On the first day of Christmas Vosges Chocolate Gave to Me….

 Happy Holidays Chocolate Lovers!

I was very excited to see a Vosges Chocolate advent calendar.  I haven’t done an advent calendar since I was really young and that was the kind with the little pop out windows and tiny pieces of chocolate that tasted only a little better than the cardboard they were hidden behind.  But what did I care?  I was a kid.  Chocolate was chocolate! Those were more innocent times. 

Luckily this isn’t your average kiddy advent calendar!  The box is huge and has 25 different compartments for each day before Christmas. Twas the Night Before Christmas is written on the sides of the door panels and everything is purple in honor of Vosges’ signature color. 

As soon as I opened the doors to the box I was a little disappointed to find an entire list of all the chocolate contained in each box.  For me, the point of an advent calendar is to be surprised by what you get each day.  In the future it might be better to have the label inside the box for after you open it to save some of the surprise. 

But surprises aside, I was very excited to see what I got for the first day.  

Vosges' peppermint candy cane bar is one of my favorites of theirs and finding a mini bar in the box was a great way to start off the season!  The peppermint and chocolate are very well balanced and are perfect for the holidays. 

(By the way, if you're still interested, the Vosges store in SoHo is still selling their advent calendar boxes  and at a discount.  I'm sure you won't be sad that you have to catch up.)

 

RAWWWSOME

So for the most part I have woefully neglected this blog.  I now have a new puppy in the house who eats any scrap on the floor she can find, so having chocolate in the house is much more precarious than when it just used to go to my hips.  And since I only wish I could be a professional blogger, that means I can post whenever I want. 

And now that I’m finished with excuses, we can get on to the real reason you read this blog: amazing chocolate. 

I’m not always impressed by local New York “bean to bar” gourmet chocolates.  I’ll be the first to admit that I have been taken in by pretty packaging and a good slogan only to find that the chocolate inside is stale and not very appetizing.  So I was skeptical when I heard about Fine & Raw sea salt and Raaka’s bourbon cask aged chocolate bars.

Both companies are based out of Brooklyn and are equipped with that artistic wrapping paper that always makes me wonder about what's underneath.    But thankfully, I tried them at the most recent New Amsterdam Market and they reminded me of why I started a chocolate blog in the first place. 

Both Raaka and Fine & Raw are advertised as “raw chocolate” which means chocolate made in as close to a raw state as possible.  This means no refined sugars, and the resulting bars are about as far away from Hershey’s as you can possibly get. 

Fine &Raw’s 70% sea salt bar was deep and refreshing with a saltiness that you can actually taste, but doesn’t overwhelm the chocolate. 

Raaka’s bar was prepared by aging the cacao nibs in bourbon casks.   The bar is slightly thicker than most and has a warm cherry flavor with a strong berry aftertaste.  The bar tastes like the whiskey of chocolate, smooth and hits you with a punch. 

The bars are small and a little pricey, but completely worth it because a little bit goes a long way.  You won’t want to eat these in one sitting, but savor them with a glass of wine or cheese.   

Check out their websites here:

http://www.fineandraw.com/

http://www.raakachocolate.com/

Sweet Silk Chocolates- gluten free, stupid good.

My first instinct is to say Sweet Silk chocolates are weird.  In fact, I almost didn’t even try them.  The first time I was at the New Amsterdam Market and saw their gluten-free chocolates, I was more nervous about the flavor combinations than impressed, but thank goodness I had a change of heart.  These chocolates are what I like to call “stupid good” and are odd in the best possible way. 

Sweet Silk offered two different kinds of chocolates.  They have a selection of truffles which are all natural and gluten-free, and their sweets which are are more like candy bars and are cut into small squares like fudge with a small square of chocolate on top. Their truffles are unique in that they have chewy centers made of fruits and nuts that pack quite a wallop! Both the truffles and the treats are grainy and earthy and remind me of the texture of good marzipan. The cherry dark chocolate truffle sample which probably amounted to ¼ of the full truffle, was rich and full of very powerful fruit flavors.  Sweet Silk is not afraid of flavors that leave you more than satisfied after one taste.  Which is good for a girl like me who is on a diet.  You don’t have to eat more than one to feel like you’ve treated yourself for the day.  (Though I did find it in my heart to..um..oversample the samples). 

On the whole, the combination of middle eastern fruits and nuts really make for interesting chocolates.  My favorite chocolate from Sweet Silk was the rose and white chocolate sweet treat.  The rose flavor is blended perfectly with the chocolate and doesn’t overpower or seem unbalanced.  I think it would be the perfect treat for Valentine’s Day.  I mean who could resist combining the chocolate and the rose into one gift!

Check out Sweet Silk chocolates at the New Amsterdam Market this coming Sunday at the South Street Seaport or check out their website here at https://www.savorsweetsilk.com/

Fika Chocolates or how I met one of my favorite chocolatiers.

I’ve always been a fan of FIKA.  FIKA is a Swedish coffee shop that has three stores in New York so far (though big plans are in the works for a fourth store).  The word fika, according to the website, roughly translates to taking a coffee break, so the store itself is mostly known for its high quality coffee. 

Which is sad because their chocolate is fantastic aswell.  

Håkan Mårtensson,a chocolatier who has, among other things, won a gold medal at the  2008 culinary Olympics, has a very playfu lside as well as a strong mastery of what you can do with chocolate.  In the kitchen there is a foot tall Yoda made of chocolate, and a dragon draped around a mountain, which I found out he actually made live in front of an audience at a chocolate expo. And you get the feeling from the flavors of his truffles that he is always experimenting and pushing the limits of what you can do with chocolate. 

I had always wanted to meet Håkan since I heard from one of the staff that he often comes tothe shop to check in and do work there in their impossibly small kitchen.  My fiance and I often go there on the weekends for chocolate and coffee, but today we decided to get coffee there on a weekday morning, and as soon as we entered the stylish shop I saw him. 

I turned to myfiance. ”That’s him! Oh my gosh that’s him!”  I was so excited, I got hisattention and gestured ”I <3 U" making a heart shape with my fingers. Yes excitement turns me into a crazyfangirl.  He smiled and went back to his work.  I really wanted to meet him and tell him how much of a fan I am.

But then Ihesitated.  I didn’t want to bother him while he was at work.  Who knows what kind of masterpiece he was about to make. The creative genius can not be stopped for just a fan!   

Michael brought me down to earth. 

           

”You’ll never know unless you ask, right?”  He convinced me to ask one of the baristas if I could take a picture with him, hoping that he would take just a minute to come and say hello. The man went back and I saw the two of them talking through the glass window where you could see the pastry chefs at work. 

Then he came outand saw me waiting for him, (possibly jumping up and down a little because Icouldn’t help myself).  He smiled and I smiled.  I didn’t expect a long conversation but we ended up talking for a good five minutes about chocolate. 

I told him how much I loved his flavor profiles of his truffles and how his chocolate is art.  He told me he was a fan of Star Wars, hence Yoda, and has spent over 20,000 hours of his life working with chocolate.  A fact I can believe, especially after he told me how much work he does without chocolate equipmentsuch as a tempering machine.  Everything they do comes out of that small kitchen including chocolate that he supplies toWhole Foods and the Gansevoort Hotels.

We also talked about how he recently worked with Valrhona chocolates to make a coveture that is specifically for his chocolates and also how he stays so thin (he says henever takes his work home with him).  Wetalked about some of his future projects which are in the works, and I can’twait to see how things develop for this talented chocolatier in the future. 

After we talkedand I came down from cloud nine I drank my coffee and thought about what just happened.  I think people who are good atwhat they do like to know that someone out there is a fan of their work.  I’m glad that I got a chance to meet him andeven more excited that I have a six piece box of Fika truffles waiting for me!

Cheers! 

http://www.fikanyc.com/chocolate

Domori Javablond chocolate.

ZOMG Chocolate!

As soon as I get pictures off my camera I will tell you about all of my adventures in Portland (ironic that I blog about New York chocolate specifically and my new favorite chocolate store is in downtown Portland...go fig).

Anyhow I am on a chocolate mission. When I was in Portland a wise chocolate store worker let me taste a sample of Domori Javablond chocolate...and I flipped out. The taste is deep rich, berry and musky. My new favorite chocolate. It's made with the highest quality cacao beans (criollo). To Domori's credit they have almost single handedly revived the population of these trees in the world.

My chocolate mission is to find where to buy Domori chocolate here in New York. So far I haven't seen it, but I'm sure I will figure it out.

Oyster Truffles

So hi again. I am not a person who can update the bloggy-mc blog consistently. I am currently clearing out my backlog of posts so more shall happen in the near future. We shall see how this goes. In any case on to more important things! The chocolate.

Back in February my friends and I had a chocolate party. I wanted to find some really weird chocolates and found that Vosges Chocolates had aphrodisiac chocolate boxes just in time for Valentine's Day. I was hooked on the idea. And then I found out that they had kumamoto oyster truffles. Yes you heard me, truffles with shell-fish. Double intrigued.

For some reason they refused to sell it to me by the piece. You had to get an expensive heart shaped box with only two truffles. Going into it I thought the truffles would be really salty and weird. Oyster truffles?! But it was worth it. My friend Beth and I not only lived to tell the tale, but it was one of the most interesting, delicious truffles I have ever had.

The chocolate itself was white chocolate with the oyster mixed right into the white chocolate ganache. The ganache was a bit grainy in texture, and they said they made it slightly differently than usual. The sweet white chocolate had just a touch of oyster in it. It was creamy rich and subtle as well as flavorful. The oyster didn't come out and bite but stayed comfortably in the center. It tasted like vanilla ice cream actually!

If when Valentine's rolls around next year, you too decide to get adventurous, this is the way to go. Hopefully, Vosges will get their act together and sell them by the piece, but until then the Aphrodisiac Box is the way to go. ( The absinthe truffle was also worthwhile so getting the box isn't half bad.) Here's to more adventures in the land of chocolate

Recee's Pieces!
-Jeni

An evening of chocolate

Chocolate at the Waltz-Astoria.

I just had a night full of chocolate. I'm getting ready for my performance on Saturday, an instrumental night, and went out to the Waltz open mic. They were advertising their new frozen hot chocolates, my favorite contradiction in terms. I had that and everyone started asking me about it. It doesn't make any sense. Frozen hot chocolate you say? Why yes, it is delicious.

I had a great time tonight (though my songs need work). To top it off, a chocolate cheesecake.

I've been avoiding chocolate these days. How could I? Because chocolate and my waistline don't get along, but chocolate and my soul do. I'll split the difference.

Anyhow that is to say that more is coming. I have more chocolate adventures to come. Old backed up stuff but good stuff.

Later.