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ark chocolate using your favorite cacao don t have one head over to chocolate alchemy and start equipping your own cacaolab i m recognizing the holiday by working on obtaining a vacuum oven so that i can start making milk crumb the vital ingredient in making cadbury style milk chocolate it s a way of drying and concentrating milk into a crumbly powdery cake that can be used to make milk chocolate the process also caramelizes some of the milk sugars resulting in some really nice flavor components really interested folks can check out a description of the process in advances in food research 2 comments uncategorized permalink posted by tspyz quiz your waiter october 18 2009 browsing the web i happened across the menu for daniel a three star french restaurant in new york for fun count all the items on the menu that require prep work it s exhausting just to contemplate the feature of the menu that i d like to applaud is that he or rather his pastry chef calls out the specific chocolates used in the desserts unsurprisingly they are valhrona stalwarts but identifying them is an admirable step forward being a chocolate obsessive i ve taken to asking waiters what chocolate the pastry chef is employing which often starts some interesting questions and on at least one occasion free goodies from the pastry kitchen at melisse in los angeles the waiter was hugely knowledgeable about wine but was in the could be pumped from the ground category of knowledge about chocolate for better or worse he left that evening knowing more a lot more about chocolate spread the word start asking where your chocolate dessert is coming from for reference i know that l atelier du joel robuchon uses valhrona chez panisse uses michel cluizel coco 500 in san francisco offers a dessert option of a tasting of el rey bucare 1 comment uncategorized permalink posted by tspyz bittersweet cafe field trip october 15 2009 bittersweet cafe danville ca a recent customer visit for my real job took me by danville a small suburb east of the oakland berkeley area for a while i have been wanting to visit bittersweet cafe and remembered they have a location there am i ever glad that i made that little detour the san francisco area is packed full of places to find artisan chocolate fog city news and chocolate covered for example and bittersweet is another top flight chocolate retailer with a well educated staff and an astounding selection of the good stuff all this luxe chocolate goodness is delivered in a friendly welcoming coffeeshop atmosphere which strikes me a good tactic for luring unsuspecting hershey s consuming chocolate neophytes part of bittersweet s inventory bittersweet s owners are dedicated enough to the concept of artisan chocolate that they not only make their own micro batch chocolate they are planting cacao in hawaii with the hope of making tree to bar chocolate their selection of artisan chocolate spans the range from classic european producers south american companies and most of the new american startups the shelf you see here is maybe one tenth of the bars they offer and if you look closely you can see amano taza patric rogue and divine the bar at the bottom left is the storied amedei porcelana the world s most expensive chocolate that s a 16 bar you see for 1 75 oz and 30 rock punchline for the record i bought two bars and think it generally deserves it s reputation it s not the most complex chocolate i ve had but it delivers a nearly thermonuclear chocolate wallop with very little bitterness all the chocolate is tagged with reviews written by store staff who were also nice enough to offer me free tastes of many bars bittersweet makes a few of it s own bars and i got their sambiran a 70 madagascar origin dark chocolate bittersweet describes it as a very light roast and that s no lie it s a riot of bright citrus and brandy notes with some lingering coffee flavors my first taste out of the wrapper delivered a quick punchy succession of flavors but that effect calmed down a little when i resampled the chocolate after a few days my wife who loves 99 and 100 bars and typically is not a fan of lighter chocolates was pretty addicted to the sambiran please move this or i m going to eat the whole bar my only quibble is that the chocolate was not finished as well as it could be the tempering was imperfect with a bit of bloom on the edges and the overall texture is a bit gritty indicating a somewhat uneven particle size still i get the sense that stylistically bittersweet is aiming for the white stripes not the london philharmonic bittersweet has three locations san francisco danville and the home store in oakland i can t imagine how the founders manage to pack running three stores sourcing cacao planting in hawaii and making chocolate but the results are certainly delicious leave a comment micro producers reviews united states tagged bittersweet cafe chocolate danville permalink posted by tspyz another artisan confection honey october 13 2009 last saturday i got the chance to go watch some folks extract honey from a set of backyard hives it s not chocolate i thought that people obsessed with making chocolate might be interested in seeing how the most ancient confection is made chocolate is a brand new invention dating from about 250 c e compared to honey eaten since at least 2100 b c e like chocolate there are dedicated artisan honey producers making specialty honeys artisan honey is distinguished by the species of flower the bees extract nectar from there are honeys from apple blossoms red sumac basswood clover lavender among others like chocolate the character of the agricultural product determines the character of the final product apologies to any serious honey experts that might be reading this i m sure i m missing lots of detail here especially on the complexities of bee husbandry uncapping honeycomb like refining chocolate extracting honey is a fragrant messy process the process starts by kindly asking the bees to vacate the box they are living in then taking out the frames that the bees have used to build honeycombs you then use a hot knife to uncap the honeycomb cutting off the wax caps of the comb the resultant mess of honey and wax can be heated to separate the honey and the wax but most of the honey is recovered from the main body of the comb in the next step the uncapped frames are loaded into a centrifugal extractor extracting honey if you are lucky you can get a three year old spaceman to come by and help spin the combs in the extractor what they lack in arm strength is made up in enthusiasm there s an enormous amount of honey in even a small set of frames our hosts extracted more than ten gallons of honey from a single hive box honey ready to jar once the honey is extracted it s poured into a bucket with a coarse filter cloth to take out the remaining small chunks of wax the bucket has a valve that makes it relatively easy to jar and you have a finished very delicious product many thanks to thomas and jenny for inviting us over and for the great honey it really takes some dedication to keep three beehives and their thousands of sting prone residents in your backyard time to start thinking about pairing dark sumac honey with chocolate leave a comment micro producers united states tagged bee keeping chocolate honey honey making permalink posted by tspyz apparently i m jack donaghy october 11 2009 sitting here watching waaaay too many episodes of 30 rock when jack donaghy the pretentious ceo character is explaining how he wants to take his date to plunder the most expensive restaurant in new york for a 1000 dessert imagine a dessert for two consisting of a tahitian vanilla bean ice cream in a pool cognac drizzled in the world s most expensive chocolate amadei porcelana covered in shaved white black and clear truffles topped with edible 25 carat gold leaf can you imagine anything better a goof on serendipity 3 a dessert place in nyc that whole scene pretty much boomeranged given that i have two bars of that chocolate in the fridge suffice it to say that the wife is still laughing at me leave a comment uncategorized permalink posted by tspyz isn t it ironic don t you think october 7 2009 so we here at cacaolab s international headquarters were pretty excited to see that gourmet magazine named us one of their favorite food and travel sites ok we were more than excited we wore out our browser s refresh button making sure the link was really there and not some sure to be corrected editorial error the universe decided to teach me some kind of web based karmic lesson by nudging the magazine overlords at conde nast to shut down gourmet my sudden impulse to cancel all my conde nast subscriptions was quickly reconsidered when i realized that not having the new yorker wired or vanity fair around would reduce my recreational reading to cereal box nutrition labels or these objects i dimly recall from my pre baby life called books it s ironic in that alanis morrisette sense which is not in fact ironic but just sort of oddly tragic life goes on more interviews chocolate making and reviews coming and ruth reichel if you are looking for a new job we ll find you an office here somewhere leave a comment uncategorized permalink posted by tspyz black mountain chocolate october 4 2009 updating the artisan chocolate maker list is getting pretty hectic the next entrant is black mountain chocolate of asheville nc founded by fellow uc davis chocolate technology grad dave mason he s been busy and is now selling single origin chocolate sourced from nicaragua the dominican republic and venezuela 2 comments micro producers united states permalink posted by tspyz battle madagascar chocolate september 30 2009 as part of my quest to get people to eat better chocolate i ve been giving cacaolab chocolate seminars at some small events it s not hard to get people to show up and eat some free chocolate and are interested in hearing about what cacao is how it s made into chocolate and about the obsessives that work to perfect this craft once i ve cleared the rights to an image i ll post the presentation almost everyone has had chocolate but most would be willing to believe it was pumped out of wells drilled in the sahara at the last chocolate seminar after the talk about cacao i gave a little coaching about how to evaluate chocolate on a few sensory axes initial taste aftertaste and texture then staged some head to head battles between chocolates from different cacao origins the audience fell to the tasting job with gusto nibbling and taking notes on an evaluation form each chocolate was rated on a 1 9 scale for initial taste aftertaste and texture the goal was to evaluate how the newer american craft chocolate makers hold up against the legendary european warhorses i m not making any claims for the science here but i think there are some worthwhile conclusions the first battle was a three way madagascar competition pitting the american makers patric and amano up against the aristocratic french valrhona ampamakia bar here s a review from the studied palates at seventy percent the sample size was pretty small with 11 completed evaluations but the results were pretty remarkable from the raw numbers amano scored an average of 21 4 points patric was second with 20 9 and valhrona was third with 19 6 patric got the best overall initial taste score with an average of 7 3 and tied with amano for aftertaste at 7 1 amano slightly edged patric on the texture score with 7 2 vs 7 1 looking at the numbers and the subjective comments on the evaluation forms 15 forms had subjective comments amano scored consistently solid numbers across the testers patric and valrhona were chocolates that people either loved or didn t both of these chocolates had perfect ratings from different people tasters consistently noted that the patric had strong fruity notes 7 of the 15 forms and five of the tasters noted that the valhrona was smooth and consistent the tasting was not blind and the boxes were next to the samples the fruit note was so pronounced in the patric chocolate that one taster came to me and said the test was unfair because the patric contained plums this tester had tried the chocolate and gone back to check the box and saw plum notes and drew the conclusion that fruit had been added to be fair two respondents named the amano as their favorite chocolate of the six that were made available for testing i ll be compiling and posting the results of the other two taste comparisons venezuelan cacao and dark milk chocolates later on the most important overall conclusion is how much people have to learn about the potential of chocolate in the audiences that i ve talked with i estimate that less than 5 have had artisan chocolate and tend to be surprised at the variety and complexity available and at the seminars at least a few people run off to order bars from the maker s websites that is the ones that haven t pocketed bars off the testing table 1 comment mega producers micro producers reviews united states permalink posted by tspyz chocolatier chocolatier or chocolatier september 28 2009 my wife and i managed to sneak away from the house and kids for a few hours this weekend to a small wine and chocolate event in san francisco mindy fong a classmate from the uc davis chocolate technology course was showing her new jade chocolate line at the show and i was excited to see what she d been up to since the course she s combining chocolate with asian ingredients to create some really unique and tasty combinations mindy fong and jade chocolate her chocolate covered edamame have a nice subtle interplay with the crunch and saltiness of the soybeans against the chocolate she s got a spicy bar and a really great rice and tea bar it s a hershey s krackle that s grown up done some yoga and now works at a hedge fund in short much richer and sophisticated highly recommended given that this is a snooty artisan chocolate blog i m compelled to ask the abstract question here is mindy an artisan chocolatier to the non cacao obsessed this sounds like a pretty goofy question of course an artisan is a skilled crasftsperson she s spent countless hours matching chocolate to rice chili peppers and wheat tea pursuing her vision of what jade chocolate should taste like if you take a look at this forum discussion on clay gordon s encyclopedic site the chocolate life it s not that simple the chocolate community has a seemly unquenchable aristotlean imperative to order and name the members of the chocolate community there are chocolate makers who take beans and make plain chocolate and chocolatiers who take chocolate and other ingredients to make confections chocolate makers have enormous investments in the time equipment and travel budgets required to wrestle a cacao bean into quality chocolate it s an expensive painful process no one outside of the lurkers on chocolate blogs really understand the chocolate process so these folks ...