Archive | class

Chocolate Plus Bourbon

July 30, 2013 by Lisa

We’ve been on a roll, Michael and I, teaming up to combine our respective loves of bourbon and chocolate. Upstairs in Hi Lo‘s loft, a quick turn ’round the block from Dandelion’s factory, we recently hosted our fourth event, tasting attendees through a lineup of 3 single-origin chocolates, first on their own and then paired with whiskey.

I get to share my love of the bean-to-bar chocolate making process and Michael Lazaar, the bar manager at Hog & Rocks, regales the crowd with the history of bourbon and the science of distillation. We’re hoping to make Chocolate Plus Bourbon a monthly tasting event that highlights the role of craft producers and explores pairings between each of our work-related passions.

I met Michael while perched at his bar in Hog & Rocks and our introduction quickly led to an impromptu chocolate and bourbon tasting. Once I reached into my purse for a foiled, broken bar, he reached up to the top shelf and taught me how to use a water dropper, a handy tool indeed. We found playing with the unique flavor combinations so much fun, we knew we had to recreate the experience for the public. We figured if we loved chocolate and bourbon, other people must, too.

We’ve had some great support from friends like Star St Germain, who designed a tasting mat and tasting notes to help refine the experience and took these pretty photos, and from Dandelion’s exec team. I have to thank them, and Michael and his expertise, for helping me share something I love with a wider audience and put a twist on it.

While every tasting’s been a little different, we’ve accumulated some crowd favorites. I think our Patanemo from Venezuela is a natural choice with classically caramel-tasting bourbons, such as Willett’s Family Reserve Wheated Whiskey, which brings out notes of maple in the otherwise nutty-tasting Patanemo.

We’ve found that Buffalo Trace Antique amplifies smoky flavors and we’ve had fun pairing it with Cumboto, another Venezuelan origin, and Papua New Guinea, made with naturally fire-dried beans. Madagascar, our fruitest-tasting chocolate, is a natural choice with Four Roses OSBO, a recipe that uses a high concentration of fruity-tasting yeast along with a high-rye mashbill to bring out complimentary citrus and spice flavors.

It’s easy to find interesting pairings when Michael sources the best single-barrel bourbons through the Hog & Rocks “Barrel to Bottle” program and I’m lucky enough to make extraordinary chocolate, sourced straight from farms and using only cacao and sugar. All in the same neighborhood.

Chocolate Plus Bourbon is tentatively scheduled for the second Saturday of every month, with the next event slated for August 10th. Tickets here.

Classes are back!

February 19, 2013 by Alice

We held our last Chocolate 101 class on May 31 in our production space in the Dogpatch. At the time, Cam led our production with Caitlin and Cynthia by his side. I can’t tell you how much has changed in nine months! We’re settled into our beautiful cafe and factory at 740 Valencia Street, and we’re ready to invite guests in to learn about our process.

May 2012

Our first Chocolate 101 class will be next Thursday, February 28th, from 7-9 PM in our factory on Valencia Street. Tickets are available here. The class is exactly what it claims — a detailed foundation of chocolate knowledge. We’ll talk about chocolate-making generally and our process specifically. We’ll cover the different types of chocolate, their ingredients, and a tour of our process. It’s a fun night, full of information and nearly too much chocolate.

February 2013

Chocolate, and cheese, and wine! Oh, my!

November 21, 2012 by Alice

I hope you’re all thinking about turkey and pumpkin pie as this week winds down. But, when the festivities end, we have another reason to celebrate! We’ll be next door with our neighbors at Mission Cheese on the night of November 26th, pairing chocolate, cheese, and wine from Sutton Cellars. You’ll each be able to play and discover your favorite combinations, while we share some of our own picks. It promises to be a delicious night and we hope you’ll join us!

Here’s the event information: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/296794. The Night Cheese tasting will take place on Monday, November 26th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM at Mission Cheese, 736 Valencia Street.

Pirates, Poems, Sea Salt & Chocolate

November 20, 2012 by Chiann

Back in June, Alice and I led a workshop called “Chock-full O’ Chocolate” at our friendly neighborhood pirate supply store, also known as 826 Valencia. Founded ten years ago in San Francisco, 826 Valencia offers a variety of free programs for primary and secondary school students to support their writing skills, foster creativity and inspire confidence through writing and the literary arts.

We met a group of really great, talented students (all between the ages 12-15) who came to learn about chocolate, the chocolate-making process, and to further hone their creative writing skills. By the end of the four-week session, each student had produced numerous short stories, poems, and drawings inspired by chocolate. They personally selected their best pieces, which were published in a chapbook entitled If I Were A Wizard Chocolatier.

We’re thrilled to announce that this chapbook can now be found at our chocolate factory as well as 826 Valencia! To commemorate this super-special collaboration with our neighbors, If I Were A Wizard Chocolatier comes with its own limited-edition chocolate bar, developed especially for 826. It’s called the High Seas bar, complete with sea salt and an intriguing back-story. In honor of the partnership, we’ve made a total of 826 bars.

You can pick up both as a bundle at our space; alternatively, you can purchase the chapbook at 826 Valencia’s Pirate Supply Store, where you’ll also receive a golden ticket that can be redeemed for the accompanying High Seas bar at our location one block away.

María and Lauren, two of the fantastic designers at 826, are responsible for creating the look of the chapbook, as well as the packaging for the High Seas bar. They did an absolutely amazing job, and we can’t wait for you to dive right in and enjoy both!

A portion of the proceeds from If I Were A Wizard Chocolatier and the High Seas bar will go to 826 Valencia, so they can continue to fund free student programming for elementary-, middle- and high-schoolers. We had a great time working with everyone at 826, and especially with our workshop participants: Nathan, Miriam, Cecily, Janelle, Bryan, Troy, Anja, Zora, Anthony, Alexis and Myles.

Now that our factory and retail space on Valencia is open to the public, please feel free to stop by and thumb through the chapbook: maybe it’ll inspire you to pen a paean to chocolate as well!

Please click on the links to learn more about 826 Valencia and 826 National, which coordinates its sister chapters located around the country.

Chock-full o’ Chocolate

May 30, 2012 by Chiann

We are extremely excited to announce a collaboration with our soon-to-be Valencia St. neighbors, 826 Valencia! As stated on their website, 826 Valencia is a nonprofit organization that provides writing and tutoring assistance to students aged 6-18, with the belief that strong writing skills are crucial to future success. Their offerings include evening and weekend workshops designed to sharpen writing skills and foster creativity — which is where we come in!

All throughout the month of June at 826 Valencia, Alice and I will be leading a free writing workshop based around the theme of — what else? — chocolate. We’ll be teaching students all about the chocolate-making process, and using that as a springboard for them to come up with their own chocolate-inspired literary or artistic creations, be they in haiku, short story, poem or pictorial form. These student writings will be collected and published in a chapbook, which will be available at our factory space as well as the Pirate Store.

If you know of any young writers or chocolate enthusiasts who would like to participate in our workshop, they can sign up here. It’s a 4-week workshop, with each session held from 6-8 pm on Wednesday evenings. The first one starts next week, June 6. It is free to sign up and participate; the only stipulation is that you have to be between the ages of 12 and 15. Oh, and you have to love chocolate. It would be wonderful to see you there!

Please stay tuned for other exciting collaboration news between Dandelion Chocolate and 826 Valencia! (Hint: You know who else loves chocolate? Pirates. Pirates adore chocolate. Entire pirate nations have been lost on account of chocolate.)

All images credited to 826 Valencia.

To sign up for our writing workshop at 826 Valencia, please click here.

For more about 826 Valencia, please click here.

To find out if there is a local 826 chapter close to you, please click here.

Chocolate Education

March 16, 2012 by Alice

We added a new round of Chocolate 101 classes to our online store. Our classes are a chance to come have a little fun with us in our Dogpatch factory space. Cam and I had a blast teaching last month. A few people have emailed us about doing it again, so we decided to teach it at the end of every month. Right now, tickets for March – June are available in our online store. We’ll cover all the chocolate basics: ingredients, sourcing, and making, with a tour of our space and lots to taste. We’d love to have you here.

Chocolate 101

February 16, 2012 by Alice

We’re offering our first class! We’re really excited about chocolate education. As we get closer to opening our space on Valencia, we’re starting to think about the different classes and tours we’ll host there. We’re teaching Chocolate 101 in our production kitchen in the Dogpatch, but this is just the start of a big part of our mission for our factory and cafe space.

This is a class for 15 people from 7-9 PM on February 29th. It’ll be an all around introduction to chocolate. We’ll cover the different types of chocolate, their ingredients, our chocolate making process, and a little about single origin bars. You’ll leave well-versed in the chocolate basics.

We’ll start the night out with a little chocolate treat, have a discussion about chocolate making, then a tour of our space, and plenty of time for your questions. We’ll taste chocolate in all of its unfinished and finished forms and provide samples of all we try for you to take home and share your knowledge.

We just added tickets to our online store, available to the first 15 interested people. We’d love to have you there.