ChocoLee opened last Friday in Boston's South End
Ok, I haven't been to this new chocoboutique yet, but I'm dying to go. Why? Because the "Lee" of ChocoLee is the very same Lee Napoli of the South End Buttery who created those delicious Earl Grey Green tea truffles that I blogged about a couple month ago. Interestingly, the ChocoLee boutique is at 83 Pembroke Street, which is the very same location as Choco Choco House, maker of the lovely and fashionably signature chocolate purses. What's going on? Where is Choco Choco? And then I visited the Choco Choco House site only to find that it is under construction! To be continued...

Chocotaste Testing at Boston Magazine
Boston Magazine had the lofty task of taste-testing 6 New England area chocolatiers, including 3 of my faves: Chocolate Springs, La Tene, and Knipschildt.

Chocolate Awards for 2008 were announced today
And Amedei won again (it's 3 years now). The Italian Amedei's Toscano 63% received the 'Golden Bean' award for best bean to chocolate bar. French Valrhona's 70% Guanaja and 64% Manjara took gold. The awards were given out by the UK's Academy of Chocolate.

NYTasting
The New York Times ran a great article today about the emergence of ultra high quality 'dark' milk chocolates to contend with the common foodie opinion that dark chocolate is where it's at and milk chocolate, well, isn't. They also did a tasting of no less that 30 (!) milk chocolates and posted a short article about their favorites here.

Chocolate Biodiesel?
My dear friend Jeff emailed me this link to an article about a chocolate-fueled biotruck that made it from the UK to Timbuktu.

Deluxe Washington Hot Chocolate
And to retouch upon my recent hot chocolate kick, the Washington Post posted this recipe for deluxe hot chocolate that requires no less than 11 ingredients.

And finally, in honor of Valentine's Day, my new Valentine's-Day-heart-red couch is arriving tomorrow (which is Valentine's Day). Happy Valentine's Day! (See pic above).

I'm excited to announce that The Tasty Show Chocolate Tasting Kit for Two is almost done. Last night I had a dream that it was ready to go in time for Valentine's Day, but then I woke up, unfortunately. I don't want to reveal too much since it's not out yet, but I will say that I agonized over the selection of chocolates, and have almost 100% finalized a pretty sweet line-up spanning several countries of origin and some of the best brands in the world.

Check back at the boutique soon for more info.

Here's another tea-infused chocolate dessert recipe.

As I've mentioned before, when I'm not working with chocolate, I'm blessed to work with fabulous clients through my main endeavor at Zemack PR. And whenever those two worlds connect somehow, I get really excited. So I was totally surprised this morning to get a Google alert for (my client) Whittard of Chelsea that linked to an article about the Chocolate Idol contest at Boston's Langham Hotel... (Whittard of Chelsea is an English tea boutique that opened its first US shop in Boston this past spring.)

Here's a little background about the contest: Several weeks ago, I posted about a chocolate recipe contest being held by the Langham Hotel Chocolate Bar in Boston. The Chocolate Bar at the Langham is a huge lavish chocolate buffet featuring every chocolate dessert you've ever dreamed of that's open every Saturday through the fall and winter. This year, they wanted to do something fun and new, so they organized a chocolate recipe contest. Whoever wins the contest, which was called "Chocolate Idol," gets a season pass to go to the Chocolate Bar whenever they want, and their recipe will also be featured in the chocolate buffet for the rest of the season. The Boston Globe just ran a story about the creator of the winning recipe.

The winning recipe was created by Blanche Ip, a self-taught chocolate and sweets enthusiast who has been crowned Chocolate Idol for her Earl Grey Brownies recipe. In the Globe article about her, she explained that she's become a bit tea-obsessed over the past year, and Whittard of Chelsea's Earl Grey tea is her favorite kind of tea! And this comes at an interesting time, because Whittard has recently done a bunch of exploration in the world of tea-infused desserts with the South End Buttery - I just posted an Earl Grey Green Tea Truffle recipe from a Green Tea Desserts event that we organized at Whittard a couple weeks ago. Blanche's recipe is made up of a classic brownie topped with an Earl Grey ganache frosting. The recipe is posted on the Globe website or if you want someone to make it for you, you can try Blanche's brownies at the Chocolate Bar at the Langham any Saturday.

Blanche's Earl Grey Brownie recipe.
South End Buttery's Green Earl Grey truffle recipe.

I had the pleasure of having lunch with Larry, co-founder of Taza Chocolate last week. Taza Chocolate is a pure chocolate-maker based in Somerville, MA (which is the very same town I live in). They released their very first bar, a 70%, this past winter, and then followed shortly after with an 80%. So last week I was excited to learn that they are rounding out their line with a third bar, this one a 60%, which will be coming out within a couple weeks. Taza's chocolate bars are stone-ground using antique Mexican molinos (stone grinders). When I was at their chocolate studio a few months ago, the Taza guys explained that using a stone grinder (rather than a steel grinder, which is what most other chocolate-makers use) to process their cacao preserves more of the natural flavor of the bean. They have an online chocolate journal that has some pictures of the molino and explanations of exactly how their chocolate is made.

Taza 60% Stone Ground Organic Dark Chocolate: I have to admit that I shared this bar with all sorts of people and did not end up being able to taste a whole lot of it. But what I did manage to note was its earthiness and bold notes of raisin and spice. The Taza bars most certainly do not fall in the smooth and velvety category. The bars are minimally refined in order to keep the chocolate flavor as close to the natural form and flavor of raw cacao as possible. That said, the mouthfeel is quite textured and a little gritty; overall, a wholly different experience than other pure chocolates. I'll have more indepth tasting notes once the bar comes out.

So once the 60% bar is out, I'll post an update! In the meantime, you can get Taza Chocolate's other bars online or at one of these places.

Early this past August, Godiva Chocolatier's parent company Campbell Soup Co. announced that Godiva is kind of the odd one out in light of the rest of Campbell Soup's products, and they are therefore looking into parting ways with the brand, possibly by selling it. Too sweet and glitzy to fit in with V8 and SpaghettiOs, apparently. The Campbell Soup Company has owned Godiva for around 40 years. The original company was a wholesale chocolate outfit that started up in Belgium in the 1920s and then morphed into a retail shop around 1940, and was at that point named after the legendary Lady Godiva, who rode around naked on a horse to help out some peasants sometime during the 11th century. In the mid 1960s, the company was partially acquired by Pepperidge Farms, and was owned wholly by Campbell shortly thereafter.

So who's going to be the big buyer? Hersheys? Mars? As much as another lux brand seems right up Hershey's alley, yesterday I heard that Switzerland's Lindt & Spruengli wants first dibs.

And here's one more 'fact' about Godiva that I just can't resist:

"When pronounced "G'dai, Va!" the name may be mistaken for an Australian greeting to a person named Va." (Courtesy of Wikipedia.)

My office is in Davis Square in Somerville, MA. And to my great delight, so is Kickass Cupcakes. Or at least it will be soon. I've been walking by their coming soon sign on Highland Street for some time now, and was thrilled to hear from Kickass Cupcakes owner Sara Ross, who gave me the lowdown on this delicious Davis Square development.

Kickass Cupcakes will be open by September 2007. The cupcakes will be baked fresh each day, including classics like chocolate and vanilla and curious flavors like one of Sara's personal favorites, the Mojito cupcake. This cupcake rendition of my preferred drink of late features a rum-soaked cupcake topped with sugar cane lime frosting and a hint of mint. Then there's crispy cupcakes, cupcake parfaits, Pupcakes, and Kittycakes (so our pets can rejoice...) They will also be serving coffee, tea and other kickass beverages to complement their kickass cupcakes, which, according to Sara, will kick ass.

Kickass Cupcakes is at 378 Highland Ave in Davis Square in Somerville, MA. Impatient cupcake lovers who don't want to wait a day longer than they have to can sign up for the mailing list to find out exactly when they'll be officially open.

A journalist from Canada.com was at my Cote d'Or chocolate tasting in Toronto last week and posted a lovely article about chocolate today. In addition to giving a nice rundown of chocolate's benefits (health and otherwise), she also talked a bit about the tasting itself. According to me as quoted in this article, "chocolate is like a story." And indeed it is - there is a beginning that starts with the aroma and the first few seconds as the chocolate melts on your tongue. There is a middle that is made up of the changing flavors and developing textures of the chocolate as it continues to melt. And there is an end, which stretches way beyond the point when the chocolate has totally melted into the realm of aftertaste, which is an integral part of the tasting experience.

And on a related note, the article also reports that chocolate can help you score significantly higher on a standardized scale of sexual functioning. (Who knew that there was such a scale?)

Check out the article here.

So I got an email the other day about a new bar released by Vosges featuring chocolate and bacon. Bacon. The Vosges website describes Mo's Bacon Bar as "Applewood smoked bacon + Alder smoked salt + deep milk chocolate." I haven't tried it yet. I did, however, give a bunch of people some Smoky Blue [cheese] truffles to try this week, and we noticed that they kind of taste like bacon (it's the smokiness). I even enticed my friend Jeff to try one by telling him that "it'll be as satisfying as a crisp piece of bacon on a Sunday morning." But I'm pretty sure that doesn't count as actually eating chocolate with bacon in it.

Moving right along, reviews I've seen of Vosges' new bacon bar highlight the sweet, salty, and crunchy of it (go figure) and have been pretty good - though some can't seem to find the bacon taste. Here's a quick round-up of reactions thus far:

From DirtyNerdLuv: Salty, bacon-y and really good. The flavors were so intense I can't imagine eating more than a bite a day... Link.

A reviewer on Chowhound reported: It's a 41 percent milk chocolate base (the same as the Barcelona bar), and I found it too sweet. But worse, I didn't think it was particularly bacony... Link.

From Chocolate Obsession: The bottom line is this: it's good. It really is good. They have taken salt, bacon, and chocolate and combined them and the result is really quite good. This is an impressive feat... Link.

From The Best Bite: The first thing you taste is that rich, creamy, Vosges milk chocolate. The second thing you taste is crunchy grains of salt. That's also the third thing you taste. The bacon is just a minor note that pops in at the end. Definitely disappointing... Link.

From The Wandering Eater: The salty, smokiness of the bacon worked so well with the sweet, slightly caramel-like finished chocolate. I was hooked that I bought another bar... Link.

From FoodHoe: When you bite into the tiny little specks of bacon, it's crunchy but tastes salty, a little chewy and finishes with a rich smoky flavor that lingers on your tongue... Link.

From Cupcake Club: Vosges is really onto something -- this bar is crunchy, salty and delicious. I'm a convert...

Last week I posted some of the highlights of The San Fransisco International Chocolate Salon. The salon also featured a tasting panel that tasted and rated the chocolate show's participants based on several categories. The award winners have just been posted. Notably, Amano Artisan Chocolate received 3 gold awards including Best Dark Chocolate and Most Gifted Chocolatier. Unfortunately, they do not give details on which dark chocolate bar won the award. Personally, I most enjoyed their Madagascar 70%.

I just read in the Boston Business Journal that Temper Chocolates will be closing for good on July 29, 2007.

Owner Caroline Yeh has been sourcing some of the best truffles and most innovative chocolate confections available throughout the country since April of 2005. It will be sad to see Temper go!