Entries tagged as ‘almond’
As I mentioned yesterday, I ate at Frasca when I was in Boulder. It wasn’t enough that I had lobster, beef shoulder and bombolini – I also had to try the house chocolates.
The plate came with coconut, almond praline, passionfruit caramel, 72% dark chocolate, and espresso chocolates. They were all well done, but the highlights were the passionfruit caramel and the 72% dark chocolate.
Aside from combining two of my favourite flavours, the passionfruit caramel was a great combination of tart, sweet and rich flavours. All gooey, sticky and creamy, it was delicious. The 72% dark chocolate truffle was lovely and bittersweet, with an amazing airy texture.
Nom.
Frasca Food & Wine
1738 Pearl St
Boulder, CO
303-442-6966
Categories: Restaurant reviews · Travel
Tagged: almond, caramel, chocolate, coconut, espresso, passionfruit, praline
Chocolove was an exhibitor at the IACP last week, and generously donated a few samples for ye olde blog. I picked up a few more flavours here and there, since this Boulder-based company has its wares in most of the gourmet food shops here.
I’m going to take a brief interlude to tell you about the ritual that I used to have with my friend Sarah. We would rent girly movies and stockpile junk food. One of our favourites was Skor bites. They were balls of toffee (sugar and artificial vanilla flavouring) surrounded by cheap, mass-produced chocolate (sugar, hydrogenated soybean oil, caranuba wax). We would eat them until our bellies and teeth hurt equally.
Anyway, back to the present. I’m going to buck my usual dark chocolate snobbery and boldly say that Chocolove’s toffee & almonds in milk chocolate is sinfully delicious. The milk chocolate is just sweet enough without being cloying, and the crunchy toffee-almond bits remind me of a Skor bar. A Skor bar, all grown up.
Incidentally, I’ll be in Toronto this week to see some peeps – Sarah being one of them. It’s been a while since our last girly chocolate marathon, but I’ve stockpiled some Chocolove toffee bars, just in case.
Categories: Confessions · Product reviews
Tagged: almond, chocolate, chocolove, toffee
At the ChocolaTas booth a few weeks ago, I tried their Dent-du-midi. It’s billed as dark chocolate with almond praline and nougat, which is a fairly classic flavour. Consequently, it’s a good litmus test for the rest of the line of chocolates. After all, if a chocolatier can’t get a praline right, then there isn’t much hope for anything else.
For a refresher on what praline actually is, check out my post on Voya’s hazelnut praline bonbons.
The ChocolaTas almond praline is actually quite surprising. I was expecting sweet, chocolatey notes and not much else – but there’s a lovely nuttiness and richness to this chocolate. The almond provides more interest and depth to what would otherwise be a pretty pedestrian chocolate. Just for good measure, there are little flecks of praligrain for a bit of textural interest.
ChocolaTas
151 – 1669 Johnston St.,
Vancouver, BC
V6H 3R9
604-488-1226
Categories: Product reviews · Restaurant reviews
Tagged: almond, chocolatas, chocolate, nougat, praline
If you’ve just joined us, I’m waxing poetic on the petits fours plate at Voya. It’s a changing plate of miniature deliciousness, and the plate I had featured lemon spritz cookies, sparkly coffee cookies, pineapple pate de fruit, cherry cordials, hazelnut praline chocolates, and coffee chocolates.
So, what’s this about sparkly coffee cookies?
That’s probably not their real name, and it really doesn’t do justice to just how pretty they are. They probably have some fabulously Italian name that means coffee-almond-bites-of-eternal-and-undying-love, but I’m just going to call them sparkly coffee cookies.
They’re perfectly round, loonie-sized cookies that are dusted in sugar and garnished with a coffee bean. Coffee bean aside, these cookies pop with coffee flavour, and then mellow to the slightly sweet and nutty almond base. It’s like a chewy version of a coffee amaretti. But prettier.
Voya (in the Loden Hotel)
1177 Melville Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 639-8692
Categories: Restaurant reviews
Tagged: almond, cherry, chocolate, coffee, cookies, hazelnut, lemon, pineapple, voya
The lounge menu at Voya looks quite tempting. I mean, it’s all cute tasty things that look beautiful. We had rare tuna with ponzu sauce, on a bed of pickled daikon. The pickled daikon was really nice. The tuna was…acceptable, but not amazing.
What is amazing is that they have a petits fours plate on the lounge menu. Otherwise known as mignardise, they’re typically served after dessert with coffee. Back in my restaurant days, it was my favourite part of the meal because you got to plate so many cute things – and it was fun thinking of new things to put on the plate.
Now, there’s no mention of pastry chef Maurizio Persichino anywhere on the Voya website. It’s a shame because the pastry chef should always get billing wherever the executive and sous chef are, but it’s even more of a shame because he does such beautiful things.
The petits fours selection changes with Chef’s whim, but on this night there were lemon spritz cookies, sparkly coffee cookies, pineapple pate de fruit, cherry cordials, hazelnut praline chocolates, and coffee chocolates.
The lemon spritz cookies are beautiful. They’re little rosettes of moist, lemony goodness. The cookie has an almond base, which adds enough body and richness to the cookie without being overpowering. The best part about this cookie is the texture: the outside is crisp and slightly caramelized, while the inside is moist and slightly chewy. The whole thing is dusted in sugar and garnished with confit orange. So simple, but done so perfectly.
Voya (in the Loden Hotel)
1177 Melville Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 639-8692
Categories: Restaurant reviews
Tagged: pickles, cookies, lemon, chocolate, coffee, cherry, daikon, hazelnut, tuna, pineapple, ponzu, petits fours, almond, voya
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