Smoky Chocolate Mousse

April 28, 2016

I’m not a fan of smoky chocolate. This may come as a surprise to some, since I’m from Texas, land of smoked everything. But that savory taste you get in a lot of cacao from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and so on? Not for me.

But it can really work in recipes. The smoky undertones of the PNG brownie in Dandelion’s brownie flightblew me away when I tried it, and I haven’t quite recovered.

Recently Evan LeRoy, the pitmaster at Freedmen’s Barbecue in Austin (my favorite spot), sent me a recipe for a smoked chocolate mousse where he actually SMOKED the chocolate. Like, ON A GRILL. He kind of reverse-engineered the drying process that they use in Papua New Guinea. I thought, well, why not just use PNG chocolate in it? So without further ado, here’s the recipe:

Smoky Chocolate Mousse

8 ounces smoky chocolate (Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Java), chopped

1 C + ¾ C heavy cream, separated

4oz powdered sugar

1oz bourbon

Smoked salt, optional

1. Whip 1 C heavy cream with 4oz powdered sugar, and 1oz bourbon to stiff peaks. Simultaneously heat 3/4 C heavy cream to a low simmer.

2. Pour the warm cream in a blender and start on low. Slowly add the chopped chocolate. Add a heavy pinch smoked salt and blend covered on high for a few seconds until all combined to create a ganache.

3. Fold in the ganache to the whipped cream in three batches as to not deflate the whipped cream. Make sure everything is combined and the lumps are gone. Pour into serving vessels and chill to set. To serve, top with smoked salt.

In my upcoming book, I'm including all sorts of chocolate-forward recipes like this, where you can actually taste the flavor notes of the chocolate. I can't wait to share them with you!

Do you have a special recipe that you make with craft chocolate? Tell me all about it! Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

I Threw Away Chocolate, and I'm Not Ashamed

April 27, 2016

Last weekend I sent out what I thought was an innocent little tweet:

Boyfriend just laid down the law and made me prioritize and toss chocolate stash. What would you keep, and what would you throw away???
— Megan Giller (@MeganGiller) April 23, 2016

Oh, it’s the middle of the day on a Saturday, I thought. No one will pay attention.

But it got a BIG response, including its own hashtag, #keepthestash:

@MeganGiller I'd keep the chocolate and throw away the boyfriend. He should be supportive of your projects.
— Chocophile George (@chocophilenyc) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller Rogue stays, Corallo goes?
— Joe Fox (@SilverSpringJoe) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller the boyfriend
— andrea grimes (@andreagrimes) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller If it's only bloomed, it can be melted into milk for delicious hot chocolate.
— Chocophile George (@chocophilenyc) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller You can chop it up for chocolate chip cookies or brownies, too.
— Chocophile George (@chocophilenyc) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller eat what you can now, get rid of anything gross, rationalize keeping the rest by organizing and categorizing :)
— Alan P Woods (@ATroubleU) April 23, 2016

@MeganGiller throw away the boyfriend
— Maverick Chocolate (@MaverickChoco) April 23, 2016

Blasphemy! @MeganGiller don't waste it!!! Make hot fudge or fondue!!!
— With Love from BK (@withlovefrombk) April 23, 2016

Best tweet we've seen all day! #KeepTheStash @MeganGiller! https://t.co/DwsPsoKam1
— Bean Bar You (@BeanBarYou) April 24, 2016

@MeganGiller @chocophilenyc sounds like a hot chocolate party is in order.
— Dan Rattigan (@RattiganDan) April 24, 2016

Now, my first reaction was to

Clarify that it was really my doing and that I don't know why I brought my boyfriend into it
Get defensive and tell everyone that I was tossing Green & Blacks and Scharffen Berger that had been sitting in my cabinet for three years, as well as some samples from new makers that, well, weren’t so enjoyable. I’d been hoarding it for all this time, planning to make cookies, drinking chocolate, and so on, but there are only so many calories in a day. Then there were about 10 packages with one or two squares left in them, which I’ve kept to taste and retaste. I’m almost afraid to finish a bar, especially a really, really good one. Tiny morsels of Soma, Rogue, and Patric fill my cabinets. On Saturday I bit the bullet — well, actually the chocolate bar — and polished them off.

I then had to clear out a massive drawer in my closet to stash all of the chocolate, since it had taken over the kitchen and part of the office and needed to be relocated. (I won’t even get into how many empty packages I have laying around, a collection that I plan to keep forever to remind myself what bars I’ve tried and also the ridiculous volume of chocolate that I’ve eaten over the years.) The stuff I couldn’t keep was repurposed, mostly given to some very lucky neighbors.

This exercise as well as the reaction on Twitter made me realize how much food waste is not part of the conversation — and how much it should be. When I reviewed restaurants for places like Texas Monthly and Zagat Austin, I would wince every time chefs sent out 10 dishes for just a friend and me, knowing we couldn’t finish everything. Sure, it’s a fabulous lifestyle, but it’s also super wasteful. The entire food industry perpetuates this status quo, and it can be shocking to people who aren’t part of that world.

In the case of those chocolate bars, farmers took a lot of care with those beans. They were then shipped across the world to be treated lovingly by a craft maker, who then sent them to a store or to me directly. That’s a lot of time, energy, manpower, and carbon footprint to simply throw away. But chocolate makers as well as people in the industry and even good old chocolate-obsessed folks do it all the time. Is it part of the process, or a waste? What do you do with your leftover chocolate?

Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

You Should Pay $100 for This Chocolate

April 25, 2016

A few weeks ago I sat waiting at a café for the self-proclaimed “most hated man in chocolate,” Mark Christian of C-Spot. The slim, red-haired guy who appeared from the Upper West Side on his bike took me by surprise, launching into conversation about “cocoa doodle gurus” (i.e., experts) and “a bucking bronco of a chocolate” (i.e., a particularly flavorful bar).

He slipped me some cacao beans out of what I think was a cigarette case. “Guess the origin,” he said excitedly. They were amazing: Dark, decadent, roasty. I had no idea what they were. “Now try this chocolate,” he said, cradling the label so I couldn’t see where it came from. Equally delicious, smooth and creamy. Turned out the beans were from Cuba, and A. Morin used those same beans to make the chocolate I tried.

Mark kept showering me with goodies, always accompanied by the (frankly intimidating) guessing game. Far and away, I was most impressed with the Heirloom Chocolate Series, a box of seven half-ounce bars made with heirloom cacao.

What’s heirloom cacao? Well, there used to be many, many varieties of cacao in the world. Some have disappeared naturally while others are being replaced with higher-yielding varieties like the dreaded man-made CCN-51 (which supposedly tastes like sh*t). That’s why some people in the industry got together to form the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Fund, which hopes to encourage farmers to continue to grow quality cacao by designating strands of it as “heirloom,” which go for much higher prices.

So far seven strands have been officially designated “heirloom.” Mark enlisted chocolate makers Fruition, Zokoko, Millcreek Cacao Roasters, Manoa, Mindo, and Brasstown to make bars with each variety. The cacao is from Ecuador, Bolivia, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Belize. Mark’s palate is impeccable, and I love how his quirkiness shines through in the tasting notes, with descriptions like “cocoa nuts ‘n honey,” “cookie dough,” “chocolate hash,” and “volcanic coral.”

I’ve been talking a lot about the right price for a bar of chocolate lately, from $10 to $325. This box combines the best cacao in the world with the most talented makers in the world, curated by one of the most esteemed chocolate experts in the world, without any bullshit or marketing. $100? Seems like a steal to me.

Agree? Disagree? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

Notes From the Underground Chocolate Salon

April 20, 2016

Ten chocolate bars. Seven people. And a lot of conversation. Last week's Underground Chocolate Salon was great fun, and I want to tell you about it.

I’ve always been jealous of Paris in the 1920s, when artistic and literary luminaries gathered at Gertrude Stein’s house to talk and hang out: Picasso, Cézanne, Joyce, Eliot, Cocteau. Only one thing would have made it better: chocolate. That’s why I started what I’m calling the Underground Chocolate Salon, for like-minded (or not so like-minded) people to get together and talk chocolate, as well as enjoy one another’s company.

If you want a spot at the next one, in New York on MAY 25 from 6:30 to 8 PM, email me immediately at megan@chocolatenoise.com to let me know and I’ll send you the details and location.

In the meantime here are some notes from last week’s salon.

This time everyone brought a bar or two that they liked or that they wanted to try, so we had a huge variety. One person noted that after reading my thoughts about Askinosie's new whiskey bar, she bought a few as gifts. When she shared them with friends, a few people disliked it so much they spit it out! I'm curious if they were surprised by the unique tastes in the chocolate because they had never tried bean-to-bar chocolate or if it was the whiskey taste itself that bothered them (she wasn't sure). It's true that trying chocolate with strong flavor notes can surprise and overwhelm people at first — in both good and bad ways.

Anyway, on to the tastings.

Michel Cluizel 66% Mexico

Smells smoky and earthy, tastes of red fruit and raisins. Includes vanilla, which intensifies/throws everything off.

French Broad 68% Nicaragua

"Smells like Taza," something stone and mineral. Tastes nutty, very dark roast, more bitter. Licorice. Acidity in front.

Woodblock 70% Peru

Tastes acidic and of red fruit. Coarser texture, fudgy, thick bar. Not a lasting bar, has a short finish. A bit astringent.

Durci 70% Rio Caribe, Venezuela

Smells of herbs and licorice. Tastes sweet and of herbs and licorice, maybe horseradish. Nice texture, snappier, definitely a lot of added cocoa butter in this one. Too buttery for some people, flat. No astringent aftertaste.

Dandelion 70% Mantuano, Venezuela

Tastes round and complete. Lots of chocolate tastes, an end note of fruit, specifically dried cherries and spice. Bit of astringency at the end.

Pump Street 72% Madagascar

Tastes flat initially but huge burst of red fruit as it finishes.

Askinosie 72% Tanzania

Tastes earthy, a little acidic, dried fruit like raisins. High cocoa butter content, a dairy taste and something like molasses or burned sugar (in a good way). Might have to do with the type of sugar they use.

Marou 76% Ba Ria Vietnam

Smells like chocolate chocolate chocolate. Tastes strong even though it's still relatively low cocoa percentage. Coffee, toasted nuts, meaty.

Bisou 76% Honduras, "American Style"

Smells like licorice, smoke, cleaning products, ammonia, moldy. Tastes like cough medicine, very astringent. Bad aftertaste. Possibly made using underfermented beans?

Several people disliked this chocolate so much that they asked me why Bisou would sell something that was so clearly not up to snuff. That's a complicated question. On the one hand, people are still figuring out how to make good chocolate, and companies need to recoup costs of expensive beans and the time and energy it took to make the chocolate. On the other hand, should we pay for people's experiments? I don't want to throw Bisou under the bus, but at the same time, it's important to be honest about what's happening in the industry, and what we're tasting.

Pump Street 85% Ecuador

Smells yeasty and tastes mild, not very chocolatey. Not floral like most Ecuadorian cacao but still hay, grassy, vegetal, raw nuts. "Empty" for an 85%, lots of added cocoa butter.

This salon raised lots of questions. Have thoughts about them? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

Judge a Book By Its Cover

April 19, 2016

French Broad's new packaging is exactly what this industry needs

Let’s get real: We are a judgmental bunch. Very few people stand in the chocolate aisle (or wine or beer or, yes, books) and read the fine print. Instead we look at the cover as a shorthand to convey quality, time, care. It’s not the end-all, be-all, but it helps the hard sell.

Take French Broad, which has just MAJORLY redesigned their packaging. Up until now, their chocolate has been camouflaged behind some plain-looking wrappers.

Brown. The shape of a cacao pod. Cursive. Not much to distinguish it on the shelf. Now take a look at how they've transformed their image:

GORGEOUS, right? It immediately speaks to the customer. Beyond saying, "You need to eat me NOW," it also communicates French Broad's strong sense that storytelling is central to their company and their mission. (Read more about French Broad in the full profile, here.)

Each bar can stand on its own, but together they make a unique library of chocolate. Inside every one you’ll find:

Chapter 1. The story of Dan and Jael Rattigan, the couple behind the cacao

Chapter 2. The story of that particular bar (for example, “From the Waters of Bulls Bay” to describe the sea salt bar and their collaboration with local company Bulls Bay Saltworks)

Chapter 3. Notes on Taste

Chapter 4. The story of the (recyclable) box and packaging

Afterword. The story of the entire company

Oh, and a delicious bar of chocolate.

As an interesting side note, French Broad decided not to use the term “bean to bar” but to describe their chocolate as “handcrafted.”

Over the past year or so many makers have redesigned their packaging (Ritual’s in particular is pretty cool). In my opinion Dan and Jael have stepped the game up several notches. Then again, I’m a book lover.

Which makers' labels are your favorite? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitterand I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

John Scharffenberger’s Advice to Bean-to-Bar Makers

April 15, 2016

John Scharffenberger thinks that bean-to-bar makers are doing it wrong. I chatted with him recently for my upcoming book about American bean-to-bar chocolate, and most of our discussion was about the mistakes that the industry is currently making.

If you haven’t heard of John and his company Scharffen Berger, well, let’s just say they started the bean-to-bar movement in the United States. John and his partner, Robert Steinberg, actually coined the term “bean to bar” and inspired a generation with their high-quality chocolate: Dandelion, Fresco, Rogue, and more have all mentioned the company’s influence to me. Scharffen Berger sold to the Hershey Company in 2005 for about $50 million, and now you can find their bars and products in mainstream grocery stores across the country.

John is still pretty excited about the exploding bean-to-bar movement here and abroad, and he told me that he loves Marou, Dandelion, Guittard, Valrhona, and Dick Taylor, among other brands. However, he also has a lot of advice. Here are some of his thoughts.

1. The prices are too high.

“If you’re trying to make something for the 99 percent and your pricing is for the 1 percent, there’s a disconnect. You don’t sell your first Tesla for $100 million. People aren’t eating as much chocolate as they would be if it was better priced. By making it so exclusive by having all these constraints, you end up excluding people.”

2. Scale is a problem.

“A lot of people’s ideas of their scale is not going to work. They’re going to be bumbling along forever. Scharffen Berger hasn’t gotten any bigger than it used to be, but nobody has gotten bigger than Scharffen Berger. That’s kind of weird.

“Brands like Marou are going to do really well. They’re not planning on having this itsy-bitsy little company. They just want to make really good chocolate. They don’t make it an intellectual exercise.”

3. A big company can make good chocolate.

“I think the quality of Scharffen Berger now is pretty good. Two of the bean-to-bars that were made after we sold have been better than anything we made: a single origin from Brazil and a single origin from Vietnam.”

4. Makers should target the home baking crowd.

“Forty-five percent of our products were used by home bakers. They were not candy bars. It’s a big mistake [to focus on solid bars]. Candy bars are 20 percent of our market per sales, which is not very much. The consumer is crazy about good baking products.”

5. Only make a single-origin bar with really special cacao.

“You have some of these guys who are buying several tons of beans and bringing it here and selling by the bag, and everybody has that origin. [But even] Chuao is terrible every few years; it’s mediocre two to five years, and it’s great one of the five years or so.

“Single-origin bars definitely have a role. They put a focus on geography and on the abilities of growers to produce things that are of high quality and also to make more money. From that standpoint, it’s great. But if you’re trying to actually deliver a product that is consistent you want to make it standard.”

6. Blends can be amazing.

“In our 62 percent, we usually have 7 components. And in our 70 percent, we had sometimes 10 flavor components. We put things together to come up with as many flavors we could possibly pack into a bar. That’s how you do it."

6. Ethics should guide your business.

“Everybody works with these wonderful people in third-world countries, and the trick is this: Are they getting any money for what you’re paying them? You can’t rely on mechanisms like fair trade to do it. You have to make sure it works. Robert and I were both hippies of the sixties. We paid living wages to everybody, and we gave everybody health care. We believed that that’s the way to run a business. And you don’t make those ethical decisions like pertaining to marketing.”

7. Making money in this business isn’t easy.

“What happened when we sold? There was a huge amount of press, especially about that whole amount of money we got. My take is that a lot of these people [who are now making chocolate] said, “Oh! Look at this!” They were thinking that this is a business that one day they could do and retire. And maybe bought [into it]. I think that played a role in people’s trajectories into the [chocolate-making] business."

Do you agree with his statements? Disagree? Write me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll publish your thoughts in the next Chocolate Today.

Is $325 Chocolate Bullshit?

April 13, 2016

In 2014 a brand-new maker called To’ak took the world by surprise with a $260 bar of chocolate. Now they’ve upped the ante, with a $345 bar that has been aged for 18 months in a Cognac cask (it comes in the same expensive-looking wooden box with gold lettering and handmade tweezers as the first bar). Most makers are having trouble convincing the crowd that they should pay $10 for a bar of chocolate. So is a $325 bar helping or hurting the bean-to-bar cause? And at the end of the day, is the chocolate worth it, or is it simply marketing and hype, otherwise known as (necessary) bullshit?

Pros

When I tried the $260 bar last year with co-founder Jerry Toth, I was pleasantly surprised:

“The chocolate itself is great, single-origin Nacionale cacao from Ecuador that Jerry and his team have clearly taken a lot of time to cultivate. He described the aroma as ‘a flowerpot in the face,’ which I thought was pretty accurate.”

— Chocolate Noise, Facebook, Nov. 9, 2015

I haven’t tried the $345 bar, but something tells me it’s equally interesting. I believe that a crazy-high price like this is ultimately good for the industry, as it forces people to challenge their assumptions that chocolate is a cheap thrill without much depth or nuance to the flavor.

Here’s what Lauren Adler, the owner of Seattle specialty store Chocolopolis, had to say:

“The media attention they receive from their $345 bar of chocolate will be a good thing for the craft chocolate industry in the long term. Why? It forces consumers to think about chocolate in the same way they think about wine, cognac or other expensive liquors. Consumers aren’t used to paying the true economic cost of their chocolate. Suddenly, a craft chocolate bar that costs $14.00 seems like a good buy. ”

— Lauren Adler, Chocolopolis

Meanwhile Jessica Ferraro of Bar Cacao said in some ways she sees it as a positive because "it's been way easier to work with a $12 bar and a $20 bar since To'ak's release." She also mentioned how transparent Jerry is about the company’s process and goals, which has been my experience as well.

Cons

Yet at the end of the day, Jessica said she believes To’ak is more problematic than progressive, because it’s too easy to poke holes in what the company is doing. Through conversations with Jerry, she learned that the $260 bar was the company’s first attempt at making chocolate, and that the $325 bar is their first and only attempt at aging chocolate (in a Cognac barrel or Elm barrel, depending on which bar you buy). In fact, the aged chocolate is repurposed from the first time they made chocolate: Reject bars were remelted into one-gram-size coins and dropped into the barrels.

“It’s problematic to make your first batch of chocolate, put it out there to the world and suggest that it’s worth this much money because that is what it costs to produce.

A bar this expensive should be made by someone with expertise and experience. They are gaming it. They hired two people to help them. They did go to the rainforest of Ecuador and uncover some good cacao and are working to save it, but they’re being very provocative.”

— Jessica Ferraro, Bar Cacao

The bigger problem to me, though, is that there's no concrete evidence that aging chocolate makes it any better (to some degree, all chocolate is aged, since it takes time to get it from the factory to your mouth). To'ak even quotes Mark Christian from the C-Spot in their own pamphlet on this issue:

“Theoretical and anecdotal evidence suggest that allowing a bar to mature under climate-controlled settings softens flavor tags and rounds off the sharp spikes and edges, mellowing the overall profile. What else the aging process might do — whether bringing greater concentration or added hues to the flavor graph — currently remains speculative for aging chocolate.”

— Mark Christian, C-Spot

To’ak is getting press from places like Vice’s Munchies, which highlights the high price they pay their farmers and their profit-sharing program. That’s great, as it sheds light on direct trade and bean to bar. However, they’re hardly the only makers to do this. Taza, Askinosie, Dandelion, Patric, French Broad — the list of makers paying high prices, trading directly, and caring intensely about farmers and the quality of cacao goes on and on. In fact, it’s a hallmark of this new movement, not something unique to To’ak. And you can buy those bars for about $8.50. So what makes this one worth $325?

Lauren wondered that as well:

“I’m looking at the money To’ak spent on packaging, website development, marketing, a 116-page booklet, an engraved wood box and a very old Cognac barrel, and I can see the costs adding up quickly. The small batch of only 100 bars produced has some expensive marketing behind it.”

— Lauren Adler, Chocolopolis

Meanwhile Clay Gordon of TheChocolateLife.com said, "I'm not convinced that the bars would sell without the gimmicks — the box, the tweezers, etc." Instead he recommended the seven-bar Heirloom Cacao Project sampler from the C-Spot, which is priced at a comparably low $100.

So after all this discussion, should you pay for someone’s experiment? Or, if the chocolate is great, does it matter? What’s the highest price that makers should charge for a bar of chocolate, regardless of how much work went into it?

Sure, To’ak raises plenty of questions. But in my mind it’s not a cut-and-dried good or bad thing, because they’re questions we need to be asking.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me what you think at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

And the Most Ridiculous Chocolate of the Week Is…

April 11, 2016

Brix Chocolate for Wine. When I saw this a while back at the Fancy Food Show, I was amazed that it was literally a brick. Of chocolate. Meant for wine.

I’m not really a drinker, but my chocolate expert and sommelier friends tell me that chocolate is notoriously hard to pair with wine, and that old dark chocolate with big red idea is, well, frankly, bullshit. The tannins fight with one another and block the flavors of both the chocolate and the wine.

Brix, though, subscribes to the old idea. But way, way more upsetting is that the brick of chocolate is literally just some bad Forastero chocolate from Ghana “mixed with the highest quality confectionary chocolate,” whatever that means. In other words, this stuff is absolutely not guaranteed ethical in any way: not direct trade, not even fair trade.

I’m sick of crappy products like this tricking consumers into paying for and confusing the world of chocolate even further.

Agree? Disagree? Or have your own ridiculous chocolate to share? Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Facebook or Twitterand I’ll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

What I'm Tasting Today

Dandelion Chocolate' Kokoa Kamili Tanzania Bar

Askinosie's New Microbatch Line Is Bean to BAM!

April 6, 2016

I always knew Shawn Askinosie was some sort of chocolate priest, so it comes as no surprise that he is literally a monk: He’s a family brother at a Trappist Cistercian monastery in the Ozarks.

That Trappist history of making artisan food (ok, beer and cheese in the past, but add chocolate to the list) inspired Askinosie Chocolate to launch its new microbatch line of only 1,098 bars. Why? Because the Cistertian Order was founded in 1098, duh.

I tried the first one this week, a 77% Whiskey Dark Chocolate Bar that blew my mind with its sweet, complex flavor and strong notes of whiskey. Askinosie took Tanzanian cocoa nibs and aged them in an oak whiskey barrel for 2 years, then ground the nibs for a week in their antique melangeur before adding sugar and cocoa butter.

The time, effort, and intensity shows. Other makers have turned out excellent barrel-aged bars (Fruition’s barrel-aged bourbon dark milk comes to mind), but the liquor is usually a more subtle afternote. Here it’s front and center, though transformed into something all its own.

I’m also crazy impressed with the beautiful bar itself: The giant “A,” the throwback Medieval-looking design. Even the pouch that it comes in, a simple muslin bag sewn by the monks at the monastery. The next bar in the series will be available in Fall 2016, which is a long time to wait for chocolate this good.

There are only 1,098 of these bars, and I have number 647. That means they’re more than half gone. I suggest you get on this whiskey trainimmediately, if not sooner.

The Results of the Triple-Blind Chocolate Tasting

April 5, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user Yelp Inc. — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user Yelp Inc.*

Last week I challenged you guys to virtually decipher the chocolates I featured in a blind chocolate tasting at the last Underground Chocolate Salon, and the results were awesome.

Here were the hints I gave you:

One bar is from Mast Brothers, one from Sol Cacao, and one that I made for an upcoming story and a section in my book.

Smelled sheetrock or something industrial. Gritty texture but smooths out. Flat. Strange aftertaste.
Earthy. “Wet, dead fall.” Leaves, wood, but not in a bad way. Burny. Crumbly. More interesting. Enjoyed it and would pick this over #1 and #3.
Peanuts. Boring, fine, flat. Nice texture.

And here are the responses:

“#1 - Sol Cacao: I’ve never been to Harlem, but the chocolate flavor description matches my mental picture of that borough (industrial & gritty).

#2 - Your creation: I’ve tried some Raaka chocolates before & they were always a bit “earthy” to me.

#3 - Mast Brothers: Unfortunately, we bought a set of 13 chocolates from them when they had a “pop up” in L.A. before the bad press came out (I probably wouldn’t willingly buy them again at this point) & my impression of their chocolates has always been “boring.””

— Patricia Baker, My Year in Chocolate

@MeganGiller Mast, yours, Sol Cacao?
— Daniel Haran (@danielharan) March 30, 2016

@MeganGiller I hope Mast was 1!
— Daniel Haran (@danielharan) March 30, 2016

@MeganGiller that industrial thing can be a deteriorating grinder, or an insufficiently cleaned one on the first batch.
— Daniel Haran (@danielharan) March 30, 2016

Patricia Baker hit it head on: Sol Cacao, mine, Mast Bros. I'm not sure why people liked mine better than the "real" chocolates, but I think it's because people who are interested in food are always looking for new tastes. In this context, "different" doesn't mean "bad." And mine was certainly different, though I thought it was especially terrible. Nate Hodge from Raaka agreed that I'd made truly horrendous chocolate. At first he thought it was because I'd had the beans so long they'd gone rancid. But then he decided that I'd overrefined the sugar, leading to a gummy texture. And of course storing the chocolate in ice cube molds gave it a lovely plastic, freezer-burned taste. Delicious.

PSA: I tried my hand at making chocolate for an upcoming story and for my book. I will in no way be trying to make my own chocolate again: I’ll leave that to the experts. After all, I’m primarily a chocolate EATER…

We Don’t Trust the People Who Make Our Food Anymore

April 4, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user Dyniss Rainer — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user Dyniss Rainer*

On Friday I posted what I thought was a cut-and-dried April Fool’s joke: “Valrhona Outed: Remelting Mast Brothers Chocolate for Years.” But people believed it! I tricked at least two chocolate makers, a handful of people in the chocolate industry, and several journalists (food writers!) and regular folks.

This has taught me two things: First, the chocolate supply chain is so eclipsed that most people don’t have any way to understand it.

Second, and more important, we don’t trust the people who make our food anymore.

That kind of goes without saying for big companies like Monsanto, which have been highly criticized for its corrupt business practices. From where I stand, that corruption and disregard for our health and the environment created the artisan food movement: People wanted to eat real ingredients, made ethically and honestly by other people, not by machines or giant corporations.

But now the distrust has spread to even those small artisan makers. The Mast scandal didn’t help, but it goes much deeper and broader than that. On an elemental level, we don’t trust that people are doing what they say they’re doing. They might poison us, ruin the environment, or sell us something strange. Sadly, it's a given in this day and age. Valrhona has been around for a long time, but it's not a big company. Yet people immediately jumped to the conclusion that it could and would deceive them.

I don’t have an easy answer for this, but I’d love to hear what you think. In the meantime, here are my two favorite responses to the April Fool’s joke:

“MEGAN YOU ARE A CHOCOLATE DETECTIVE”

— Paula Forbes, Facebook

“I always thought that there was a Brooklyn-y sort of funk [to Valrhona] and now the red hairs make sense ... travesty. No wonder they are so secretive.”

— John Cunin, email

Tell me what you think over email (megan@chocolatenoise.com) or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today!

Valrhona Outed: Remelting Mast Brothers Chocolate for Years

April 1, 2016

What Lies Beneath the Berets: Part 1

This story was originally published on April 1, 2016 (aka, April Fool's Day).

Late last year, in December 2015, it came to light that Brooklyn darlings Rick and Michael Mast had remelted Valrhona chocolate and passed it off as their own bean-to-bar creations.

Now a French whistleblower who wishes to remain anonymous has revealed that for about four years around that time, Valrhona was actually buying as much Mast Brothers chocolate as it could get its hands on and remelting it into bars that it sold as “fancy French chocolate.” If you bought a bar of Valrhona or a truffle from a snobby chocolatier from 2007 to 2011, you were actually eating artisan chocolate made in the Masts’ tiny apartment that had been "accidentally" shipped to France, remelted, and then sold as Valrhona's own.

I reached out to Valrhona, which had this to say: “Mon dieu! Pomplamousse. Putain—er, purée.”

They assured me that they recognized the mistake within one millisecond of putting a piece of chocolate in their mouth.

Stay tuned for Parts 2 through 4, where I rehash the same thing in excruciating detail.

Notes From the Underground Chocolate Salon

March 30, 2016

What do you get when you combine craft chocolate lovers with four interesting bars and a blind tasting? Last week’s Underground Chocolate Salon, of course.

Up until now it’s been pretty unannounced (hence the name “underground”). But now I’m opening it up to the whole community. Still FREE, still fun, still small. If you want a spot at the next one, in New York on APRIL 20 from 6:30 to 8 PM, email me immediately at megan@chocolatenoise.com to let me know and I’ll send you the details and location.

In the meantime here are some notes from last week’s salon:

Lindt 70% Cocoa Smooth Dark

Used as an introduction to dark chocolate. Tasted smooth and eatable on first try. After the whole tasting we circled back to try it again: All vanilla and sugar, with some cocoa butter for texture.

Bar au Chocolat 80% Trinidad

I’d tried several chocolates from Bar au Chocolat’s line and especially loved the Marañon. Red fruit notes, tannic and somewhat bitter. Texture a bit gritty (probably because it’s a two-ingredient bar: cacao and sugar). Still tasty.

Cacao Prieto 72% Dominican Republic

Passionfruit. Smooth, creamy. Tastes like it has a lot of cocoa butter, but that’s not listed as one of the ingredients on the label.

Fruition Marañon Dark Milk

Caramel, cooked milk. Condensed milk. “Tastes like Easter in a good way,” one attendee laughed.

Blind Tasting

I enlisted the salon to try three chocolates blindly: one from Mast Brothers, one from Sol Cacao, and one that I made for an upcoming story and a section in my book (thanks to Chocolate Alchemy and Raaka for dealing with my neuroticism). Here are the notes from all three. Can you guess which is which? Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Facebook or Twitter and tell me, along with why, and I’ll include the results in the next Chocolate Today.

#1. Smelled sheetrock or something industrial. Gritty texture but smooths out. Flat. Strange aftertaste.

#2. Earthy. “Wet, dead fall.” Leaves, wood, but not in a bad way. Burny. Crumbly. More interesting. Enjoyed it and would pick this over #1 and #3.

#3. Peanuts. Boring, fine, flat. Nice texture.

Want to come to the next FREE Underground Chocolate Salon in New York? It will be APRIL 20 from 6:30 to 8 PM. Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com.

What I'm Tasting Today

Chocolate Naive Porcini Bar

Pastry Chefs Need to Know Where Chocolate Comes From

March 28, 2016

Michael Laiskonis measuring the size of the particles in semi-refined chocolate. Photo courtesy Niko Triantafillou/Dessertbuzz — *Michael Laiskonis measuring the size of the particles in semi-refined chocolate. Photo courtesy Niko Triantafillou/Dessertbuzz*

Ask most pastry chefs where chocolate comes from and they’ll point to a bag of Valrhona. But like, before that? I don’t know, a plant or something.

For example, Fruition Chocolate's Bryan Graham recently told me that when he went to the CIA, making chocolate was limited to “one 15-minute part of one of the lectures.” He had to figure it all out on his own. Considering that chocolate is a main ingredient in, oh, I don’t know, MOST DESSERTS, that’s madness.

One school is changing that: The Institute of Culinary Education has built an impressive new educational bean-to-bar facility, with pastry chef Michael Laiskonis at its helm. Walk into the Chocolate Lab and you’ll find Michael toiling away day and night, making chocolate from scratch with a variety of machines. ICE’s pastry curriculum now requires students to walk through the bean-to-bar process with Michael, and they’re even offering classes to the public too.

This will change the face of pastry, since presumably when people know where an ingredient comes from and how to make it, they’ll understand how to work with it even better. Michael’s even had “play dates” with pastry chefs at other NYC restaurants, and some of them want to start making their chocolate from scratch in house!

Roasting beans. Photo courtesy Niko Triantafillou/Dessertbuzz — *Roasting beans. Photo courtesy Niko Triantafillou/Dessertbuzz*

But the most exciting part to me is that Michael is discovering and cataloguing information that big companies like Mars and Hershey’s have known for years and kept siloed. He’s keeping meticulous notes about every step of the process and how one tiny change alters everything. He’s experimenting with things like aging chocolate to see what in the heck happens, and he wants to partner with a lab to get analytics about all of the data he’s collected. “I’m looking at ingredients and preparations and trying to understand them on a scientific level,” he said. In other words, he’s chocolate’s big data scientist.

Winnowing. Photo courtesy Niko Triantafillou/Dessertbuzz — *Winnowing. Photo courtesy Niko Triantafillou/Dessertbuzz*

I think (I hope, at least) that Michael’s planning to share all of this with the craft industry. Historically he’s given this kind of knowledge away and collaborated with lots of people, so there’s a good chance.

But at the end of the day, no amount of money will buy you some of the best chocolate in New York. Of course, if you meet Michael in person, he’ll probably give you some for free.

Think Michael's doing something unique? Think I'm full of it? Tell me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or on Facebook or Twitter and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

What I'm Tasting Today

Undone Chocolate Himalayan Pink Salt Bar

And the Most Ridiculous Chocolate of the Week Is….

March 25, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user MattysFlicks — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user MattysFlicks*

Chocolate toothpaste. Theodent Kids is made with real cocoa beans and supposedly tastes like chocolate. Apparently you can swallow a ton of the stuff and still be fine, which I guess is good?

NOT. Chocolate toothpaste and products like it are dangerous. They're worse than regular old candy. They make us think that chocolate is a commodity product, a flat, easy taste, and they completely eclipse the deeply flawed sourcing methods of big cocoa. Everyone knows about blood diamonds, but blood chocolate? Not so much. Doesn't sound so appetizing after all, right?

Do you agree? Think I'm reading too much into a product for kids? Even better, do you have a ridiculous chocolate of your own to share? Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or tell me on Twitter or Facebook and I'll quote you in the next Chocolate Today.

What I'm Tasting Today

Soma Aleppo Pepper Bar

Butter You Up

March 24, 2016

There’s a reason we’re used to eating chocolate with added cocoa butter: It’s delicious. Call it European style, call it cheating, call it whatever you want: I call it some of my favorite chocolate out there.

For many years bean-to-bar makers wanted to distinguish themselves from the old guard by eschewing cocoa butter (and vanilla) to focus on “pure” ingredients: cacao and sugar. Art Pollard of Amano Chocolate says this attitude is all ego, and I tend to agree with him. If you’re making chocolate that way because that’s what you like to eat (like Dandelion), then more power to you.

But if it’s to showcase your talents and to be “pure,” then I’m not sure I buy it. What does “pure” in this context even mean? I think it’s related to our desire to get away from industrialization and capitalism to an idealized simpler time, when ingredients were whole and we were (supposedly) happier. Scott Craig of DFWFood.org said recently,

““If a well-capitalized company using state-of-the-art equipment makes better chocolate than a Oaxacan grandmother grinding it out on a metate, put it in my bag, please.””

— Scott Craig, DallasFood.org

I think he’d say the same about adding cocoa butter.

Of course, cocoa butter is also the main ingredient in the much-reviled white chocolate (and lots of skincare and beauty products, ha). Some makers like Askinosie and Fruition are starting to make white chocolate bars, but honestly, I still don't like them that much. Have you tried one you liked? And are you into added cocoa butter in your chocolate, or are you a purist?

Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or write me on Facebook or Twitter and tell me what you think and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

Reactions

“Ah-ha! I agree with the sentiment re: adding cocoa butter, vanilla, but just yesterday I was trying some chocolate that had that waxy taste to it. I had the same experience the day prior. Both times I was disappointed and just wanted something more, shall I call it, pure? So, I ate as a satisfying “chaser” some Peru Lamas chocolate I made a couple of months ago. No judge would score my chocolate higher for obvious reasons. My chocolate is just not “there” yet and I am still struggling with “to add or not to add” cocoa butter, and also with “to buy or not to buy” professional tempering equipment. To up my game, both are probably necessities.

Back to the butter: some makers seem to add a lot more cocoa butter than others. The problem is: there is no way to know! I understand the addition is important to viscosity and thus molding, and mouth feel, but here’s my final sentiment: the less butter the better AND please tell us what % is added to the cocoa mass (-:
”

— Heather Hughes, email

“While I’m sure there are some out there, I’ve never spoken to a chocolate maker who (like myself) makes 2-ingredient chocolate who said it was to showcase their talents. All that I’ve ever spoken to have expressed similar thoughts to my own, which are that I make 2-ingredient chocolate because that’s what I generally most enjoy eating and because I feel that, for me, I can best highlight the flavors of the cacao this way.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that I don’t love chocolate with added cocoa butter.

On a side note, I’d suggest that some of the dry mouthfeel of some 2-ingredient chocolate could be coming from improper processing for that particular cacao. I think that several bars made from Camino Verde cacao (which is notoriously low-fat) show that you can make excellent 2-ingredient chocolate with a low-fat cacao. The ones that come to mind are Rogue Chocolatier’s, Ritual Chocolate’s, and Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate’s.”

— Ben Rasmussen, Potomac Chocolate, Facebook

“The fat content of the beans themselves fluctuates depending on climate and of course distance from the equator. But harvest fluctuations can be pretty dramatic. Our philosophy is pretty simple - if the beans have enough fat, we can do the bar as a 2-ingredient bar. If not, we’ll add butter. There are too many makers sticking with two ingredients with beans that don’t have enough fat, resulting in an extremely dry mouthfeel.”

— David Menkes, LetterPress Chocolate, Facebook

What I’m Tasting Today

French Broad's Limited Edition Panama Bar With Nibs

You Are a Supertaster

March 22, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user Linus Bohman — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user Linus Bohman*

You might not have the years of training to judge a chocolate competition or the taste buds to discern the flavors of raspberry from blackberry in a 70 percent Madagascar bar, but rest assured, you are a supertaster.

That’s because you know what you like to eat best of all. People can tell you that one type of cacao is better than another or one brand is better than another, but at the end of the day, you like what you like.

Too often with high-end foods we’re told what tastes good and what tastes bad, or we’re ashamed when we don’t taste the flavor nuances that someone else describes. I’ve had this experience time and time again: For example, I like Fine & Raw’s salty bar, even though many experts will say it’s not great chocolate. I call it an “eating bar.” I might not sit around and discuss the nuanced flavors in it, but I could happily munch on it after dinner. I’ve also tried tons of chocolate bars and been dismayed that I didn’t taste the notes of starfruit or rye bread or whatever else I “should” have tasted.

Part of that is because we’re all still learning the language to describe what we taste. Translating the experience from our tongues into talk is tricky. Recently I sat in on Whole Foods’ tasting panel, a group of people who have been trained to identify different flavors in food, like the distinction between the taste of brown sugar and caramelized sugar in a milk chocolate. It was fascinating, and proved that anyone can be a supertaster.

In all practicality, though, most of us aren’t going to study 20 types of sugar, 50 types of cacao, and so on. That doesn’t mean we’re disqualified from liking what we like, though. Trust your intuition. Taste freely, and when you find something you like, eat it with abandon.

Do you agree? Disagree? I want to hear from you! Email me at megan@chocolatenoise.com or write me on Facebook or Twitter and tell me what you think and I'll include your comments in the next Chocolate Today.

Reactions

On "Eating Bars"

“Nice to know other people have an ‘eating bar.’ I buy giant 125g bars of dark chocolate from Aldi. They’re nothing special, but it satisfies the sweet craving.

Like what you like!”

— Jason Warner, email

@MeganGiller @chocolatecodex I do. I describe what chocolate is good for if it’s not highly rated. Baking, eating, thinking chocolate.
— ChocolateAdvocate (@ChocoAdvocate) March 22, 2016

@MeganGiller @comconnoisseur Freedom to like what one wants, recognizing that liking a thing doesn't necessarily mean it's good.
— Scott DFW (@dallasfoodorg) March 23, 2016

On "Supertasters"

“Quick comment about your assertion that anyone can be a super taster. Based on what I was taught, that isn’t actually true. Years ago I took an oenology class at UC Davis. One of the things we were being shown was how to identify certain off flavors in wine. The message that came through loudly from the instructors was that yes, anyone can improve their ability to identify flavors and aromas with practice. But not everyone can be a super taster. Tasting is a physical skill and, like most other physical skills, we all don’t have the same natural abilities. Like great athletes, super tasters were born with more natural potential in their flavor receptors. But they need to be developed too or else the potential is never realized.

So this means that an average person, with practice, can indeed get much better at identifying what they are tasting. They can even be better than someone with more natural abilities who has never developed their skills. But they can’t be a super taster unless they have the ingoing natural equipment AND work to develop it.

I understand your desire to empower people to own their tastes. It’s a laudable goal. Too many people eat or drink what they think they “should” like and they waste a lot of money on products whose properties or subtleties they can’t or don’t really appreciate - especially with items that have a perceived sophistication about them like wine or liquor, and maybe chocolate too. I’m not sure where it sits on the sophistication scale but I’m a daily nibbler of Green & Black 85% dark. I’ll own that.”

— Donald Wright, email

“I agree that whatever each person likes is the best to them, but supertaster has a specific definition, so, unless each person fits that specific definition, I don’t think supertaster is the right word. I wouldn’t call people who like and appreciate colors tetrachromats, if they don’t have the ability to see extra colors. It’s the same with supertaster.

I don’t know if just eating chocolate requires a label. If it’s something you love and spend time researching and investigating, maybe aficionado or connoisseur.”

— George Gensler, Facebook

“But who wants to be a supertaster?

The problem with chocolate, as with coffee, tea, cheese, wine, etc. is that the supertasters whilst they can identify the finest nuances, they forget that the product has to appeal to a large group of people to be successful.”

— Julie Fisher, Facebook

Read more reactions on Facebook and Twitter!

What I'm Tasting Today

Guittard's Clair de Lune 85% Bar

"We Were Doing Bean to Bar Before Bean to Bar Was Born"

March 19, 2016

When the Kitchn asked me recently to write a short story defining “bean to bar,” I thought it was going to be a piece of (chocolate) cake.

“All chocolate is technically bean to bar,” I started. Wait, no.

“Bean-to-bar chocolate is better,” I wrote. Scratch that.

I eventually settled on this: “Artisans have started making their own chocolate and overseeing the entire process…to bring out intense flavor notes.”

It’s strange, but there aren't standard definitions for basic terms like “bean to bar,” “artisan,” and “craft," legally and in common parlance.

This only got more confusing when I visited Valrhona recently. “Do you consider us bean to bar?” COO Anthony Valla asked me over a beautiful chocolate cake and a plate of chocolate cupcakes (my, how it’s dangerous to work in their offices!).

“Well, yeah,” I replied. “Of course.”

I’m sure y’all are already familiar with Valrhona, but in case you’re not, the French company has been around since the 1920s, and it’s become the gold standard for high-quality chocolate, in bar form but mostly for pastry chefs and chocolatiers. If they’re using Valrhona, you can almost guarantee that they know what they’re doing. The company even owns a few of its own plantations, so they can control every part of the process and make fabulous chocolate.

*Famous chefs like Lincoln Carson with their hands dipped in chocolate, on the wall at Valrhona in Brooklyn*

Anthony and I went back and forth and then forth and back about the differences between bean-to-bar companies and industrial companies. At what point is a company big enough to stop being considered “bean to bar”? Or does size have anything to do with it?

He had the last word, though, with this definitive statement: “We were doing bean to bar before bean to bar was born.”

Do you think he’s right? What does “bean to bar” mean to you?

I want to start a wiki here on Chocolate Noise where we can hammer out the definitions of these terms. It will all be under a Creative Commons license so that anyone who wants to can use the agreed-upon definitions, and I'll plan to publish them in my upcoming book, so that it represents everyone. But first I want to gauge interest. Tell me your definition of "bean to bar" on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Would You Eat Tortilla Chip Chocolate?

March 17, 2016

Photo courtesy Flickr user Martin Kleppe — *Photo courtesy* *Flickr user Martin Kleppe*

Ritter Sports’ new chocolate bar is…crispy tortilla chip! My first reaction was, What is the world coming to? And then I remembered that chocolate has been paired with corn since it was invented.

The Premesoamericans, the Aztecs, and the Mayans drank their cacao with corn, achiote, chilis, and spices like cinnamon, and in fact, the people of Mexico today still drink chocolate this way. It’s kind of like a nutritious porridge, and it isn't all too sweet. The Europeans added sugar to cacao and, eventually, milk, and Ritter Sport’s milk chocolate with tortilla chips follows that tradition to a T (pun intended).

@MeganGiller Sure. Chocolate was paired with corn for a couple of millennia before it was paired with sugar or milk. It's a classic.
— Scott DFW (@dallasfoodorg) March 2, 2016

@ChocoAdvocate @dallasfoodorg @MeganGiller and the crunch! Could be a deadly bar. Corn. Salt. Crunch. Imagine that with *great* chocolate?!
— The Chocolate Garage (@chocolategarage) March 2, 2016

We’re used to drinking hot chocolate and eating sweet chocolate desserts with flour in them, but corn and cacao aren’t that familiar. That’s why I’m including a recipe for a traditional beverage called champurrado in my upcoming book: Think a thick, almost nutty water-based drink with plenty of chocolate, corn, and spices. Who knows: It might be your new favorite way to enjoy chocolate.

The Life and Times of CHOCOLATE, Part 2

March 15, 2016

If you missed it, check out Part 1, How Chocolate Is Born

Unroasted cocoa beans taste nothing like chocolate. I know, it’s weird. I guess if you squint your eyes and really pretend, you can kind of taste what will turn into chocolate.

The process of creating chocolate from raw cocoa beans is long and complicated, which is why Ecole Chocolat and I have partnered to put together a four-part series about where the heck chocolate comes from called "The Life and Times of Chocolate." Last month we cartoonized how chocolate is born, and this month we’re tackling how cocoa beans become chocolate. We hope to tell the story as simply as possible, and while we may not capture all of the nuances of the bean-to-bar process, we hope people remember the image.

So without further ado, here it is! First our little cocoa beans get toasted brown and chocolatey in the roaster. Then the beans are cracked and their outer shell winnowed away, getting naked for all the world to see (in an SFW kind of way). The part of the bean that's left is called the nibs. After that it's a trip to the grinder with sugar and sometimes extra cocoa butter for sweetness and flavor. Then the chocolate is tempered, a process that uses temperature and motion to make sure the chocolate hardens shiny and stable. And last but not least, the chocolate is molded into bars! (Thanks to Fernanda Frick for the awesome illustration.) Stay tuned for Part 3 next month!

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French Broad's new packaging is exactly what this industry needs

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1. The prices are too high.

2. Scale is a problem.

3. A big company can make good chocolate.

4. Makers should target the home baking crowd.

5. Only make a single-origin bar with really special cacao.

6. Blends can be amazing.

6. Ethics should guide your business.

7. Making money in this business isn’t easy.

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Cons

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What Lies Beneath the Berets: Part 1

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