THE NIBBLE Gourmet News & Views
Trends, Products & Items Of Note In The World Of Specialty Foods
Read all of our content on TheNibble.com, the online magazine about specialty food.
Archive for Chocolate
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June 20, 2008 at 8:24 am
· Filed under Chocolate, Top Pick Of The Week
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If you’re a person with a passion for the world’s greatest chocolate, why not produce it yourself? That’s what the chocolate artisans in this week’s Top Pick have done—the majority of them as a second career.
They are not chocolatiers in the traditional sense. Their goal is not to make bonbons, nut clusters and truffles. They are chocolate purists whose goal is to produce the best chocolate bars in the world from scratch, traveling abroad to source raw beans, cleaning, roasting, winnowing, grinding, refining, conching, tempering, molding and packaging the chocolate—some with no help, some with a partner and/or a tiny staff. In the process, most have built or modified chocolate-producing equipment for results they could not otherwise achieve.
So, how good are these bars? They rank with the world’s best, including acclaimed small producers (but still, much larger than micro producers) like Amedei, Michel Cluizel and Pralus. If you like great dark chocolate, this is an eye-opening journey you can take without ever leaving your home. Read the full review and learn more about these exceptional chocolate bars on TheNibble.com. |
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April 23, 2008 at 11:06 am
· Filed under Chocolate, Coffee & Tea
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| What do you do when you’ve mastered coffee? Come up with a line that goes with it. Starbucks has launched Starbucks Chocolate, a portfolio of artisan-style chocolates inspired by their coffee and Tazo tea products—and in some cases, containing pieces of the coffee and tea. The chocolate looks beautiful: a glossy finish and beautiful design. And it tastes great, too.
Starbucks’ offerings include chocolate bars, tasting squares, truffles and chocolate-covered coffee beans. The chocolate was designed in consultation with The Artisan Confections Company, the subsidiary of The Hershey Company that owns the artisan chocolate brands Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Joseph Schmidt Confections and Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker.
The chocolate quality is superb—among the best one can find outside a gourmet bar store, and some of the products can compete with most of what is found within those stores. The price is right: 3-ounce bars for $2.99, boxes of tasting squares and Milk Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans for $4.99 to $5.49 and five flavors of Chocolate Truffles in the same price range. |
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Take a bite out of Starbucks’ tasty new line of affordable, artisan-style chocolate. |
| Our only unhappiness is that today, we can’t find anyone online to ship these to us. But the products were just launched last month, and distribution will evolve. Whenever you see them, grab them. For three to five dollars a pop, they’re a treat you can enjoy, and a gift you can afford to give. Read the full review of Starbucks Chocolate, and find more about artisan chocolate in the Gourmet Chocolate & Chocolate Gifts section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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April 11, 2008 at 1:33 pm
· Filed under Chocolate, Top Pick Of The Week, Entertaining, Mother's Day
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Looking like the Marilyn Monroe pinup of white chocolate, Pierre Marcolini’s white chocolate bar truly is eye candy. |
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If you don’t already love white chocolate, our review of the best white chocolate bars in the world will make a believer out of you. You’ll also learn why you may not have enjoyed the white chocolate you’ve had in the past, and how to select the best bars. With Mother’s Day fast approaching, if you’re stuck for a gift or an activity, order one of each bar and have a white chocolate tasting party (read our instructions). Read the full review, and check out the Chocolate Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine for many more of the world’s best chocolates. |
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March 11, 2008 at 11:09 am
· Filed under Chocolate, Contest
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Make your recipe from Green & Black’s organic chocolate, and help cacao farmers in Belize. |
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Love chocolate? Love organics? This one’s for you. Green & Black’s, the world’s largest brand of organic chocolate, is inviting organic chocolate lovers to submit an original recipe that contains no more than five ingredients, and incorporates at least 2 ounces of Green & Black’s chocolate—any variety, from white to milk to dark to extremely dark to inclusions (nuts, fruits). Write a short essay on your growing taste for organic foods and how your recipe wows your family and friends, and include a photo of the prepared dish. You have until April 21, 2008 to submit your recipe. Five winners and their guests will enjoy a food-filled trip to New York City to the “Academy Awards” of the food industry, the James Beard Foundation Awards & Gala. Winners will start by shopping for organic ingredients at some of New York’s finest markets, and take them to a cooking session with Curtis Stone, star of TLC’s “Take Home Chef.” |
| All entrants to Green & Black’s Chocolate Challenge will be helping cocoa farmers in Belize. For each valid entry received, Green & Black’s supplying the members of Belize’s Toledo Cacao Growers’ Association cooperative with funds to plant and grow to maturity one hardwood tree. Hardwood trees are a reinvestment in the indigenous rainforest, and help to provide the necessary shade to shelter the farmers’ cacao trees. Each shade tree as helps a cacao tree thrive, thus providing the farmers with greater economic potential. NIBBLE TIP: We’ve judged a few recipe contests, and it isn’t the obvious cake or mousse recipe that always takes the cake. Think outside the box and submit a recipe using Green & Black’s chocolate where it isn’t so obvious. Just don’t submit anything like our own Chocolate-Stuffed French Toast recipe—we’re going to enter that one! Learn more and get entry information at GreenandBlacks.com. |
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March 5, 2008 at 7:15 am
· Filed under Chocolate, Special Sweets
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| Chocolate lovers: New temptation has been put in your path. Starbucks has launched a new collection of artisan-style chocolates, developed with the Artisan Confections Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Hershey Company (the subsidiary includes Dagoba Chocolate, Joseph Schmidt Confections and Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker). Master chocolatiers have created a portfolio of chocolates with flavors inspired by Starbucks coffees and Tazo teas. And, they are darned good. Made with high-quality cacao and other premium natural ingredients, the collection is artistic, flavorful…and extremely affordable. It includes Tazo Chai, Passion[fruit] and Citron tea-infused chocolate tasting squares; Caffè Mocha, Chai, Espresso, Caramel Macchiato and Madagascar Vanilla Bean Truffles; and Milk Chocolate Covered Caffè Verona Coffee Beans. For those who like their chocolate plain, there are dark, mocha and milk chocolate bars and tasting squares. The tea-infused tasting squares are dynamite—perfect with a cup of coffee or tea, or just a burst of fine chocolate. The Citron square is an epiphany, Passion is perfect, and the Chai is enchanting. The milk chocolate-covered coffee beans are among the best we’ve ever had, plump and robust (and let’s face it, if these two companies together can’t master a chocolate-covered coffee bean, who can?). And yes, the truffles are very good too. |
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Look closely at the shape of these bonbons, filled with chai-flavored creme: They’re tea cups! |
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But the best thing is the low price: The various bags and boxes retail for $2.99 to $5.99 (individual packages) at grocery, mass retailers, club and drug stores nationwide. Alas, the chocolates are not available in Starbucks stores at this time…but I suppose we’re lucky. It would be just too easy to get a bag of chocolate with that cappuccino. Every day.
Read our full review of Starbucks Chocolates.
- Read about more of our favorite chocolates in the Chocolate Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine.
- Read our review of Dagoba Chocolate.
- Read our review of Scharffen Berger Chocolate. |
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March 3, 2008 at 1:08 pm
· Filed under Chocolate, Gifts, St. Patrick's Day
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| You don’t need the luck of the Irish to enjoy Leprechaun Bombs from Cosmic Chocolate. You just have to read THE NIBBLE (or else, live in Oakland, California and wander into this boutique chocolate shop). Part of the shop’s “Cosmic Bomb” series, these bonbons are the bomb: beautifully hand-painted chocolate shells, dappled with edible glitter. The Leprechaun Bombs are filled with a ganache that is infused with Bailey’s mint liqueur, Irish whiskey and Green Chartreuse, an ancient herb liqueur of more than 130 medicinal and aromatic herbs, flowers and other plants (who can even name that many?). Taken from an old alchemical recipe for an “elixir of life,” it was first made in the 1600s by monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the Chartreuse Mountains of eastern France, intended as a medicine. |
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You don’t have to be Irish to deserve a set or two of Leprechaun Bombs from the Cosmic Chocolate Shop. |
The recipe was enhanced and became popular as a beverage. It’s green in color, hence appropriate to the Leprechaun Bombs. A second Chartreuse liqueur, colored with saffron and milder and sweeter than the original, is called Yellow Chartreuse. The yellow color with the greenish tinge known as chartreuse takes its name from the Yellow Chartreuse liqueur. But back to the chocolate. You can purchase four bonbons for $8.00 in a transparent box, allowing the cosmic glow of the Emerald Isle to shine through (well, not really—but the candy looks great) at CosmicChocolateShop.com—and you can see the other Cosmic Bombs as well. We haven’t tasted the Leprechaun Bombs, but we’ve enjoyed every other Cosmic Bomb that has crossed our lips, so our money is on the Leprechauns. When you order, please tell the Cosmic Chocolate folks that it’s St. Paddy, not St. Patty (you’ll note that error in their website description). No one likes his name spelled wrong, not even the patron saint of Ireland. When your name gets spelled like a girl’s name, even a saint has his limits.
- See our other favorite St. Patrick’s Day chocolate, candy, cookies and more. |
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March 2, 2008 at 7:37 am
· Filed under Chocolate, Special Sweets, Candy, St. Patrick's Day
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| St. Patrick’s Day will be celebrated on Monday, March 17, 2008, honoring the feast day and date of death of the priest and patron saint of Ireland, who died on March 17th around 460 C.E. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade actually took place in New York City on March 17, 1762 and continues today, with kilted bagpipers and drum corps drawing enormous crowds (a few years ago, we joined them to see both a kilted Sean Connery and a suited Mayor Bloomberg march). These days the holiday is celebrated not just by people of Irish descent, but people of all backgrounds, in the United States, Canada, and Australia—and even in countries where there is no Irish population, such as Japan, Russia and Singapore. In Ireland, it was traditionally a religious holiday (pubs closed). But in 1995, the government decided to use St. Patrick’s Day as an opportunity to drive tourism. It is now a multi-day celebration featuring parades, concerts, fireworks and other attractions. |
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Order some shamrock cookies for a St. Patrick’s Day treat. |
| Our own NIBBLE celebration focuses on food and drink, starting with a selection of sweets you can order for gifts, a St. Patrick’s Day party, or just to treat yourself and your family. Take a nibble at our recommendations. |
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February 23, 2008 at 10:02 pm
· Filed under Chocolate, Special Sweets, Tip Of The Day, Washington's Birthday
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 Chocolate, cherries, nuts. |
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Yesterday may have been George Washington’s actual birthday, but why not extend the celebration one more day and treat yourself to Chocolove’s Cherries and Almonds bar? It’s 55% cacao Belgian chocolate—a semisweet chocolate not far over the borderline between milk and dark, so milk chocolate lovers can enjoy it too. It’s available at many fine retailers; or you can buy them online. Get enough to share—you’ll be very popular. Read our review of Chocolove. The Orange Peel, Raspberry and Crystallized Ginger chocolate bars also rock. |
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February 14, 2008 at 8:34 pm
· Filed under Chocolate, Special Sweets, Daily Food Holidays, Valentine's Day
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Molded chocolates from DeBrand Fine Chocolates. |
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Fittingly, February 14, Valentine’s Day, is also National Creme-Filled Chocolates Day. Cream-Filled chocolates were made possible by Jean Neuhaus, the Belgian chocolatier who invented the first hard chocolate shell in 1912. Using molds, it enabled fillings of any kind and consistency—creme, whipped cream, soft caramel, light ganache, liqueurs, etc. Previously, only solid centers like caramels and nut pastes could be enrobed in chocolate—anything else would have leaked out. In enrobing, the center—marzipan, fruit jelly or nuts in caramel, for example—were hand-dipped into liquid chocolate. The center had to be solid enough to be held and hand-dipped. With Neuhaus’ chocolate molds, chocolates could now be made in pretty shapes, too—flowers, butterflies, fleur-de-lis, crowns, berries and others that are now familiar to us. |
| Thanks, Jean Neuhaus, for vastly expanding our world of chocolate bonbons. Today, bonbons with chocolate shells are known as Belgian style, and dipped chocolates as French style. Some chocolatiers work in only one style, some create a mixture of both. Chocolate shells have a thicker chocolate covering than dipped chocolate, so consumers have their preferences, based on whether they like more chocolate flavor or more flavor of the center. Read more about filled chocolates, a.k.a. bonbons, in our article on chocolate truffles and ganache in the Chocolate Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. |
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February 12, 2008 at 1:17 pm
· Filed under Chocolate, Candy, Cocktails & Spirits
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 Enjoy a Cassis Strata bonbon with a Kir Royale. |
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Love chocolate? Love pâte de fruit? Love cassis (black currant)? Chocolatier Michael Recchiuti combines them all to create the February 2008 “Flavor of the Month,” Cassis Strata. It’s a layer of cassis gelée atop a layer of silky Madagascar single origin ganache, enrobed in pure bittersweet chocolate. Nibble a piece as you sip some creme de cassis…or add the cassis to a moderately-good Champagne (never a great bottle, where you’ll want to enjoy all of the flavor nuances and not cover them up with external flavors) to make a Kir Royale. The drink was named after Félix Kir (1876 - 1968), a mayor of the city of Dijon in Burgundy (the same city of mustard fame). He added a splash of cassis to white Burgundy. The “Kir,” as it was known, became very popular, and led to the Kir Royale, substituting Champagne for the still wine. (You can use any sparkling wine for a similar effect…and you can substitute framboise or Chambord [raspberry liqueurs] for the cassis.) |
KIR ROYALE RECIPE: First, pour about an inch of cassis in the bottom of the flute or tulip Champagne glass. Then, add the Champagne. Stirring breaks the bubbles in the Champagne, so the better option is not to stir (if you must, stir once, very gently). An alternate technique is pour in the Champagne first, then tilt the glass and pour the cassis down the side.
CHOCOLATE DETAILS: You can drink Kir Royales year-round, but the Recchiuti Cassis Strata is ephemeral, here only through the end of the month. 8 pieces, 3.5 ounces, $18.00. Read our full review of Recchiutui Confections. |
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