My friend Irina has great taste in cake. For my birthday, she found the above caramel pear mousse torte at Athans, which wins the award for Best Place in Boston to Get a Birthday Cake for People Who Like Delicious Things. Then she put cute little candles that were wrapped in foil kind of like peanut butter cups.

OH and then there was this nice note on the cake box.

Beau-u-u-tiful!

This is a picture of Taza Chocolate's delicious, limited edition 75% chocolate bar that was made with cacao beans that came from a farming community in Chiapas, the southernmost state of Mexico. My bar, as you can see, was number 660 of the total 1,392 bars that were made.

Chiapas made it's own special mark on chocolate history in 1648. Here's the story: The ladies of Chiapas liked to indulge in their chocolate drinking several times a day, so much that they were having their maids bring it to church and serve it to them during sermons. The bishop didn't like that, and tried to stop them by excommunicating anyone who dared drink chocolate during church. They didn't like that, and sent him poisoned chocolate. Then he drank it and died! And so the saying went, "Beware the chocolate of Chiapas."

I learned about this story in this book, by Thomas Gage (who was there!) Pg 161.

After a month-long hiatus from The Tasty Show blog, I'm back with this tidbit I found on Boing Boing today. A fascinating inside look at TCHO Chocolate's curious chocolate laboratory. TCHO Chocolate founder Timothy Childs talks about his converted turkey ovens, how he plans to run the chocolate factory from his iPhone, and NASA's role in it all, among other things. Also, at 4:58 there is an awesome explanation of what is really happening when chocolate is tempered.

Note that this is the second part of a 3 part Boing Boing series. The first part can be viewed here.