The Well-Tempered Chocolatier

Summer competitions: Seattle chocolate salon, Vancouver blueberry festival

July 10, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Ahhh, summer. All I want to do is sit on a porch eating cherries, discarding the stems and pits wherever they land. Maybe, if I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll cut up some watermelon and have a seed-spitting contest—but only if I know I can win. Or hey, there’s always long afternoons on sunny patios with endless pitchers of sangria.

Still, it seems to be a season for competition. In fact, there are two coming up next week: the Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon and the Vancouver Farmers Markets blueberry bake-off. I’m happy to say that I’ll be judging at both of them.

Seattle Luxury Chocolate Salon

As luck would have it, this chocolate salon always coincides with a heat wave. Call it fate. It’s a little unfortunate, since it makes it difficult to really taste the chocolate (less snappy, more squooshy) but it’s still great to see a room full of chocolate fiends. With a nice mixture of bean-to-bar producers, confection makers, this is usually a fun event.

Tickets are $25 at the door. The event runs from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sunday, July 11 at the Bell Harbor Conference Center (2211 Alaskan Way, Pier 66).

Vancouver Farmers Markets blueberry bake-off

I make a weekly trip to the Main Street farmers market, where I load up on gorgeous fruits and vegetables. Whether it’s luscious cherries, delicate summer squash or insanely fresh spring garlic, the market is one of the highlights of my week. I go for the hard-to-find stuff: collard greens, zucchini flowers, heirloom tomatoes. And I have been known to walk away with pounds and pounds of fruit: cherries, apricots, strawberries, raspberries.

And now, blueberries!

To celebrate the bounty of B.C. blueberries, the Vancouver Farmers Market is having a blueberry muffin competition. I’m, ahem, helping them out as a judge. I’m charitable like that. They’re accepting entries until Monday. More information is available on the blueberry muffin competition entry form (opens a pdf).

And even if you’re not entering, check out one of the faboo farmers markets that run across this fine city of ours.

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Chocolopolis turns two

July 8, 2010 · 2 Comments

I don’t have kids, but my friends seem to be reproducing at an alarming rate. Most of the offspring are pretty young, but the first of the pack are nearing the exciting age of two. I think this means that their parents need to bolt down anything remotely breakable, protect all walls and fabrics with some eco-friendly replacement for Scotchguard, and generally prepare themselves for the Terrible Twos.

Can you tell how excited I am for this?

Well, Chocolopolis is turning two next week, and I’m pretty darn excited about that. Aside from being run by the lovely Lauren Adler (self-described Chief Chocophile), it’s a great place for chocolate bars, bonbons and education. It’s an accessible place to start learning about what makes good chocolate, where it comes from and why you should care where it comes from. And with the serious list of events that they’re hosting next week, you have ample opportunity to check out this store—for the first time or the nth time—and learn about great chocolate.

Chocolopolis
1527 Queen Anne Avenue North
Seattle, WA
(206) 282-0776

Chocolopolis anniversary week events

Events at the store are free and open to everyone.

Ongoing throughout the week:

Annual Golden Bar Giveaway

Somewhere on our shelves are three bars with golden tickets hidden inside.  Anyone who purchases a bar containing one of the golden tickets will receive a free bar of chocolate every week for a year. Who will be the lucky Charlie this time?

Chocolate Passport

Each day of our anniversary week will feature a different cacao-producing region (Madagascar, Venezuela, etc).  Purchase a bar from the region featured each day and earn a stamp in your “chocolate passport” (only one stamp per customer per day).  “World travelers” who earn 5 stamps by making purchases on five days will receive a free Chocolopolis tasting bar and a truffle.  Collect all 7 passport stamps and receive the bar and a truffle plus free entry to a future Chocolopolis chocolate class or event.  Luxury travel minus the jetlag!

Sunday, July 11

11am – 5pm:  Chocolopolis at the Chocolate Salon

Be sure to look for the Chocolopolis booth at Seattle’s third annual Luxury Chocolate Salon.  Save room for samples of our hand-made truffles and our mendiant bar, a delicious bar topped with dried fruit, nuts & vanilla-infused sea salt.  We’ll also be unveiling our talented confectioner’s latest creation. NOTE:  Tickets for the Chocolate Salon are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. The Seattle Chocolate Salon is held at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in downtown Seattle. Visit http://www.tastetv.com/sf-seasalon_tix.html to purchase tickets.

Monday, July 12

1pm – 3pm:  Hands-on Event for Kids

Everything is better when dipped in chocolate–even your kids!  At this fun event our younger customers will get to play chocolatier, dipping a variety of treats into melted chocolate, then enjoying the fruits of their labor.  Stop by any time between 1 and 3.

4:30pm – 6:30pm:  Meet the Chocolate Maker: Amano Chocolate Tasting

Award-winning bean-to-bar chocolate maker, Amano Chocolate, will be sampling their lineup of single-origin chocolate bars sourced from regions as diverse as Indonesia, Madagascar, and South America. Taste their passion for chocolate yourself.

7pm – 9pm:  The Inside Story on the Cacao Trade in Ghana

At this special presentation, Dr. Kristy Leissle will share the inside story of what it’s like to live on a cacao farm in Ghana. Sample chocolate while enjoying videos and photos taken by Dr. Leissle during her visits to Ghana. No reservations are required, but space is limited for this free event, so make sure to be there on time if you’d like to participate.

Tuesday, July 13

1pm – 2pm:  Tasting for Moms

Calling all moms!  Chocolopolis would like to thank you for all you do.  If you have 15 free minutes, stop by today for a complimentary guided tasting of 3 chocolates, offered at 1:00, 1:15, 1:30, and 1:45.

6pm-8pm:  Meet the Chocolate Maker: Claudio Corallo Chocolate Tasting

From his base on the island of Sao Tome off the west coast of Africa, Claudio Corallo grows heirloom cacao and crafts it into a range of outstanding products. Enjoy samples of Corallo’s unconched chocolate as Claudio’s representative, Marie-Françoise, shares the story of this fascinating artisan.

Wednesday, July 14 – Bastille Day

1pm – 2pm:  Book Reading for Kids

Our mouth-watering story hour will feature a dramatic reading of Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory. Curious George introduces kids ages 4-8 to the joys of monkeying around with chocolate.  Kid-friendly chocolate samples will be provided during the reading.

2pm – 5pm:  French Chocolate Tasting
Celebrate Bastille Day in an appropriately delicious way.  Throughout the day we’ll be screening a video on lauded French chocolate maker Michel Cluizel (in both French and English). While watching, enjoy samples of rich, creamy chocolate from a variety of French makers.  Feel free to BYOB (bring your own baguette) and improvise a celebratory pain au chocolat.

6pm-8pm:  Meet the Chocolate Maker: Pralus Chocolate Tasting

Later in the evening we’ll narrow our focus to master chocolate maker François Pralus.  A company representative will share the story of the venerable François Pralus and his ongoing quest for perfection.  Put the story into context with samples from Pralus’ vast range of smooth, intense chocolate bars.

Thursday, July 15

6pm-9pm:  Customer Appreciation Party

Enjoy cheese, crackers and chocolate, and enter a drawing to win a visit to our “Chocolate Surplus Room”.  As a special treat, sample our mysterious, luxurious Egg Cream soda –a delicious chocolate drink that contains neither eggs nor cream — expertly made by a genuine soda jerk from Brooklyn.

Friday, July 16

6pm – 9pm:  Chocolate That’s Good for the Cacao Farmer

Taste chocolate by chocolate makers who purchase cacao directly from the farmer. A delicious way to learn a bit about Fair Trade certified, direct trade and profit-sharing programs that benefit the farmers and result in better-quality cacao (and tastier chocolate!).

Saturday, July 17

11am – 5pm:  Frozen Chocolate Tasting

Beat the heat (fingers crossed!) with samples of our frozen drinking chocolate.  And if you’re feeling lucky, join the search for any Golden Tickets that remain.

6pm – 9pm:  Guess-the-Ganache Challenge

Take the truffle challenge and put your taste buds to the test! Step up and see if you can distinguish the origin of the chocolates used in three of our single-origin truffles in a blind tasting. Enter your answers on a ballot to be eligible to win a box of truffles.

Sunday, July 18

3pm – 6pm:  Meet the Chocolate Maker: Theo Chocolate Tasting

Learn more about Seattle’s very own bean-to-bar artisan chocolate maker as a representative from Theo Chocolate shares the lowdown on their production process.  Sample Theo chocolate and ask any questions about Theo’s products and progressive trade policies.

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White chocolate gets a bad rap

July 2, 2010 · 2 Comments

El Rey ICOA white chocolateIn the chocolate world, it seems like darker is better. Whether it’s dodgy studies that claim dark chocolate will cure everything that ails you (from heart disease to athlete’s foot) or wannabe chocolate snobs one-upping each other by eating high percentage chocolates, it’s all about the dark. Generally speaking, a 70% bar does best with consumers, somehow striking that balance between perceived bitterness and actual sweetness.

But what about white chocolate? It’s like the abandoned, poor cousin of dark chocolate. It doesn’t even contain any cocoa solids: just sugar, cocoa butter and milk powder. And maybe it does deserve some of your derision. After all, most white chocolate on the market is sparkling, shockingly white and tastes cloyingly of too much sugar and milk powder. But then, that’s like saying all dark chocolate is bitter—which, of course, it isn’t.

How it’s made: white chocolate

After cacao beans are roasted and the skins are removed, they’re transferred to a melangeur (fancy French word for ‘mixer’). In the melanger, the cacao is ground into a fine paste of anywhere from 35-50 micrometres. There are one million micrometres in a metre. While 35-50 micrometres is pretty darn small, it’s still big enough that you’d perceive some graininess in the mixture. From there, the mixture is expelled under high temperature and pressure. Under these conditions, the cocoa mass is solid (think of cocoa powder) while the cocoa butter is a liquid.

When it first comes out of the expeller, cocoa butter isn’t white; it’s actually off-white, yellow or light brown. It often has distinct taste, though that taste will depend on where the cacao beans came from and their quality. In most cases, the cocoa butter is deodorized before it’s transformed into other things. Some chocolatiers add it back into their chocolate to increase its smoothness; some sell it to the cosmetics industry.

That’s right, the cosmetics industry. Cocoa butter commands much more money in the cosmetics industry, where it makes its way into lipsticks, face creams and soaps. This is why most mass-market chocolate makers want to replace cocoa butter with other fats: so that they can remove the cocoa butter and sell it at a higher price to the cosmetics industry.

And still, some take that cocoa butter, mix it with milk powder and sugar, and make white chocolate.

There are a few tricks to making white chocolate. One, if you roast the beans at a higher temperature, you weaken the cell walls in the cacao bean. This makes it easier to expel the cocoa butter. If you’re trying to make money by selling the cocoa butter to the cosmetics industry, this will maximize your profits—but it will also leave you with over-roasted, nearly burnt beans. Chances are, if you’re making your buck off the cosmetics industry, you’re not interested in high quality chocolate.

The second trick is that in deodorizing your cocoa butter, you’re removing some of the inherent flavours of the product. Again, if you’re looking at maximizing profits, rather than producing good chocolate, then this is a moot point. However, if you’re interested in making interesting white chocolate, then this is a problem. Deodorizing makes the resultant white chocolate sparkly white, and also terribly bland. That’s why most white chocolate all tastes the same.

El Rey ICOA white chocolate

This is the darling of the pastry world, as far as white chocolate goes. For a long time, this has been the white chocolate that professionals swear by. El Rey is a Venezuelan chocolate company, and while I can’t say I’m a huge fan of all their stuff, the ICOA white chocolate is quite nice.

This white chocolate is not deodorized, so it’s slightly yellow. It’s delicately milky, with a sharp sweetness at about mid-palate. Most important, both fade away to a clean finish so you’re not left with a chalky, cloying, milky aftertaste. As with all El Rey products, this one is silky smooth and luxuriously melty.

Askinosie Nibble Bar

Askinosie Nibble BarThis was a recent silver award finalist at the New York Fancy Food Show. That in itself is pretty impressive, because—as I alluded to earlier—it’s unusual for white chocolate to win awards. I’m particularly happy about this one because Askinosie is an American chocolate company who’s doing great things: putting pictures of their farmers on the packaging, including a “chocolot” number that lets you trace the provenance of your chocolate bar and innovative, sustainable packaging.

The nibble bar is a cute concept, too. It’s white chocolate with cocoa nibs on top. I like to think of it as a deconstructed cacao bean: taking the components (cocoa and cocoa butter), separating them, and putting them back together in a different way.

Just like El Rey, Askinosie doesn’t deodorize its cocoa butter. But unlike El Rey, Askinosie uses goat’s milk powder. The Askinosie white chocolate is beige-brown, which somehow fits with the rustic look of the packaging. There’s a bit of goatiness and sourness from the goat’s milk, and that offsets some of the sweetness. As you bite into it, it does taste too sweet and a bit grainy, but then the cocoa butter starts to melt and you start to crunch into the cocoa nibs. And as you keep chewing the cocoa nibs, the sweetness intensifies and the graininess becomes comforting, and then you’re just left with a clean palate and a bit of nibby flavour.

There’s something addictive about the crunch of the sugar and nibs, and the weirdness of the goat’s milk. They don’t call this the nibble bar for nothing. Notice that the top third of the bar is missing in the photo? Yup. Nibble nibble nibble.

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The weird and wacky world of chocolate sculptures

June 25, 2010 · 1 Comment

I’ve made a few chocolate sculptures. They make me uncomfortable. The entire time that I’m making them, I feel like a fraud. Like someone will come up behind me and whisper, “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” And the answer, usually, is no.

Sugar sculpture at 2007 James Beard Awards

What grows from a sugar tree? Candy apples, of course.

James Beard Awards chocolate sculpture and desserts

Those are Valrhona Manjari chocolate domes with raspberry gelee inside and gold leaf on top. And a snarling jungle cat, made of chocolate, to guard the table.

There are some pictures in this post about my time working as a chocolatier. And, in a bit of serendipity, when I googled for an image of “chocolate sculpture,” the first one took me to Rose Levy Berenbaum’s blog post about the 2007 James Beard Awards in New York City. I was at that awards show. I worked with the chefs of Le Cordon Bleu to prepare 1400 plated desserts. And I assisted as they created a candy apple sugar sculpture and the snarling jungle cat chocolate sculpture that is shown on Rose’s blog. It took three of us three days and 36 hours, but we did it.

So I have the utmost respect for people who make gorgeous chocolate sculptures. It’s a delicate balance of artistry and engineering. I think the artistry is pretty self-explanatory, but the engineering might be undervalued by most. Chocolate is heavy, and stacking chocolate on top of chocolate makes for a very heavy (and heavy-looking, as in clumsy) sculpture. At the same time, delicate pieces don’t provide much structural support, so you have to create something that’s still sturdy. Tricky.

Chocolate sculpture at EAT! Vancouver

Chocolate sculpture from Suzannah Yeung of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel.

I was fortunate to be a judge at the EAT! Vancouver chocolate competition a while back, and the winning sculpture just blew me away. Created by Suzannah Yeung of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, it was hands-down my favourite of the competition. The entire piece is made of chocolate, without any extra supports. You know that someone has done a good job when you’re so entertained by it you don’t even notice the construction. I loved the level of detail, the execution and the cleanliness of the piece. The playfulness—the lizard’s face and tongue—just made it that much better.

Chocolate sculpture at EAT! Vancouver - lizard closeup

Closeup of Mr. Lizard. Look at the detail on his face and hands.

Chocolate sculpture at EAT! Vancouver - flower closeup

These are chocolate flowers. Usually you need pastillage to get this level of detail.

Chocolate sculpture at EAT! Vancouver - back closeup

The back of the sculpture is as clean as the front.

From a technical standpoint, the sculpture was impressive. It was impeccably clean. Despite my eagle eyes looking for any signs of drippy chocolate, I didn’t find any. What I did find was shiny, tempered chocolate, smart use of colour, and a range of impressive techniques. That giant block of would-be granite that’s on the bottom of the piece? That’s not granite. That’s chocolate, all dolled up to look like rocks. The incredibly delicate flowers, so thin that I would have sworn they were made of pastillage? Nope. All chocolate. The air-brushed portrait, right down to the lines on the dragonfly—seriously impressive.

And, finally, I always look at the back of the sculpture. I was told when making a sculpture that it needs to be beautiful from all angles. That means that the back of it needs to be as clean, well-composed and aesthetically pleasing as the front of it.

This is the kind of work that comes from hours and hours of practice, years of experience and a natural knack for the stuff. I’m glad someone knows what they’re doing. I’m happy just to gawk.

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Strawberry rhubarb pie. Leaf lard crust. Divine.

June 22, 2010 · 7 Comments

Strawberry rhubarb pie with leaf lard crustThis post is totally not chocolate-related, but it’s officially summer (even the sun knows it, finally!) and the farmers market is full of goodies. Like strawberries and rhubarb. And pig fat.

I’ve spoken with the lovely Kate McDermott before about her wondrous pies. Kate makes The World’s Best Pie, as I discovered last summer. She swears by leaf lard, and I’ve been altogether too lazy to track down a source of it in Vancouver.

Leaf lard is the fat from around a pig’s kidneys, and is highly prized for its clean flavour and magically flaky pie properties. I finally found a source for it in Vancouver, and bought mine from Gelderman Farms at the Main Street farmers market. Give them a call or drop them an email, let them know how much you want, and they’ll have it for you at their next market date.

I bought three pounds of frozen leaf lard from them and rendered half of it in my crockpot. I used Cheeseslave’s handy how-to, and it worked like a charm. However, whereas most instructions call for the rendered lard to be strained into mason jars, I poured mine into a loaf pan lined with parchment paper. Once it solidified (overnight, in the fridge) it lifted out of the loaf pan easily. I now have a brick of white fat hanging out in the back of my fridge, wrapped in parchment and stored in a ziptop bag.

Word to the wise: while most instructions say that rendering fat produces a rather, erm, distinctive smell, I don’t think it’s unpleasant. However, it definitely smelled porky in my apartment for about six hours. I happened to be making peanut butter ice cream at the same time, and it got me thinking about peanut butter and bacon sandwiches…but that’s another post for another time.

Of course, all the fun of leaf lard is in making pie with it. I’ve worked with store-bought lard before and just find it off-putting. It’s strange-tasting, greasy and slick—and while it does produce a pretty flaky crust, there’s something missing.Strawberry rhubarb pie with leaf lard crust

So I made pie. And it is the best pie that I’ve made so far. I went a bit overboard with the sugar for the filling, but I’m so distracted at the exquisite flakiness of the crust, the crisp sound that it makes when you plunge your fork into it, and the delicate, buttery sweetness of it that I don’t even care about the filling.

Now that, my friends, is good pie. And I’m wholly convinced about the leaf lard thing.

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