PRODUCT: Claire’s Squares
Bi-Rite’s specialty food store has a lovely chocolate section with many of our favorites, including Recchiuti, Michael Mischer, Vosges, Coco-luxe, Lillie Belle, and some specialty items we had never heard of but bought up to try. The most tempting looking, which we attempted to have for breakfast Saturday morning, are chocolatae shortbread and caramel squares, melodiously called Clairesquares. Alas for us, Claire, though a dedicated artisan who makes her products by hand, has a tooth far sweeter than ours. Both milk and dark chocolate squares were far too sweet for us to eat. If only we had looked at the ingredients label before we bought them, it would have been a clue; the milk chocolate has a cocoa content of 31.7% and the dark chocolate has 51.8%, both indicative of more sugar than cacao for our taste. To us, a minimum 60% for dark hits the spot. | Buttery shortbread topped with rich caramel and coated with Belgian chocolate. |
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Although, we still love the concept: a half-inch-thick slab of buttery shortbread, covered with a quarter inch of chocolate caramel, topped with a thin slab of milk or dark chocolate bar. The overall size is three inches; all measurements are approximate, as we are writing in a hotel room without a ruler. Available at Clairesquares.com. Breakfastless, we ventured forth to the famed farmer’s market at the Ferry Building in search of other nutrition. |