Today, samgrrrl and oneangryrabbit took me to The Chocolate Show, and it was excellent. This was my first year, so everything was new.

I stopped by the L. A. Burdick booth to pay my respects, as their Cambridge store is where I got interested in chocolate in a serious way. They, like many other exhibitors, were interested in HotChA. HotChA was a great conversation starter. I found a number of other places that might be good to visit this year, including Payard New York, INTenT New York, Tribeca Treats (which is opening a retail space on Jan. 3rd and may feature hot chocolate)

Quick notes and links on many booths:

For my last birthday, Alison gave me a sampler set of chocolates from around the world. Pralus, the maker of that set, was exhibiting near where we entered. I found Chocolatier Magazine, which may focus too (for me) broadly on desserts in general, but is worth checking out.

DeBrand had a great booth with a set of cinnamon truffles that I am going to have to get for my father sometime soon. Their catalog is pretty great, too. They have an $84 "S'more Tray" gift pack, though... please!

Cosmic Chocolate, from Walnut Creek CA, had some very beautiful truffles on display that I think would fit in an Apple Store aesthetically. John & Kira's, out of Philadelphia, makes neat truffles from Valrhona chocolate. They also seem to be doing some good responsible business-- working with area schools, organic farmers, and coffee cooperatives. Românicos Chocolate had some fairly tasty truffles with the catch: "38 calories per truffle! NO Preservatives NO Butter NO Extra Sugar". I'm wary of desserts like that because, really, what's left?! Their samples were reasonably tasty, though. SerendipiTea had a nice "Once Upon A Time" tea with cocoa and mint in it.

Chocopologie, associated with Knipschildt Chocolatier, had a neat product-- a set of full-sphere molds with one set of hollow chocolates in them. The idea is that you'd fill the hollow chocolate shells, then dip them. I noted that you could probably re-mould another round with their nice plastic moulds, but that seemed to be more than the guy behind the table was ready to be asked about. I met the SweetRiot people, and they were a lot of fun, as expected.

Cocoa Locoa was another possible Real Find. They're a new (started Thursday!) New York chocolatier started by Karalee LaRochelle. They make truffles, but also offer a "Bespoke Chocolate Service", which includes chocolates customized to your taste after an interview. I'm curious about their wonderful-sounding mojito truffle. While the Bespoke service looks expensive, I'm going to talk to them about HotChA.

I stopped by the table for the Institute of Culinary Education, picked up their newspaper flyer, and met Ruth, a recent graduate who makes desserts from the far side of Prospect Park (Roxy B'Sweets). We had a great networking session about resources, from nice cheap bulk chocolate at Sahadi's in downtown Brooklyn to possible coffeeshop retailers and whether tempering machines are worth it.

Right now, they're not. The tempering machines on (significant) sale at the Chocovision aisle are the standard for hobbyists and demi-professionals (and probably professionals), but when the base model starts at $350 it's still out of range of my hobby. I did buy a box of dipping forks from them, though, and I'm quite excited to use them.

My only purchase other than the admission was at the Guittard table, where I picked up a 5 kilo box of chocolate buttons (or buitton or something). That's 11 lbs, FTR, and should easily last me through the holidays. If I got it elsewhere, like through a distributor, that particular chocolate would've been ~$8/lb rather than the ~$4.50 I got it for (and which is within good chocolate range).

I've been holed up in my apartment a lot lately, but am enjoying it after weeks of holiday travel. It is nice to curl up on a sunny couch and type-- here to my friends and flist, on some Christmas card-inspired renewed correspondances, and over on my various sites.

The last few weeks, despite the travel and not being around, have seen some nice creature comforts come into my life. I just took five minutes from my computer to toss a turkey burger into the Foreman Grill I got for signing up for a local bank account, covered it in Tonkatsu Sauce, and YUM. Last night ali_wildgoose and I installed some more shelves in the office and got some floor space back. The shelves also make the office much warmer by breaking up a big blank wall. We tossed up a few more posters and pictures we'd been meaning to hang, too.

I've been cooking and eating at home a lot more, too, and have enjoyed the pleasures of 'earning' my meal and having home-cooked food, too. Ali got a pasta-maker for Christmas and we've made some linguini. The grill has helped. There were cookies from the Cookie Collective, and the last of my CC truffles (fresh mint ganache in milk chocolate and cardamom ganache in dark chocolate) are just about gone. (Fortunately I did not eat even most of them, this time.)

Friends passed me some delightful Christmas presents that are providing good eating or will soon, too: two friends gave me the Vosges Collection Italiano, which lived up to its promise to 'deconstruct what you know about chocolate and its companions'. I have can now appreciate that not only can things like olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fennel pollen, sea salt, and taleggio cheese be put in chocolate, but sometimes they should be. tromboneborges fulfilled a wish of mine and passed me a chocolate chipper and offset spatulas for the next round of chocolate making, too. The chocolate chipper is especially timely-- after the CC truffles I let the milk chocolate cool in the double boiler and wound up with a 4" thick dome of well-tempered chocolate which will not respond well to my usual knife.

I have some slight sadness about not being out and about more. College friends are gathering in DC this weekend for birthday celebration, and Boston friends are holding about fifteen different sorts of gatherings right now. But after the last month of traveling, holidays, and hence expenses, it is nice to be home recouping financially for the new year. And I'm not merely recouping-- my local friends have certainly represented NYC properly. Friday I worked from my sister's place for the day; Friday night multitudes came over for gaming (incl. online friends akickinthehead, calloocallay, chibideath, goraina, jlh, samgrrrl, and yaytime); Saturday saw brunch with erinfinnegan, N, and epathamerkerson; and tonight I will be attempting a Bloody Kiss with the best of friends at my side.

Oh, new icon! Thanks for the link from thoroughbass. Now, back to FMA d20, from which I am determined to wring a project timeline and basic chapter pages by the end of the day.

I tried some more chocolates last week... ali_wildgoose and I went crazy in my kitchen with a proper double boiler, almost nailed the tempering thing, and are certainly closing in on The Perfect Centers. This time around:

Mint Butter Cremes - just like before, butter and confectioners sugar and (real) mint extract
Orange Cocoa Cremes - dark, expensive cocoa powder instead of a third of the confectioners sugar, plus some Grand Marnier, came out dark like Oreo cookie, but smoother
Almond Cocoa Cremes - ditto, but amaretto instead of Grand Marnier
Japanese-themed Ganache - green tea-steeped cream for a ganache, plus a bit of saké. Can't say it was a success, though it was interesting. I might try it again with "white chocolate" or the like, as the conflict was between the green tea and the dark chocolate.

Anyway, they were good, almost properly tempered (who knew 2-5 degrees could make the difference?), and I only ate about six of them. The rest went to my office and Ali's Mom.

This past weekend on the way back from a holi celebration I stopped by 'the Bakery Supply' store and picked up several pounds of Callebaut chocolate, 2 lbs dark and (shudder) 1 lb. milk chocolate, for the next round of experimentation. I think one of my challenges has been trying to work with too little chocolate at a time, as the temperature fluctuates more quickly with smaller quantities.


( Pic of pretty almost-tempered chocolates! )

It's a beautiful warm Sunday in mid-February, so what am I doing? Covering ali_wildgoose's kitchen in chocolate while bopping to Breton rap, of course.

(Note: I wrote this yesterday, but only finished up its enormity today. Hence the anachronism)

The last few weeks have been ridiculously busy. After Ali left Boston, I spent a week catching up on all the things that I skimped on while having a good time with her as a Boston resident. Except that the world, quite frustratingly, kept on going and so kept giving me more things to keep up with.

( Last weekend I went to a conference on Tinderbox )

( So it's time to write about my chocolate experiments. )

( From the epi*center* )

( In the wake of the C.C. )

( Chocolate brand reviews )