Created by: OnlineMBAPrograms.org

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to taste test this year due to an allergy. But I had taste testers with me.

Hope you enjoy hearing directly from these food entrepreneurs. Let me know what you think.

Thai Feast is brand new to the gourmet food market. The Winter Fancy Food Show was their 2nd show! They are a family owned business based in Dearborn, Michigan.

Their award winning restaurant, Bangkok 96 Foods, opened in 1996, almost 16 years! They created Thai Feast as a way to share their food with people who were moving away from the area.

There aren’t too many frozen Thai entrees on the market. Actually, I can’t even recall one brand. And Thai Feast is gluten-free.

Caroline V. Polly is the one featured in this video. She is dressed in a beautiful, traditional Thai outfit and got quite a lot of attention.

Pad Woon Seen – Sweet Potato Vermicelli, Tofu, Bok Choy, Onions, Red Bell Peppers with Sauce

Pad Thai – Rice Noodles, Chicken, Bean Sprouts, Green Onion, and Egg Flavored with a Fish Sauce

Pad Se’ew – Rice Noodles, Chicken, Broccoli, and Egg Flavored with an Oyster and Fish Sauce

My taste testers said that the flavors were savory with sweet notes.

Owner, Genevieve Vang’s fruit and vegetable carvings were featured in the Clint Eastwood’s film “Gran Torino”.

To be honest, that was the only season of Top Chef: Just Desserts I have ever seen. And while watching, I was secretly rooting for Yigit. So, what a delight and dream come true it was to meet him in person.

He’s supercute with those dimples, very knowledgeable about baking, and very friendly. I was also surprised that he’s frugal.

Yigit told us about how he saved money by buying chocolate molds and forms not from a baking supply store but at a hardware store or plastic store. In his bake shop, he uses textured plastic panels from fluorescent light covers. Yigit will use it to spread chocolate to make innovative shapes and designs for garnishes.

He also doesn’t use a mixer to mix chocolate. Rather, it’s better to mix by hand with a spatula, not a whisk, so you don’t “piss off the cake”. That just means you don’t want to over mix the batter. Otherwise, the cake will come out too heavy and chewy instead of light and fluffy.

The chai chocolate cake was rich, moist, and tasty. The silky ganache melted in my mouth, while the chocolate cake was delicate and velvety, with a hint of chai and a creamy caramel center.

Serves 8

For the cake:

• 5.6 oz. all-purpose flour
• 2.5 oz. (5 Tbs.) Scharffen Berger® Unsweetened Natural Cocoa Powder
• 0.18 oz. baking powder
• 3/4 cups plus 4 tsp. whole milk
• 3.5 oz. crème fraîche
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 10.5 oz. (1 1/3 cups) sugar
• 3.5 oz. (7 Tbs.) grapeseed oil
• 4 tsp. chopped Ceylon tea
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon, preferably Ceylon
• 1/2 tsp. ground clove
• 1 tsp. ground green cardamom
• 1/4 tsp. ground star anise

For the ganache glaze:

• 7 oz. Scharffen Berger® 70% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate, chopped
• 10.5 oz. (1 1/3 cups) heavy cream
• 5 1/3 Tbs. corn syrup
• Cinnamon stick, for garnish
• Star anise, for garnish
• Candied orange strips, for garnish

Make the cake
Pre heat the oven to 350°F. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and set aside. In a bowl, mix the milk and crème fraîche and set aside. Place the eggs, sugar, grapeseed oil, tea and spices in an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and whip until the mixture has a thick, fluffy consistency. In two steps, alternately mix the crème fraîche mixture and the flour mixture into the eggs using a spatula. Be gentle not to overwork the batter or deflate it. Spray an 8-inch round cake pan with pan spray and lightly dust with flour. Pour the batter into the pan, about 1 inch from the top. Bake until the cake has a rise and peak, rotate gently, and bake until it passes the “skewer” test, and lightly bounces to the touch. Pull out of the oven, allow to cool 5 minutes and then loosen with a spatula on each side, and gently unmold and cool on a cake rack.

Make the ganache glaze
Melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Bring the cream and the syrup to a boil, and pour over the chocolate. Mix using a spatula, and in the end finish mixing using an emersion blender to emulsify the mixture, taking care not to add too many air bubbles. Use the glaze while warm.

Assemble
Place the chocolate cake on a cooling rack with a pan lined with plastic underneath it to catch the drippings of glaze. Put the chocolate glaze in a container with a spout, and gently yet quickly pour evenly over the chocolate cake, covering the entire top. It is ok, if not desired, if the glaze drips off some of the sides. Garnish with the cinnamon stick, whole star anise and candied orange strips.

Photo Credit: Scharffen Berger

I was ecstatic to participate in the Scharffen Berger Bakery Crawl recently. They took a group of about 30 food bloggers in a cable car trolley to 4 different bakeries in San Francisco. And it ended with a cooking demo by Top Chef Just Desserts winner, Yigit Pura!

The purpose of this event was to promote Elevate a Classic Dessert with Scharffen Berger Chocolate contest.

I didn’t want to go alone so I asked Joanne Boston of Taking Over the World One Bite at a Time to join me. And together we ate our way through San Francisco, one rich chocolate bite at a time!

We met up with other food bloggers at the Scharffen Berger shop at the Ferry Building Marketplace in SF’s Embarcadero. (BTW: If you want to get with the San Francisco lingo, never ever refer to it as “San Fran”. That means y0u aren’t from here! San Franciscans refer to San Francisco as “the city” or “SF”).

Then we loaded into a cable car trolley. Even though I have lived in San Francisco my entire life, I have never been on a cable car trolley. It’s a touristy thing to do. But I’ve secretly always wanted to.

The funny thing is every time we stopped, a tourist would try to board the cable car trolley! It was like that episode of The Office where Michael Scott was driving the Korean church van for the Michael Scott Paper Company. And every time they made a stop, a Korean lady would get in, thinking it was going to church.

Like I said, this cable car trolley is known to tourists as it’s a popular way to see the city.

On the Friday that we rode on the trolley bakery tour, it was fleet week and the Blue Angels were zooming around the city. It was fun to catch glimpses of them during our ride on a gorgeous day in San Francisco.

The bakery crawl destinations were Anthony’s Cookies, Citizen Cake, Kara’s Cupcakes, and Miette. Each bakery designed a special dessert using Scharffen Berger chocolate and we got to try it!

Anthony’s Cookies
1417 Valencia St.
www.anthonyscookies.com

The first stop was Anthony’s Cookies, which is located in the Mission on a street not near too many other businesses. Basically, if you go to that block, you’re there for his cookies.

This was my first time at Anthony’s Cookies so I was super excited to try his cookies.

His special dessert for the bakery crawl was a Double Chocolate Chunk Cookie with Walnuts using Scharffen Berger 62% semisweet baking chunks. OMG, it was amazing! When I bit into the freshly baked cookie, the chocolate was perfectly moist inside, like a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered. And the walnuts that I bit into with every bite, complimented the semisweet chocolate chunks.

Anthony prepared bags of cookies for us to take with us, one cookie in a bag. There were extra bags left so I quietly snuck more bags into the chocolate brown shopping bag that Scharffen Berger provided for us. Shhhh…. don’t tell anyone! When I went home, I savored every last cookie. I wish he would add this on his menu!

Minutes before we had to leave, I quickly bought half a dozen cookies – 3 toffee chips and 3 cookies and cream, as recommended by Joanne. After all, she frequents Anthony’s Cookies so much that Anthony knows her. She even had his cookies at her wedding.

Citizen Cake
2125 Fillmore Street
www.citizencake.com

Next, we piled back into the cable car trolley to go onto Citizen Cake on Fillmore. I had never been to Citizen Cake either but heard so much about it. I’m quite a bakery newb, aren’t I?

When we arrived on the busy Fillmore street, the bright red exterior caught my eye. This is just a hint of owner, Elizabeth Faulkner’s style.

Inside, we were greeted by the award winning chef, Elizabeth Faulkner, who was waiting for us in front of a neat display of masterly crafted cakes and desserts. Right above her was a bright neon sign with the words “Citizen Cake”. Yet, another hint of what was to come and I was unprepared for this!

She put on bright blue gloves to prepare for her demo of Chocolate Gelato Sundae with Chocolate Cake Crumbles and Marshmallow Cream. Elizabeth poured cream, chocolate, and other ingredients into an industrial mixer. And then…. she busted out a can of Nitrogen gas and pours it onto the mixture!

All I could see was smoke like dry ice filling the mixer. Who does that? Elizabeth Faulkner does! She explained how that was the old fashioned way of making gelato. Wow!

As you can imagine, this isn’t something you see every day so all of us food bloggers got our cameras out like the paparazzi and tried to capture this to share with you. This is how she makes ice cream. She loves the little details that go into making dessert.

It was a rich gelato made with Scharffen Berger 41% Extra Rich Milk Chocolate and 82% Extra Dark Chocolate, layered with chocolate cake crumbles made with unsweetened natural cocoa powder and topped with 70$ bittersweet chocolate sauce and made from scratch marshmallow cream. Decadent and heavenly are the only words to describe this special treat. She even threw in some chocolate nibs, which I loved.

Kara’s Cupcakes
Ghiradelli Square, 900 North Point
www.karascupcakes.com

For our third stop, we headed to Kara’s Cupcakes in Ghiradelli Square. Out of all these bakeries, Kara’s Cupcakes was the only one I’ve ever been to before and was familiar with.

The cable car trolley driver dropped us off in the wrong spot, but it was ok since Joanne and I have been here before. We quickly walked to the front of the pack to find the entrance to Ghiradelli Square. Kara was supposed to be there to greet us but sadly, she couldn’t make it. Boo!

We were greeted by an admin assistant who showed us the cupcakes. It was aptly named The Candybar, a chocolate cupcake made with Scharffen Berger Unsweetened Natural Cocoa Powder filled with caramel and topped with a milk chocolate peanut butter ganache frosting, sprinkled with sea salt.

I loved the peanut butter ganache frosting, a soft delicate way to feature peanut butter. The chocolate part of the cupcake wasn’t too sweet either and went well with the caramel filling and peanut butter ganache.

Miette
Ferry Building Marketplace, Shop 10
www.miette.com

At this point, we were an hour behind schedule so we had to rush back onto the trolley back to the Ferry Building to the last stop, Miette. Again, the owner wasn’t there to greet us, but it was probably because we were late. But they gave us a cute box with a Scharffen Berger Triple Chocolate Cream Cake.

It was a very substantial layer cake made with Unsweetened Natural Cocoa Powder, 70% Bittersweet Chocolate and 62% Semisweet Chocolate Chantilly cream mixed with Roasted Cacao Nibs in the layers, covered in a rich 62% Semisweet Chocolate ganache.

Chocolate on chocolate on chocolate. A chocolate lover’s dream. It was quite a heavy dessert that I considered it a meal! I was put in a food coma from this.

To be continued… Cooking demo with Top Chef Just Desserts winner, Yigit Pura.

Photos courtesy of Scharffen Berger

The premier food, wine, and spirits festival, SF Chefs, is returning August 1 – 7, 2011 to San Francisco’s historic Union Square. This annual gourmet culinary event promotes local restaurants and chefs and offers classes for industry professionals. After all, San Francisco is the epicenter for the slow food movement.

SF Chefs 2011 supports a good cause – the Golden Gate Restaurant Association Scholarship Foundation, which grants financial scholarships to students from the Bay Area entering culinary and hospitality programs.

Last year, I attended cooking demos by executive chefs Matthew Accarrino of SPQR Restaurant, Joanne Weir, and Gary Danko of Gary Danko Restaurant. I also got an exclusive interview with Chef Matthew Accarrino and attended the Sugar Party, where different interpretations of ice cream desserts were explored.

The SF Chefs 2011 schedule includes Preview Events, Grand Tasting Tent, Classes and Demos, as well as Parties.

Meet SF Bay Area chefs and food personalities such as:

• Charles Phan of Slanted Door and Heaven’s Dog
• Joey Altman of Miss Pearl’s Jam House
• Tyler Florence of Wayfare Tavern, Rotisserie & Wine, and El Paso
• Gary Danko of Restaurant Gary Danko

Check out Restaurant Week which is held in conjunction with SF Chefs 2011. Select restaurants will be featuring a two-course lunch for $20 and three-course dinner for $35. Some of the participating restaurants include:

• Crustacean
• Pacific Catch
• Sanraku
• Spruce
• Thirsty Bear Brewing Company

and many more.

Special Perks

If you have a Visa signature card, you’ll be treated to special perks like 20% off SF Chef 2011 tickets, priority admittance, and preferred seating.