Chocri
What: Gift-worthy chocolate bars topped with a custom mix of toppings
Price range: Roughly $10 to $15 based on my bars, depending the toppings
Recommended chocolates: All of them
Recommended toppings: Honey chocolate drops, strawberry chocolate drops, real gold flakes, dried raspberry, dried strawberry, anise seed, hazelnut brittle, toasted hazelnuts, marzipan rose

When I received a very friendly email from Carmen at Chocri offering to send me three of their custom chocolate bars in the hopes of hearing my opinion of them, I jumped at the chance to do a review.

Okay, okay, I got very excited about the prospect of free fancy chocolate and then didn’t respond to the email for months. Oops. Pregnancy does odd things to the brain. But once I started to get the hang of my new full-time mommy job, the siren song of my food blog started calling to me, and I remembered the offer. Then I jumped at the chance, and Chocri was kind enough to give me a belated shot at it.

Now, I have to admit my first thought when I checked out their site (http://createmychocolate.com/) was I could make that. Anyone with a creative bent has had that thought before, whether looking at something in a boutique or magazine or online. Usually it accompanies an urge to purchase said item. But no matter how much you want it, no matter how much you acknowledge the ingenuity of the person or company who came up with it and or at least put a novel spin on it, I could make that is usually enough to keep your wallet in your purse or pocket, even when you know you never will get around to it.

I was getting the chocolate bars for free, but even so I was haunted by the I could make that vibe as I set off to explore the site. I had this idea that the bars would be way better or more fun or something similarly vague yet persuasive if I made them myself. And I certainly wouldn’t pay for something I could make in my own kitchen.

But as I started designing my bars, I could make that met a fearsome opponent: Hey, this is really fun. First, you select what kind of chocolate you want: dark, milk or white. All three are organic, fair trade Belgian chocolate. (I would add “rich” or “delicious” or something similar to that description, but that would be getting ahead of myself.)

Then you add up to five toppings. I had a lot more fun picking them out than I expected. Not that I didn’t expect it to be fun; it was simply more fun than I had anticipated. There are six different topping categories (excluding seasonal categories): fruit, spices, nuts, confections, decor and grains. The heading “grains” includes a lot of things I wouldn’t consider grains–most notably bacon and flower petals–but it’s a fun category with a lot of variety so I’ll forgive them if something got lost in the translation from their original German site.

The pictures of the toppings appear against the variety of chocolate you’ve chosen, making it easier to imagine the overall aesthetic effect. Clicking on the names of the toppings takes you to educational and entertaining descriptions. If you’re looking for inspiration (or just want to leave the creativity to someone else), Chocri has a page of recommended creations and top five bar names of the week lists on their blog (as I was researching for my review, I saw that one of my bars made the list…very fun!).

According to their website, there are more than 10 billion possible combos. I’ll take their word for that, because I don’t have time to do math these days beyond how long the Microfoodie has been napping. (Forty minutes at the moment, in case you’re curious.) Faced with such a vast selection to choose from, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to give the bars names (up to two lines of text on the packaging) and create them each with a theme based on something in my life.

Time passed, and my bars showed up more or less on schedule, maybe a day or two later than the estimated date of arrival. I was very impressed with their appearance; the red boxes are quite striking against all three types of chocolate. It was fun seeing the names I’d come up with for the bars right there on the packaging, looking very crisp and professional.

What really got me excited was the look of the bars themselves. I never expected the toppings to be arranged with such care and artistry. That appeased a large part of my remaining I could do that. One of the main reasons I would have wanted to make a bar like this myself was to give my inner perfectionist control over what it looked like, but the bars from Chocri pretty much satisfied that desire.

On the back of each box a list of the toppings appears along with the code that allows you (or the recipient, if the bar was created as a gift) to reorder the exact same bar in the future. Inside the box, the bar is wrapped in shiny plastic, lending a glamorous sparkle to the toppings beneath. I know, I know, it’s wrapped in plastic, big deal, but for some reason I thought this particular plastic wrapper looked sharp and special, seeing as it was holding my own creation.

One of the things I was most surprised with was how thin the bar was. Most of the toppings-heavy bars I’ve seen offered for sale have been chocolate-heavy as well. While you might expect less chocolate to be a negative thing, I liked the chocolate-to-toppings ratio of the Chocri bars. Keeping them on the thinner side also accentuates the well-tempered snap of good chocolate.

Honeyed Paradise: a foodie’s love letter
Dark Chocolate with Paradise Grains, Honey Chocolate Drops, Real Gold Flakes, Rice Crispies in Chocolate Coating and Bourbon Vanilla

I designed this first bar with Chris in mind, drawing on his love of honey, fine liquor, spices and spiciness. This was the biggest visual hit of the three bars, its appeal based in the monochromatic exploration of texture enhanced by the dusting of glittering gold. In other words, we thought it looked cool. The grains of paradise came to mind because I was a bit disappointed in the chili options among the toppings, which were limited to chili powder and whole dried chilies. We all quite liked the way the subtle and unusual spiciness of the grains of paradise played off of the strong fruit notes in the chocolate and the sweetness of the honey drops.

However, at the end of every bite, everyone who tasted this bar ended up chewing on a grain or two that had gotten stuck in their mouth, a slight detriment to the overall experience. It sort of ruins the balance of flavors when one of them stays behind as a hard little nuisance between your molars. I understand why the spices are left whole as they’re much prettier that way, but I think it would be great if you could choose to have them ground before being added to your bar. I would’ve also liked the rice crispies to be a bit crispier and lend more crunch to the bar. But the flavor was quite an intriguing combination, especially the intersection of the chocolate, honey and grains of paradise components, and one I’d like to explore in my own chocolates in the future.

Parisian Breakfast Memory: muesli, banana, macaron
Milk Chocolate with Banana Chips, Hazelnut Brittle, Candied Rose Petals, Toasted Hazelnuts and Organic Muesli

We had some of the best and worst food of our European trip during our four days in Paris, scaling the heights with a rose-flavored macaron Ipshan from Pierre Hermé’s shop and plummeting into the depths with one too many baguettes laden with a few slices Swiss cheese and more mayonnaise than I had consumed up until that point in my life. Eating well as a vegetarian on a budget in Paris apparently takes more planning than I had done.

Along with the divine macaron I mentioned and the fresh morning bread and pastries at the bakery half a block from our hotel’s front door, one of my favorite food memories of Paris is going across the street to the tiny grocery store. In fact, from that point on, I got excited at any chance I got to go to a regular food store. Not only because of the whole vegetarian-on-a-budget thing, which made the prospect of a banana and some really good yogurt exciting in comparison to what we found in the touristy areas of the cities we visited, but also because it’s fascinating to see what products are on the shelves. I was particularly fond of some hazelnut cereal bars I found in the little market in Paris. Americans don’t use hazelnuts nearly often enough.

This bar spans the gap between the high class patisserie and the hole in the wall market not much bigger than a convenience store. Rose petals for the macaron, bananas, hazelnuts, hazelnut brittle and organic museli for the breakfast I had before I set out in search of the macaron, and Belgian milk chocolate just to round out the European theme.

I think Troy, my best friend, said it best when he described the bar as tasting like a high-quality cereal bar coated in really good chocolate. All of the chocolate we got from Chocri was really, really good. But this was the one bar where I thought the toppings could have had a more assertive presence. I think I would have liked it better if it really was a cereal bar covered in that chocolate instead of the other way around. I could barely pick out the flavor of the muesli, and couldn’t taste the rose petals at all. However, I did like the crunch of the toasted hazelnuts and the hazelnut brittle.

My Sweet Anise by Pie of the Tiger
White Chocolate with Raspberry, Strawberry, Strawberry Chocolate Drops, Anise and Marzipan Rose

The story behind this one is much shorter:
a) Dilettante Chocolates, a local chocolate company, makes a white chocolate and anise truffle. This was possibly my first taste of a chocolate flavor pairing more challenging than peanut butter or caramel, and I still really enjoy it.
b) I wanted to put pretty red and pink toppings all over the white chocolate bar.

I think I meant to tie those two plot points together by connecting the romantic marzipan rose to my having first had the truffle at my brother’s wedding, or acknowledging the influence of this white chocolate and raspberry bar by Divine Chocolate that I tasted at the Seattle Chocolate Salon, but really, this one was almost entirely about the pretty.

This bar was my unexpected favorite. Even my anti-white chocolate taste testers admitted it was good, and it turned out to be quite pretty indeed. Chris and Troy both felt the anise seeds presented the same problem the grains of paradise had in the first bar; I thought they were less of an issue in that respect than the grains of paradise had been.

I loved the way the bold flavors–super sweet white chocolate, distinctive anise, acidic raspberry, bright raspberry and bold almond–both blended and stood out. Each one took it’s turn on my palate, the others supporting without detracting from the star of the moment. It was the sort of flavor progression I’ve admired in the best chocolates that I tasted at the Chocolate Salon last summer. Granted, I don’t think any adult could eat more than one square of this bar at a time, but that just makes the chocolate last longer, right?


Overall, despite my nagging I could make this thoughts, I’d consider going back to Chocri to buy a bar in the future. Let’s face it, I’m not exactly overloaded with free time to putter around my kitchen making chocolates, and even when I was, I rarely got around to it. And I’d certainly recommend them to anyone who’s first thought when seeing these photos is I could get someone to make one of those especially for me? Cool.

The prices are about what you’d expect for a chocolate bar custom-made with organic, fair trade chocolate and high quality toppings and presented so stylishly. Had I purchased them, my bars would have run in the $11 to $14 range. This puts the bars squarely in gift territory for me, as I’d probably make truffles to experiment with flavor combinations for myself. But a Chocri bar or the experience of creating one provided by a gift certificate would make a fun and delicious gift for almost anyone, from a sweet tooth with a favorite chocolate mix-in to a foodie playing with flavors to a kid piling on colorful candy.

I had one other suggestion I was going to email to Chocri–sort of an Amazon Associates-style program where you could design a bar, link to it from your blog and earn a chocolate bar for every X number of people who bought your creation–but I see that they’ve recently started a program that’s almost as cool. They call it the 5+1 Rule: for every five chocolate bars you create, they’ll add a surprise bar to your order. I have to admit that what they say about it makes me kind of curious to see what I’d get.

Even cooler are the big coupons they’re giving out to anyone following them on Facebook or Twitter by May 3rd, based on the number of followers they have by that date. They’re already up to enough to cover around half of the cost of a chocolate bar, so if you’re interested in giving them a try, go forth and follow them. (While you’re at it, you now can become a fan of “like” Pie of the Tiger on Facebook. Not much to see there yet, but just wait!)

Extra special bonus challenge: Whether or not you want to buy a bar, head over to Chocri’s site and design one based on a theme inspired by your life. Then come back here and tell me about it. I’d love to hear what other people come up with!

So I went about collecting juice orders from about 10 friends, and tried my best to guess at how many apples would be required to hit the 40-45 gallons that we all wanted.  Based on a number that turned out to be way off base, that came to 630 pounds.  After factoring in the cost of renting a cider press and crusher from a local brewing supply store, I guessed that it would cost somewhere around $8 per gallon, which sounded pretty reasonable compared to the $12-15 that organic unfiltered apple juice can cost in the store, especially if I could also pick the kinds of apples that were going into the juice (Honeycrisp are Jessica’s favorite).  Too bad my information and my math were wrong.

Finding apples was easy.  I went to our local weekly farmers market and talked to the people at Tonnemaker Family Orchards.  Kurt Tonnemaker was happy to deliver 30 boxes full of Honeycrisp, Cameo, and Gala apple “seconds” for $0.50/lb (the boxes were an extremely welcome surprise — I initially thought I’d end up with a huge bin of apples at the bottom of my steep driveway).

For those who don’t know, apple seconds are the older and uglier apples — not good enough to sell at full retail price for eating but still full of delicious juice.  I’d like to add that I love knowing the name of the people who grow the food I eat — the Tonnemaker family all seem to love what they do, which I think makes their produce taste even better.

A friend picked up the press, which as you can see is stained quite purple from other people using it for grapes.  It also smelled like stale beer.  If you ever go about renting a cider press, make sure you pack a tarp to protect your car’s interior. 

We also picked up a couple of pressing bags.  These are basically nylon mesh bags designed to handle the pressure of the press.  The idea is that you can press them more before you start getting apple pulp leaking into your juice.  The problem we found is that the bags are about $8 each, and don’t actually hold very much apple.  With both bags full, the press wasn’t even full enough to get more than a couple of cups of juice out.  The press came with spacers to allow you to press it down much further than the screw allows, but we all felt that we were missing at least one more pair of spacers to get any advantage out of the pressing bags, so we abandoned them after a single attempted use.

The crusher was definitely worth the rental fee, however.  This is basically a device that breaks up the apples into chunks that help make the pressing easier.  Our apples were quite large, which prevented the crusher’s blades from easily pulling them in, so we ended up building an assembly line to wash, rinse, and quarter the apples before dropping them into the crusher. 

We washed the apples in a large garbage can that I keep around for yard waste (meaning that it has never been used for actual garbage), in a solution of standard “fruit and vegetable wash” from the grocery store along with an extra dose of grapefruit seed extract for good measure (which has powerful antibacterial/anti-fungal properties).  Rinsing was done in some large food-safe buckets that I keep on hand for brewing.  We also used these same buckets to hold the pulp produced by the crusher until we were ready to pour it into the press itself.

After a few attempts with the ratchet press that had it wandering all over my deck (trailing some nice scratch marks), we quickly realized that the forces involved were more than we could handle without actually attaching it, so I succumbed and drilled some holes for lag bolts.  Along with some beeswax to grease up the screw mechanism, we were able to more than double the speed with which we could ratchet down the pressure on the apple pulp.

Even without the pressing bags, we didn’t have any trouble with pulp pressing out through the slats on the press, so I can’t really recommend them as an extra investment.  We used one bag as a filter over the drain into our juice bucket, but you could get the same effect from some cheap cheesecloth.  Definitely invest in some lag bolts and a wood surface to attach the press to, or you’ll never get enough pressure for a good amount of juice.

After about 8 hours (2-3 of which were spent just figuring things out), we managed to get 33 gallons of juice out of 630 lbs of apples.  This put the total cost per gallon somewhere just under $13, which was a far cry from the $4 that I was trying to reach.  The sad thing is that Whole Foods put organic cider on sale for $6/gallon one week before the pressing party.  Good thing the experience of actually pressing my own apple juice was worth it.

So what did we do with the juice?  Cider.

Well, as you can see from the first paragraph, one of my primary goals was to make some hard cider.  The recipe from my friend Tor is about as simple as it gets for cider, but it’s also not going to taste anything like the stuff you get at the store.  Turns out, I didn’t actually have enough sugar, anyway.  I usually use dry champagne or ale yeast for my cider, but this time I decided to splurge and try out two different strains of liquid yeast from the brew store:  one specifically for cider, and a champagne yeast (both from Wyeast Labs, which is a brand you’ll find at most brewing supply stores).  Since I started brewing without checking to see that I had enough sugar on hand, and still had a bunch of honey left over from making mead, I decided to make a cyser instead (this is basically a melomel, or an apple mead).  The recipe went as follows (twice, since I made a 5-gallon batch for each type of yeast):

• 8 cups of white sugar
• 3 cups of golden brown sugar
• 8.5 lbs of fireweed honey (about 11 1/3 cups)
• apple juice to fill the bucket to 5 gallons

I mixed about 1 gallon of apple juice with the sweeteners and cooked them until everything was dissolved.  Then I added it to my fermenting bucket and topped it off to a little over 5 gallons, let it cool for awhile, and pitched in the yeast.  That’s pretty much all you have to do for cider, and it’s currently bubbling away in my garage (ok, so there is some maintenance work to be done, but I haven’t actually done that yet and I’ll reserve that for another post dedicated specifically to brewing).

And Jelly.

Aside from drinking a bunch of the juice, we also made a batch of apple cinnamon jelly.  With the arrival of our first child scheduled for early December, Jessica and I have been doing our best to prepare for Christmas gifts in advance, which includes teaching ourselves how to make jams and jellies (I’m sure she’ll have a post of her own on this topic that will be better than anything I can come up with).

Using a trick I use for clarifying homebrews like mead and cider, I clarified a bunch of the apple juice using bentonite clay.  Bentonite is amazing stuff — 24 hours after mixing up a slurry and tossing it into the juice I had a gallon or so of almost completely clear apple juice, with all of the opaque solids settled to the bottom of my pitcher.  Using a recipe from The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving, Jessica and I made a double batch of gorgeous apple cinnamon jelly.

Jessica: We followed the recipe in the book fairly closely, but started with clarified cider and made a much, much larger batch. We also added more cinnamon. The book calls for one cinnamon stick to two and a half cups of unfiltered cider; we used one short cinnamon stick per a jar (a total of 11 sticks) for eight cups of filtered cider. Why? Because I wanted a stick in every jar, not just a shard of a stick in every jar! Essentially, for every 2 cups of pre-clarified cider, we added 4 cinnamon sticks and brought it to a boil in a large, covered pot. (Covering is important to prevent boiling off too much of the water content of the cider, as the original recipe has you start with more unfiltered cider, and then measure again after steeping the cinnamon and filtering the result. We measured out that second measurement from the start, so we wanted to keep it all in the pot.)

Once the cider was bubbling fiercely, we let it continue for about five more minutes and then fished out the cinnamon sticks. If you wanted to take an extra step at this point, you could strain the cider to remove any tiny flecks of cinnamon and then return it to the pot, but we were on our second variety of jelly for the evening and midnight was quickly approaching, so we just left it as is. Personally, I don’t think the little flecks of cinnamon dotted through the clear, golden jelly look bad at all, although I did strain a few largish ones out at the end.

Next, we added 3 1/2 cups of granulated sugar for every 2 cups of cider and, once again, brought it to a boil, stirring occasionally to make sure the sugar dissolved completely. As the mixture heated through, we tasted it, and we both worried that perhaps there was a little too much cinnamon in the mix. We discussed leaving the cinnamon sticks out of the jars, but neither one of us wanted to do that, so I put a stick in each jar as we waited and hoped for the best.

Once the cider was boiling again, we added a pouch of liquid pectin for every 2 cups of the original volume of cider, stirred the pot, and let it boil for one more minute. There was a whitish foamy gel on the top, and I used a very small, very fine sieve to skim it off the top. We thought it might melt into the rest of the jelly as the jars processed. It didn’t melt, just rose to the top in the jars that got some of the gloopy stuff, so in retrospect I would’ve let my inner perfectionist have free reign and gotten every last bit of the foam off the top.

After that, it was a simple matter of filling the jars with the jelly and processing them as directed in the book. (I’m new to and wary of preserving enough to let you figure out how to do that elsewhere!) From 8 cups of cider, 14 cups of sugar, 11 cinnamon sticks and 4 pouches of pectin, we filled ten 12 oz. jars and one 8 oz. jar, plus a plastic 8 oz. jelly jar for our fridge. For every 2 cups of cider, you can expect to get around four 8 oz. jars plus about a quarter of a cup or so to spare.

We tasted the jelly again at this point. Our earlier worries had been completely misplaced. Over the duration of the cooking time, the fresh apple flavor and the cinnamon had blended beautifully, and the resulting jelly tasted exactly like hot apple cider on Christmas Day. We’ve since eaten our way through most of the jar we put straight into the fridge, putting it on English muffins, pancakes, graham crackers and, in a moment of desperation on Chris’ part, a spoon. I’d like to make another batch, but this time I want to put the entire pot away in the fridge and freezer for our own quick consumption.

All in all, it was a very easy recipe, so easy that I can remember it off the top of my head days later. The instructions in The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving are clear, and there’s a very wide range of really delicious-sounding recipes to try, all in small batches so that you don’t need bulk produce, huge equipment and a zillion jars to try them out. My only complaint is that there isn’t much explanation of why you do what they tell you to do, which makes the book incomplete on its own as a way of learning to create your own jelly recipes. Perhaps too much of my foodie education came at the feet of Alton Brown, but I need to know the science and the rules behind what I’m doing in the kitchen to really make the process my own. I’m now eying The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves: 200 Classic and Contemporary Recipes Showcasing the Fabulous Flavors of Fresh Fruits as the next book I’d like to get on the subject, as well as the classic Ball Blue Canning Book, so that I can learn a bit more of the “why” behind the “how.” But I still really like this book for what it is, and it’s fun to look through it and imagine what all of the creative flavor combinations might be like.

I had the really good fortune to check my email shortly after a message showed up from Foodbuzz offering the first two Featured Publishers to respond a ticket to attend the Seattle Chocolate Salon on their behalf. (This was back in mid-July–did I really start writing this post a over a month ago? Fortunately, chocolate never goes out of style, but I still want to give FoodBuzz a big thank you for being kind and patient with an exhausted and preoccupied pregnant foodie!)

My fortune wasn’t favorable just because I got a free ticket; Chris attended as my trusty photographer and we both felt that the experience was well worth the $20 he spent to get in. No, I also count myself lucky because if it hadn’t been for that email, I never would have known about the event at all. I don’t know if I live under a rock or what, but the only other place I’ve seen a mention of the event was in another food blog after I already had scored myself a ticket. To make matters worse, in the days leading up to the Salon, I felt a bit confused by the layout and wording of the site, and was unsure exactly what kind and quality of event I was going to be attending. So even if I had found out about it another way, if I hadn’t had that ticket already, I’m not sure the website would have convinced me to go.

Which would have been a huge shame, because the event itself was all kinds of awesome. Several different varieties of awesome, in fact, that far exceeded both of our expectations.

There was an overwhelming amount of chocolate to taste, really good chocolate made by people who really think about their craft. When the very friendly event staff at the will call table had banded us with VIP wrist straps (I’m pretty sure everyone was a VIP, but hey, it always feels pretty cool to be Very Important), one of them told me we were free to go in and make ourselves sick on chocolate. We got there almost four hours before the salon ended, and we still didn’t quite manage to hit every table, much less go to any of the chocolate demos they were holding in a side room off the main floor. Even so, I have to admit I did end up making myself ill.

In my defense, this probably had as much to do with being pregnant as with the pound or two of rich, delicious chocolate I consumed. And I did it in the name of good journalism! I mean, really, it wouldn’t have been fair not to attempt to try every chocolate on display, even if I ultimately failed in that goal. What if I only tasted the chocolates I didn’t like on a table, and missed a few stellar ones I’d end up waxing poetic over?

Eventually, I realized that was not the best way to go about things and started picking and choosing what I tasted. I noticed that certain flavors made appearances at a plurality of tables, and comparing the variations on chili, mojito or grapefruit chocolates ended up being a much better way to compare and contrast quality and style than trying to take everything in. I also went for the most unusual flavors the more creative chocolatiers were offering, and rarely was disappointed by what I chose.

As time ran short, I reached for smaller and smaller chunks of chocolate and pieces of cut up confections, but I learned all those lessons too late. Still, the wonderful thing was that the whole room seemed to have magic chocolate bubble around it. Even as I got fuller and fuller, I was still enjoying chocolate up until the very end. I didn’t start feeling queasy until we’d trudged back up the hill to our car, leaving the experience of the Salon itself untainted in my memories.

Let’s leave the cautionary tale behind and proceed to the sights and tastes of the show!

Oh! Chocolate

Oh! Chocolate is a local chain of Seattle chocolate shops, with locations in Mercer Island, Bellevue and Madison Valley…as well as far off Peachtree, Georgia, of all places. (I wish I’d known that before the show so I could have asked how they ended up there!)

Theirs was the first table we stopped at, which was great because I believe they were the only table making chocolates on site. It was a fun way to get drawn into the festive atmosphere.

They were hand-dipping glacéed apricots and handing them out, soft and dripping with still-melted chocolate. The apricots were moist, plump and sweet, perfect with the dark but not too bitter chocolate.

They were also offering two dipped chocolates: a mango habenero truffle and a fleur de sel orange honey caramel. I was impressed by both. Many chocolates boast chilies on their ingredient list, but previous to the Salon, neither Chris nor I had found any that captured enough chili flavor or heat to warrant mentioning the peppers on their packaging. We finally broke that unlucky streak, and Oh! Chocolates set the tone for the afternoon with a truffle that had a noticeable overtone of spiciness, well matched to the mango.

A few years ago, while working a booth at the Taste of Washington, I tasted my first (and I thought last) salted caramel from a different, well-established local chocolate company (who was oddly absent from the Salon) and couldn’t understand the appeal. At all. Since that was A.D. (After my love of Dark chocolate began) and not B.C. (Before I discovered good Chocolate), I don’t think my tastebuds have changed that much in the interim. So I must have been turned off by that one particular version of the flavor combo, because I quite enjoyed Oh! Chocolate’s salted caramel and many others I tasted after it.

Theo Chocolate

Theo Chocolate is located in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. They are one of only a handful chocolate makers in the US–meaning that they grind and process their own cacao beans–and they have the commendable distinction of being the only organic, fair trade chocolate maker in the country.

Okay, I have to admit something: I was not super excited when I saw the massive number of chocolates that Theo had out for Salon attendees to taste. Back when I went through my obsessive chocolate tasting phase in pastry school, I bought a bar of Theo chocolate and didn’t like it at all. It was better than some of the other organic bars available at the time, but I wasn’t taken by the flavor or texture, enough so that I remembered disliking the chocolate after the intervening years.

I don’t know if they’ve improved or if I was smoking something metaphorical the day I did that tasting, but I was very, very wrong about Theo. I tasted everything on their table, and enjoyed pretty much all of it. First came their range of single origin chocolates and straight chocolate blends. You should be able to spot a pattern in these bars in this peek into my tasting notes:

• Theo Costa Rica Dark Chocolate Bar 91%: decent mouth-feel; fruity; not super bitter, despite the high percentage
• Theo Ghana Dark Chocolate Bar 84%: sweeter than the Costa Rican bar, which brought even more fruit flavor out of the beans
• Theo Madagascar Dark Chocolate Bar 74%: strong zing of fruit
• Theo Jane Goodall 70% organic Dark Chocolate: smooth; fruity
• Theo Jane Goodall 45% organic Milk Chocolate: yummy, caramelized flavor to the milk chocolate; very rich flavor and texture

You guessed it: Theo has super powers when it comes to coaxing the fruitiness of chocolate to the forefront. I found this was particularly interesting given that two of those single-origin bars come from Africa, and African chocolate is generally more on the bitter, coffee-ish side of the flavor spectrum, rather than on the fruity end. Not that I’m complaining; the bitterness is why I generally don’t like chocolate from Africa.

Next came a few bars from Theo’s line of “classic combination” bars. Both the Orange bar and the Mint bar had nice, fresh, true flavors to them. I was a little less taken by the Cherry and Almond bar, since I found it difficult to search out much cherry or almond flavor in the piece I sampled.

Then I tried a couple of their confections: the Ghost Chile caramel–great caramel center paired with a nice, definite heat that haunted the back of my throat as the chocolate went down–and the Peanut Butter Big Daddy–rich, with a nice crunchy layer inside.

Finally, I made it down to the end of the table with the 3400 Phinney Bars, Theo’s line of more adventurous flavor blends. I didn’t taste all of them, but out of the ones I did, the Coconut Curry was the star. It somehow satisfied a savory curry craving and tasted great in the chocolate at the same time–quite a feat, really. Paired with the Chai bar, you can have a full meal and dessert at the same time.

Among the other bars were the Fig, Fennel and Almond bar–very strong on the fennel flavor, not so much on the fig and almond–and the Hazelnut Crunch bar–lacking in hazelnut department, but with a surprising but pleasant saltiness to it. One of the big hits is the Bread and Chocolate bar, featuring toasted bread crumbs inside. We have a friend who is addicted to these. I just don’t get the attraction, mostly because I can barely taste the bread, but apparently I’m in the minority with that opinion.

Forte Chocolates

Forte Chocolates hails from Stanwood, Washington. In addition to some really good chocolate and caramels, they offer chocolate classes and custom chocolate and sugar showpiece creation. Chris didn’t get a photo of it, but she had a large, pretty monarch butterfly shimmering on her table, an element like the ones she would be featuring in a chocolate sculpture that was debuting that week at Teatro Zinzanni in Seattle.

Also on the showpiece side of things was this gorgeous, delicate white chocolate rose. I was amazed at how realistic it looked, far beyond anything I could imagine being made out of modeling chocolate. She told me that it was her own blend of white chocolate, gumpaste, fondant and corn syrup, but was still composed of more than 50% white chocolate–amazing!

Even the chocolate itself was aesthetically pleasing. I loved the shape the bars were molded into. The little squares showed off their well-tempered shine in the light coming from the bank of windows behind that row of tables. The 71% dark chocolate was creamy and fruity, and the 64% was it’s lighter, sweeter counterpart.

Even the white chocolate was good–and I rarely enjoy white chocolate–with a full measure of the wonderful creaminess that all of the Forte chocolates shared.

I liked the light touch of the salt on the sea salt caramels.

The Chipotle Honey Caramels were getting the most attention at the Forte table. They were rich and buttery, with a distinct honey flavor and a sneaky kind of heat that only crept up on you once you had the whole, chewy piece in your mouth and couldn’t get away from it. These were the kind of caramels that I could easy be satisfied with one tiny nibble off of the end, both because of the heat and the sticky richness.

L’Estasi Dolce

L’Estasi Dolce specializes in Asian-fusion and wine-infused chocolates. We got to their table a little later in the day than we should have, as we missed out on a few of their confections. But we were lucky enough to catch the last samples of some of the others, which was good because these were some of my favorite chocolates of the day.

We missed out on most of the the Asian line of chocolates, based on the family recipes of the company’s founder, Rose Ramos-Benzel. But the two we did get to try were delicious: a Mint Ginger truffle bursting with fresh flavors and an amazing Lemongrass Ginger truffle. The lemongrass seemed to pair with the chocolate better than ordinary lemon ever could in any form. Apparently the recipe was based off of a crème brûlée they had once in New York. I’d definitely like to try to whip up my own version–both of the chocolate and the crème brûlée, and perhaps both at the same time.

The wine truffles were also delicious, but more than that they were very intriguing in the way they morphed the wine into other flavors. The Cabernet truffle–their best seller in the line of wine truffles–tasted of black cherry. The unexpected flavor in the Champagne truffle eluded Chris and me for a few minutes, but I finally spotted it: jackfruit, but only if jackfruit actually tasted good, because the truffle did. I also enjoyed the Mimosa truffle, which had a nice orange flavor from juice rather than rind. The Pinot Noir truffle was similar to the Cabernet but lighter in flavor, and the Port truffle was surprising in that it had less flavor from the alcohol than the others, when I was expecting more flavor from port than wine.

Choffy

Choffy makes brewed chocolate–and yes, that’s “brewed” as in brewed coffee.

Both Chris and I liked this stuff. The flavor is light, falling somewhere between barley tea and coffee–well, a slightly chocolatey coffee.

Whether or not I’d go out of my way to drink it instead of something else more readily available, I’m not sure, but I’d certainly enjoy having a full cup of it sometime to investigate further.

Eat Chocolates

Eat Chocolates is another local chocolate company right here in Seattle. In addition to selling molded chocolates, they offer chocolate work classes (with a cap of 6 people per class), and you can even rent the kitchen and equipment to make your own chocolates with her assistance. I’m not sure how much that would end up costing, but considering how much I shelled out last year for just two chocolate molds, it could be a pretty good opportunity for some of us not-quite-professional chocolate types.

While this style of chocolates is typical for molded chocolates–cocoa butter transfer sheets, etc.–they still looked very pretty, especially displayed on the colorful slabs of marble. Hopefully I have these photogenic truffles matched up with the correct flavors–if not, oh well, they’re still pretty!

The Lavender truffles had a nice blend of lavender and chocolate. I was afraid the lavender would be overpowering, which often leads to the feeling that you’re eating soap (fancy soap, but soap nonetheless), but these were well balanced, with just a light suggestion of lavender.

The Honey Thyme truffles were really different: almost savory, but in a good way, like Theo’s Coconut Curry bars.

The 5-Spice Hazelnut Pralines packed a lot of flavor–a lot of spice, and I’m a person who triples the measurements for spices in recipes–and had a great crunch to them. The Orange White Chocolate truffles weren’t so powerful, though. I couldn’t taste much orange flavor in them. The Cardamom truffles were also light on flavor for my taste, but considering my love of cardamom is already well-documented, it may have been enough cardamom for most other people.

And these were just plain cute.

Carter’s Chocolates

Carter’s Chocolates is another Washington chocolatier, this time in Port Orchard, WA. Their chocolates are also available at the Chocolate Box and Pike Pub in downtown Seattle, online, and at farmers markets in Port Orchard and Gig Harbor.

They had quite a spread to sample from! Sadly, time and stomach-size restraints prevented us from tasting all of them. But with that many chocolates, fifty percent still adds up to quite a few to taste, and I got to enough of them to determine that they really know what they’re doing with flavor.

One of the really cool things about these chocolates is that rather than being molded in magnetic molds that hold a transfer sheet with a cocoa butter pattern so that it shows up on the top of each chocolate in the mold, Carter’s are individually hand-dipped in hand-tempered chocolate, then topped with a chocolate cutout with the colorful pattern on it. This gives them both a handcrafted feel and a professional, colorful finish at the same time.

As for the flavors: the Blackberry Wine had a wonderful blackberry flavor to it, and the honey in the Honey Mead came through in a strong caramel flavor. The Raspberry Wine was similar to but lighter in flavor than the Blackberry, so I’d go with the Blackberry if I had to choose. The Orange Muscat was also sort of a repeat flavor for me, but this time with the Honey Mead.

The Mint was weirdly similar to the curry chocolates I tasted that day–in a good way once again, but it was a strange connection for my taste buds to make. The Chai Tea was good, with plenty of spice, and the Sweet and Spicy Herbal Tea had a cool cinnamon finish to it. Their Chili truffle was one of the few to have both the flavor and heat, rather than one or the other (or neither).

The Pike Old Bawdy Barley Wine was delicious, sweet and flavorful. The Pike XXXX Stout wasn’t my favorite (it had a sort of bitter beer flavor at the end), but Chris says it’s the best beer-flavored chocolate he’s ever had.

I was very taken with their turtle-shaped turtles, even if it was hard to get a good photo of them. What a great idea!

La Châtelaine Chocolat

La Châtelaine Chocolat is a French chocolate shop in the Rocky Mountains in Montana. They were definitely in my top three at the Salon, all of which came, of course, once I was already getting much, much too full. If only I had decided to make the loop around the room in the other direction.

In their flavors, their textures, and even the thought and craft that I could tell went into their creation, La Châtelaine’s chocolates had that wonderful subtle, sophisticated quality that the best French pastries and confections have.

I was a little wary of grapefruit-flavored chocolate, especially grapefruit-flavored milk chocolate. I love grapefruit, but I have a hard enough time finding orange chocolates that I like, and I couldn’t really imagine how this combination would work. Well, it worked beautifully, because they earned not only a star in my notes, but a “wow”. I loved how much grapefruit flavor came through the chocolate, without there being a hint of bitterness at all. These were also visually interesting, with the grapefruit rind texture on their tops.

These Pink Champagne truffles were very striking in person, rolled as they were in sparkling pink sugar. They had a nice, sweet champagne overtone and a very smooth texture.

I loved the pates de fruit layer in the Black Currant chocolates…

…but the Montana Huckleberry chocolates won the pates de fruit battle for me. I’d always wanted to try a huckleberry truffle, and these did not disappoint!

I also loved the Geranium Bourbon chocolates, and the Olive Oil and Almond ones. All in all, I was really impressed with what I tasted at La Châtelaine’s table.

Chocolopolis

Chocolopolis is a chocolate shop in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle. I have yet to get to the shop myself, but I’ve occasionally run across job postings to work there and daydreamed about working at such a fabulous-sounding place. What chocolate lover wouldn’t want to be surrounded by fine chocolate all day?

While Chocolopolis generally sells rather than makes chocolate, they were launching a new line of in-house truffles at the chocolate show.

They had a progression of six chocolates set out to taste. I thought it was interesting that they were serving small squares of a firm ganache rather than squares of straight chocolate. I asked if that was how they normally conducted their tastings, and it’s not–the ganache was to go with the truffle launch. But that got me thinking about doing a side-by-side tasting with some distinctive chocolates, both in their normal form and as ganache. It could be a great exercise for anyone interested in learning to taste chocolates with an eye to using them in the pastry kitchen. Watch this space…I may do a trial run of the idea soon.

Divine Chocolate

Divine Chocolate is another socially-conscious brand of chocolate. It’s really wonderful to see so much delicious fair-trade chocolates on the market these days.

The Mint Dark Chocolate bar was awesome–kind of crunchy, with a more traditional mint-chocolate flavor than some of the more herbal mint chocolates we tried at other tables. I also liked the Fruit and Nut Dark Chocolate. It had a kind of trail-mix vibe from its tiny bits of nuts and fruit, which were much more prominent than the nut/fruit bars I tried at Theo’s table. The Hazelnut Milk Chocolate had an assertive milk chocolate flavor followed nicely by the hazelnut flavor as the milk chocolate wave subsided.

My favorite of Divine’s chocolates was the White Chocolate with Strawberries bar. I got excited about it in the way I get excited about a good Merlot: I hate Merlot as a rule, so any time I taste one I actually like, I have to buy it. The same thing goes with white chocolate, although my dislike for Merlot does run quite a bit deeper. The reason I loved this bar was the way the acidity of the strawberries cut through the white chocolate. It made the white chocolate make sense.

I Love Chocolate Jewelry

And now for a non-edible interlude! I Love Chocolate Jewelry specializes in glass jewelry that evokes the colors and shapes of chocolate. I really loved the rich browns and golds, so different than any of the glass I was able to find on our trip to Venice last year.

Posh Chocolat

Posh Chocolat, another chocolate company of several that represented Montana at the Salon, was the second of my top three tables of the day. As I mentioned before, all three fell at the end of our chocolate tour, when stomachs were overfull and palates should have been dull, and so that these companies broke through the chocolate glaze over our taste buds to win my top honors is all the more impressive.

What I loved about Posh Chocolat was the savory quality of the flavor combinations, a quality that highlighted the chocolate that each flavor was blended with rather than fought against it. A comment on this brought out the news that the husband-and-wife chocolatier team came originally from the savory side of the kitchen. Even so, it still takes real talent and uncommon skill for a chef to apply their hot side sensibilities to the pastry world, especially with chocolates.

We got there too late for the Bacon Caramels with Applewood Smoked Sea Salt. Not that either of us could have tried them–we’re not of the odd but creative variety of vegetarians who count bacon as a vegetable–but we would have snagged a sample for the resident bacon enthusiast among Chris’ friends to try for us.

When it came to the White Truffle Oil Caramels with Flaked Cypress Sea Salt, my first reaction upon tasting it was, and I quote: “salt…truffle???” But despite the strangeness of that combo on my taste buds, and the inclusion of truffle oil (truffles are another ingredient that I don’t care for, though I wish I did), I enjoyed this one. The flavor was incredibly complex, with the truffle adding to the experience rather than overpowering it.

The Thai Peanut Caramels with Ginger Sea Salt were one of my favorite things I tasted all day, and a perfect example of what I was saying before about their deft touch with savory flavors in their chocolates. While the Coconut Curry bar at Theo’s table focused on pairing the curry flavors with the sweetness in the chocolate, Posh’s Thai Peanut Caramels seemed to marry the curry spices to the essential chocolate flavor in the chocolate, rather than the sugar.

The Ras al Hanout chocolates were once again–and I hate how I’m overusing this word, but nothing else really fits what I tasted–very deliciously savory, with a surprisingly subtle use of the famous Moroccan spice blend.

The Rose Water chocolates had a very strong, beautiful flavor, with the rose coming through most intensely at the end. Rose water and chocolate could have had that sad, soapy flavor that I was talking about with lavender earlier, but these were really wonderful. Apparently they use rose oil rather than rose water to flavor them, and that makes all the difference. The Mojito chocolates were also outstanding, very minty with a hint of rum, and the lime played straight into the fruitiness of the chocolate.

Posh also offered a pair of chili chocolates, one a 74% Ecuadorian Dark Chocolate bar that had an immediate assault of spice on the tip of my tongue, the other a 57% Single Origin Ecuadorian Milk Chocolate bar with Tipus Chilis that had a great chili flavor, a rare accomplishment as I’ve mentioned before.

Our trip to the Posh table ended with a taste of some of the richest, most decadent hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.

Crave Chocolate

Crave Chocolate also hails from Montana. Despite the state’s drive-quickly-through reputation, apparently there are lots of places for chocolate lovers to visit there!

Both the Rainbow and the Apres Ski had nice, strong flavors–raspberry and lime, respectively. The Lavender Blueberry chocolates tasted strangely like the chocolate-covered blueberry confections we got from Harry and David for our candy buffet at our wedding. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it left me wondering why my mind was making that connection. I finally decided it must be the subtle influence of the lavender. The Mint Julep chocolate wasn’t my favorite, with a muddled, less-defined flavor profile, but the Yellowstone had a creamy chai flavor that was quite pleasant.

Amano

Amano’s table was perhaps the table that suffered the most from being at the end of our loop through the Salon. They had several varieties of artisanal chocolate set out, plus had several kinds of nibs to sample. My poor tongue was too exhausted for a true chocolate tasting at that point. Mix in some lime or spices and those I could taste, but I was not up to the task of identifying and contrasting subtle flavor differences.

Still, I was able to figure out which were my favorites in the bunch, or at least which tasted best to my compromised palate. Out of the chocolates, my favorite was the Madagascar 70%, which was very fruity with a warm yet bitter finish. “Fruity” and “bitter” pretty much characterized all of their chocolates (or what flavors I could still taste), and the particular variations on those flavors in the Madagascar bar worked the best for me. The Ocumare 70% tasted quite a bit like the Madagascar, but with a more muted fruit flavor and an odd bitterness that showed up in the middle of the flavor curve. The Montanya 70% was sweeter and milder, but the bitterness in this bar presented itself as a weird dry feeling on the top of my tongue. The Jembrana 70% was milder yet, and worked much better in the milk chocolate form I sampled next. Typing this up now, I wonder if I started at the wrong end of this table, as my impressions might have been very different if I’d gone from the mildest chocolate to the most intense.

The nibs were harder to compare, but in the end I decided I liked the fruity Ocumare nibs the best. What struck me the most about tasting the nibs is that their flavors didn’t really line up to the flavors of the corresponding bars. I have a lot of respect for anyone capable of selecting and blending beans into a fantastic chocolate.

All in all, I really wish I’d visited this table first. The chocolate seemed to be very good quality, and I would have enjoyed tasting it on a fresher palate.

Intrigue Chocolates

Intrigue Chocolates is another local chocolate business–very local, as in from right here in Seattle. They were one of Chris’ favorite tables (hard for them not to be, since they had his favorite of all the chili chocolates at the Salon), and I was impressed with their bold, complex flavor combinations.

The best part about the Salon for me was the chance to talk to and learn from the chocolatiers, and the guys at Intrigue explained something about flavoring chocolates that should have been obvious but had never occurred to me: many of the things we use to flavor truffles are water-based flavors, steeped in the cream that’s used to make the ganache. But chocolate is oil-based. That means that oil-based flavors are going to mix into the chocolate itself better than water-based ones, demonstrated in their vibrant truffles.

The Grapefruit, Mojito, and Saint Basil truffles all showed off Intrigue’s ability to pack fresh, true flavor into their chocolates, something that was especially noteworthy in the Grapefruit truffle. The Paradise truffle takes its name and subtle peppery flavor from the Grains of Paradise spice–interesting, but the flavor was perhaps a little too subtle in comparison to their other offerings. The Jamaican Hot Chocolate truffle was the chili chocolate that won Chris over, and I was amazed at the ring of spiciness that hit the back of my throat when I tried it. Due to the fact that it gets it chili infusion from habaneros steeped in rum, we now have an incredibly spicy jar of rum in our house, waiting to be experimented with.

Suess Chocolates

Suess Chocolates & Pastries in Madison Valley is dedicated to handcrafting German chocolates and pastries based on their German grandmother’s recipes. It is–according to its owners–the only kid-friendly chocolate shop in Seattle. Children are encouraged to participate in their own complimentary chocolate dipping. As the current constant carrier of a future foodie, this sounds like a very kid- and parent-friendly idea, because at least you could leave whatever part of the mess that didn’t fall on the little one behind at the shop. They also hold weekend chocolate classes for kids and adults.

I’ve had tea-infused chocolates before–I think I may have even made one myself before–but never any with a strong enough tea flavor to really make it stand out. Suess’ Matcha Green Tea truffles broke that pattern. The intense green tea flavor seemed to ride the white chocolate, and I liked it a lot more than I expected. Now I understand!

I also tried the Raspberry Wasabi and Creme Fraiche truffles. The Raspberry Wasabi was really interesting in the way the wasabi counterpointed the raspberry flavor without trying to be the star of the show, a blend that I liked a lot. The Creme Fraiche was okay, but more sour than I expected. Suess is pushing the boundaries of adventurous truffle flavors, though, and more often than not I was surprised and pleased by what I tasted.

William Dean Chocolates

As I rounded the corner of the inner square of tables at the Salon, we were racing against the clock, but there were only four or five tables left to visit. Surely we could make it before time and/or chocolate ran out! But the first of these was William Dean Chocolates, and after only a few minutes of talking to William Dean Brown and tasting a few of his chocolates, I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

His was the last of my top three tables I mentioned above, and it was also my favorite out of the three. I tasted some amazing confections that brought me back to the time in pastry school when I was first exposed to so many ingredients and classic recipes. I also learned a lot just from talking to this chocolatier who was so obviously passionate about his craft and so willing to pass on what he’d learned. Our conversation made me really miss being in the business and learning from experienced chefs, but only in the best of ways. It was wonderful to revisit the excitement of the world opening up for my eyes, mind and palate at the same time.

Not only do his chocolates look absolutely gorgeous, but they taste absolutely gorgeous as well. He orchestrates the order in which the flavors hit your palate.

For example, in this pina colada pate de fruit, first I tasted the pineapple, then the rum, and then, finally, the coconut. I always thought that such feats were happy accidents. However, the more I talked with him, the more I realized that he was ordering the flavors this way intentionally, so that you really taste each one, clear and clean.

I had to ask if there was a method to it, or if it just was a product of experience and lots of trial and error. He explained that certain types of flavors hit in a certain order: fruits first, then herbs, then heat. Also, over time, the flavor of herbs gets stronger, while that of citrus gets weaker, and so you have to account for that when you make the chocolates so they’ll be well balanced later. Obviously, there has to be more to this, but I’m really fascinated by these concepts and eager to learn more. You can definitely expect to see a post from me testing them out.

I also learned other things, like the trick of adding extra chocolate to chocolate nougat (so, so good) to prolong the shelf life, and that they use microwave popcorn in their gourmet popcorn line because it’s the only popcorn that stays crisp–microwave popcorn! Amazing.

(Speaking of which, their Macadamia and Coconut popcorn is to-die-for good.)

As for the individual chocolates and confections…I must say, the conversation was so interesting and the samples were coming so quickly that my tasting notes are a mess of hasty scribbles accompanied by stars (my way of marking the chocolates that really stood out to me at the Salon). There was some sort of delicious amaretto cherry marzipan–at least, I think that word I mangled there is cherry, but I can’t find it on his website to confirm–that was just amazing; a Peanut Butter Krunch chocolate that really crunched from the bits of peanut brittle inside; a Lavender/Lemon soft caramel in white chocolate that had a light, smooth caramel infused with fresh lemon flavor; a macadamia nut marzipan that had a really fun texture to it; a mango chili chocolate–I think perhaps his Mexican Mango–with just a beautiful blend of the mango and chilies to it; a Grapefruit & Tarragon chocolate–very different from any of the other grapefruit chocolates at the Salon–that really impressed me with the way he used a slight bit of the bitterness of the grapefruit to blend with the tarragon…and on and on.

Chris and I also both thought that William Dean’s packaging was very well designed. This was the only table we actually bought something at–a box of twelve chocolates that met a truly tragic demise during Seattle’s recent wave of extreme heat–and while we were blown away by how good the chocolates were, the visual appeal of the chocolates and the box they came in definitely factored into our decision to pull out the plastic. The boxes feel substantial, and they just look like something you want to own, want to give someone as a gift.

But, really, the main reason we bought a box of William Dean’s chocolates was those were the kind of chocolates I was so inspired by in pastry school. And that’s how I felt as I left the Salon: inspired. Well, inspired and very, very full. I never thought I’d ever say this, but I hope I never eat that much chocolate in one day–much less four hours–ever again in my life.

Except, perhaps, when we go back the the Chocolate Salon next year. We’ll see if I’ve learned my lesson, or if the siren song of all those chocolates wins again.

And now I’m going to put my left hand on my copy of The Professional Pastry Chef, raise my right hand, and vow never to write another blog post this long again. And I thought some of my older ones were epic! Now I can focus on some of the other posts I have patiently waiting their turn: a berry lemon tart and lemon curd recipe review, a Dala horse cake for my mother’s birthday, and my discovery of the best cake recipe I’ve made in my life, along with the peanut butter milk chocolate ganache I invented to go along with it for Chris’ cousin’s camping-themed groom’s cake. I’ve only got about fourteen more weeks until the Tiger Cub comes out into the world, so I’d better get my food blogging in now.

Tres leches, move over. There’s a new cake in town with three iterations of the same component: tres (or maybe it should be trois?) ganaches chocolate raspberry cupcakes. Sounds decadent, right? Well, they were. Decadent, extravagant, and definitely delicious…if possibly slightly unnecessarily complicated.

Not only that, but I used expensive eating chocolate for all of them. Bars and bars of the $3-$5 for two frickin’ ounces kind of eating chocolate. Valrhona raspberry ganache fills both the raspberry inside the cupcake and the one on top. Around the interior raspberry is a Scharffen Berger ganache. Finally, Michel Cluizel ganache frosting swirled on top crowns it all. The only reason I said that it was possibly unnecessary was that while eating the cupcake it wasn’t necessarily apparent that there were three different chocolates in play. But you definitely could tell that the chocolate involved was really, really good chocolate.

Now, before you think that this is a completely inappropriate post for the current economic climate, let me explain: I’ve been using up ingredients in my pantry, one of the thriftiest ways to save money in the kitchen. Let me introduce you to my secret source of unending shame: my chocolate collection.

Now, I know I’m not the only one who has chocolate hidden in her kitchen cupboards–in my younger and sneakier days, I used to liberate sweets from a hiding spot or two that I knew about. But I’m not ashamed of my collection for the usual reasons. No, I’m ashamed because I’ve had bars and bars and bars of high-quality chocolate in my possession for ages and never got around to eating it. I’ve meant to rectify the situation for a long time now, but somehow the enormity of this crime against chocolate and checkbook makes it even harder to do anything about it. I was saving these bars for a purpose, so it seemed like eating them for the sake of eating them rather than for some grander reason was doing them yet another disservice.

It all started in pastry school. In one of the few actual take-home assignments they ever gave us, we were assigned to write a paper on a single ingredient used in the pastry kitchen. At that point, I’d taken a three day workshop on chocolate work and gotten a glimpse of the world of high-quality chocolate, so I picked that as my subject to investigate. My research led me to a fantastic book, The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes, that not only told the history of chocolate and explained how it was processed in greater depth than I’d encountered before, but went into detail about the three different types of trees–criollo, forastero and trinitario–and the different chocolate-producing regions of the world and how those differences affected the chocolate’s flavor and quality.

The book also shows you how to properly taste chocolate, and while that’s a fairly common foodie thing to do now, back then the specialty chocolate craze was just getting started. Our favorite grocery store–the Shoreline Central Market–was stocking a lot of single-origin bars at the time, so we’d pick a couple up every time we went shopping. That’s when I fell in love with Michel Cluizel’s chocolate. The package for one of his single plantation chocolates claimed that you could taste the flavor of green olives, and when that flavor spread over my tastebuds as the chocolate melted on my tongue, I was hooked.

I started buying one of every chocolate bar that I saw, justifying it as part of my education as a future pastry chef. We had a few friends–and most of Chris’ extended family, once–join us in tastings where I’d share both my collection of chocolate and my collection of chocolate knowledge with them (if only I’d started teaching chocolate classes professionally back then…I would have been ahead of all of the ones that have popped up since!), but for the most part, I would taste one or two squares of the bar and save it. Why? Because at some point I wanted to sit down and do a real chocolate tasting. I wanted to taste them all side-by-side (this was before wine tasting taught me that your palate gets exhausted if you try to taste the subtleties of too many products in the same day), I wanted to take notes, I wanted to do it right. And any time I want to do something right…well, the odds of me actually doing it go down considerably. It’s the curse of the perfectionist: why bother doing something if you aren’t going to do it better than anyone else ever has?

So, I kept buying chocolate, and I kept collecting bars, many of them not even opened to taste my usual two squares because I was saving them for my tasting to end all tastings. In a way, it did end all tastings, because I stopped indulging in my informal little chocolate explorations, in my informal chocolate classes with my friends. And my chocolate languished, waiting to be liberated.

So, what does this have to do with cupcakes?

The answer is simple: I am liberating my chocolate.

Yes, it’s on the old side. Believe me, I got a good, hard time about that from some of the cupcakes recipients this weekend. It’s served most of a life sentence and had given up hope of parole.

But, fortunately, chocolate doesn’t exactly go bad, not in the spoiling sense of the word. Mine doesn’t look so hot, but it still tastes like expensive chocolate. A good chocolate bar stored in a cool, dark environment won’t start to lose its quality and flavor for at least a year. Over a more extended period, that bar will eventually fall out of temper, especially if it’s storage location is less than ideal. The flavor will probably lose some of its potency and complexity, like dried herbs left in the cupboard for too long. A speckled white coating might form on the chocolate, which may look like mold to the uninitiated but is really just “bloom”, formed by the cocoa butter separating out and rising to the surface. Or the chocolate may just turn dull, losing the shine that it had (hopefully) when it was in temper. If you try to break it, it won’t have the well-tempered snap that you look for, either.

To a certain point, you can put it back in temper if you know how. I know how to temper chocolate, but with chocolate as old as mine…well, there really is only one thing to do: bake with it. I did this first with the Rainbow Cookies I made last Christmas, where the wonderful flavor of Michel Cluizel’s chocolate elevated the colorful little bars to something truly on another level of deliciousness, and since then I’ve decided to dispose of the rest of the chocolate in the same way. These cupcakes made a huge dent in the collection.

I’ve been with the same writing critique group for almost four years now. One of the members has a birthday coming up, and we planned to surprise her with a celebration at our most recent meeting. I volunteered to make the cake, and I wanted to do something really special for my friend. I saw some beautiful fresh raspberries while I was out shopping, and the idea for these cupcakes was born. I was hoping they’d turn out to be as glamorous as I envisioned them, and I think, for once, they did.

So, that’s the story behind the trois ganaches. These cupcakes could easily be made with any decent dark chocolate, and in the future I’d only make two different ganaches–a raspberry one for the inside, and a plain one for the top. I’d go entirely with raspberry ganache except that it doesn’t have quite as smooth of an appearance as regular ganache, so it’s more suitable for filling cupcakes.

After all that chocolate talk, let’s start by looking at the most important part of a truly good cupcake, the cake itself. In my opinion, it’s easy to make cupcakes look pretty or cute, and a lot harder to master baking them.

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you may remember that I’ve had some difficulties with baking cupcakes in the past. Since then, I’ve learned my lesson and stuck to recipes intended specifically for cupcakes from books that are all about cupcakes. To that end, I picked up a copy of Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes and this was my first attempt at one of the recipes.

I tend to trust Martha Stewart recipes, and Martha definitely didn’t fail me this time. I used the Devil’s Food Cupcakes recipe for these, and they were perfect for the purpose: not so chocolatey that they’d just seem like an extension of all the ganache I was planning to utilize, but not watered down like so many chocolate baked goods are. The texture was so soft and moist–in the recipe’s description, they attribute this to sour cream–and they were divine both warm from the oven and cooled down and decorated. (For reference, the recipe yielded 18 normal-sized cupcakes and 24 mini cupcakes. The baking time was spot on for my oven, with a five minute deduction to the time when baking the mini cupcakes.)

I baked them Friday night and then set about decorating them Saturday morning. First thing, I washed the raspberries and laid them out to dry on a cooling rack covered in paper towels, making sure that there was no water inside or out because the raspberries were going to be surrounded by ganache and water is a great way to invite mold into your chocolates. I made my raspberry ganache, so it would have a little time to set up to a pipeable consistency before I started filling the cupcakes. I improvised the recipe, and the formula is easy to remember: 8 oz. of dark chocolate (Valrhona in this case), 8 oz. of cream, and 8 oz. of raspberry preserves. I put the preserves straight into the cream as I heated it to simmering, mixing to combine the two, and strained it over the chocolate to keep the seeds out of the ganache.

You can make the ganache the traditional way and pour the hot cream over finely chopped chocolate, wait five minutes and then whisk it until smooth, or–if you feel confident in your ability too melt chocolate in the microwave without scorching it–you can use the cheater’s method I figured out to save my injured shoulder: melt the chocolate in the microwave, let the cream cool down a little bit from simmering before you add it, and whisk them both together right away. That allows you to leave the chocolate in bigger chunks rather than do all of that fine chopping. You just have to be careful with chocolate in the microwave: zap it for a minute, then stir, then stir after every additional thirty seconds. You want to stop while there are still a few unmelted chunks. Residual heat will melt those the rest of the way.

I set that to the side and stirred it from time to time as I prepared the cupcakes to be filled. I certainly didn’t invent this method, but I figured I might as well take photos of how I did it as I went:

First, I picked out the size of round cutter I wanted to use and measured it against the height of the cupcakes. The cupcake was taller, so that meant that I could push the cutter all the way down without worrying about punching through the bottom of the cupcake.

Next, I centered the cookie cutter on top…

…pushed it down into the cupcake evenly…

…and then pulled it out, giving the cutter a slight twist as I did so. The center of the cupcake came out whole most of the time, but when a large crumb or two did stick in the bottom of the hole I’d created, I’d flick them out with the tip of the paring knife.

Then, I carefully cut away the very top of the cupcake’s center, saving it as a little lid for the filling. The rest when into a bowl of cake crumbs, which never got very full because the cake really was too good to not eat.

Once I had the centers cut out, the raspberry ganache seemed to be thick enough to pipe, so I made up a simple ganache with 8 oz. of the Scharffen Berger chocolate I had (a combination of semisweet, dark and extra dark) and about 1 1/4 cups of cream. I poured that into a pie plate so it would cool faster as I worked with it, but it was pretty much fine for filling the cupcakes by the time I was set up and ready to go. I wanted it to be pretty fluid so that the raspberries could settle in properly.

It went something like this:

One cupcake, with its lid.

Add a small scoop full of the plain ganache.

Fill a raspberry with the Valrhona raspberry ganache, making sure not to leave any air pockets inside. (Like the water I mentioned above, air also encourages mold to grow inside of chocolates.)

Set the raspberry open-end down in the center of the other ganache.

Top the raspberry with another scoop of the plain ganache, making sure to fill the hole all the way to the top.

Press the cupcake’s lid down onto the ganache to seal it up and hide the treat waiting inside.

At that point, I put them straight into the fridge because I didn’t want to leave that raspberry surrounded by lukewarm ganache for very long. That gave me time to make the ganache frosting out of the Martha Stewart book with the Michel Cluizel chocolate and cool it in a pair of pie plates in the fridge–a trick I remember from pastry school when we were bringing ganaches and other fillings for molded chocolates down to room temperature. In retrospect, I wasn’t as fond of the ganache recipe as I was of the cupcake recipe–it dulled too easily, and set up too quickly as I was working with it, even in the summer heat, which means it might have benefited from more cream or corn syrup–but I made it work. All there was left to do was decorate the cupcakes, which is the fun part.

Like I said before, I wanted them to look glamorous, so I sprinkled them with some shiny “chocolate flakes” I picked up at Central Market a few weeks ago in the bulk section and painted the raspberries with a mixture of a few drops of Grand Marnier and a quarter teaspoon of a berry-colored luster dust I’d bought for another cupcake project and then never used.

What I was really excited about, though, was opening the raspberries up and using them flat against the top of the cupcake. I’m sure I’m not the first to do this, but I’ve never seen it before. The idea came to me when I was checking out the raspberries I bought and noticing how strong and firm they were, how they even stayed together if I opened them up along one side. I’m always looking for any fondant alternative I can find that has a better taste and texture, and fresh fruit definitely fits the bill. I think it not only looked cool but heightened the raspberry-to-chocolate ratio, which is always a good thing.

I thought they looked a little like dragon scales with the luster dust…

…but my critique group thought they looked like brains. I’ll forgive them. We’re all writing novels somewhere along the scifi/fantasy continuum, so we have conversations about various supernatural creatures currently popular in the urban fantasy market on a regular basis, zombies included.

Here’s a bunch of them all together. I have to recommend the 3 Tier Snapware Snap N Stack Cupcake, Cookie and Cake Carrier. We picked one of these up at Costco a month or two ago. I’m not sure if they still have them, but after using mine for the first time this weekend, I’m going to buy another one if they do, just in case I need to transport a lot of cupcakes to an event. What I like about this one is that it’s extremely versatile: each of the tiers has a reversible tray insert–one side is flat, and the other has rings to hold cupcakes in place. The trays have handles that also allow you to suspend them halfway up the tier, either for carrying two layers of cookies or other flat baked goods (giving you a total of six layers with all three tiers) or for serving the cupcakes in the tier so that people don’t have to reach all the way inside and risk bumping the frosting. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to scramble for shallow, flat containers to carry baked goods to parties and holiday dinners.

Finally, here’s one of the mini cupcakes I mentioned. They were too small to stuff with raspberries, and I used up the Scharffen Berger ganache on the bigger cupcakes, so I filled them entirely with the raspberry ganache. This made them a little different from the big cupcakes, sort of like a tasty little truffle surrounded by cake. I love how small they looked in comparison to the big raspberries.

But now it’s meddling in a new and more creative way than morning sickness that’s not bad enough to complain about but was annoying enough to keep me from cooking anything interesting enough to write about. No, now it’s gotten sneakier.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to have dinner waiting for Chris when he got home, in an attempt to make up for all the times he made dinner this spring when I wasn’t feeling up to it. I had a cucumber and several tomatoes–beautiful tomatoes, small Camparis as red as fire engines and hovering just at the apex of perfect, sweet ripeness–so something vaguely Greek/Mediterranean seemed the way to go. I turned to a box of falafel mix in the cupboard, but suddenly plain falafel fried up from a mix seemed too boring for those tomatoes.

So I got creative. After getting a batch of potatoes bathed in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and Greek spices in to the oven to roast, I halved the tomatoes and scooped out the watery seeds, just leaving the juicy yet still firm flesh behind. Kosher salt served both to season the insides of the tomatoes and encourage them to let down some of that juice once I turned them upside down on top of some folded paper towels. I oiled the pan and the tomatoes with more olive oil and spaced the red beauties out, cut sides up, and stuck them in with the potatoes to roast for, oh, about 15 or 20 minutes at 375-400 degrees (you see, I’ve already forgotten), until they had softened and sizzled and the kitchen was perfumed with their scent.

I used a bamboo skewer to pour the juices that had gathered in the bottom of each tomato half as it had baked. While they’d been in the oven, I’d mixed up some falafel and set it aside to absorb the water I’d added. I rolled the falafel into tiny balls, much smaller than I expected, and pressed it into each tomato. I think I also sprayed them with a bit more oil at that point, in the hope of simulating frying the falafel in a pan. Then I baked them again, this time at only 350 degrees but with the convection fan on in the hope of giving the falafel a golden, crisp top.

Chris walked in the door around that time, perfect timing for the falafel to come out and join the potatoes, a simple salad of cucumber, tomato and red onion and toasted whole wheat pita wedges I’d resurrected from the depths of our freezer. I topped each tomato with a bullseye of yogurt sauce, my quick-and-shameless substitute for tzatziki sauce that I make when I don’t have the forethought to make the real thing, that needs only plain yogurt, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, dried dill and a few minutes to sit mixed up on the counter to meld the flavors and hydrate the dill.

The tomatoes were delicious, even better than I expected. Roasting had only made them sweeter, and they balanced the salty, seasoned falafel wonderfully. Not only that but they were beautiful on the plate and fun to eat, a little bite-sized taste of savory sunshine. I even got some halfway decent photos of my plate even though I was too impatient to eat to take very many, leaving me with a quick and easy post whenever I wanted to write it up.

The problem was that they weren’t perfect. There was a little too much falafel-to-tomato, so that the middle of each was a bit mushy, a bit much in general, and the falafel mix I used seemed especially bitter to me. Whether that was from aging in our pantry or just a flavor that’s always there that the roasted tomatoes brought out, I don’t know, but I kept wishing it wasn’t there. The tomatoes should have been the best thing on the plate–they certainly had all the potential necessary for that–but the roasted potatoes won that honor instead. Of course, they were possibly the best potatoes I’d ever roasted, but the tomatoes could have topped them all the same.

I decided that I needed to make the tomatoes again, to give them a chance to shine in all their glory. I’d make falafel from scratch, despite a superb failure at it early in my cooking career that discouraged both of us not to try to make it ourselves again. I’d look into hiding a little surprise of flavor under the falafel. My first thought was feta, but the powers that be warn pregnant women away from soft and blue cheeses, so I talked to the nice people at the cheese counter at Whole Foods and struck upon mizithra cheese as a substitute, maybe with some chopped kalamata olives to really punch up the flavor. I even thought about making my own pita. We did that in pastry school, and it was actually pretty fun and easy. Maybe this time I’d roast the tomatoes low and slow in the oven overnight to dry them out better and super-concentrate the flavor, and maybe I’d try flipping them over and frying them at the end once the falafel was cooked through down to the cheese and olives. And with all of that effort, surely the tomatoes would be worthy of words at the end.

I bought all the ingredients, and even blended up my falafel, but somehow the tomatoes still haven’t graced our table again. Why? I’ve utterly lost an interest in eating them. It seems the gustatory life of the pregnant woman is far more complex than the morning sickness or pickles and ice cream jokes would lead you to believe. I have yet to actually crave anything. To me, a “craving” implies an intense, physical desire for something.

What happens to me is something quieter. I think of a food I’d like to eat, and it sounds like a really good idea. I won’t crave it, but I also never forget that good idea until I’ve carried it out. My body will wait two patient weeks to get a chocolate doughnut, and once I’ve had that doughnut, the idea will quietly leave me in piece. The good idea may lead me to coerce friends into going to a particular restaurant to get the particular pizza I thought about two days ago, but I’ll never sit there agonizing about having to have that pizza right this instant. As far as I can see, Chris gets the most benefit out of this since he has yet been called to duty in the middle of the night to go out and get me ice cream.

Apparently, my body now has this same power in reverse. The tomatoes sound like a wonderful idea to me intellectually, something I’d like to do and photograph and write about, but my body just yawns in response to the idea of them and sends me off to make scrambled eggs for a breakfast burrito.

But if anything, pregnancy is teaching me that my body is wise. It knows what it wants and what it needs, and tomatoes stuffed with falafel is not currently on its list. It doesn’t care about satisfying my ego, only satisfying itself and the little life growing inside of it. You don’t need to make those tomatoes again, it says. Didn’t you already make them? Don’t you already have pictures? Isn’t the whole point of writing about them to pass on the idea, and haven’t you already proved it was a good one?

Now, weren’t we thinking about making oatmeal for breakfast? it adds, and leads me into the kitchen to do its bidding.

And so I give you my Falafel-Stuffed Roasted Tomatoes idea, and hope you’ll take it and improve on it and tell me how it went, so that when my body lets me make them again, I’ll know how to make them better.

I’ve written about these cupcakes before, but in few enough words to hide the real story, the one I wanted to tell the moment I snapped this photo. But now that we’ve passed a magic number I’ve untied my own hands, so I want to share: the moment I looked down through the camera lens and saw that tiny, little red heart, I knew I was going to be someone’s mom, and that someone wanted to say “Hi.”

I’ve long thought that studying literature in college makes you more likely to see symbolism and structure in your own life. I’ve never decided whether those material metaphors woven into the ups and downs of daily existence truly mean something. It’s tempting to think so, especially when you have questions that no one can answer for you but time. Still, in a rational world, it’s natural to be suspicious of any signs you think you see in the world around you. Particularly when the sign in question has a bit too much in common with those images of the Virgin Mary that “miraculously appear” on a piece of toast. Back when I was working a dessert buffet as a pastry cook, all it took to burn the image of Trogdor (a cartoon dragon, for those not in the know) into the top of a giant creme brulee was a deft hand with a blow torch.

But this heart convinced me better than the actual pregnancy tests I took days later did. Those were easy to doubt, to question, but the moment I saw the heart, I knew. Sure, it helped that I’d been getting lightheaded all morning while I was up and around baking, and that what was to become a four-day straight headache had just set in. That didn’t stop me from knowing that this was a message just for me, the girl born on Valentine’s Day.

Hopefully, between the cupcake and the heart, this is a sign that we’re going to be welcoming a very sweet, very loving child into our lives. If nothing else, a lot of people have come by the site to see what I consider our first “baby photo”, even if they didn’t know what they were looking at.

So for my long absence–and my severe aversion to even the thought of those vegetarian Peeps I made–I have our future foodie-in-training to thank. He or she will be showing up around the first week of December, so I probably won’t be posting another flood of cookies and chocolates around Christmas again this year. But now that I’ve hit the second trimester and I’m feeling more like cooking, I hope to catch up on answering comments and be around more regularly.

And I mean that this time. As long as no one mentions those Peeps. I’m still having issues with them.

While we were grocery shopping last weekend, I saw that Whole Foods had red bananas at a pretty decent price, so I decided to pick up a few to continue my rum sauce experiments. I know that they take well to heat (until very recently, I actually thought they had to be cooked in order to avoid a stomach ache), and I have a fondness for unusual fruit. They’ve been sitting on the counter tempting me for the last few days, so I finally decided to try again tonight with the caramel sauce.

My rum sauces usually start out with three things: sugar, butter, rum. Tonight, I added whiskey and orange juice to the mix. Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat and add:

2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp Sucanat (dried sugarcane juice)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup golden rum
1/4 cup sour mash whiskey
pinch of salt

Warm this until it is all dissolved and fairly homogeneous, and add four red bananas, sliced lengthwise (I find it easiest to do this with the skins still on).  Place the bananas with the cut side down, and cook them, basting occasionally with the liquid (but not flipping them), until the sugars have slightly caramelized.  This should take 10-15 minutes, and you should see the bubble pattern of the boiling liquid change, especially around the edge of the frying pan. The bananas will be quite soft with a bit of crunch on the bottom, which should have some extra caramelization.

When they’re done, remove them from the heat to cool for a few minutes, and then serve them with a large scoop of ice cream (I’d recommend vanilla or coconut).

Okay, so maybe I haven’t had a food aversion to the food blog itself–after all, I haven’t figured out how to disseminate it in edible form yet. But I may have eaten a few too many of those delicious vegetarian marshmallows in the same week as gorging myself on that incredibly rich Cadbury Creme Brulegg, which resulted in my not really wanting to look at or think about sugar–unless, of course, it came in a fruit or chocolately sort of flavor. Which is a problem for a writer of a blog that focuses a lot of its attention on the pastry arts. Every time I looked at the front page, I’d have to run and get some nice, bland crackers or a brown rice cake. And just when I would think that I could get past it and write something for the blog, another comment would come in on one of the offending posts and it would start all over again.

But I think I’m feeling better now, and the thought of eating a s’more only slightly grosses me out. Still, to stay on the safe side, I’m going to ease back into things with a walk on the savory side of the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, the mailman brought a big box right up to my door. I was momentarily confused by the PERISHABLE sticker until I saw address label, and then I remembered the wonderful people at FoodBuzz had offered to send me some Buitoni fresh pasta to sample.

I put the box down and immediately ripped into it so I could get it straight into the fridge. On top of the contents was a nice little note from FoodBuzz.

This seemed like a lot of packaging just for one little container of pasta. But I don’t know how much space was necessary to ensure that the ravioli was kept cold, so I’ll give them all the benefit of the doubt there.

I lifted out the pasta and set it on the counter. Wild Mushroom Agnolotti…that sounded pretty good, although portobello and crimini mushrooms, beyond being two different sizes of exactly the same mushroom, are not varieties of mushrooms that scream “wild” to me. But I do like crimini mushrooms, the cheeses sounded like good choices and the pasta looked to be pretty high quality, so I was still looking forward to giving these a shot. I meant to enter the Buitoni recipe contest with them, but after the deadline passed I figured we should just have them for dinner with garlic bread and a nice, fresh salad.

The phrase “journalistic integrity” has a certain allure, doesn’t it? It makes me want to say I didn’t like the pasta, just because I got it for free. And so it is with great hesitation that I tell you that these were absolutely the best prepackaged ravioli I’ve ever had, and possibly better than anything I’ve ever had in a restaurant. I could’ve easily eaten the entire package myself, and then gone back for seconds. The filling was flavorful enough to stand up to the sauce, and the pasta had the backbone of Chris’ latest batch of fresh pasta, when he tried using semolina flour for the first time to really amazing results. There was just something so present about the flavor and the texture of the filling that lingers in my mind, something that’s missing in most ravioli in my experience.

(The only down side to these is that “rennet” is listed in the cheese ingredients, and I usually assume that animal rennet is being used unless otherwise stated. Fortunately, Chris and I have a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell, and if someone tells, turn a blind eye” policy with rennet because we love trying different kinds of cheese so much, but for any of you stricter vegetarians out there, you’ll want to read the label.)

Oh great, I want more right now just writing about it. I have to figure out where they sell it in our area…or make something similar on my own. But ravioli are one of those things that I always think take more effort than they really do and thus never set out to make, so I don’t mind splurging on the prepared ones at the store occasionally.

As long as I’m writing about my first food sample from FoodBuzz, I might as well show off the Moo Cards they got for me.

I love everything about this company. The packaging is really cute and clever, and reading their company blog shows that there are some cool and creative people behind the product.

The cards are half the size of a regular business card, which makes them great to hand out when people seem interested in your blog. I like that they’re a little less formal, but at the same time they’re nice and thick and vivid and glossy, so they have a professional look to them as well.

The cool thing about them is that you can have a different photo on the back of every card. FoodBuzz chose a bunch of bright and colorful food photos, and they’re really eye-catching.

I’m working on a set of images now to get some cards to hand out at writing conferences, but I’ll probably also end up ordering another set for this here blog, because as cool as these FoodBuzz ones are, I’d like to have my own photography on the back of mine. I always feel like I have to explain that the photos aren’t my own!

Long story short? FoodBuzz knows how to treat their Featured Publishers right! I was already enjoying being part of the program before the free stuff showed up, but free stuff never hurts. Thanks!

Apparently, word has gotten out that Jessica and I live in Seattle, a city obsessed with coffee.  I was never much of a coffee fan until Jessica introduced me to Turkish coffee a few years ago, which soon had me curious about espresso and other high-strength brewing methods (I still can’t drink “normal coffee” because it tastes watered down).  A coworker recently caught my attention with an unusual device he kept on his desk.  It’s made of industrial grade plastic, and doesn’t really look like anything to do with food, but he assured me that it produces some of the best coffee that anyone has ever tasted.  It’s called an Aeropress, and it’s made by Aerobie, a company better known for frisbees than for cooking.  I’ve been obsessed with this device ever since I got my first taste, and have been recommending it to friends and family alike for the last couple of months.  When I woke up this morning in need of some coffee, I knew that it would be the perfect thing to use for my first “Tools and Gadgets” post.

The aeropress basically contains 4 parts: the main chamber, the plunger, a stir stick, a funnel, and a coffee scoop for measuring.  Pieces like the funnel and stir stick are made of what appears to be industrial strength black ABS plastic, and the main chamber and funnel are made of an equally-durable semi-transparent variety.  The plunger also has a high quality rubber tip.  The aeropress uses small paper micro filters that cost about $0.01 each (the kit comes with 300 or so to start you off).  You’ll need to provide your own coffee, water, and coffee mug.  For the purpose of this demonstration, I chose to use a glass instead of a mug, so you can see the whole operation in progress.

The funnel is only required to keep your workspace clean when filling the chamber, but it does a good job.  The scoop is made to measure out enough grounds to make one “shot” of coffee, and the chamber has numbers on the side to mark out the water fill line, depending on how many shots you would like to make.  You can use whatever grind setting you like with the aeropress, but I would recommend using as fine of a grind as possible so that you can get the best flavor extraction.  The only caveat is that you will have to apply considerably more pressure with fine grinds, which some people may find difficult.

When making coffee for myself, I usually measure out two scoops and fill to the 2-shot marker, but have found that I need less coffee when using an espresso grind to make larger batches.  My coworkers and I have found that the water absorbs slowly into four scoops of espresso-grind coffee, and if we use four scoops and fill to the 4-shot marker, we usually only get 2 shots worth of coffee out.  When making two double-shot cups with espresso grind coffee, we usually put in 3 scoops of coffee, but fill to the 4-shot marker.

Aerobie recommends using water at 170–190°F (75–80°C), and I’ve found that the hot-water spout on the water cooler at work produces perfect coffee.  At home, I use the automatic “beverage” setting on my microwave, which heats the  water to  just below 190°.  I tried using near-boiling water a couple of times, but the coffee was so bitter I had to throw it out.

Making the coffee couldn’t be simpler.  You pour the water into the chamber, stir for 10 seconds, and press it into your cup.  I should warn you that if you are making more than 2 shots with finely ground coffee, you will need to apply quite a bit of pressure to extract all of the liquid.  It’s not uncommon that  I have to put most of my weight onto the plunger in order to make four shots.  Make smaller batches or use a standard drip-coffee grind setting if you find that you don’t like this effort — personally, I appreciate having to work a little for my food.  For those who prefer something that looks a little less like tar, you can top off a single- or double-shot cup with hot water or (soy) milk to produce an americano or caffè latte.

I haven’t quite figured out what it takes to get a nice crema like good espresso, but it appears to happen more frequently when making 2 shots at a time.  Different styles of coffee beans also produce better crema than others, too.  I miss the visual appeal of seeing crema on top of my coffee, but I usually like to drink my espresso with a bit of honey and the crema is usually gone by the time I’m done stirring, anyway.

Cleanup couldn’t be simpler: you unscrew the black plastic filter cover from the bottom of the chamber, and press the plunger down all of the way to eject the filter and grounds into your compost bin.  As you can see, the grounds are pressed into a “puck” just like in an espresso machine, so they won’t produce much of a mess if you prefer to use a trash can.  Once the grounds have been ejected, you can just rinse the aeropress pieces under warm water (soap if you like) and set aside to dry.

If you’re not trying to set things up for a photo shoot, the entire process takes about 60 seconds if your water is already hot.  This makes it ideal to use at work; it doesn’t really take any longer to make yourself a good cup with an aeropress than it does to pour yourself a cup of the burnt overcooked drip coffee that you’ll find in most offices.  You’ll soon find yourself sharing the duty of making “space coffee” as your coworkers get a taste, too.

The aeropress costs $20-30 and is available online and in many brick and mortar stores.  Replacement filters cost about $4 for a pack of 350.  Compared to a $250 espresso machine (about as little as you can pay for a decent one), or the $10,000 Clover device Starbucks is starting to advertise, it’s worth every penny.

Update: Please see the Aeropress inventor’s comments below about applied pressure. I still run into the occasional situation where I have to apply a decent amount of pressure (usually when making four shots from fine espresso grounds), but by following his advice you should be able to slowly press out a nice double shot of espresso with very little effort. I should also point out that the resulting coffee definitely tastes better, and even consistently has a nice crema on top (small bubbles that linger, unlike the larger foam shown in my photos, which quickly dissipates).

This hole in the vegetarian’s candy jar is hard enough in the summer, surrounded by blissfully happy s’more-toasters at any campfire you twirl a veggie dog over. But months later, Easter hops onto the scene, and suddenly us vegetarians are surrounded by not only chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs, but Peeps, glorious Peeps.

A few years ago, I started satisfying s’mores cravings with a complicated procedure involving a low-heat oven, Marshmallow Fluff and a blow torch, but then homemade marshmallows became all the rage. It killed me even more than I not only couldn’t eat regular marshmallows, but I also couldn’t make their gourmet grown-up cousins. I saw a recipe for marshmallows made with agar at one point, but I was never really keen to try it knowing the kind of brittle, flaky gel agar tends to produce. At one point, there was a brand of vegetarian marshmallows on the market, but they were outed as not actually being vegetarian before I got my hands on a bag.

Fortunately, the situation is on its way to being resolved. Last year, Chris started getting curious about molecular gastronomy stuff, and one of the interesting recipes he came across was a recipe for marshmallows set with xanthan gum rather than gelatin. It’s from Texture: A hydrocolloid recipe collection, a free PDF download at khymos.org that contains all sorts of interesting recipes, from the weird to the ingenious. He made them, and even though he over-cooked the sugar and made “caramel marshmallows”, I was really amazed at how good the texture and flavor were.

We meant to make them again, getting the temperature right this time. Months passed and it didn’t happen, but those Peeps have been taunting me from the shelves at the drugstore, so today I printed off the recipe and decided to give it a go myself. I knew they’d taste good, but could I pipe them into real, actual Peeps?

The procedure for making the marshmallows was so quick and easy, I’ve decided that it was easier than going out to buy marshmallows at the store. The recipe has you grind the xanthan gum with one tablespoon of the sugar, but my mortar and pestle smell suspiously of Indian herbs, so I did my best in a regular bowl with the back of a spoon. As far as the cooking goes, you boil water, sugar, corn syrup, cream of tartar and half a vanilla bean to 120°C (soft ball stage).

The syrup (without the vanilla bean) gets drizzled into the egg whites while the mixer is running. Next, you sprinkle the xanthan gum/sugar mixture on top of the expanding egg whites. Then you just continue whipping until the marshmallow begins to pull away from the sides, like it has here in this photo.

Working quickly, I began preparing to pipe my Peeps. I like to use a tall cup to hold my piping bags while I fill them, and fold back their tops like shirt cuffs to keep them as clean to work with as possible. Even with this help, the marshmallow really didn’t want to let go of the spatula.

Finally, I got enough marshmallow goo into the piping bag to at least see whether or not it was going to work. And did it work?

Uh, not so much.

I could pipe the shapes just fine. The marshmallow wasn’t hard to squeeze or direct. The problem was it just wouldn’t let go of the pastry tip! It would stretch forever without letting go, and so in my attempts to shake, pinch or otherwise wrench the bag away from the half-finished Peep, any resemblance to a Peep was entirely lost.

I kept trying until the piping bag was empty. Then I moved my deformed Peeps and added more sugar to the little quarter sheet pan (by the way, I was using vanilla sugar from the jar I keep my vanilla beans in, just to add a little more flavor) and dumped the rest of the marshmallow in the bowl onto it. After liberally dusting the top of the marshmallow mound with more sugar, it was surprisingly easy to press it flat in the pan. I was even able to pick it up from underneath and stretch it with my hands.

I wrapped the pan tightly with plastic wrap and left it in the fridge for about four hours, then took it out. I still wanted the marshmallows to be Peeps, so instead of cutting them into squares, I got out my favorite little flower cookie cutters and the chick-shaped one I used to make the decorations for my Cadbury Creme Brul’eggs. I found that greasing the cutters with a little oil and dipping them in sugar was enough to keep the marshmallow from sticking to them. To cut out the centers of the flowers, I used the end of a plain round pastry tip. As I cut each shape out, I put it in a container with more vanilla sugar in it, making sure to get the sticky sides coated and giving the whole thing an occasional shake and toss to keep everything covered nicely in sugar.

In the end, I have to say that these are definitely Peeps, even if they don’t look quite like the mass produced variety. Why? Because my mouth thinks they’re Peeps. The have the same crunch from the coating of sugar contrasting with the squishy marshmallowiness, except the homemade type aren’t stale. I have to say, I think these xanthan gum marshmallows might even be more marshmallowy than normal marshmallows or Peeps, partially because of the qualities of the gum (it’s used to add a “fatty” feeling in nonfat and lowfat dairy products), and partly because they contain egg whites, whereas most marshmallows are little more than sugar and gelatin. They have a rich, luxurious mouthfeel, and the flavor from the vanilla bean doesn’t hurt, either.

However, I still want to be able to pipe out real Peep shapes. After studying the differences between regular marshmallow recipes and ones made specifically for piping, I think I may have figured out the problem with piping the xanthan gum recipe. If my new formula works, you’ll being seeing some 3D Peeps here in the next week. If not, I’ll probably keep that FAIL to myself next time.