in Exodus didn't involve much sugar or butter. If only Moses delivered G-d's demands in candy form, then those gnats and ticks could have been chocolate, not infectious insects! With Passover only three weeks away, here's a few candy homages to the anniversary of Egyptian calamities. Mmm, who wants a sugar high from boils and murrain?
I'm getting tired of people touting the health benefits of chocolate. I just saw a couple ladies about town ogling Dolfin's "dark chocolate with pink peppercorns from Brazil" bar. "It's dark chocolate," they said, "it's healthy." Uh, yeah, cacao is naturally high in flavanols, and most of the time dark chocolate is packed with more cacao and less sugar than milk chocolate. We all know that by now. But perhaps we have forgotten that pink peppercorns are mildly toxic—imports of the colorful little beads (not true peppercorns at all but the berries of a plant related to poison ivy) were suspended for a period of time in the 1980s by the FDA.
But just because something's bad for you doesn't mean you shouldn't eat it. I bought one of Dolfin's little 30-gram pink peppercorn bars for myself. It was good. It was, um, piquant. No adverse reactions. I'm sure there's not enough pink peppercorn in there to kill you. But I also know that there aren't enough flavanols to save you. It's just candy, people! So eat well, stop at the gym or the yoga studio from time to time, and then, by all means, treat yourself to a strangely seasoned chocolate bar on the way home. Just don't expect too much.
Emily Stone, a food writer and proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh.
What happens when a dark chocolate bunny gets it one with a white chocolate bunny? They lay eggs! And have little milk chocolate bunny babies! The way nature intended.
Watch the miracle of bunny-shaped chocolate life, after the jump.
Transform your marshmallow Peeps into classy (or classier) treats by coating them in salted caramel and dipping them in melted dark chocolate. Roopa has the recipe for these highbrow peeps at her blog, Raspberry Eggplant.
I'd say the only downside to coating the Peeps in caramel and chocolate is that they ultimately look more like like chocolate lumps than vaguely chick-shaped marshmallows, but the loss of form is worth the 500% increase in deliciousness.
Why had I not heard about the glorious marriage of muffin and goo-filled chocolate treat before reading Nicole Weston's recipe for Cadbury Creme Egg Muffins? Weston say that while you probably wouldn't want to serve these at any regular brunch (but...but maybe I do!), they're good for Easter and may prevent you from eating a bag of Cadbury Mini Creme Eggs all at once, "since you’ll have to eat through each muffin to get to them first." I like that idea; stagger your intake of eggs by wrapping each one in a muffin.
If you have patience, dexterity, and the desire to have some classy chocolate egg-shaped treats for Easter, check out these directions for making golden chocolate Easter eggs from the Culinary Institute of America's baking and pastry art professor, Francisco Migoya. All you have to do is empty out some eggshells, fill the empty eggshells with melted chocolate, and paint the eggshells with edible gold paint. It's just a bit more involved than how you decorated eggs in elementary school. [via craftzine.com blog]
If you gave up something for Lent this year, chances are it was either carbon emissions or chocolate. And if you fall into the first category, I'd recommend that you celebrate the close of the Lenten season by supporting a business in the city that that put Mardi Gras on the map—New Orleans. Try Sucre on Magazine Street, the year-old business whose owners Tariq Hanna and Joel Dondis have been hailed by the New York Times as plugged-in post-Katrina entrepreneurs.
Their inspirations are mainly Parisian (their macarons are modeled on Ladurée's, and they pack gifts into pink paper purses à la Fauchon) mixed with sultry French Quarter signatures like the Meuniere bon bon (dark chocolate filled with a burnt-butter-and-almond white chocolate ganache).
Editor's note: This week, it's, like, omigawd, totally '80s for our daily In Videos segment. Big hair, breakdancing, and before-they-were-big celebrity commercial appearances to the max. So kick back your fat-laced high tops and take a chill pill. —The Serious Eats Team
How did Hershey and Pringles manage to peddle their addictive snacks to the young, impressionable youth of the '80s? Through the power of breakdancing. And not just any breakdancing, but the kind that can only be accomplished by an entire student body moving in perfect harmony to a beat brought forth by a crazed desire for junk food.
After the jump, check out these commercials and a bonus video of a tween Alfonso Ribeiro (aka Carlton Banks) teaching you how to breakdance.
So yes, this is where Peeps come from—within the thick concave walls of "passable" milk chocolate. Some of Candyblog's commenters pointed out that with some graham crackers and a source of heat, this candy could double as filling for s'mores. Granted, the Peep would die in the process, but it all ends up in the same place anyway.
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.
How well do you know your candy bar innards? Test your knowledge by taking the Candy Bar Identification Quiz. Whether this is a quiz you want to score high on is debatable.
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 28, 2008 at 11:30 AM
I love Cybele's semi-scathing in-depth review of Palmer's hollow chocolate flavored bunny. Yes, chocolate flavored—cocoa is the fourth ingredient. Cybele explains just how much of an effective role it plays in the nuances of flavor possessed by this bunny-shaped mass:
Sometimes I wonder if Palmer is doing the cocoa industry a service by buying beans that would otherwise be turned into compost or rot in the co-op storehouses. I don’t think I’d mind their products if they were sold as “biodegradable decorations” ... but sadly the appearance of a nutrition label seems to indicate they really do think people want to eat it.
"Biodegradable decorations" is my new favorite euphemism for "crappy chocolate."
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 27, 2008 at 10:45 AM
Japanese architect Oki Sato has teamed up with patissier Tsujiguchi Hironobu of Mont St. Clair and Le Chocolat de H to create what may be the only dessert to feature something you may find in your office supplies cabinet. Their new chocolate pencils come with an accompanying "pencil shaver" that allows the diner to shave chocolate onto their dessert. [via Cool Hunting]
With about a dozen banquette seats sandwiched between flame-red walls, and with just as many hot chocolate flavors (American-style dark chocolate, Venezuelan chile spice, coconut curry, Chinese five-spice, passion fruit, raspberry, citrus, peanut butter, hazelnut, mint, mocha, and espresso), the new Christopher Elbow Artisanal Chocolate shop is open for business in San Francisco's Hayes Valley. Christopher Elbow flew in from his home base in Kansas City, Missouri, to open the doors just nine days before Valentine's Day, with a lineup featuring his signature Peanut Praline with Pop Rocks bon bon and a special-edition Absinthe Ganache candy, named for the restaurant across the street.
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 19, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Cadbury's latest ad campaign for their Creme Eggs shows the eggs using creative methods to release their creamy innards because "Creme Eggs only want one thing: to let their goo out." I see this more as a collection of ideas for how to commit suicide if you're a Creme Egg, but maybe the eggs continue to live on even after they've been smashed and sliced and...um...maybe not.
Thank you notes get a "sweet" upgrade with Tokyo Super Sweets' Arigachoco. Based on a fusion of the Japanese word for "thank you" (arigato) and "chocolate," these chocolates (green tea-flavored, enrobed in a white chocolate coating) come with a QR code on the box. Scan the code with your cell phone and you'll receive a message of thanks that the sender picked for you (all ending cutely with "Arigachoco!"). Saves you from buying all that unnecessary stationery, eh? [via Trends in Japan]
Posted by Robyn Lee, February 14, 2008 at 12:15 PM
Have you ever wondered what chocolates do on Valentine's Day? Contrary to popular belief, they're not just inanimate objects incapable of showing true love—they can totally get their freak on.
Watch the chocolate mating ritual after the jump. Somewhat NSFW, more so if you have your sound turned up.
Posted by Erin Zimmer, February 13, 2008 at 10:30 PM
When You Care Enough to Give the Very Worst
Candy can be a beautiful thing, but throw Valentine's Day into the equation and suddenly every candy company unloads the kitschiest, tackiest, most undelicious confection onto the shelves. Sometimes it's the thought that counts, but other times, it's just a waste of perfectly good sugar—and, potentially, a relationship killer. We went on a hunt to find the best of the worst so you could see how bad it really is out there.
Worst Disney Character On a Stick
Add this to the nauseating marshmallow lollipop genre, except ... wait. Serious Eats intern Emily Koh—who probably loves Disneyland and Thunder Mountain and Minnie deep down—wanted no part in the taste-test. And who can blame her? The confection had all the, ahem, subtle aroma of undiluted lemon-scented floor cleaner. Disney should really get a grip on brand image.
Posted by Emily Stone, February 13, 2008 at 11:00 AM
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, here are some bursting heart alternatives:
The New York Times is reporting that several big chocolate companies in Europe are being investigated for price-gouging, just in time for Valentine's Day. That is the definition of cold-hearted corporate behavior.
Don't know what to get for that special someone this Valentine's Day? How about a chocolate fish to embody your limitless love? It comes accompanied by the witty sayings, "You're A Keeper" and "I'm Hooked On You." Get it?...yeah, okay. [via Candy Addict]
Posted by Emily Stone, February 6, 2008 at 11:00 AM
The first time I saw a Guittard's Nocturne 91% Cacao Extra Dark Chocolate Bar (which quietly crept onto the market last July) was at the New York Chocolate Show. Guittard's director of sales Mark Spini handed one to me. And, just as quickly, he snatched it away. "You can't eat this now," he said. You see, I was hanging around the Guittard booth with Andrew Shotts of Garrison Confections (Guittard's former pastry chef) and Amy Rosenfield of the Mon Aimee Chocolat boutique in Pittsburgh (which keeps both Guittard and Garrison products in stock). And we were drinking a bottle of Zinfandel. Mark explained that I couldn't possibly taste his super-dark, super-complex bar with a wine as heavy as a Zin. He told me to pop a milk chocolate in my mouth instead. The Zin was not for the Nocturne.
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 idea.
The picks from my 2006 chocolate gift guide are still good to go. So are the inside-out peanut butter cups, ultimate nougat bars, nut clusters, and butter crunch from 2007's Serious Eats Sweets Gift Guide. And if your significant other is a brownie lover, let me remind you about Mari's. But after the jump I'll turn you on to my latest and greatest chocolate discoveries.
Valentine's Day is just around the corner, so with the next two Cook the Book selections we will concern ourselves with sweets appropriate for the occasion. The first of our cookbooks for exploration is Alice Medrich's Chocolate Holidays: Unforgettable Desserts for Every Season. The book is geared toward people who love baking but might not have the time to devote to it, so each of its recipes has been chosen for brevity and ease of preparation.
The first of these will be along in a few minutes, but first, we'd like to let you know you can win a copy of this book. All you have to do is answer in the comments below: How do you indulge in chocolate? Hot cocoa? Chocolate cake? A rich and creamy pudding? Chocolate bars?
Posted by Gordon Mark, January 31, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Someone should make this life-size chocolate keyboard, which is, unfortunately, only a concept at this point. While it probably wouldn't work as a functional keyboard (the keys would either melt or get munched), it would be quite the geeky goodness. [via Gizmodo]
As much as I love seeing giant balls of chocolate getting bathed in layers of more chocolate, it's the 80's soundtrack of this video that propels it into a higher level of awesomeness.
Turn your volume up and see what I mean after the jump.
Posted by Emily Stone, January 30, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Since 1903, there's been more going on in Hershey, PA, than in any of the surrounding towns in Pennsylvania dairy country. In the early part of the twentieth century, chocolate baron Milton Hershey built a park, a zoo, and an amusement park, in addition to an orphanage and a hospital. In 1973, the elaborate Hershey's Chocolate World opened for official tours, offering a window into the chocolate-making process. In 2006, the company updated the Chocolate Tour Ride so that the scenes of dairy farming in the US and cacao harvesting abroad now look a more like something from this century and less like attractions from the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago (which is, of course, where Mr. Hershey got his start).
Perhaps the best use of two dollars, Meiji's Kinoko No Yama ("mountain mushrooms"), are found at even the most average Japanese market. The chocolate cap and biscuit-like cracker stem harmonize wonderfully. And the chocolate-to-cracker ratio is spot on. While the milk chocolate isn't great quality, similar to Glico's Pocky, there's something about the chocolate's density that offsets the cracker stem perfectly.
This week The Kitchen is focusing on chocolate—how it's made, how to use it in different forms, and what to make with it. Here are some of our favorite chocolate-filled posts:
Posted by Emily Stone, January 23, 2008 at 10:00 AM
As the chocolate industry becomes more like the wine industry, chocolate tourism is looking more like wine tourism, with trips to chocolate "regions" replacing factory tours. Here are two upcoming options in Central America, each with a few spaces left:
The Ecole Chocolat Master Chocolatier Tour of Costa Rica April 6–11, 2008; $1,990–$2,390 Steve DeVries (the maverick Colorado chocolate-maker who made an appearance in Mort Rosenblum's book Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light) knows a lot more about Central America than most people in the business. On this trip he's teaming up with the online cooking school Ecole Chocolat and bringing a team of adventurers on a bean-buying excursion to Costa Rica. The trip includes meetings with individual cacao farmers as well as stopovers in Costa Rica's pristine national parks.
About the author:Emily Stone, a food writer and proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh.
This Valentine's Day share Mii-shaped chocolate figurines with the one you love. They come packaged in a Wii-shaped box bearing the heartfelt declaration, "Wii belong together, you and Mii." Available for $15 at Paul Pape Designs. [via Yumsugar]
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 in the chocolate industry. Herein is the gospel according to Sam.
It takes cajones to set a cooking show to the tune of Isaac Hayes's "Chocolate Salty Balls." Emeril's not doing it. Neither is anyone else on cable or network TV. The only guy brave enough is James Beard Award-nominated chocolatier Michael Recchiuti—on YouTube.
Last week, the namesake of Recchiuti Confections uploaded two videos: Chocolate Truffle Class Part 1 and Chocolate Truffle Class Part 2. Recchiuti turns a San Francisco freight elevator into a makeshift studio, where he unveils a try-this-at-home recipe for "refrigerator truffles" while throwing around cue cards and tossing back champagne. Dressed like a wacked-out Santa in a red cap and a pair of kitchen overalls, he's the most subversive chef since Mero Cocinero, star of culinary-politics roadshow Cooking con Karimi (con Castro).
About the author:Emily Stone, a food writer and proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh.
Learn how to make chocolate truffles by watching San Francisco-based chocolatier Michael Recchiuti in action as he makes truffles in an elevator (an elevator being your second choice if your kitchen is too crowded):
The holiday season is hot cocoa/hot chocolate season no matter where you live, so as a public service the Serious Eaters have endeavored to taste every hot cocoa and hot chocolate we could find at a reasonable price. That means we set a price ceiling of 75¢ a serving. That means delicious fancy-pants hot chocolate mixes like Jacques Torres and MarieBelle's are not included in this tasting. They do contain chocolate, they are delicious, but they're just too pricey. The Land O' Lakes Supreme Hot Chocolate, which was pretty good, is also too expensive for our survey, at 99¢ a serving.
The Ground Rules
Before we begin, we must define our terms. Hot cocoa is made with cocoa powder, a by-product of the chocolate-making process. What that means is that almost all hot cocoa/hot chocolate varieties we found in our price range contained no chocolate. Even some brands that called themselves hot chocolate, like Lake Champlain Chocolates' Traditional Hot Chocolate, are actually mislabeled because they contain no chocolate.
Posted by Erin Zimmer, December 16, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Apparently, today is Chocolate-Covered Anything Day. It’s such a real national holiday that we even get it off of work and school! Go traditional with apricots or trusty with pretzels, nuts, and strawberries. Other suggestions include chocolate-covered pickles, chocolate-covered hot dogs, and chocolate-covered bacon. Hey, they said anything.
Posted by Emily Stone, December 12, 2007 at 8:00 AM
Save the frilly boxes of candy for Valentine's Day. And hold off on the chocolate-of-the-month club until your best friend gets married. This time of year, people need simple, warm gifts that will sustain them through the winter—like hot chocolate, or the tools to make good hot chocolate.
Despite what certain retailers may tell you, hot chocolate is not hard to make. It does not require overcomplicated kettles or overpriced gadgets. You can make extraordinary hot chocolate with just two ingredients: chocolate and milk. To avoid disaster, keep the heat low. To enhance the flavors, allow the hot chocolate to sit for several minutes, hours, or even days (after an hour, refrigerate it).
After the jump, the Serious Eats Hot Chocolate Gift Guide. Prices do not include shipping unless otherwise noted.
Just click through the mydovechocolate.com site to customize individually-wrapped chocolates by writing up to four secret messages with three seventeen-character lines each. The possibilities are endless: I'm a Tiger/Watch Me Roar/Baby, Oh, Baby and May Chocolate/Cure You of/All Mortal Sin are just two options among countless others. You can also select your own font, foil color, and clip art. The only drawback is that a bag of 50 bite-sized pieces will run you $79, a price more suited to Valrhona than a drugstore brand (even if Dove is a top-shelf drugstore brand).
Both Charles Chocolates in California and MarieBelle in New York will gladly take corporate orders and replace the designs atop their award-winning artisan chocolates with your company logo, but be prepared to order in bulk and drop a couple of grand.
About the author:Emily Stone, a food writer and proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh.
You can never go wrong giving someone something sweet for the holidays. Sweet things make people happy. Not just chocolate or cookies or cake either. Perfectly ripe fruit brings a smile to my face as well. Here's our guide to sweet things to give and get for the holidays. Prices don't include shipping unless otherwise specified.
Posted by Amanda Clarke, November 29, 2007 at 3:45 PM
I’ve recently had the pleasure of spending some time in the production kitchen of Brooklyn-based chocolatier CocoaVino, observing firsthand the care and attention given to every detail by proprietors Alisha Lumea and Avril Pendergast-Fischer. In addition to creating their unique and delectable chocolate bonbons and confections—all handcrafted to exacting standards—the duo also designs the company’s graphics and packaging, right down to the special box inserts that hold the bonbons snuggly in place.
This year, they’ve taken things even further, designing and making a small lot of beautiful cups for sipping their new hot chocolate mix. Individually sculpted by Ms. Pendergast-Fischer to resemble sections of white birch branch (complementing the birch-bark motif on the hot chocolate box), the charming shot-sized ceramic cups are as well-suited to serving rich hot chocolate as they are to any other manor of delicious winter tipple. And they’d make lovely holiday table accents, too—holding sprigs of holly or candy sticks.
The mugs are available as part of a gift set, which also includes half a pound of CocoaVino’s new cardamom-spiked Hyggelig Hot Chocolate, at cocoavino.com.
About the author: Amanda Clarke is a recovering restaurant pastry chef with a background in architecture. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes, tests, and develops recipes and works on freelance food-styling gigs between walkings and feedings of her two dogs and husband.
Posted by Emily Stone, November 27, 2007 at 8:00 AM
"Some 40 years ago, a budding chocolatier arrived on the scene and helped restore the fortunes of the once-great chocolate empire Baumeister Confections."
Screenshot courtesy of PlayFirst.
At least that's the story according to the opening screen of Chocolatier 2, a computer game from PlayFirst (the company behind the culinarily-inspired virtual pastimes DinerDash and, of course, Chocolatier 1). In the new version, which launches this week, you start at a San Francisco factory that bears a striking resemblance to the Ghirardelli headquarters (though the plot shares more with the Guittard family history) before traveling off to San Jose, California; Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; and Paris to make deals and secure investments. You get 50 sacks each of cocoa beans and sugar along with a set of candy recipes, but figuring out how to make artisanal chocolate may be easier than learning the rules of the game.
I suppose it's up to your imagination whether the Baumeister business dealings are socially responsible and environmentally sustainable. Adventurers looking for more accountability might want to close their laptops and jump into the Land Cruiser with Andy Pag and John Grimshaw, two Brits who are driving from Europe to Timbuktu with a tank full of cocoa-bean biodiesel. The pair has already been profiled in the Independent, on the BBC, and in the Times of India.
About the author:Emily Stone, a food writer and proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh.
Posted by Emily Stone, November 21, 2007 at 11:30 AM
Seneca Klassen cares deeply about where his chocolate comes from. At the two branches of his Bay Area shop, Bittersweet, he does a good trade in all manner of bars marked "70 percent," "Organic," and "Single Origin." He carries brands like Domori, El Rey, the Grenada Chocolate Company, and Platations, and San Francisco chocolate lovers show up in droves to buy them. It's a pretty good deal. But in recent months Seneca has been working harder—he's been calling in favors from friends in Hawaii, Madagascar, and the Dominican Republic; he's been doing the laboriously sweaty work of roasting cacao beans in a back-room convection oven; and he's been grinding those beans in home-baked machinery that he put together with parts ordered from ChocolateAlchemy.com. He's been doing all of this so that he can make a set of bars that he has ultimate confidence in: Bittersweet Origins.
Herein, Seneca explains what all the chocolate terminology being bandied about means to him.
Posted by Emily Stone, November 16, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Monica Passin paints with oil on canvas, she teaches guitar lessons around New York City, she sings old-school honky-tonk with her band Li'l Mo and the Monicats, she raises money for the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and she owns Painter Girl Chocolates (produced in Brooklyn, sold on the web). She also has the best Betty Boop laugh ever. At three o'clock last Sunday, I met Li'l Mo and her sweetheart, Eddie (a chocolate novice who's known Monica since grade school in Riverdale), at the back entrance to the New York Chocolate Show. By four, we'd had a sultry good time and discovered every secret in chocolate business.
Emily: I'm here at the Chocolate Show with Monica Passin of Painter Girl Chocolates. What are the conditions here, Monica?
What's the difference between bittersweet and semisweet chocolate? Why did your ganache or chocolate mixture break? Chocolate and dessert master David Lebovitz answers these questions and more in his chocolate FAQ.
For all those times that you've wondered what would happen to a chocolate bunny artfully subjected to the destructive power of an iron, a heat lamp, and a blow dryer, here's your answer.
Posted by Emily Stone, November 11, 2007 at 11:00 AM
The allure of the Chocolate Show is that you get to look the chocolatiers in the eye and have them place holy morsels on your tongue. You get the candymakers' unlimited attention—that is, until the chocolate wonks swoop in.
The chocolate wonks are very serious people. They're working the show, but they have no official status. They're like politicians on the campaign trail, taking meetings in hallways and while waiting in line. They have chocolate bars to sell, chocolate investment deals to negotiate, research on chocolate fermentation to carry out, and chocolate articles to write. Listen, and you'll hear them.
Posted by Emily Stone, November 10, 2007 at 9:00 AM
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.
Posted by Emily Stone, November 7, 2007 at 10:30 AM
This is a slow week for chocolate news. Most American chocolatiers and chocolate-makers are busy hitching their horses to their wagons for the harrowing journey (either across the country or across town) to the tenth annual Chocolate Show in New York City.
And, of course, other earnest chocolate pioneers, from far and wide
The Chocolate Show takes place at the Metropolitan Pavilion at 125 West 18th Street and runs from 11 a.m. Friday to 7 p.m. Sunday.
About the author:Emily Stone, a food writer and proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh.
An artisanal food tradition has been quietly taking hold in Tuscany in the last two and a half decades: chocolate-making. And the chocolate in this region of central Italy has two defining characteristics: It uses the flavors of the area (lavender, olive oil, balsamic, rosemary) and "is made in handcrafted batches in small factories."
Posted by Emily Stone, October 30, 2007 at 12:15 PM
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.
I've been procrastinating a lot this month. There are two things that I do when I procrastinate: eat chocolate and fixate on stuff I find online. And that's how I found myself unwrapping about a dozen five-gram chocolate squares (each one with a funky cacao-pod design indented in it along with the words 
Brownies aren't merely my preferred dessert; they're one of my all-time favorite foods. Over the years I've learned to bake some pretty amazing varieties, from Susan Spungen's 
I'm getting tired of people touting the health benefits of chocolate. I just saw a couple ladies about town ogling Dolfin's "
If you gave up something for Lent this year, chances are it was either 
The staff at the 
I love 
Thank you notes get a "sweet" upgrade with Tokyo Super Sweets' 
Add this to the nauseating marshmallow lollipop genre, except ... wait. Serious Eats intern Emily Koh—who probably loves Disneyland and Thunder Mountain and Minnie deep down—wanted no part in the taste-test. And who can blame her? The confection had all the, ahem, subtle aroma of undiluted lemon-scented floor cleaner. Disney should really get a grip on brand image.
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 
The first time I saw a 
. The book is geared toward people who love baking but might not have the time to devote to it, so each of its recipes has been chosen for brevity and ease of preparation. 
This Valentine's Day share 
It takes cajones to set a cooking show to the tune of Isaac Hayes's "Chocolate Salty Balls." Emeril's not doing it. Neither is anyone else on cable or network TV. The only guy brave enough is James Beard Award-nominated chocolatier 
Apparently, today is 
I’ve recently had the pleasure of spending some time in the production kitchen of Brooklyn-based chocolatier 
Monica Passin paints with oil on canvas, she teaches guitar lessons around New York City, she sings old-school honky-tonk with her band 
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 
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