Archive | product

Remy and the Chocolate Chip

June 18, 2020 by Jennifer Roy

For as long as chef Lisa Vega has been with Dandelion Chocolate, Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookie has been part of our DNA. For years, our chocolate chips were made in-house by the kitchen team, who hand-piped over 50 pounds of tempered discs a week. That is, until recently, when the Large Chip was born.

To learn the “making of” story we spoke with Remy Labesque, a talented industrial designer and good friend of ours who collaborated with Chef Lisa and the production team to make the perfect chocolate chip. Remy met Todd when he attended a Chocolate 101 class some years ago and so began a lasting friendship. Remy was working at Frog Design at the time (he’s now at Tesla) and he jumped at the opportunity to re-design the chocolate chip.

When the large chip was launched in May, Remy walked us through his creative process which led to the birth of these geometric beauties.

“The chip project began about three years ago. If my memory serves me, it was driven in large part by pastry chef Lisa Vega, who wanted something specifically tailored for her recipes. There are two chip designs: large and small (the large was released first, and the small will be at a later date). Their mass (3.5 grams and 0.8 grams, respectively), was driven by Lisa, and the prototypes were tested along the way in her recipes as part of the R&D process. Another consideration was that we also needed something that could be enjoyed as a chocolate-eating experience completely by itself — that’s where our unique shape comes into play.

“The shape of a typical store-bought chocolate chip is an arbitrary result of the industrial manufacturing process used to make it. As you might expect, a drop of molten chocolate is deposited onto a flat surface and left to cool. Chocolate chip taste varies widely by brand, but the shape of the chips does not.

“The shape of our chip is faceted: The edges of a Dandelion Chocolate chip taper to thin-as-we could-make-’em without compromising structure. This is because the thermal mass of a thin piece of chocolate melts more quickly on the palate. So when you put a Dandelion chip on your tongue, the thin, chiseled edges warm-to-melt nearly instantly. The 3D shape, while simple, we believe is also novel. And this is noteworthy because the world of industrial design is running out of simple forms that haven’t been claimed for something already. Beyond that we’re proud to have optimized the chocolate chip eating experience as a result of rethinking the humble shape itself.”

While the chip was created for baking, many of us at Dandelion Chocolate have reached for them to nibble because the mouthfeel is different from our bars; but make no mistake, there is nothing like the taste when these chips are baked in a gigantic chocolate chip cookie.

The chips are being released by origin, and the first two are especially suited to baking and confections:
Costa Esmeraldas from Ecuador, 70%, 2018 Harvest, with notes of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana; and Hacienda Azul from Costa Rica, 70%, 2019 Harvest, with notes of chocolate almond biscotti and buttery caramel.

We want to thank Remy for bringing his know-how and love of chocolate to the project. It’s great to finally to be able to share his story with you.

Our Chocolate is Now Kosher-Certified!

March 9, 2020 by Leah Hammerman

[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]Leah has been our Culinary Liaison since 2017. She introduces our cocoa ingredients to professional chefs, bakers, baristas, and brewers across the country. This is her first post for the blog, and she’s going to share the story of how and why she obtained a kosher certification for our single-origin, one-and-two-ingredient chocolate.

My mom had been nudging me about getting Dandelion Chocolate kosher-certified since my first day on the job. Mom’s always right, right? In fact, I attribute my career in the food industry to her because baking together has always been our weekly tradition.

My family keeps a kosher kitchen, which means that in our house, we never mix any dairy products (milk, cheese, butter, etc.) with any meat products (beef, chicken) within the same meal. This means cheeseburgers or ice cream after a chicken dinner are big no-no’s. We also look for kosher symbols on packaged food to inform us that the ingredients are in alignment with our family’s dietary laws. There are many different kosher symbols, but some of them look like this:

Growing up, the chocolate options for dessert were fairly limited. For as long as I can recall, Scharffen Berger had been our best bet. (Parenthetically, our company’s own early history began soon after “Big Chocolate” bought Scharffen Berger.) Both my mom and I have always seen the opportunity for Dandelion Chocolate in the kosher market. And after receiving a couple of wholesale inquiries from kosher-certified businesses who were interested in buying our chocolate, I justified researching what the kosher certification process would mean for us.

I had hoped the certification process for our chocolate would be simple since we only use two ingredients—cocoa beans and organic cane sugar. This also designates our chocolate as pareve, meaning it’s not made with dairy or any animal derivatives and it can therefore be eaten with any meal. Furthermore, our chocolate-making equipment wasn’t previously used for non-kosher production.

I was connected to Rabbi Welton of the Vaad of Northern California, a.k.a. Sunrise Kosher, through the Illuminoshi, the not-so-secret society of SF Bay Area Jews who work in food. Caitlin, our Director of Production and I gave Rabbi Welton a tour of both of our San Francisco production facilities (Valencia Street and 16th Street) so he could see the process, the equipment, and the product first-hand.

Soon thereafter, we received our official kosher certification. It has been effective since August 2019, and it applies to both of our SF factories and to all of the one- and two-ingredient cocoa bean and chocolate products we make (single-origin chocolate bars, cocoa nibs, ground chocolate, Chef’s Chocolate, whole roasted beans, single-bottles of Hot Chocolate Mix, and our soon-to-come chocolate chips).

Sunrise Kosher is based in the East Bay, and its accreditation is accepted nationally by kosher consumers who abide by varying degrees of kosher stringency. We’re planning to update our packaging (hopefully in late 2020), at which point we’ll revisit adding the kosher symbol. Until then, we have the digital certification to show for it!

One might say we’re celebrating a “Bar” Mitzvah! My mom and I say mazel tov to that.

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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.

Elman Introduces the 2017 Harvest Cahabón, Guatemala 70% Chocolate Bar

March 21, 2019 by Elman Cabrera

Elman is a Senior Chocolate Maker at our Valencia Street factory and the profile developer of our Cahabón, Guatemala 70% 2017 Harvest chocolate bar. His story is a Dandelion Chocolate first: he was born in Guatemala City, and his father is from the north region, so this bar has such a strong family connection for him. Elman takes pride in all of his work, but he feels a particular responsibility in this 2019 release. We’ve asked him to share his experience with and connection to the cocoa beans from Cahabón.

(La traducción al español está abajo.)

Back in the day when I joined Dandelion Chocolate, I was so happy that the company was working with beans from my country of Guatemala. It was an amazing surprise and I felt really proud that my country was represented in such a delicious way. I’ve always wanted to work with the Cahabón, Guatemala beans but I knew it was a long shot. I was sad when I heard the Cahabón bar was no longer being made by the Valencia team, but also happy because I got to work with beans that have some cultural relationship with Guatemala.

The 2017 Harvest Cahabòn, Guatemala 70% chocolate bar

I was given the opportunity to work with the Guatemalan beans for a limited time. This profile is going to be produced just one time and only tempered for two weeks before it is gone forever. I want to give this origin the farewell it surely deserves for what it represents to me.

While working with these beans, I was surprised to find a different set of flavors from our previous 2014 Harvest Cahabón, Guatemala bar, which tasted like rich chocolate, walnuts, and liquid caramel. This new bar iteration of these fantastic beans is packed with lots of fruity notes while keeping its rich chocolatey notes. That was a nice surprise and something I knew I wanted to explore. I wanted to give the Cahabón bar more balanced tasting notes and get rid of the earthiness that the previous bar had. I still wanted to take the people trying the bar on a roller coaster of taste, but I wanted that experience to stay in the same line of flavors. That’s why this new bar starts with fruity notes that transform into rich chocolate and finishes with tart, fruity notes.

Is this bar a personal achievement? The answer is YES! I love my country and I’m proud of what farmers are able to produce and the dedication that they put into their crops. This time it’s not just about my country, but also the reiteration of my love and passion of what I do for a living. I love working with chocolate and having opportunities like this profile. It helps me to showcase how much I have learned over the years. I’m beyond blessed to have had the chance to learn from people with so much talent and knowledge. My hope is to be able to pay it back and share that knowledge and passion with my team members.

Elman es un fabricante de chocolates en nuestra fábrica de Valencia Street y el desarrollador del perfil de nuestra barra de chocolate de 70% de Cahabón, Guatemala de la cosecha 2017. Su historia es única en la historia de Dandelion Chocolate: Elman nació en la ciudad de Guatemala, y parte de la la familia de su padre viene de la región norte del país, por lo que esta barra tiene una conexión familiar muy fuerte para él. Elman se enorgullece de todo su trabajo, pero siente una responsabilidad particular en esta versión del 2018. Le hemos pedido que comparta su experiencia y conexión con los granos de cacao de Cahabón.

El día en que me uní a Dandelion Chocolate, estaba muy feliz de que la compañía trabajara con semillas de cacao de mi país: Guatemala. Fue una sorpresa increíble y me sentí realmente orgulloso de que mi país estuviera representado de una manera tan deliciosa. Siempre quise trabajar con las semillas de Cahabón, Guatemala, pero sabía que era una posibilidad algo remota. Me sentí triste cuando escuché que la producción de la barra de chocolate de Cahabón iba a concluir, pero también feliz porque pude trabajar con semillas que tienen alguna relación cultural con Guatemala.

Recientemente, me dieron la oportunidad de trabajar con la semilla de cacao Guatemalteca por un tiempo limitado. Este perfil se producirá solo una vez y solo se templará durante dos semanas antes de que desaparezca para siempre. Es mi deseo darle a este origen la despedida que seguramente merece por lo que representa para mí.

Mientras trabajaba con esta semilla, me sorprendió encontrar un conjunto diferente de sabores a la de nuestra barra de la cosecha 2014, la cual tenía un sabor profundo a chocolate, nueces y caramelo líquido. Esta nueva versión de esta fantástica semilla está repleta de notas frutales y mantiene sus notas profundas a chocolate. Esa fue una agradable sorpresa y algo que sabía que quería explorar. Quería darle a la barra de Cahabón notas de sabor más equilibradas y deshacerme de la terrenalidad que tenía la barra anterior. Quería llevar a la gente que probará esta barra de chocolate en una montaña rusa de sabor, pero quiero que esa experiencia se mantenga en una misma línea de sabores. Es por eso que esta nueva barra comienza con notas frutales que se transforman en un chocolate profundo y terminan con notas agrias y afrutadas.

¿Es esta barra un logro personal? ¡La respuesta es sí! Amo a mi país y estoy orgulloso de lo que los agricultores pueden producir y de la dedicación que ponen en sus cultivos. Esta vez no se trata solo de mi país, sino también de la reiteración de mi amor y pasión por lo que hago para ganarme la vida. Me encanta trabajar con chocolate y de tener oportunidades como desarrollar este perfil. Lo cual me ayuda a mostrar cuánto he aprendido a través de los años. Estoy más que feliz de haber tenido la oportunidad de aprender de personas con tanto talento y conocimiento a través de los años. Mi esperanza es poder devolver la oportunidad y poder compartir ese conocimiento y pasión con los miembros de mi equipo actual.

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.

We’re Brewing Cacao Nib Coffee at Our SF Valencia Street Café

June 22, 2018 by Jennifer Roy

Jennifer has handled the public relations for Dandelion since 2013, and she’s an avid drinker of coffee in the cafe. For this piece, she spoke with Voga Coffee’s co-founder and CEO Eli Salomon who, along with Josh Avins, CTO and scientist behind the technology, and Jason Sarley, co-founder and Chief Coffee Officer, are the creators of the Ground Control vacuum coffee machine.

Voga Coffee's Cyclops coffee machine in the Dandelion Chocolate cafe

The Ground Control Cyclops coffee brewer behind the counter at the Valencia Street cafe.

If you’ve been in our café on Valencia Street recently, you’ve probably seen a very futuristic-looking machine topped with hand-blown glass bulbs. It’s a new coffee machine called Ground Control® Cyclops from the innovative folks at Oakland-based Voga Coffee. We’re the first café in the world to have this machine, and it just won the Specialty Coffee Association 2018 Best New Product award. We’re thrilled to be serving both brewed coffee and brewed cacao nib coffee with Ritual’s beans.

Why add another machine in our café, and how did we meet the team from Voga? Eli Salomon of Ground Control was testing the machine near our Alabama Street factory, and he asked if he could experiment with brewing some of our cacao nibs. How could we say no? When we finally got to taste our nibs brewed with delicious Ritual coffee, we had an “aha!” moment where we were blown away by the taste. The cacao nib coffee is smooth, nutty, and full-flavored coffee without any kind of bitter aftertaste. Todd, Dandelion’s co-founder and CEO, exclaimed: “How could we not have a machine that brews the most delicious coffee made with our nibs?”

Keep your eye on the Cyclops when you next visit our Valencia café.

Since launching the brewed coffee and the cacao nib brewed coffee at the end of May, 2018, the feedback has been very positive. People love it! Cacao nib coffee makes you less jittery than regular coffee, and it has a more uplifting buzz. Along with the normal caffeine kick, it must be the theobromine from the nibs that helps give your mood a boost.

How does the Cyclops work? Salomon explains, “Traditionally, it’s been impossible to brew cacao nibs, because their high-fat content clogs brewing filters. When we first spoke with Dandelion, our team suggested the possibility of using Ground Control’s high vacuum brewing process to overcome this hurdle that has plagued the chocolate world for hundreds of years. After Voga ran a few brewing experiments, it became clear that our innovative, patented brewing approach was exactly what was needed to coax the delicate, beautiful flavor of Dandelion’s impeccably sourced single-origin cacao. It was through this effort that the world’s first cacao brewer was discovered.”

He adds, “In addition to brewing a delicious cacao-based beverage, Ground Control’s unique multi-stage brewing method extracts multiple layers of flavor from coffee or cacao, resulting in a delicate, multi-dimensional cup. Drinkers of Ground Control brewed beverages have marveled at their smooth, clean cup profile and the significantly pronounced sweetness that soars from the cup. Ground Control’s unique, carefully controlled process not only eliminates harsh bitterness but also presents delicate, nuanced flavors that would otherwise be obscured.”

Currently, we’re offering a Ritual single-origin brewed coffee from Guatemala as well as the cacao nib coffee with our Camino Verde, Ecuador nibs. We look forward to having you come by to try it. Let us know what you think!

Don’t worry; you still get one of our signature shortbread cookies with every cup.

How to Store Chocolate: Tips and Tricks (and the Science) for Keeping Chocolate Bars at Their Best

June 13, 2018 by Becca Taylor-Roseman

Becca works on chocolate quality, team safety, and risk at our SF Valencia location. She enjoys the science that explains how chocolate works. Her favorite bar at the moment is Gola Rainforest, Sierra Leone. And yes, she once left chocolate to accidentally melt on the backseat of her car.

Chocolate with streaking and sugar bloom

When bad things happen to good chocolate from improper storage. Left to right: fresh chocolate, streaked chocolate (when the cocoa butter separates), and sugar bloom (when sugar crystallizes on the surface).
📸@ericwolfinger

Leaving a bar of chocolate in your hot car will surely ruin your day. So much work goes into making a Dandelion chocolate bar: we bring beans into the factory from all over the world that undergo a meticulous production process to transform them into glossy chocolate. We wrap each bar in gold foil and make sure the label lines up. And then just like that, the whole thing is a puddle. The chocolate tastes great in the short term (yum! molten chocolate!), but after that it’s messy and, without retempering the chocolate, the bar won’t ever be the same again. So, in the interest of having the best chocolate-tasting experience days, months, or years from now, I share a few pointers on how to properly store tempered, finished chocolate bars.

Short-term storage for enjoying chocolate within a few months:

● Squirrel it away somewhere cool and dark; the back of your pantry is ideal.

● Keep it away from strong odors. Cocoa butter can absorb strong flavors like garlic and coffee, which can alter the delicate flavors of the chocolate.

● Keep the bar away from heat and out of direct sunlight. The stable form of cocoa butter (Form V or 𝜷V) starts melting at 84°F. Tempered chocolate is a sol: a suspension of solid particles (cocoa solids, sugar) in a liquid (cocoa butter). It can separate just like the emulsion of oil and vinegar in a vinaigrette, except with chocolate you get dark cocoa solids and white streaks of cocoa butter. If a chocolate bar melts in your beach bag and you pop it in the fridge to resolidify, the bar will likely have a streaky appearance, a soft break, and it will crumble when you bite it. The appearance may be unpleasant, but it’s still safe to eat. I recommend melting it into brownies or some other delicious chocolate-based dessert.

Mid-term storage for up to a year:

● For storing chocolate longer than a few months, keep it in a temperate climate: we’ve had good results storing our chocolate between 40-68°F. The kitchen pantry is ok, but a cool closet or basement area are ideal.

● Stable temperatures are best. Chocolate’s appearance and texture can be affected by transitional bouts of hot and cold.

Long-term storage for up to five years:

● For cellaring chocolate and holding on to vintage bars, I recommend using a wine fridge set to 50°F. Note that a regular kitchen refrigerator may have strong food odors and it is often too cold for the task (below 40°F). Greg, our Chocolate Sourcerer, and Todd, our CEO and co-founder, set their chocolate refrigerators to 50°F. If chocolate gets too cold or undergoes a temperature shock, condensation can form and potentially cause sugar bloom. Sugar bloom changes the texture and appearance of the bar. It occurs when the sugar in the bar absorbs water and, when the water evaporates, it recrystallizes on the surface of the bar. It’s still safe to eat, but the chocolate’s appearance and texture make it better for baking.

● Never freeze chocolate for all of the same reasons as above.

● All of our chocolate bars have a “best if used by” date of one year from production. This is the time period during which we’re confident that the flavor notes you’ll taste in our bars will be as close as possible to when the bar was first tempered. That said, the flavors in our bars evolve over time, and some chocolate even improves with age.

● After a year or two in storage, it’s possible for chocolate to start looking dull and a bit grey on the surface and acquire a brittle, chalky texture. Over time, cocoa butter transforms into an even more stable polymorph known as Form VI or 𝜷VI. As long as you’re storing the chocolate in controlled conditions, it should be safe to eat for several years.

● Chocolate like ours with just cacao beans and sugar tends to be shelf stable. You don’t need to worry about two-ingredient chocolate going bad. In milk chocolate or bars that have nuts, those other ingredients can become rancid over an extended period of time.

The chocolate/wine refrigerator of Greg, our Chocolate Sourcerer. What a collection!

Our 2017 Advent Calendar is here!

October 25, 2017 by Elaine Wherry

Exciting news! Our 2017 Advent calendar is just about here. This year, we’ve collaborated with some incredibly talented chocolatiers who have gone above and beyond, but before I share all the details I thought I’d tell you how this whole crazy Advent calendar idea started…

Todd and I had very different upbringings. Todd’s family embraced sweets. Todd’s mother carries a purse full of treats and she’ll stuff one in your pocket if she thinks you look even slightly hungry. Todd’s father has an insatiable sweet tooth that cannot deny a brownie (or a cookie or an eclair or a slice of chocolate cake). And Todd? He inherited the sweet tooth genes from both sides. For his high school science project, he bought many tubs of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream from different makers to see which dough yielded the best cookie. He extracted the dough from the ice cream, baked it off, and ran a questionably scientific cookie tasting comparison. Many years later, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that he started a chocolate factory. As his wife, I can attest that Todd just really, really, really loves chocolate like no one else I’ve ever met.

Back in Missouri, my mother was a nurse and a goat farmer. We grew up on rice and vegetables. And I mean that literally — each and every day we had the exact same dinner like clockwork — brown rice and frozen vegetable mix — without deviation for all of my elementary school years. So when a family friend gave me an Advent calendar loaded with chocolate to count down the holidays, I slept with it like a teddy bear. A piece of chocolate each day? We weren’t religious but whatever occasion brought with it a daily sweet treat — big fan! Big, big fan!

Separated by a thousand miles, Todd and I grew up. And as college freshmen, we met and later married. And at some point, we started making chocolate from cocoa beans in our apartment. And then this hobby chocolate project grew legs and we moved to San Francisco to see what would happen. And yet when each holiday passed, I found myself longing to try the Advent calendars I saw in the grocery stores but knowing that the calendar I enjoyed as a girl probably wouldn’t give me the same joy today. This even became one of our favorite discussion topics — what would be in our dream Advent calendar? And who would make it? And eventually, how would we organize an effort to design an Advent calendar that showcases a local talented chocolatier each day?

Norah, our fearless product manager in 2015, heard those conversations and insisted on co-designing an Advent calendar with Yvonne Mouser, a talented local artist. And thus, the dream came true. Norah sought out chocolatiers across the Bay Area to make toffees, caramels, truffles, and all sorts of treats with our chocolate. And to her amazing credit, she made it happen.

In the process, we also learned why this project makes no sense. Most Advent calendars are designed with long shelf lives in mind since they are made so many months before the holidays. But we just couldn’t do that. Our partner chocolatiers are quality-driven, shy away from preservatives, and intend their treats to be eaten fresh within a few weeks. So, we didn’t have the option to make and assemble Advent calendars in October, or even early November.

Designing an Advent calendar with the best chocolatiers in San Francisco means that everything has to come together just before Thanksgiving so we can sell and ship calendars within 5-7 days. Anyone with any business inclination would say this is a horrible, terrible, no-good idea. The likelihood of a printing mistake, a collaborator dropping out, a batch of chocolate just not tempering the way it should, or a box of truffles getting accidentally smooshed… there’s just no time to recover from error. The project is seriously riddled with potential for failure and I can’t even imagine how Norah did it that first year.

At the same time, the Advent calendar is so good. Once we saw that it was possible, we had to find a way to make it happen again. When life gives you a chocolate factory, it just seems like you should take the next logical step, which is obviously an annual San Francisco Advent calendar.

This year’s calendar is our third. Norah has moved to new responsibilities and I’ve taken over this tradition in her stead. The project doesn’t live on any official product roadmap — everyone just assumes it will happen because we can’t imagine December without it. And this year, we stumbled upon the very talented Ronan Lynam. When he showed us his initial winter San Francisco scene, we were floored. And from there, Indica, our graphic designer, imagined watching this bustling nightscape from her window. The flaps open to reveal twenty-five individual boxes with detailed iconic San Francisco landmarks. It’s our most elaborate Advent calendar yet.

And the best part of the Advent calendar is what is inside. Our collaborators represent the small San Francisco chocolatiers who might not have a public storefront or a national presence. I don’t know of any other place where you can celebrate the very best of San Francisco’s chocolate all in one place. For them to take on this project during an already-busy holiday season is absurd & yet they rise to the challenge each year. I’ve included the full collaborator list below. If you haven’t heard of some of these small makers, please take a moment to visit their websites and learn more about these individuals who bring so much to our local food community.

Given how many times I’ve opened and closed our various prototypes this year, you would think that this project might lose its charm by October. But no — opening this Advent calendar still gives me the tingles of joy that I recall having as a young girl. I can not wait until December 1st to open the first box!

Though the holidays might seem far off, to a chocolate maker or chocolatier, December is just around the corner. If you’d like to see what we’ve all been working on this year, please head over to the Order page.

• Claire Keane of Claire Squares
• Cristina Arantes of Kika’s Treats
• Kathy Wiley of Poco Dolce
• Melissa Santos of Cadence Chocolates
• Mindy Fong of Jade Chocolates
• Michelle Hernandez of Le Dix Sept
• Christine Doerr of NeoCocoa
• Shawn Williams of Feve Artisan Chocolatier
• Lisa Vega of Dandelion Chocolate

Thanks for reading & all the best,

-Elaine