chocolate obsession

Quick Hits: Mint Crisp M&M's

2008-05-11T01:03:36Z

Hey, I finally found some of the Mint Crisp M&M's action (more candy - real chocolate will be posted this week - I promise)! Packaging feels kind of busy with a background of some ruins and the logo and Green and Indy. For those who haven't had a chance to try them yet what you have is a batch of slightly larger than normal green and white M&M's with a single big rice crisp in the middle of each. Oh, and they're minty (like you couldn't guess). They have a nice minty aroma lurking about them and a nice mint flavor. There isn't a ton to say about them beyond they're being crispedy crunchedy M&M's with a nice hit of mint. Not mint like the York Sensation or anything, but a nice quality mintiness. My only gripe is that the chocolate is kind of backseat on this ride and when you go to the effort of trying to notice it it just doesn't seem all that remarkable. Still, not bad. And overall they're a nice snackedy snack kind of deal so I'm giving some decently high marks. Solid 8 out of 10. Tasty.

Coming up: More Indiana Jones promo limited edition chocolate! And then a little cardamom (and I'm having a tiny bit of trouble coming up with a good adjective to describe having the flavor or aroma of cardamom - cardamommy don't work - caramomacious? cardamomiful?).

Quick Hits: Starbucks Vanilla Bean Truffles

2008-05-06T00:51:09Z

Ok, I'm taking a new tack on things. The mini-reviews that I have done in the past are now being sort of formalized into a regular sort of thing. It's not necessarily that I feel a product isn't worth a full review. Sometimes it might be, but sometimes I might just not have a lot to say about something. Or I might just be feeling lazy (most likely). Anyway, the idea is this: don't read too much into me giving something a Quick Hit as opposed to a full-blown review.

First of the quick hits is the first piece of the Starbucks Chocolate collection that I've sampled, their Vanilla Bean Truffles. The description from the label reads as follows:

Sweet and dreamy vanilla from Madagascar meets exquisite dark chocolate in a lovely pairing

Sounds like a winner. Packaging is a foldy cardboard affair made from at least 35% post-consumer waste (nice) and the individual truffles are wrapped in little wraps so you can have as few or many as you like.. A quick check on the label reveals that there is real vanilla in it, not just vanillin. And when you bite into one of them you will see loads of lovely vanilla bean specks running around in it. Taste wise the chocolate is not super intense, but is nice and pairs well with the vanilla. The "ganache" is white and there is no white chocolate along for the ride so I'm guessing that the palm oil listed in the ingredients plays it's role here. But it tastes good. Tasty, convenient, and not over-expensive. Seems we have a good start for my experience with the Starbucks line. 8.0 out of 10 is what I'm calling it and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the collection has to offer.

Agley Indeed

2008-04-19T23:16:51Z

Well, I thought I had my computer working right again. I was wrong. I overestimated the manufacturer of the hard drive thinking that they had improved their game since the last time I bothered trying one of their drives. The track record now stands at four faulty drives - two of which were completely DOA. The longest any of the lasted before acting up was two days. The only drives from them that I haven't had problems with were the replacements for the ones I did have problems with. Way to go . And now you can't return your faulty hard drive to the store anymore. Oh no, you have to RMA it. What a pain. Well, I finally got frustrated and resurrected one of the old hard drives I had slagged and made it my system drive and when the new drive at last arrived I just set it up as a massive data store. I'm going to run full diagnostics on it before I put a lot of faith in it. And trust me when I say I'm done with this company. Sick to death of fighting to get my computer back together and sick of a company with such an amazing failure rate.

While it was working, before the drive went away again, I had worked on some stuff for the blog. Yeah, those things are gone now. I'll try and get things back to normal this week. In the meantime....

So this weekend has been one of those "don't leave the couch for anything" sort of weekends with a geek twist to it (watching a large chunk of a "drama" which isn't really a drama and will not be named here) and munching on tasty stuff. But for this to work right I needed something to eat for dinner and I needed dessert. So I made a brief run out for supplies for my little geek holiday. And I realized on the way home that what the little holiday really needed was brownies. So I swung by Sugardaddy's for to pick me up some treats. And the signage in the window confused me. There was a cheesecake in one picture. And truffles in another. Seems that they have some new products in Sugardaddy land. The cheesecake tastes quite nice and the truffles, based on their brownie flavors, sound quite good. Haven't tried them yet, but trust me I will (got one of each of their eight varieties - I'm weak like that). I didn't take home a cheesecake, though. I had some Graeter's Black Raspberry Chip ice cream in the car and wasn't ready to commit myself to that much overload in one weekend. It's chocolate obsession, not chocolate overdose.

*EDIT*They're BROWNIE truffles. Sort of a magical hybrid of brownies and truffles. Hrm. Truffownies? Brownuffles? Yeah, I suppose brownie truffles works.*EDIT*

Chocolate Overdose. That would be a good domain. Hmm... I've been thinking about picking up a few new domains lately. It all sort of started out of an idea for a April Fools thing. I didn't want to simply rickroll everybody, I wanted to do something fun. Next year, oh yes, next year I have some fun planned.

And I tried this wine today. It's red wine with "the flavor of dutch cocoa" or something similar. It's got a mouthfeel like Bailey's, but the taste is a little different. Kind of a slightly alcoholic hot chocolate that isn't hot. And it has a slight cherry undercurrent to it. Pretty tasty, but reading the back revealed the horrible truth: no chocolate at all. The wine was wine and the cream was cream, but the flavors were artificial. Tsk tsk.

What else? I still can't find those darn Mint M&M's. Nowhere I look. It's getting depressing. I suppose when the movie comes out I'll find them everywhere, but for now I can't find bag one. It makes me sad. Haven't seen the Starbucks chocolate yet either. Need to find and try.

Administrative Professionals week is this next week. If you got an admin in your world hook 'em up with some of the good stuff. Most people appreciate chocolate. It tastes better than flowers.

Saw this recipe float through the in box and had to share. It's got bacon. And chocolate of course. But bacon. In cookies no less. Sounds interesting. And I'll try most things at least once.

If you live in the San Fran area you NEED to get on the Charles Chocolate mailing list. There have been a couple of great in-store events that have crossed my inbox in recent weeks and if I lived out there I would have gone for sure.

It's not chocolate, but there are these Cinnamon Fire Twizzlers running around out there and if you like the whole hot cinnamon candy thing then these are really pretty darn good. Very pleasantly surprised by them.

Ok, that's all I've got for now. I have to attack my email sometime (running it from my iPhone has limits). I promise to talk chocolate and beer soon, but the subject frustrates me. And some reviews are due along the way. I'll see what I can work up. The computer still needs some work before it's up to where I want it to be and in theory I'm on vacation next weekend, but we'll see what I can fit in.

Oh, and there is another local brownie I need to address. I picked up one of theirs at my favorite gourmet market (ooh, it sounds so snooty when I say it - and the place is anything but snooty) and quite liked it. I need to be trying more.

Here's to hoping I haven't made any glaring spelling or grammar errors, cause I certainly am NOT going to proof it. The couch: she beckons.

'nite all!

Review: Wildly Cherry M&M's

2008-04-03T12:47:00Z

Ok, so I had been planning on writing up a formal review of the Wildly Cherry M&M's and had, on multiple occasions, promised that it was forthcoming. And then I sat down to write it and realized that I really didn't have a lot to say. There really isn't a lot to say about them.

So, tearing into the bag you are met by a slight cherry aroma. Not bad and not overpowering. The M&M's themselves are of both varying size and varying shades of red. Some are no bigger than a normal M&M and some are monstrous huge. Most are well above average size and most tend away from the really dark red. The darkest ones seem to be the biggest ones and I guess that was by design. Anyway, they are big so you get that much more chocolate in each one and that's a nice little bonus. The taste is really nice. The cherry flavor isn't super-strong, but more of a background flavor. And since it isn't quite so front-and-center you don't get any sense of it being overly fake. It doesn't come across as overly genuine either, but it doesn't scream FAKE at you and that's a good thing. And finally the aftertaste. The Razzberry M&M's had an aftertaste that I just couldn't stand. With these the only aftertaste I'm getting is of milk chocolate. The cherry fades and all that is left is a little hint of milk chocolate.

So they don't have any of the weaknesses that I found in the Razzberry M&M's and are quite enjoyable. Overally I'd be forced to call that a win. I don't really like to have more than a few at a time, but I do enjoy them. As they are a nice step up from the annoyance of the Razzberry I'm going to give them a 7.5 out of 10. They aren't perfect and are far from "fine chocolates", but they do the job and do it nicely.

Now I'm looking forward to trying the Mint Crisp M&M's that they are releasing in a Indiana Jones cross-promotion. Seems to me it's time to start hitting the drug stores again. I do love to hunt for chocolate.

Write Off Another Week

2008-03-30T02:28:53Z

"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley" Robert Burns

Well, this week has been quite the mess. I had high hopes of posting and then things... went wrong. I decided to upgrade my pc and ended up with a dead box for a few days. My allergies and a cold both teamed up on me to start making me miserable (you ever had a wire brush taken to your throat and sinus cavity? that's how it felt) and I spent most of Thursday asleep. I only just got sound working on my pc again this evening and the cold and allergies are still giving me problems. And the only thing that got me through it all was my container of Dufflet Crunchy Caramel Crusted Pistachios in Pure Milk Chocolate. Oh, they are snacktastic. Almost all gone, too.

But there's been stuff going on! All sorts of stuff all over the place. Stuff that needs addressed.

First up there is this study that was conducted by the University of Illinois in conjunction with Mars Inc. that shows that the CocoaVia brand chocolates can lower both your cholesterol and blood pressure due to them being fortified with plant sterols. Normally I'd sneer at any study conducted in conjunction with the manufacturer of the product being studied, but I doubt that the U of I is in the business of selling itself out. I've known whether to take the product seriously or not. I tried some (it was free) and found it ok, but I did like the idea that they guarantee a certain level of flavanols. Turns out that those plant sterols might be something special as well.
Medical News Today
Food Production Daily

What would you do with 20 tons of chocolate? That is the question facing the individual or individuals who stole a trailer full of Hershey's products this week. The theives made off with the trailer and ditched the tracking device. The trailer has since been recovered. The chocolate has not. 20 tons is a lot of chocolate. What the heck do you do with that much chocolate? I can't imagine you could sell it all to one buyer. If you did you would have to split it into separate lots and move them separately with appropriately forged paperwork in case the driver is stopped. Hmmm.... how do you move 20 tons of chocolate? I suppose there are a number of people on both sides of the law pondering that question about now. I suppose I'll leave them to it.

Hershey's is launching a new line of chocolate snacks called Hershey's Bliss which comes in three varieties: Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and Milk Chocolate Meltaway. They are apparently - and this is entirely the wording from the press release - "targeting female chocolate lovers" and letting them sign up to host one of ten thousand Bliss launch parties nationwide. You can sign up to get in on the free chocolate action by visiting this site. I'm impressed with the way that they're socializing the whole luanch. This is a neat experiment in marketing and social networking as they give you online tools to send invites and share pictures and stuff as well as giving you the snax and some host gifts (so, yeah, you want to be hosting the party). So sign up and give it a shot! Or not if Hershey's isn't your thing.
Press Release
Signup Page
Product Page

A lot of stuff that people send me seems to get caught in the old bulk mail bucket and the bits that don't, well, I'm not as diligent as I should be in answering all of my correspondence or addressing everything that happens across my inbox. One of those things that has floated by recently is Chocolate Expert, a site with a nice selection of reference articles and recipes on chocolate. Seems to be a pretty decent sort of place so I figure they are worth a mention.

Another of those things that showed up and wasn't given quite the interest it deserved was the site The Chocolate Life. It's a community-based site for those with a love for that most perfect of foods. It's one I'm going to have to give a closer look at. I like the community idea thang they have going. And I received a question in a recent email that would be a lovely topic for discussion over there.

I'm hoping that I'll get the M&M's review that I promised a few days ago up tomorrow and a review of the Amano Cuyagua bar if I can find the darn thing. It was on my desk and I was eating it just a few days ago. I can't figure out where the heck it's disappeared to. Of course the last week has been chaotic on my desk with all the computer work so its only natural that it would be a little harder to find. I think it's out on the kitchen table from when I was taking pictures of it. Anyway, I plan on finally reviewing it this week. Really I do! I also plan on talking about my painful experiences with extremely high cacao content chocolates and the potentially difficult combination of chocolate and beer. Assuming this cold goes away and I don't spend any more days in bed.

What the heck?

2008-03-25T13:05:55Z

So I'm at the grocery store last night picking up some green leafy stuff for the rabbit and I happen to wander by the promotional aisle where all of the Easter stuff is. Well, I figured it was worth a look to see if there weren't some good post-Easter deals to be had. The deals weren't bad, but what I really got excited about was finally finding the Wildly Cherry M&M's! I didn't have the highest of hopes for them, but figured what the hey, they're new so I might as well try them, right? Imagine my horror when I found myself liking them! I need to go back for a second try, but I'm afraid that I actually like these. For some reason the Razzberry M&M's didn't click that well with me so I sort of expected these to miss as well. But I'm afraid that I might just like these. I'll put up a full review later this week, but right now it's looking pretty positive (not that it isn't subject to change).

Review: 3 Musketeers Raspberry with Dark Chocolate

2008-03-13T12:50:42Z

I've made a number of passes through the Easter candy aisle at the grocery store lately and I've generally come up with little or nothing to show for my efforts (aside from a few Peeps). This last trip to the store I finally noticed something different about one of the items that I had previously managed to ignore. One of those items I assumed was simply a holiday re-packaging job turned out to be a little bit more. It seems that they managed to sneak out another Limited Edition Three Musketeers and it had been right in front of my nose for weeks (maybe). Last time it was the Mint Three Musketeers which, frankly, didn't do much for me. This time they go the Raspberry Route which I, for some odd reason, had high hopes for. So into the basket it went (along with a mixed bag for the candy bowl at my desk at work).

Sadly, I can’t think of too much to say about these. They’re moderately unremarkable and that, I guess, is their biggest strength. The texture of the Mint Three Musketeers really bothered me. If the whippy fluff stuff isn’t properly whippy and fluffy then it shouldn’t say Three Musketeers on the package. The Mint was like that. The texture just felt wrong. It didn’t help that I didn’t find them that tasty either. These little Raspberry critters have a much better texture and the flavor isn’t bad either. There isn’t a whole lot of chocolate flavor to it, but that isn’t much of a surprise when you consider that there is a lot more of the fluff than there is chocolate. The raspberry fluff is really pretty decent. It does taste sort of artificial, but not to the point of being bad. The hint of chocolate and not-offensively-artificial raspberry flavor work together nicely.

So this turned out to click with me a lot better than the Mint variety did last year. It isn’t as good as a normal Three Musketeers, but better than the mint so I’m giving it a 7.5 out of 10, a score that sits it right between the two reference bars. It’s really not bad at all, but it’s also really not amazing. If you like raspberry candy these might go over well and I would say they’re worth a try, but I haven’t seen anything but Minis in this flavor and I know that I’m going to have to work to give away the rest of the bag I bought unless I find somebody who really likes them a lot.

Starbucks Chocolate

2008-03-07T01:11:16Z

Well, now. I just don’t quite know what to think about this. Starbucks is stepping into the world of chocolate delivering tea and coffee flavored chocolates with the aid of (drum roll please)…. Hershey! Yeah, I’m being intentionally misleading. I can’t see Starbucks using anything as pedestrian as normal everyday Hershey chocolate (or Special Dark). Instead they are using an unspecified chocolate from the Hershey Artisan Confections collection of companies. And it appears to be one that is associated with bean-to-bar chocolate making. By my interpretation that would make it Sharffen Berger. Dagoba would also be possible, but if they were going organic I’m sure they would trumpet it. I’d guess they want quality without the additional cost that organic chocolate generally carries.

The flavors sound like they’ll be interesting. From the press release:

The collection includes: signature dark, mocha and milk chocolate bars and tasting squares; Tazo® Chai, Passion 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.

The most interesting thing about their whole foray into the world of chocolate is the fact that it will be available in grocery stores, drug stores, and the like, but it will not be available in Starbucks stores. I would be forced to wonder if this is because they’re using Hershey’s distribution channel and Starbucks stores aren’t a part of it. Whatever the reason, they’re supposed to be in stores now.

I’m curious to try some of what they are offering. I’m enjoying the whole tea and chocolate combination lately and I’ve always liked a little coffee with my chocolate so it should all be worth a taste. There is a link to the press release below and there is some neat stuff on it with product pictures and videos of chocolate tastings so check it out.

Press Release

Review: Hershey's Vanilla Creme Kisses

2008-03-04T01:11:16Z

A lot of what I've been eating lately, in terms of chocolate at least, has been the stuff I was finding at the grocery store. Whatever bars they happened to have (more often than not it was just the Lindt Excellence bars) and whenever I saw something in the candy aisle that caught my eye I would make sure to take it along with me as well. And I really haven't eaten a lot at all.

But recently I was motivated and excited to dig through the Easter selection at the grocery store. I ended up rather disappointed. There was a lot of the sort of items that change their general shape and wrapping for each holiday and the same old stuff in a different wrap just isn't all that exciting to me. I did find one thing I was interested in, though. They had Hershey's Vanilla Creme Kisses and that seemed like something I couldn't pass up.

So the kisses come sitting flat in this triangular sleeve package which is a nice design. The kisses themselves are larger than the kisses I'm familiar with, but since they're filled this is a good thing. You get a better balance between the amount of chocolate shell and flavored stuff. The shell is standard Hershey's Kiss. Nothing all that special. It's the stuff inside that had me interested. The vanilla creme is thick stuff but softer than the shell. I suppose I expected it to be sweeter than I found it to be and was pleasantly surprised. The vanilla creme isn't overly sweet or overly strong and is a nice companion to the chocolate. They are good and don't have that aftertaste that I disliked so much with the Cherry Cordial Kisses (and it started so well, too).

So while I think that the kisses look a little strange compared to the normal ones, I do find them to be a tasty diversion. Not the sort of thing I'm going after on a normal basis (being more into the dark chocolate and less into the candy and milk chocolate), but it's pretty good stuff. I'm going to call it a 7.5 out of 10. It's some tasty snacky stuff.

What Happened Here?

2008-02-27T01:02:38Z

Yeah, it’s been about forever since I last posted. Something stressful has been going on and I’ve been in comfort food mode which generally means very little in the way of chocolate. Not that it wasn’t there. I just sort of turned my attention to the baked goods and there was quite often a chocolate component to the particular baked good. It just wasn’t the sort of thing I was going to be posting about. Chocolate mousse cake and beer sort of thing. And if it wasn’t a baked good then it was more likely than not whatever I could find at the grocery store (which really wasn’t a whole lot - the bar I wanted just wasn’t on the shelf).

The stress has died down a bit compared to what it was and I’m really kind of getting things back to normal and getting some chocolate back into my life. So this is sort of my getting over my non-posting guilt and serving notice that I’m sort of back more or less. I’m itching for some good chocolate and will be heading down to Jungle Jim’s to look for some stuff to snack on and I’ve still got an item or two collecting dust around the home or that I’ve eaten and not really talked about.

So, yeah, sorry I’ve not been posting, but life is like that sometimes.

Review: Patric Chocolate Madagascar

2008-01-27T01:57:20Z

Wow. It seems like forever since I last had a bar of just chocolate. I’ve had all sorts of truffles and brownies and bars with stuff in, but it’s been, I don’t know, since October since I last had a bar of what I would call tasting chocolate. I’ve had tons of them on hand, but have been eating really very little chocolate at all (trying to eat healthy - ugh!) and the bars have just sort of been ignored as I tackled other stuff. But last night that changed. At long last I cracked into Patric Chocolate’s premire release, the Madagascar Sambirano Valley bar. Patric are that most special of breeds – a bean to bar producer (in their case I think artisan is called for) – and the bar is a micro-batch product. And it’s one heck of a bar to mark my return to pure chocolate.

I’ve made no secret that I’m a sucker for nice packaging and the boxes that Patric use are very nice with gold trim and a nice cacao pod graphic. The bar, once extracted from it’s gold wrap, is beautiful. It’s darker than milk chocolate and lighter than a lot of dark chocolate and has a little red in it. It's well formed with a nice engraved P on each square and has a great snap. The aroma is a mix of cedar, coffee, raspberry, and cherry. I didn’t expect the cedar, but that’s what my nose was telling me. The box tells us to expect notes of citrus, red wine, and berries. To me it opens with a quick hint of caramel and a nice mixed berry note and bright orange. The flavor progresses to richer wine (or brandy?) and cherry notes while the berries settle into more of a raspberry note. And somehow there is a bit of citrus running along with it. As it closes I have to go with more of the wine, orange, and raspberry and a hint of lemon or lime as it fades leaving a lasting hint of brown sugar (?!) on the palate. There is really a lot going on in the flavor and I seem to read a little something different each time. I’m really not good with Madagascar chocolates so certainly take this review with a grain of salt. I’m afraid that I might be missing or misreading a lot here.

But even if I am missing something, what I am finding is extremely pleasurable. It is a smooth ride with nice mix of citrus, berry, and wine and no bitterness to speak of and would make a great chocolate for a relative neophyte (like me!) to enjoy. I really enjoyed the bar a lot. I’m calling it a 9.5 out of 10 (I worry that I score too high a lot) but have to warn that my reviews should be taken with a grain of salt for inexperience and the fact that I inject a lot of my personal tastes into the numbers. But, you know, this blog really is more about my impressions and experiences as opposed to some great and overriding chocolate standard. Anyway, I like the bar a lot. The score stands and I have to say I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with next.

Sugardaddy's Sweeties

2008-01-23T02:06:01Z

So somehow Sugardaddy’s Sumptuous Sweeties was lurking just miles from my apartment and I was completely unaware of their presence. It wasn’t until after I had moved and I was looking for a Big Green Egg that I saw their little sign and realized that there was a place making lovely brownies less than a half mile from my door. **sigh** I disappoint myself sometimes. But I made up for it before haring off to NYC by stopping in and getting a fat pile of brownies to snack on.

For those who have yet to hear about the Sugardaddy action they are a company that makes gourmet brownies for whatever gifting, snacking, or entertaining occasion you may come up with and make them available over the web and phone. They are also available to those of us in Ohio at their humble factory store (where you get them really fresh). They have landed themselves all over the web and TV and have done battle with Bobby Flay on his Throwdown on Food Network and emerged victorious. They make good brownies.

The first thing you notice about a Sugardaddy’s brownie is that it’s round. They cut them round and package the edge bits as separate products (Pocket Change) for them as likes the edgy bits. Me, I prefer an edge free brownie so I’m all for the Sugardaddy approach. Next is the selection. My experience with brownies has generally involved the cardboard boxes from the grocery store so my vision of a brownie is that it’s a nice chocolaty brown and nuts are optional. Well, they have an array of “traditional” brownies (which they refer to as brunettes) and blondies (referred to as blondes) and the flavors run the gamut.

Auburn Original (brunette)
Bittersweet chocolate, espresso powder, and walnuts (it is also available without walnuts if you are the “no nuts in my brownies thank you” sort of person) make for a tasty combo. A nice dense brownie with a little coffee along for the ride. Very tasty.

American Beauty (brunette)
Chocolate and peanut butter with a nice layer of peanuts on top. Normally I avoid peanut butter with any sort of added sugar (I don’t like sweet peanut butter treats), but this is good. Not my favorite, but not something I’d turn my nose up at. Far from it.

Nutty (blonde)
Blonde brownie with a heaping load of – you guessed it – nuts (cashews, almonds, and pecans)! Of course, as a blondie, there is a distinct lack of chocolate. But it turns out that blondies are actually fantastic even without chocolate and they’re even better when they are loaded down with nuts. Good stuff.

Strawberry (blonde)
Blonde brownie with peanut butter and a nice strawberry swirl. I have not tried this one yet. I will correct this oversight soon.

Dark Berry (brunette)
An Auburn Original without nuts topped off with a nice little swirl of raspberry. I love me some raspberry and dark chocolate action and this delivers it just how I like it.

Cinnamon (blonde)
The coffee cake of blondies. Brown sugar, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg and ginger make this the perfect breakfast brownie and its available with or without pecans. I’ve had it without and was completely unaware that it was available with. This I also need to try. Without nuts it's fantastic. Probably my favorite of the batch.

Rich Mint (brunette)
Chocolate and mint is one of those perfectly natural combos and this brownie brings it into play in the form of a mint sandwich with mint buttercream icing between two brownie halves. I was expecting this to be my least favorite of the brunettes, but I came away very much in love with it.

Tahiti (blonde)
Tropical paradise in blondie form. Cashews and coconut, white and bittersweet chocolate chunks, and a little bit of pineapple. This really hit the spot, though I didn’t notice any pineapple while I was eating it. I guess I need to go back and revisit this one too.

Dark Citrus (brunette)
A seasonal selection featuring orange zest and extract in dark chocolate with some milk chocolate chunks thrown in for good measure. Quite the tasty combo.

To sum up, Sugardaddy makes a darn good brownie. Actually, they make nine darn good brownies some with optional nuts. If you’re on the north end of Columbus they’re a little west of the Polaris Fashion Place mall on the backside of a strip mall. If you’re in the area I highly suggest giving them a try. Odds are you won’t be disappointed. I’ve yet to be.

Pure Imagination Chocolatier

2008-01-16T01:06:31Z

Well, I promised that I would get to Sugardaddy's this past weekend and what did I do? I went to Sugardaddy's! I followed through, really I did. It's just that they were already closed when I got there. Oops. But what I was up to before heading for my brownies was in the pursuit of chocolate as well! I needed chocolate and focaccia and beer and hot sauce so there was only one place for me to go: the North Market! I love the place to death and they had everything I needed. Grabbed some focaccia at Omega Artisan Baking, Some Scorch hot sauce from CaJohn's, a bottle of an interesting sounding holiday brew (with cocoa no less) at Grapes of Mirth, and a small assortment of truffles and a little bar from Pure Imagination Chocolatier.

Pure Imagination is Columbus' own artisan chocolatier and their chocolate is available at their little shop in the North Market as well as Whole Foods and Wild Oats. They do everything from chocolate covered potato chips to inventive truffles and according to their website they use only Fair Trade ingredients! My usual approach to them is to get an assortment of whatever sounds good at the time and this trip was no different. What I ended up with is (left to right top to bottom) a Jack Daniels Caramel truffle, a Grand Marnier truffle, a honey au chocolat truffle, a Midnight Extra Dark Bar, and a truffle that I want to say was Blueberry and Gouda. There is no doubt about the blueberry part, but I'm not sure what the cheese was and it isn't on their website so I can only take that stab at it.

So, yeah, they're attractive little critters, but how are they? Well, hmmm, where to begin? The Grand Marnier truffle was more subtle than many I've had (and the ones I've made) but nicely balanced all the same. The Blueberry and Gouda (maybe) was good. Blueberry and chocolate is my current favorite taste combination and the cheese just added an extra dimension to it. Very nice and inventive. This is my third round of cheese and chocolate and I've liked all three now. The Midnight Extra Dark Bar was good, but I have good chocolate bars all over the place and this wasn't a serious standout. Pretty and pretty good, but not amazing. The Jack Daniels Caramel, on the other hand, was borderline amazing. Very tasty. You get a nice undercurrent of the whiskey in the caramel and it goes quite nicely with the chocolate. And as good as that was, my favorite, as it has been every time I've gone there, is the Honey au Chocolat. There is just something special about the two flavors together. I don't know what it is or how to put it in words, but it just sings to me. Love it.

So now is the part where I normally assign a score, but I'm a little reticent to do so tonight mainly because I didn't have a wide enough variety of their pieces to offer a blanket endorsement. In the past, though, I have had nearly every one of their truffles. But I can't base it on those because something invariably went wrong with those (I'm not sure if it was my fault or theirs, but there was a renegade flavor in the truffles when I got to them). So I'm going to offer a score based on the few pieces I've got here. And I'm going to ignore the bar when I do it, too. The truffles are the main attraction so I'm going to focus on them. Every piece was well executed and some were standouts in terms of composition. Taking that and the fact that it's a local joint I've got to go with an 8.75 out of 10. I'm biased toward them because they're local, but the truffles are good. So there you go.

I'll get the brownies this weekend. I know when they close so as long as I remember to go before then it'll all work out.

Leftover Holiday Chocolate

2008-01-10T03:00:01Z

Throughout the holiday season I tried a few seasonal items here and there to see how they were and in general I was really pretty disappointed. I think it’s a matter of my tastes not lining up with what I was trying, but things just didn’t click for me on some things.

First up on the hate parade of holiday chocolate goodies is the Christmas Cocoa Jones Soda (which I can't find any links to aside from a review or two). I had high hopes that this might live up to my beloved Whooppee (that I can’t find any more). Something in the taste just didn’t sit right with me. It’s not that it was bad – it hit cocoa from a packet on the head pretty well – there was just something in it that I didn’t really like. So I poured the rest of my bottle down the drain and gave the remainders to my family to try. Hopefully they liked it better than I did.

The next item that didn’t live up to my high expectation was the Lindt Excellence Holiday Spice bar (which I can find no links to anywhere at all) I found at Target. Based on the ingredients they seem to have chosen cinnamon and coriander as their holiday spices. I can agree with the cinnamon, but coriander? Maybe it’s just beyond my experience. Anyway, something in the flavor was just off. Everybody I gave a piece of this bar to panned it, so I’m not alone. I think that if they had a different set of holiday spices that it could have been really good. I love their normal Excellence dark chocolate bars so I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be good with the right spices.

Not all was disappointing, though. I had a really nice Raspberry Hot Chocolate from Nordstrom of all places. And the horrifying mess I made trying to make liqueur filled chocolates was absolutely wonderful stuff. I got some chocolate covered pretzel sticks and some buckeyes from my sister’s family (my nephews make some good chocolate treats) and these are always a nice thing. I also had some really nice brownie action from Sugardaddy's, but that's a topic for another day. Probably Sunday since I won't be able to get back there until Saturday.

Return To My Roots

2008-01-02T02:34:42Z

Once upon a time chocolate, to me, was an afterthought. It was something in ice cream (and as far as ice cream is concerned I really prefer vanilla bean), the occasional York Peppermint Pattie, or possibly a (box of) cherry cordial(s) if I was in the mood. And then one day I found myself watching a show on chocolate on Food Network and somehow my curiosity was piqued. I needed to find out more about these truffle things they were talking about on the show. Well, one of the places featured on the show was Betsy Ann Chocolates which was in the Pittsburgh area. It turned out that I was heading to the Pittsburgh Comicon and there was a Betsy Ann in the mall right next to the show so I figured I would stop in and get some truffles.

And that was how it all began. The world of chocolate opened before me and I quickly became enamored of it. I sought to stretch my chocolate horizons and began trying chocolates from all over. But each time I hit the comicon after that I would go to the mall for more Betsy Ann truffles. They were the go-to chocolate for me. They make those offensively large truffles similar to the beasts you get at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and the ganache is always wonderfully smooth and nicely flavored. Lovely stuff.

With the shuffling of jobs last year and general life chaos I've managed to miss the Comicon two years running and so I never really have the opportunity to get back to the place that started it all for me. Each time I missed the show I sort of shrugged over the show - I can live without the comics - but I always sighed a little sigh that I wasn't going to get my truffles.

And out of the blue the week I was madly preparing to go to New York I arrive home to find a big and completely unexpected box on my front porch. I checked and lo and behold it was from Betsy Ann. This is the blessing and curse of blogging about chocolate. Stuff sometimes just shows up with no warning. I didn't start this blog to get free chocolate and I always feel guilty receiving it, but sometimes it's a real joy to find a little surprise on the front porch.

And, true to form, I took the bounty of chocolate goodness to work with me. I believe that the best way to make the experience of eating chocolate better is to share it with others and whenever I would go to Betsy Ann I would always bring it all in to work with me to chop up and share around. Anyway, as they had been in prior years at the prior employer, the chocolate was a hit. The big and flavorful truffles are a wonderful experience and it was nice to seef my initial wonder over them reflected in others.

I tried to avoid the truffles myself and stick to the other items in the assortment. The truffles had opened my eyes to the wider world of chocolate and so I always consider them my gateway drug so I wanted others to try the them as much as possible. But I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to have a raspberry truffle (and a couple of others - sharing can be hard sometimes). It was the one that opened the door for me and I really wanted to go back to that first special bite. And it was as good as the first time - rich and creamy and a perfect marriage of flavors.

Betsy Ann may not be a high-end super-fancy chocolatier, but they are that most special of breeds - the local chocolate company. They turn out wonderful quality products for the local market (and further through the power of the web). I love to find these little(ish) semi-regional chocolate makers as they make chocolate without pretension and simply load up on flavor and love.

There isn't a whole lot of point to this post and I'm sure it sounds like a bit of a shill, but to me chocolate is an experience and going back to the beginning was just a lovely experience for me. I suppose the only other thing I really wanted to say was to seek out and support your local chocolate shops. There are some real gems out there.