Archive | food and drink

Homemade Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

May 17, 2019 by Karen Solomon

OK. So I am a fiend for nuts and chocolate of any kind, and when it comes to chocolate and hazelnuts, even more so. I remember the first time I ever tasted brand name Nutella: I was on a school trip to Epcot Center in Disneyworld sometime in middle school and I bought a small packet of it in the little French village. (I know, I know…the stuff is actually Italian, but you’ll have to talk to Walt about the reorg on European food.) It was SO GOOD. Like, really good. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even eat it on bread or anything; it’s quite possible I just squeezed the entire contents of it into my mouth, then went back and tried to squeeze out some more.

Fast forward to my college years and I became a Riot Grrl and completely engrossed in the DIY aesthetic of everything. I was making my own zines, cutting and duct taping my own clothes, and starting to make my own food (beyond instant Lipton Noodles & Sauce from a pouch). I began making my own condiments like ketchup and mustard and mayonnaise, and odd as it may sound, doing so felt like a very revolutionary act. I loved not being held to the confines of Kraft and ConAgra, and I loved the control that being in the kitchen and stocking my shelves gave me.

This passion and food lust led to a career as a food writer and cookbook author, and that afforded me the luxury of being able to make more food my own way. I would find a product at the store, look at all the junk on the ingredient label, and then take pride and pleasure in recreating that recipe in my own kitchen with real food. Nutella, known in Italy as gianduja, and known in North America as chocolate hazelnut spread, was eventually checked off my list.

When Bloom, the chocolate salon inside our 16th Street Factory, was doing its friends and family meals, I tasted Lisa’s bruleed brioche with her take on a homemade “Nutella”. It’s sublimely creamy and entirely decadent. And on the sticks of crisp, sweet, enriched bread, it’s an exercise in rich. For chocolate enthusiasts and anyone with a sweet tooth, it is exceptional.

In our book, Making Chocolate From Bean to S’more, Lisa and the kitchen team stuff this cream inside cookies, which seems like a dessert lover’s dessert. Meredyth was the first to think about making the chocolate hazelnut cream in a melanger, the stone-wheeled grinder that we use to make chocolate. I’m sure this is what gets our in-house version so super creamy; more so than most of us could accomplish at home.

For those of us who don’t own our own melanger, we still have options; a food processor will also do the job. I have a version of the recipe in one of my cookbooks, but lately I’ve been making it even more simply and delicious.

I weigh the hazelnuts, toast them, and remove the skin; this is essential, as the skin is really bitter. While the nuts are still warm, I put them into the food processor with an equal weight of our Chef’s Chocolate. I blend it thoroughly, then add some salt and about ¼ cup good-quality extra virgin olive oil. Then I blend it for a long, long time—five minutes, at least—until it’s super smooth and liquidy. Once it’s scraped into a jar and refrigerated, the texture firms and it becomes quite smooth and spreadable, particularly once it hits warm toast. Try it also spread onto fruit or simply eaten from a spoon :>.

For the real deal, though, follow our kitchen’s recipe below. Enjoy!

Chocolate Hazelnut Spread

from Making Chocolate: Bean to Bar to S’more

Yield: About 2 cups

Ingredients:

1 cup / 140 grams / 5 ounces blanched hazelnuts
3/4 cup / 212 grams / 7 1/2 ounces melted 70% chocolate (Karen’s note: Chef’s Chocolate works great here)
1/2 cup / 100 grams / 3 1/2 ounces sugar
1/2 teaspoon / 2 grams kosher salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F (176.7°C). Spread the hazelnuts in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes, until golden brown. Cool completely, then chop the nuts coarsely.

In a heavy-duty food processor, combine the hazelnuts, chocolate, sugar, and salt, blending them until completely smooth. The longer the mixture is processed, the smoother it will be; we recommend blending for at least 5 minutes on high speed. Enjoy on toast or waffles, or spread it on your favorite slices of fruit. The mixture can be stored in an airtight container or jar at room temperature for several weeks.

NOTE: At Dandelion, we make our version with a mini melanger. If you have one at home, simply add all the ingredients to the stone grinder, and let it grind for at least 30 minutes.

Red Velvet Beet Cake Recipe

April 15, 2019 by Lisa Vega

from Lisa Vega, Dandelion Chocolate Executive Pastry Chef and co-author of Making Chocolate: From Bean to Bar to S’more

RECOMMENDED CHOCOLATE PROFILE: earthy, savory, funky

We developed this cake—our version of classic red velvet—to complement the earthy, funky, sometimes grassy flavor profile of our Liberian chocolate. Some of us think it tastes like caramel and cinnamon; others taste iron shavings and a freshly mowed lawn. This chocolate is a customer favorite, and it earned a Good Food Award in 2014, which seems to be how our most polarizing chocolates work. Either way, we like the way the vegetal sweetness of the roasted beets plays off the chocolate, and the striking contrast of vibrant red against the shining, jet-black ganache layers.

YIELD: one 8-inch 4-layer cake

INGREDIENTS:

Cake
672 grams / 1½ pounds medium red beets
5 large eggs at room temperature
2¾ cups / 570 grams / 20 ounces sugar
½ teaspoon / 2 grams kosher salt
2¼ cups / 226 grams / 8 ounces cake flour, sifted
5 tablespoons / 36 grams / 1¼ ounces ground chocolate, chef’s chocolate, or 70% chocolate finely ground in a spice grinder
butter for the pan

Chocolate Caramel Ganache
2¾ cups / 412 grams / 14 ounces ground chocolate, chef’s chocolate, or chopped 70% chocolate
¾ cup / 150 grams / 5½ ounces sugar
2 cups / 450 grams / 16 ounces heavy cream

DIRECTIONS:

Make the cake
Prepare the beets: Preheat the oven to 350°F (176.7°C). Wrap each beet in foil, and roast the beets for about 1 hour, until a knife pokes easily through the entire flesh. Allow the beets to cool in the foil, and then carefully peel each beet, discarding the skins. In a blender, puree the cooked beets on high speed with 3 tablespoons water until very smooth, a minute or two. Measure out 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (480 grams / 17 ounces) of the puree, and set it aside. (Reserve the remaining puree for another use.)

Spray or butter two 8-inch round cake pans, line them with parchment, and grease again. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk the eggs, sugar, and salt on high speed until the mixture becomes pale in color and falls back on itself in ribbons when the whisk is removed, 4 to 6 minutes. Fold in the beet puree until the batter is streaked with color but not completely incorporated. This will prevent the beaten eggs from deflating too much as you mix the batter.

Sift together the cake flour and finely ground chocolate, then fold them into the batter until just combined. Divide the mixture evenly between the prepared cake pans.

Bake the cakes for 25 to 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack, and refrigerate or freeze them before slicing the cakes in half horizontally (using a serrated knife) to make 4 cake rounds.

Make the ganache:
Place the chocolate in a large bowl and set aside. Heat the sugar over medium-low heat in a dry heavy-duty saucepan. Watch it carefully—the sugar on the bottom will begin to melt. When you see the edges begin to brown, use a heatproof spatula to drag the sugar toward the center to prevent any burning, and continue to stir occasionally until the sugar is completely melted and has turned a medium amber color.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately start pouring the cream into the caramel in a small, steady stream, while whisking constantly. The caramel will bubble violently and may even seize up slightly, and that’s okay. Continue to whisk, and put the pan back on high heat. As you bring the caramel liquid to a boil, any seized sugar chunks that may remain should dissolve. Once the liquid reaches a rolling boil, immediately pour it over the chocolate. Let the hot cream sit undisturbed on top of the chocolate for 30 seconds. Then use a whisk to stir slowly at first and then more vigorously as the chocolate and cream combine and the mixture thickens. The ganache should appear shiny and thick, but still be liquid enough to pour. Allow the ganache to fully cool and thicken before assembling the cake.

Using a large offset spatula, spread a thin layer of ganache evenly on top of each cake layer, and layer one on top of another to create a 4-layer cake. Before cutting it, allow the cake to set in the refrigerator, uncovered, for about an hour. The cake will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for several days, or in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Chocolate Almond Figs with Chocolate Labne Crémeux & Port Wine Sauce Recipe

April 15, 2019 by Karen Solomon

Chocolate Almond Figs with Chocolate Labne Crémeux & Port Wine Sauce

from Chef Rose Johnson of Private Chefs of the SF Bay

Chef Andrea Lawson Gray is a longtime friend of ours in the SF Bay Area food world; she even participated in our very first 12 Nights of Chocolate. She’s also the founder of Private Chefs of the SF Bay, and she brings us this recipe via one of the chefs in the co-op, Rose Johnson. This chef collective does private catering and dinner parties, and they’ve been kind enough to make ours their chocolate of choice for all of their cooking and baking. Karen S. tried this recipe with our Kokoa Kamili, Tanzania Chef’s Chocolate and thought that the tropical notes went really well with the tangy wine and labneh.

YIELD: two to four servings

INGREDIENTS:

Figs:
10-12 dried figs
2 oz. ground chocolate, chef’s chocolate, or 70% chocolate, finely chopped
10-12 whole almonds, toasted

Crémeux:
½ cup labne or thick Greek yogurt
2 oz. ground chocolate, chef’s chocolate, or 70% chocolate, finely chopped

Port Wine Sauce:
½ cup Port wine
2 Tbs. heavy cream

METHOD:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cut or snip the stems from the dried figs. Use a small paring knife or spoon handle to gently open the figs at the stem end and create a small pocket. Stuff the fig with the chocolate, and top it with a toasted almond.

Place the figs upright and snugly together in a heatproof ramekin, or make one from aluminum foil. Roast the figs until they soften and the chocolate melts, approximately 10-12 minutes.

To make the crémeux, melt the chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave (stirring at 20-second intervals) until melted. Fold the melted chocolate into the labne. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Now it’s time to make the sauce. In a small saucepan, combine the Port with the cream and reduce it over medium heat until it’s as thick and syrupy as honey. Pay attention, as it will thicken up fast!

To assemble the dish, spoon some of the sauce onto a plate, then top with the figs. Place a dollop of the crémeux beside each fig, and serve. Be careful; the chocolate inside the fig may be very hot.

The 16th Street Factory Opens April 19th!

April 15, 2019 by Karen Solomon

After four long years of construction, permit mayhem, and more setbacks than Annie would care to recall, our new home on 16th Street between Alabama and Harrison in SF will open its doors to the public on April 19th. Inside you’ll find our largest chocolate factory to date; the comfortable sit-down Bloom chocolate salon serving breakfast and afternoon desserts; a multipurpose classroom and event space; a casual cafe for hot chocolate, mochas and pastries on-the-go, and our third retail shop in San Francisco.

The Factory

If you’re interested in chocolate machines, you should come see Caitlin and her production team’s new hydraulic-powered Bean Room, their bright yellow 70-kilo Diedrich roaster, vintage Refining Room ball mills and roll mills, and so much more. Choose your own adventure for getting to know how we make chocolate: either sit in the new bleacher seating sipping a Mission Mocha, or sign up for a tour of the factory floor. Speaking of tours…

Classes and Tours

School is in session in our flexible, multipurpose classroom and event space, and Cynthia and the Chocolate Experiences team have an expanded menu of chocolate classes, tasting sessions, making sessions, factory tours, and trips to origin to deepen your knowledge of craft chocolate at every level. Tasting, History, Sourcing, and Making courses are now available for sign up, as well as numerous kid’s classes, hands-on family learning, and family-friendly factory tours. We now have the capacity for private events like team building, baby showers, birthday parties, or whatever kind of gathering you’re planning. Our philosophy has always been that learning is more fun when there’s a hot chocolate at the end.

The Chocolate Salon

Bloom, our chocolate salon, is nestled next to the windows that face the street, and for weeks now, curious eyes have been peeping the glimmering brass wall and ceiling tile, the deco-inspired geometric tile, oversized banquettes, and the supermodern lighting. Lisa and the kitchen team are putting the finishing touches on recipe testing, plating, and menu planning the likes of market quiche with greens and cacao fruit vinaigrette, and brûlèed brioche with Camino Verde, Ecuador chocolate hazelnut spread and cocoa nib cream. And Indica and Michelle in Creative have been hunting down teaspoons, saucers, serving vessels, and so much more to match the quality and thoughtfulness of the food they will serve.

Café and Retail Shop

If you’ve grown used to grabbing a mocha at the Ferry Building or on Valencia Street, you’ll also be able to get your drink fix here. There’s a full café onsite serving all manner of grab-and-go hot, cold, chocolate, and coffee drinks. In addition to our full pastry selection, there will also be a few new menu items in the mix, such as Kouign-Amann with a generous dollop of chocolate ganache at the center. The retail shop will stock all of our gift boxes, plus single bars and bar sets, and of course, tastes of all of our origins to help you pick a new favorite.

We cannot even begin to calculate the labor and the love that have made this dream of ours a physical space that we can now touch and see. The first batches of beans are roasting, the tempered chocolate is flowing, and that familiar scent of fresh chocolate is wafting into every room. And very soon, you’ll be here with us to engage with the best chocolate we can make.

Chocolate Mochi Muffins Recipe

April 10, 2019 by Karen Solomon

I used to live and work in Kamiyama-cho on the island of Shikoku in Japan. I watched rice grow from every window of my tiny apartment. I taught English in four elementary schools and two middle schools, and in addition to leading an adult English conversation group with the inspiring farmers of my rural community, I also sang in the town choir. I learned a lot in Japan, including a love of taiko drumming, a deepened sense of obsession for Hello Kitty, and an appreciation for food that feels uniquely Japanese. It was at this point in my life that I fell in love with mochi in all forms. I still dream about a particular mochi stuffed with fresh strawberries and whipped cream that I once at in an Osaka train station.

Lately, and here in the SF Bay Area, that mochi love continues. Hawaiian ono mochi rich with butter? Bring it. But the colorful, flavorful hybrid mochi muffins of Third Culture Bakery in Berkeley inspired me to incorporate our chef’s chocolate (also known as ground chocolate) and single-origin cocoa nibs into this decadent treat.

The texture is quite different than a regular muffin; dense, chewy, and rich. The flavor is chocolatey, nutty, and not too sweet, making them perfect for breakfast. Since it’s rice flour, these are also gluten-free.

This recipe was adapted from Snixxy Kitchen.

Chocolate Mochi Muffins

Makes: 2 dozen muffins, Time: Under 2 hours

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil, melted, plus more for greasing the pans
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
4 cups mochiko sweet rice flour
2 ½ cups dark brown sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
4 large eggs, room temperature
3 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups Kokoa Kamili, Tanzania chef’s chocolate or ground chocolate
½ cup Kokoa Kamili, Tanzania cocoa nibs (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat the oven to 350°F and center the oven rack.
Grease the sides and the top of two 12-cup muffin tins with the coconut oil.
In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the sweet rice flour, dark brown sugar, baking powder, and salt.
In a stand mixer or in a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs, then thoroughly blend in the coconut oil and the butter. Stream in the milk and the vanilla.
Add a tablespoon or so of the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix with a hand mixer until completely combined. In four batches, thoroughly combine the dry ingredients into the wet, making sure the ingredients are thoroughly combined.
Stir the ground chocolate into the batter.
Divide the batter among the prepared muffin cups, filling each cup almost all the way to the top.
Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with the cocoa nibs, if using.
Bake both tins together 40-50 minutes until the top is lightly brown and the muffin springs back when poked with a finger. Insert a toothpick into the thickest part of a muffin and make sure it comes out clean of raw batter.
Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Enjoy immediately. Store the muffins in an airtight container, or wrap them well and freeze for at least three months.

4000 Years and Counting: A History of Drinking Chocolate

February 16, 2019 by Amie Bailey

Amie Bailey is the General Manager of our soon-to-open 16th Street Factory, and she just started with us in January, 2019. She is a food blogger, a pastry chef, a hyper-organized person, and a fan of chocolate in all of its drinkable (and non-drinkable) forms.

For most of my childhood, the process of making hot chocolate started by opening a packet. I, for one, have always loved that aroma coming from the little foil envelope that can only be described as “sweet.”

These days I’m more likely to be enjoying a Mission Hot Chocolate at our Valencia cafe, or whisking up our Hot Chocolate Mix at home, and as a result I’ve been digging into the history of drinking chocolate. While bars of chocolate and confections are available around the world, historically we as humans have preferred drinking our chocolate over biting into a bar.

Let’s go back about 4000 years to 3300 BCE to prehistoric South America, in what is now known as Ecuador. In October of 2018, archeologists from UC Berkeley uncovered ceramic pots from the Mayo-Chincipe people with traces of cacao residue on them, making chocolate one of the oldest beverages known to humanity.

The Maya continued the tradition of drinking chocolate and passed it along generation after generation. It took many centuries for the Maya (and then the Aztec) people to develop the techniques for making chocolate into a beverage worthy of the devotion we pay it even today. Highly prized, chocolate was a reward, a sacrifice, a currency, and sometimes exclusive to royalty and the military (Montezuma II reportedly drank 50 golden goblets of hot chocolate per day).

It’s tempting to think that chocolate was only for the wealthy in ancient lands, but in ancient South and Central America, chocolate was truly a group activity. It’s a lot of work to grow, harvest, ferment, roast, and grind chocolate into a paste and then convert it into a drink. Our melangers refine our chocolate for four to five days after we roast and winnow the beans (depending on the origin), and they run on electricity! Imagine doing that by hand! Consequently, and up until very recently in history, chocolate has been hard to come by. While maybe not *everyone* got 50 cups per day in Mesoamerica, it’s likely that everyone got a taste of it.

Chocolate was also a decidedly different experience back then. None of these cultures grew and processed sugar, and honey was harvested in the wild and by chance. Chocolate wasn’t just “not sweet”; it was pretty bitter – more akin to coffee than what we think of hot chocolate. It was also mixed with a variety of spices, vanilla, ground corn, or almonds.

None of these cultures were traditional herding cultures either, so the chocolate was made with water rather than milk. The texture came from pouring it from cup to cup to create foam. Today, Mexican Hot Chocolate is made with a molinillo, and the foam is considered particularly desirable.

Cruising right up to 1500 AD, the Spanish invade and conquer these cultures in a brutal fashion, taking not just their gold, but their cacao (and the skills they developed to make it into chocolate) as well. Cortez presented cacao for the first time in Europe, and from there drinking chocolate found favor and fame throughout the continent. Sometime in the 17th century Europeans began to eschew adding spicy chili pepper to their drink in favor of sugar, which was expensive but available.

The pirate botanist (what a job title!) William Hughes published a book in 1672 titled The American Physitian that devoted an entire chapter to “The Cacao Nut Tree” and the ways in which it could be prepared for drinking, going so far as to call it “The American Nectar.”

In the 18th century, we see chocolate houses rising right alongside London’s famed coffee houses as places to gather, gamble, and carouse. At this time and in these places, chocolate had reached its most opulent form to date, with sugar being bountiful and using dairy instead of water to make the beverage. Many of these places still exist in London today and you can see them, or at least the outside. White’s is one of the best known. This is where Prince Charles had his bachelor party, and it does not admit any woman other than The Queen of England. You can also view The Cocoa Tree on Pall Mall in St. James’s London which is now The Royal Automobile Club.

17th century British chocolate house

From there, mass availability followed lock step with the industrial revolution. It wasn’t THE first thing to be made in a factory, but it was really close. In 1828, Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten invented the process of extracting the cocoa butter from chocolate leaving a cake that is pulverized into powder. With this invention we enter the era of Hot Cocoa (made from cocoa powder) taking the lead over Hot Chocolate (made from the paste of cocoa nibs) and making the drink widely available (unless you were a very, very lucky child) and what we all grew up with.

With small-batch and bean-to-bar chocolate gaining a wider and wider audience, I think we live in one of the best times for enjoying Theobroma cacao, the scientific name for chocolate, meaning “food of the gods” in ancient Greek. From enjoying single-origin chocolate bars to drinking a spicy Mission Hot Chocolate at our cafés, I hope you’ll join us at our shops or online to explore.

Learn more about the history of chocolate.

Resources:

Science Magazine Online: World’s Oldest Chocolate Was Made 5300 Years Ago – In a South American Rainforest

Smithsonian Magazine Online, What We Know About the Earliest History of Chocolate

Gastro Obscura, The Rambunctious, Elitist Chocolate Houses of 18th-Century London

Cooking In the Archives

Chocolate Class, Enlightenment-Era Chocolate/Coffee Houses

Pleasant Vices Video on Making Mayan Style Hot Chocolate in the 18th Century Manner

Hot Chocolate, William Hughes’s ‘American Nectar

Chocolate Ganache Macaron Gift Box for Valentine’s Day

February 4, 2019 by Karen Solomon

Loving people can be sweet. But the love of a good cookie can be transformative! For the third year in a row, we are delighted to be tucking our kitchen’s handmade pink macarons into pretty bowed boxes special for Valentine’s Day. Crisp and chewy almond meringue cookies sandwich a Camino Verde, Ecuador single-origin chocolate ganache — this year with the flavors of the kitchen team’s favorite cocktails.

If you’re local to San Francisco, we can’t wait for you to see these – and, of course, to taste them! Mary and the whole kitchen team have been flooded with preparations. You can only imagine what 2,000 macaron tops and bottoms in petal pink look like when spread across our tiny kitchen. We’re only able to produce 100 boxes. And because they’re too delicate to ship, you can only find them at our SF Valencia Street and Ferry Building shops.

In the 2017 blog post Mary wrote the first year we offered this seasonal gift, she points out the difficulty of getting the texture of the cookies right while trying to make so many all at once. “The reason macarons are usually only found in bakeries and restaurants, rather than the home kitchen, is probably that they are a rather intimidating project to take on. Admittedly, if you don’t have a great deal of experience making them, even if you’re a professional baker like I am, the prospect of making macarons can be a little…frightening.”

Why the fear? “The thing about macarons is that something can go wrong at nearly every single step of the process, and they are delicate: the almond flour must be ground and sifted finely enough, the egg whites must be at room temperature, the meringue must be folded into the almond-sugar mixture enough (but not too much!). This process is known as macaronage, and when done correctly, it produces a thick batter that flows like lava but still holds its shape when piped.” Like many great elements of French cooking, the ingredient list for the cookies is simple: ground almonds, egg whites, and sugar. And quite literally, the temperature or humidity of the air can make or break these cookies. It is no small feat to get that perfect crisp-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside texture every time.

The single-origin chocolate ganache filling, made with our Camino Verde, Ecuador ground chocolate and rich cream to make it silky, takes a new twist every year. For 2019, it’s cocktail time! (The rich, chocolatey center will have the flavor of the spirits, but almost none of the booze.) Each box contains 10 macarons total with two of each flavor: Fernet, Mai Tai, Manhattan, Negroni, and Paloma.

The beautiful, reusable gift box is decorated with one of the pretty patterns we design ourselves, and finished with a satin bow we tie by hand. Find the macaron gift box in both of our SF shops February 13th and 14th, 2019, for $35. We’ll also have bouquets of flowers on hand on Valencia Street to help you woo your Valentine.

The 2018 Advent Calendar is Here!

November 2, 2018 by Karen Solomon

Michelle, who headed up this year’s Advent calendar odyssey, grew up in a German home where the holidays are huge, and Advent calendars are treasured handmade heirlooms. Just ask her and she will share her memories of the beloved daily dose of treats, toys, or coins to countdown to the holiday. And, of course, her and her sister’s giddy anticipation of trying to peek inside the pocket to see what tomorrow might bring.

Michelle is bringing some of this spirit to our 2018 Advent calendar–our largest to date by any metric. It’s the most we’ve ever made (800!), the most amount of chocolate collaborators we’ve ever worked with (12!), and the most holiday joy we’ve ever offered (tons!)

To make this project happen, we partnered with some of our favorite San Francisco Bay Area chocolatiers and treat makers to craft the Advent calendar of our childhood dreams. You have to understand that for these small mom-and-pop makers, creating an extra 800 or 1600 bonbons in the months before the holidays is a huge undertaking! We tip our hat to these small shops and thank them for squeezing us onto their busy production line.

This year’s calendar is also a collaboration with artist Maggie Enterrios. We’ve been huge fans of Maggie’s playful, detailed nature illustrations for years, and we were so excited that we finally had the chance to work with her on this extra-large project. Her gorgeous hand drawings of local birds, bugs, and botany brought this year’s design to a whole new level. The detailed lettering and calligraphy are from another artist we admire very much: Lisa Quine. Every calendar in the collection is numbered by hand and comes tied in a shimmering forest green bow. We are so delighted to share this delicious display of edible beauty with you and whoever shares your holidays (and your chocolate).

Each large calendar contains 25 hand-picked, treat-filled, reusable treasure boxes decorated with Maggie’s hand-drawn birds, animals, plants, or flowers that call the SF Bay Area home. The decadent confection inside each box is thoughtfully crafted by people who make the sweets we love. Crisp, smooth, or chewy; chocolatey, fruity, or nutty; the array of flavors and textures changes daily, though the quality and craftsmanship are in every bite. Each treat contains some element of our cocoa nibs or single-origin chocolate. To get you ready for what’s under the lid, know that some of the confection flavors include the Oolong Crisp Bar, Smokey the Bourbon, Gingersnap Praline, Speculoos Coffee Tile, Caramel Crunch, Mini Blood Orange Bonbons, and Burnt Honeycomb. You won’t want to miss out on this once-a-year celebration of art and chocolate! Get yours here.

2018 Advent calendar collaborators include:

Supplies are limited and this is expected to sell out. Shipping is only available within the continental United States.

Cooking with Fresh Cacao Pods (and a Recipe for Cacao Chips and Cacao Fruit Jam)

October 19, 2018 by Cynthia Jonasson

Cynthia is our Dean of Beans and the head of our educational programming. She’s been saving her allowance her entire life to buy every chocolate bar possible.

The flesh and peel of a fresh cacao pod is thinner than an acorn squash (and it smells similar to one, too), which might be why so many students in my classes ask if you can eat it. My answer used to be simple. “No. People don’t eat cacao pods. They typically compost them to put the nutrients back into their farms or use them as feed for livestock.”

And then my friend received a book, The Cocoa Pod Used in Recipes by Mercedes Mendoza, from his sister who had visited The Chocolate Museum in Belgium. Mendoza is from Peru and her passion is to help cacao farmers learn to prepare nutritious dishes from this byproduct (cacao flesh is about 80% of the weight of the fruit and it is typically discarded; chocolate is made from the seeds of the pod). The book shows readers how to prepare the pod and includes various savory and sweet Peruvian dishes that call for cacao pod flesh as an ingredient.

This was the first time I had ever heard of someone preparing the flesh of the pod as food. Some recipes were really interesting. Others I’m not sure I would ever repeat again. But as a curious cook and a huge fan of cacao in all forms, obviously I had to try it.

If you do decide to try cooking with fresh cacao pods yourself, here are some general tips for sourcing and preparing them:

Source quality fresh cacao pods. I am fortunate enough to have access to fresh cacao that we buy for our Chocolate 101 class. Finding them can be easier said than done, but I buy pods from a florist called Magic Flowers near Guayaquil, Ecuador. It’s expensive – about $80 for nine pods. When they arrive I put them in the fridge to keep them fresh for a week or two.
Cut the pods open carefully. Prepare cacao pods as you would an acorn squash. Stab your knife into the center of the pod deep enough to break through the skin and flesh. Then run the knife along the length of the fruit from the top to the bottom to cut it all the way through. Don’t cut through to the other side because you may accidentally cut open some of the beans.
Scoop out (and save!) the inner fruit and seeds. Scrape out the beans and save them for another use. You can suck on them to eat and enjoy the delicious, citrus-y pulp, or try to ferment them if you plan to make your own chocolate. You can also plant them to grow a cacao tree, or save them for another use (I’ve used them to make miso, an idea I picked up from a few doctors at Casa Mascia Apothecary in Belize).

Preparing Fresh Cacao Pods

All of Mendoza’s recipes begin the same way — peel, de-seed, and core the fresh fruit. It’s easier said than done!

Peel the pods with a vegetable peeler. Be careful, as they get REALLY slippery!
Cut the cacao into small, one-inch pieces. Again, be careful! I can’t emphasize enough how slippery these get.
Cut out and remove the dense center layer. The book said to do this because the center layer hardens when it cooks and becomes inedible. I believed the book, but after cutting away the center from my fourth piece I realized that it would not only take forever to prepare the cacao but the likelihood of cutting myself was a certainty (did I mention they were slippery?). I tested cooking them with this layer intact and then removing the inner core after cooking. It was easier to remove, but the cacao was even more slippery and dangerous. My helper used a butter knife so that he wouldn’t accidentally cut himself.

The first recipe I tried from the book was for fried cacao pod chips. I was immediately drawn to thinly slicing and frying the cacao in hot oil, but it was a lot of work, very expensive, and pretty tasteless with an odd slippery texture. It’s much easier to make chips with potatoes or nearly anything else. But if you’re curious:

Recipe for Cacao Pod Chips (adapted from Using the Cacao Pod in Recipes)

1 fresh cocoa pod cut, peeled, cored, and seeded
At least 2 cups of neutral, high-heat vegetable oil
Salt to taste

With a very sharp knife, slice the prepared cacao fruit as thinly as you can.
In a small, heavy-bottomed pot, heat the oil until it’s very hot; 350-375 degrees Fahrenheit. Drop the cacao slices, a few at a time, into the hot oil and fry them until they turn golden brown, about 1-3 minutes per batch.
With a slotted spoon, removed the finished chips and let them cool on a rack over paper towels. While they’re cooling, sprinkle with salt to taste.
Fry the remainder of the cacao slices, adjusting the temperature of the oil as needed to keep it steady.
Eat immediately and enjoy.

Many of the other recipes in the book–including a spicy chili dish I was eying–were quite similar in that the first step is to puree the pod. That didn’t sound hard at all! I make purees all the time due to my obsessive desire to make everything from scratch. But I soon found out otherwise…

The puree on its own is a nutritious and thick start to soups and stews that can be fun to play with in the kitchen. Though simply making the puree was so laborious and time-intensive that I decided to just use my own kitchen skills to make a jam from the pectin-rich cacao pod boiling liquid. My co-workers thought the jam tasted more complex than regular blueberry jam, with a subtle creamy flavor. While the cacao pods make for good jam, it wasn’t chocolatey at all, and it didn’t taste like the lychee/citrusy cacao fruit smoothie we serve in the SF cafes, either. I don’t think I would do it again.

Recipe for Fresh Cacao Fruit Puree (adapted from Using the Cacao Pod in Recipes)

Fresh cacao pods
Water to cover by at least one inch

Simmer the peeled, cored, and chopped cacao pod flesh until soft, about 25-35 minutes. Note that the water will turn yellow, then purple, and then thicken so much it looks like jam. (It turns out that cacao pods have a lot of pectin.)
Remove the cacao pieces from the liquid. Be sure to reserve this liquid if you want to make Fresh Cacao Pod Jam (see recipe below). Puree the fruit in a food processor until smooth. Pretend you’re not grossed out by the resulting slimy puree. :)

Recipe for Fresh Cacao Fruit Jam

3 cups cooking liquid from Fresh Cacao Pod Puree
12 ounces frozen blueberries (or another high-pectin fruit, like apples, cranberries, or pears)
1 cup sugar (or more to taste)

Remove the solids from the cooked cacao pod, and measure out 3 cups of the liquid into a heavy-bottomed pot. Bring the liquid to a boil.
Add the blueberries and the sugar. Uncovered over medium-high heat, let the jam boil, stirring often, until a lot of the moisture has boiled away and a spoon streaks across the bottom of the pot, about 30-35 minutes.
Serve the jam warm or ladle into jars. Keep refrigerated. This makes about a pint.

This was a fun project, and one that I’m glad I tried, but it was more intellectual than inspiring. I’m glad I finally tried preparing and eating the flesh of the cacao fruit, but I think I’d rather leave it behind for the farmers to add nutrients to the soil.

Cookies for a Cause: DOUGH & CO and Dandelion

August 10, 2018 by Omar Mamoon

Since 2013, Omar has been running DOUGH & CO, a San Francisco-based purveyor of cookie dough meant to be eaten baked or unbaked (eggs are substituted for a slurry of white chia seeds). All proceeds from this collaborative cookie project will benefit La Cocina, a non-profit food business incubator for women and people of color where he’s been a long time volunteer. We are excited to have him write about the philanthropic side of his local business.

I started DOUGH & CO five-and-a-half years ago. Though I never went to culinary school or business school, I had a strong innate passion for food. This passion was further fueled by the non-profit La Cocina.

La Cocina helps primarily low-income immigrant women of color to start food businesses; I lived across the street, so I started volunteering. Seeing people go through the program was super inspiring. I quit my desk job and started renting commercial kitchen space from them on Sundays where I’d make small batches of cookie dough.

From day one of starting DOUGH & CO, I knew that I wanted to give back to the community somehow. Part of the company mission statement is to “doughnate” 1% of our profits, 1% of our time, and 1% of our delicious cookie dough to nonprofits and causes that are important to us. Since starting my business, I’ve helped raise and donate over $25,000 to various non-profits around the Bay Area through cookie dough collaborations with like-minded folks. It’s not a lot in the grand scheme of it all, but it’s something – and that something can make a difference.

I’m stoked and honored to collaborate with Dandelion, who generously provided their 70% Camino Verde Chef’s Chocolate (which I mixed in generously with a batch of my peanut butter cookie dough). It’s like eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, except in a sophisticated cookie form. All proceeds from the sales of this cookie will benefit La Cocina.

The Dandelion/DOUGH & CO chocolate peanut butter cookie will only be available at the Dandelion Ferry Building cafe. And, it’s only around for a limited time – August 10-17, 2018.

I really like it, and I hope you do, too.

-xx

Omar