Category Archives: Product reviews

Women and chocolate

Posted on October 16, 2009 | 4 Comments

On a slow news day, you’ll probably find some variation on the statistic that anywhere from 50-70% of women prefer chocolate to sex. Well, in an informal study yesterday afternoon, I asked four women which they’d prefer. Three of the four chose chocolate. The fourth chose both.

This post is about women who make great chocolate, right here in Vancouver. And, as a nice supplement to last week’s post, you might be surprised where chocolate lurks.

Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France

chocolaterie_logoThis shop opened up on a sleepy side street just off Main Street in what used to be a chic, but overpriced, clothing boutique. The shop is decorated simply but is oh-so-cute, with a chalkboard listing the daily offerings.

Truffles are sold by weight, and include tasty delights like orange blossom (delicate, floral and fragrant), Earl Grey tea (aromatic, elegant, and positively bursting with bergamot) and coffee (deep, dark and earthy). There are also truffles made with single-origin chocolates from Venezuela and Madagascar.

These are serious truffles that don’t skimp on the chocolate. They’re dense, rich and almost impossibly smooth. Finished with a light dusting of Valrhona cocoa powder, they’re shockingly good. Though they’re all delicious, the Earl Grey truffle is the best of the bunch.

You can also get small chocolate squares adorned with aromatic additions like lavender and chile flakes. The chocolatière, Anne-Geneviève Poitras, has taken care to match each chocolate with an appropriate flavour, pairing the higher percentage chocolate with robust flavours and the lower percentage chocolate with more delicate flavours.

I love it when people pay attention to detail.

Chocolaterie de la Nouvelle France
198 East 21st Avenue
Vancouver, BC
604-566-1065

Bad Girl Chocolates

bad_girl_logo[Disclaimer! Disclosure! Kelly Boyd, the woman behind Bad Girl Chocolates, is a friend of mine. She also makes kick-ass chocolates, and I wouldn't be talking about her stuff if it weren't good. So there.]

Bad Girl Chocolates has been a staple of the Vancouver Farmers Markets for a few years now, and I always look forward to this booth. Is it the cheeky, ‘40s-style pin-up girls that adorn the packages? Is it that the traditional flavours (caramel, nuts) sidle up next to the wacky ones (pomegranate, balsamic vinegar)? Is it the use of local ingredients wherever possible?

I guess it’s a bit of everything. Plus, I can have a chocolate while I fondle the produce at the other booths. (I mean, really. Did you see the peaches this year, all fuzzy and blushing pink? I dare you not to fondle a fresh peach or stick your nose into an ear of fresh picked corn. Seriously.)

Even better, a lot Kelly’s products are vegan. The ganache for Bad Girl Chocolates are made with —gasp! —water, rather than cream. At first, I was a huge skeptic, but now I’m a convert. The flavours are crisp and clean, and the chocolates taste just as rich as one made with a cream-based ganache. I won’t be making water ganaches myself, but I’m happy to eat them.

Don’t miss the fun, seasonal products. Not only are they limited edition chocolates, but they’re also the season’s bounty at its peak. I spied pears at the fruit stand last week, so I’m keeping my eyes peeled for Kelly’s pear truffle: pear ganache with pear caramel. The mere thought of it makes my knees weak.

Bad Girl Chocolates doesn’t have a storefront, but you can order online here. They’re also available at most of the Winter Farmers Markets, though the final schedule still has to be posted. You can also check out Bad Girl Chocolates’ debut at this year’s Circle Craft Fair, November 11-15 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

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Surprising places for chocolate in Vancouver

Posted on October 6, 2009 | 13 Comments

I love Vancouver, and I like to think that I know it like the back of my hand. Tell me where you are and I’ll tell you the closest chocolate shop. No joke. Just try me sometime.

Thankfully, I’m still surprised by chocolatey discoveries. And lucky for you, I like to share. Information, that is. Not chocolate. Hands off!

At the coffee shop

Soma-epic-sized49th Parallel Coffee Roasters has just launched the Soma Epic Espresso chocolate bar. A collaboration between 49th Parallel and Soma Chocolatemaker (who I wrote about here and here), it’s as if chocolate and coffee met in an upscale (but hip and down-to-earth) martini lounge, had a night of indescribable passion, and this is the resulting love child.

Soma, a bean-to-bar producer in Toronto, blends their chocolate with freshly ground Epic Espresso beans to create a bar that equally highlights the coffee and the chocolate. It reminded me that they’re both similar agricultural products: they start as beans, they’re fermented, dried and roasted, and then turned into something that people in first world countries value quite highly. Economics and agriculture aside, the bar highlights reminds me of the roasting part of the process, and there’s a really nice smoothness to the bar that makes its way to every single tastebud and every cell in your mouth.

49th Parallel also has other offerings from Soma, including the microbatch bars that highlight cacao from Papua New Guinea, Hispaniola, and Madagascar. Alas, they no longer carry Askinosie Chocolate. However, they do have the full line of Thomas Haas chocolate bars.

49th Parallel Coffee Roasters
2152 West 4th Avenue
Vancouver, BC

At the record store

Vosges-bacon-sized

Dandelion Emporium is a dangerous combination of vinyl, handmade cards, laptop bags, cheeky books, and anything else that your hipster heart desires. Ever the strategic thinkers, they also keep a stock of Vosges chocolate bars beside the cash register.

Vosges became famous for its use of spices and beautifully architected truffles, but has gained even more traction since the release of their exotic chocolate bars. I was gifted a bar of Mo’s Bacon Bar last week, and it’s a wacky combination of milk chocolate, applewood smoked bacon, and alderwood smoked salt. It has a comforting salty-sweetness to it, and actually reminds me of Chinese moon cakes. There’s a nice texture to the bar (the bacon’s crumbly, the salt crunchy, the chocolate melty) and the flavours are surprisingly well-balanced.

It makes me want to make more bacon caramel chocolates.

Dandelion Records has some large (100 gram) bars in the store, and have an order of small (15 gram) bars that are set to arrive any day now. Just in time for Hallowe’en, they’ve ordered the red fire skulls: skull-shaped versions of their red fire bar, containing chiles, cinnamon and dark chocolate. And the best part: black salt for eyes. They’re positively ghoulish.

Dandelion Emporium
2442 Main Street
Vancouver, BC
778-737-7367

(Note: Don’t get confused by the old storefront for Dandelion Records on Broadway, just east of Main. They’ve moved just around the corner to 2442 Main Street, under the new – but similar – name of Dandelion Emporium.)

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Burnt caramel and peanut butter

Posted on July 3, 2009 | Leave a comment

Let’s play a game. I’m going to think of a word and then say the first word that comes to mind when I think of that word.

Okay, so that last one isn’t usual fodder for that game, but I think the word association is valid.

Recchuiti is famous for his burnt caramel. It’s in a confection, it’s in his fleur de sel caramels, it’s in his almond caramels, and it’s probably in a bunch of other products, too.

I was incredibly excited to try his burnt caramel confection. According to the lovely little menu card, it’s his signature piece. An entire chocolate empire, built on the back of this one chocolate.

Well.

Erm.

…It’s a much more subtle thing than I could have imagined. I had lofty visions of smoke and depth, sweet and burnt, chocolate and sugar. In comparison, the real thing is – I’m just going to say it – rather underwhelming.

I got hints of burnt caramel (emphasis on the word burnt) while tasting the ganache, but didn’t really get the full burnt caramel flavour until the ganache had melted. And then, the smokiness just kept going and going. I’ve never experienced that before: having a flavour be dormant and muted while on your tongue, and then tasting its full flavour for a full minute afterwards.

On the whole, I think it’s a little too burnt for my liking. But I have to give a nod to the extraordinary experience of tasting something after it’s gone.

And, to leave you with a happy thought for the weekend: Recchuiti’s peanut butter pearls are to die for. Think Reese’s Pieces, but grown up. Think real peanut butter, think real chocolate, and think about a tiny, crunchy surprise in the middle of the whole she-bang.

I dare you to eat just one.

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Tea time

Posted on July 2, 2009 | 2 Comments

Tea-flavoured confections are tricky things. Too much tea is overpowering and unnecessary. Too little tea, or tea-flavoured confections that aren’t eaten immediately, taste like no tea at all. It’s a conundrum, and one that a lot of chocolatiers deal with by not doing tea-flavoured confections at all.

Somehow, Michael Recchuiti figured it out. Given that my box of chocolates weren’t hand-packed at his shop, I’m going to guess that they were at least 2-4 weeks old. Yet, somehow, his two tea-flavoured chocolates were lovely.

The spring jasmine tea features jasmine blossoms and green tea leaves paired with extra-bitter chocolate. The sheer size of the confection was surprising: at 3 cm squared (that’s almost 1 1/4 inches for you American folks), it’s one of the biggest artisan confections I’ve seen yet. I’ll be picky and say that the top shell was a bit thicker than I’d like, but it wasn’t overly distracting.

The inside more than made up for the overly thick shell. It smelled like what I imagine jasmine flowers to smell like on a summer evening’s walk. And the flavour profile was lovely, well-paced and deliberate. First, there were light floral notes that mellowed to aromatic, sweet jasmine. Next, you got the bitterness of the tea, and the cocoa of the chocolate on finish. The floral notes lingered for a while like a reminder of the beginning of the flavour profile.

The pearl mint tea was a more normal size, approximately 2 cm (3/4 inches) square. The shell on this one was perfect, although there was a bubble in the ganache.

The aroma on this one is pure, fresh mint. There are two kinds of mint – spearmint and peppermint – and they show up at different points in the tasting. First, there’s a low, muted taste of spearmint, followed by the earthiness and bitterness of green tea. This mellows to show off the bitterness of the chocolate, tempered with a pop of peppermint that builds in intensity.

Recently, I tried a similar flavour combination where the balance of flavours was off. The green tea was musty, making the chocolate taste like mothballs. The mint was muddy-tasting and dull, and the entire combination was really unpleasant.

Thankfully, Recchuiti knows what he’s doing.

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The real San Francisco treat

Posted on June 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

When a friend of mine mentioned that she would be going to San Francisco for a few days, an alarm went off in my head. I immediately asked if she would bring me back a chocolatey care package, rattling off a list of chocolatiers and bean-to-bar producers.

Well, she did not disappoint. She brought me, among other things, a box of Michael Recchuiti confections. Specifically, she brought me a green box, with an intoxicating assortment of gorgeous chocolates: star anise and pink peppercorn, lemon verbena, and tarragon grapefruit, among others. And, of course, Recchuiti’s signature burnt caramel.

Egads, I love my friends.

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