My Chocolate Journal - Blog

My favorite chocolatier, Jacques Torres has a new book out and if it is anything like his other releases, I think ware are in for a treat!

Let your New Year’s resolution be “Eat more chocolate.” With Jacques Torres’ A Year in Chocolate as your guide, you won’t have any difficulty sticking with it from January right on through December.

From the elegant Poached Pears with Chocolate Fondue to serve on New Year’s Day and a festive Bûche de Noël filled with chocolate cream and ornamented with meringue mushrooms, to homemade Easter eggs and autumnal Pumpkin Seed Brittle, the world-renowned pastry chef and chocolatier presents us with a calendar’s worth of treats sure to make every celebration more luscious.

Oh man, I can't wait!

I know, not very many new reviews on MyChocolateJournal.com lately. Well, it's not all my fault. Sure, the best chocolate bar I have had in the past couple weeks was a Snickers (one of my favorite everyday bars), but you guys could be adding a review or two every now and then right?

The last good bars I had were from Amedei. I finally had a Chuao bar and also a Number 9 bar. After all the hype, it was still a really good bar.

With any luck, I will have something new to post after this weekend. We are off to Orlando (the long arduous 90 minute trip from St Petersburg) for the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival. We have seen Fredrick Schilling of Dagoba there last year and someone from Callebaut a couple years back. Maybe we will luck out and fall into some chocolate.

But for now, share the love! Post a quick review about a bar you have recently tried. And if you have any problems, let me know.

Patrick

I was very sad to hear today that one of the founders of Scharffen Berger Chocolate, Robert Steinberg, died yesterday.

If you have not read the book "The Essence of Chocolate" by Steinburg and his partner at SB, John Scharffenberger you should take a look. Through the pages you will get an understanding of how and why SB chocolates came into being and how we were blessed with these exception chocolate bars over the years.

Scharffen Berger's website homepage has been replaced with this tribute to Steinburg. To read more about this loss, you can read this statement from Scharffen Berger or read one of the many articles on Google.

If you are not familiar with Scharffen Berger chocolates, you can get more information and read some reviews on mychocolatejournal.com.

My first taste of the chili and chocolate combo came several years ago when Vosges Chocolatier released their first set of uniquely (at that time) flavored chocolate bars & truffles. The first taste, hmm, not stealer.

A couple months ago, I had another chance to embrace the combo. My friend Chris, returning from a trip to Oregon, shared a bit of Dagoba's chili bar. Again, not my favorite. Part of it is the texture of the smooth chocolate with the gritty chili powder added in. I am not sure if it is possible, but could they not conch the chili power in with the chocolate for a smother mouth feel?

Now, there is another new chili bar. I was flipping through the August 2008 Candy Industry and found a the new Lindt & Sprungli Chili bar made with red chili pepper.

Third times a charm? I will let you know next time I venture by a Lindt shop.

We visited a new chocolate shop in Tampa, FL today, Choxotica. From their website, you would swear it was some type of porn shop, but this is a great little chocolate bar and drink shop!
They have a unique chocolate display showing all their available chocolate bars. Find the bar you want and take the little card next to it to the front and they will pull your bars from thier temperature controlled chocolate storage room.

We bought a bar of Michael Cluzel Madagascar 65% (review coming later).
We also tried one of thier hot chocolate drinks. Dark chocolate with Cardamom. Very tasty stuff indeed!

If you are ever in the Tampa Bay area, you will have to put Choxotica on your list.

The website Organic Guide has posted a very interesting article with Dagoba Chocolate's Frederick Schilling.

I met Mr Schilling during a chocolate tasting at Disney's Epcot park last year during the Food & Wine Festival, and all I can say is that he is a very dynamic man and passionate about chocolate.
Read the interview at Organic Guide

We just loaded some new updates to the site. These have been a long time coming as they have been sitting on my laptop for since the middle of the summer.
Most of the updates are to the site backend and will allow some new features we will be working on in the next few months.

The one new visable feature is our new 1-5 "cocoa pod" rating images. Here is a sample of the new rating images.