Chocolate is better than flowers because your mom can eat it. A chocolate tasting kit for two is better than just plain chocolate because you AND your mom can taste, enjoy, and experience it together. So those of you who are looking for a sweet, delicious, really unique, and curiously interactive Mother's Day gift, I'm taking this opportunity to shamelessly plug the beautiful and brand new Tasty Show Chocolate Tasting Kit for Two. It's kind of like a board game, except that everyone wins nonstop while eating chocolate the whole time. (And this is some of the best chocolate in the world.) Each kit comes with 24 pure gourmet mini bars of chocolate from all over the world (12 different kinds, 2 of each) that you don't just eat, you taste. It also comes with a full set up so you can have a real live chocolate tasting at home, including a tasting board, rating cards + pencils for tasting notes, a flavor chart, a guide with the flavor profile of each chocolate, chocolate glossary, and a set up guide that includes all the hows of chocolate tasting. If you give her a chocolate tasting for Mother's Day, your mom will love you even more than before, guaranteed.

WHERE can you purchase this fabulous gift, you ask? Well, if you need one in time for Mother's Day (and don't we all), visit GRAND, in Union Square, Somerville. This guarantee of your mom's unconditional love for one more year runs about $45.

Andn note, soon this delicious chocolate phenomenon will also be available online, right here at The Tasty Show!

In honor of the cold, wet, snowy, nasty weather, I am designating this week and next as Hot Chocolate Fortnight At The Tasty Show, which is 'officially' running from February 1 - February 14. So that means that I will be 'officially' trying out various hot chocolates with various pals for another 7 days or so. For each hot chocolate, I'll post details about the hot chocolate itself + a hot chocolate-related conclusion.

This week I tried two very different hot chocolates. Here are the two that I tried + two conclusions that we made:

Hot Chocolate at Flour Bakery
I had an entire page of notes that I wrote about the hot chocolate I had with Dan at Flour, but unfortunately I lost them. What I do remember is that it is rich but not overly sweet. And it's a little fluffy, which I liked. It is made with steamed whole milk and dark chocolate ganache. As you can see, I am smiling. We enjoyed our hot cuppa chocolate with a sugar-brushed brioche roll. They went incredibly well together! And it does help that Flour Bakery offers some of the best baked goods in Boston. I tried to take a pic on Dan's phonecam but I'm not sure it really does Flour's array of oven treats much justice (see pic above).

Conclusion [regarding hot chocolate + dessert pairing]
Hot chocolate is a dessert in itself, and should only be paired with something light and gentle. Rich, gently sweet, luxurious brioche does the trick.

Mexican Hot Chocolate at Tu Y Yo
The "Chocolate Caliente de Oaxaca" at Tu Y Yo was made with water rather than milk, & a pinch of cinnamon (but just a pinch) spiced up the deal. It comes in a little earthenware jug (which is great, because I've always liked mini versions of big things).The first and foremost thing we noticed about the Mexichocolate drink is that it was super light and a little watery. It wasn't rich at all. If you're looking for your hot chocolate to transport you to the land of sensual luxurious chocolate decadence with each sip, this hot drink would disappoint you. But if you've just enjoyed a rich, potentially exhausting meal (as we had) and you want to keep it light, then it is perfect. My friend Eric noted that it was much more like a chocolate tea than the thick (sometimes exhausting) hot chocolates we've had elsewhere.

Conclusion [regarding using water as a hot chocolate base]
Try making hot chocolate with water instead of milk for a refreshing hot drink that won't overload you. For a homegrown Mexican hot chocolate, check out Taza Chocolate's Mexicano. If you want to try a made-in-Mexico hot chocolate at home, try Ibarra.

When I was in Toronto doing a chocolate tasting with Cote d'Or a couple months ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Konrad Ejbich, who is both a delightful person and one of Canada's foremost wine writers. After being a fabulously enthusiastic participant during the tasting itself, Mr. Ejbich stayed on for a bit afterwards to chat with me about other pairing ideas. In addition to teaching me how to properly hold a wine glass, he also took a bunch of notes about our chocolate tasting and then wrote this comprehensive article for Canada's Style at Home Magazine about chocolate and wine pairing.

The article also featured the most awesome description of The Tasty Show that has ever found its way to print. According to Konrad, The Tasty Show is "the absolute gastroporn of melt-in-your-mouth moments." Gastroporn? Me? Who knew??

It all came at a perfect time, because I just happened to be compiling this list:

Dana's Favorite Gastroporn [Top 5 This Week]

1. Wild Sweets: Exotic Desserts and Wine Pairings: This is the cookbook I picked up at Whole Foods yesterday. Gorgeous photographs, bizarre ingredients, curious wine pairings, and awesome recipes with really long names such as "Apple softcake with dark chocolate and cinnamon soup" and "Milk chocolate and orange parfait with steamed meringues and orange and black truffle brown butter". I'm really excited.
2. 101Cookbooks: My friend Toby alerted me to this gorgeous food blog written by photographer and food enthusiast Heidi Swanson.
3. Whole Foods: I love Whole Foods. I like to walk around with my little basket and ogle all the pretty fruits and vegetables and then dream about all the weird chocolate recipes I could make with them.
4. Aapplemint: Another delicious blog that I look at for inspiration and for the pretty pictures.
5. Plum Produce: This is a tiny produce boutique in Boston's South End that is about the size of a compact car. It's not a grocery store, and you'll never be able to find everything on your shopping list there, but you will find the most beautiful local salad turnips, wild asparagus, spring onions, and porcini mushrooms that you've ever seen. (Among several other vegetables, fruits, spices, and preserves.)

My friend Ariel just sent me a very cute music video by French Singer/Songerwriter Olivia Ruiz. The song, called La Femme Chocolat, is about a girl who really loves to eat chocolate (and worries that maybe it's too much).

I can relate.

Anyway, it's all in French, but you'll get the idea.

The 5 Star Bar is most definitely a candy bar. That's what's so great about it. It's a guilty pleasure candy bar for foodies. Gourmets. Food lovers. Gastronomes. Epicureans. Food snobs. Whatever. Last week when we went to the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory, Dan bought a whole box of the 5 Star Bar peanut variety. The peanut bars are chunky, full of whole peanuts that are mixed into a rich peanut butter rice crisp filling then all enrobed in milk chocolate. They're so good that I almost can't believe it. I can't stop eating them.

If you need a peanut butter fix, you can get them at most Whole Foods. They also have hazelnut, fruit & nut, and caramel.

People sometimes ask me what I would get if I was standing in a supermarket checkout line and wanted a candy bar. If they didn't have 5 Star Bars (which aren't found in the checkout area at regular supermarkets anyway), here's what I would choose, in order of priority starting with my favorite:

1. Kit Kat Big Kat: My number one favorite supermarket candy bar. It's a monster version of the regular Kit Kat, and the ratios of chocolate-to-wafer are a little skewed, so there's a lot more solid milk chocolate coating the wafer part.)


2. Reeses Big Cup: Kind of the same theme as my top pick... the Big Cup is a monster version of the classic Reeses peanut butter cup with the ratios switched up in favor of the peanut butter.


3. Cadbury's Fruit & Nut: Not everyone agrees with me on this one, I know. But I think raisins (and other dried fruit) in chocolate are delicious with a chewy, satisfying texture.


4. Peppermint Patties: A classic, really.


5. Peanut M&Ms: No explanation necessary here. M&Ms are totally addictive.

Above Lake Champlain 5 Star Bar Peanut Photograph from Lake Champlain website.

Yesterday I had the following unopened bars sitting on my desk in my office:

• Vosges Mo's Bacon Bar
  
• A selection of 5 of Soma Chocolatier's Micro-batch Single Origin Bars
  
• Taza's Chocolate Mexicano (not really a bar, and this one's actually half eaten)
  
• Scharffen Berger's Bittersweet 70%
  

I've been thinking about mood-matching chocolate a lot lately. Here's a list of 5 excellent pure chocolates that cater to 5 very different moods:

• If you're feeling edgy or impatient: Scharffen Berger's 70% - a burst a sweetness and deep chocolate comes through asap for instant gratification.


• If you're feeling reflective: Valrhona's 70% Guanaja - this bar has a deep aroma that moves into a long, interesting flavor experience with an equally long finish (aftertaste), leaving you lots to think about.


• If you're feeling sexy: Valrhona's 66% Caraibe - this bar is ultra-velvety smooth, mildly fruity, and will coat your palette with sensual deliciousness.


• If you're feeling mellow: El Rey Dark 58.5% - this bar is well-balanced and an all-around crowd pleaser - there aren't many ups and downs in this bar's flavor profile, it's pretty much smooth-sailing from beginning to end.


• If you're feeling angry: El Rey Milk 41% - this sweet, buttery, caramel-y bar always makes me smile.

In case anyone who watched last week's episode of Entourage was wondering which Teuscher chocolate is Lloyd's "favorite"... well, he doesn't say it straight out, but when Lloyd walks into Ari's office with a box of assorted Teuscher truffles, the light-colored (powdered sugar-dusted) ones in the center of the box are Teuscher's signature Champagne truffles. The camera then cuts to Ari, then back to Lloyd and half of the Champagne truffles are gone... so, as for his favorite, Teuscher's Champagne truffle (also my favorite) would be my guess.

Not one, but two chocolate desserts found their way onto a plate right in front of me this week:

Pots de Creme at The Beehive: I've been wanting to check out The Beehive ever since it opened in Boston's South End a couple months ago. The space is theatrical and cavernous, full of velvet and exposed brick (pic above). We liked it a lot there, at least until the music started... which was great, but it ended our conversation pretty much instantly. Thankfully, by that point, dessert had arrived and we just focused our attention on the earthenware crock of chocolate pot de creme in front of us. A bit of a twist on the smallish "pot" that this French dessert usually arrives in, the Beehive's version seemed pretty huge in comparison (though it's not like it was that big, just bigger than the norm - and anyway, we were sharing it between the two of us). After an exhaustive search through a mountain of homemade, barely sweetened whipped cream sprinkled with nutmeg (don't get me wrong, the whipped cream was fabulous... there was just a little too much of it), we found the chocolate part of the dessert. It was dense, stiff, and rich - much stiffer than classic pots de creme. The chocolate flavor was intense but not bitter at all, on the sweet side with notes of caramel.

Cocoa Bean Souffle at Oleana: Oleana is one of my favorite restaurants. Last night, four of us sat outdoors at a little table in their beautiful enclosed garden. We ended a really delicious dinner with a frozen cocoa bean souffle with a cocoa hazelnut tartlet topped with cocoa sherbet. We paired it with a late harvest Cabernet Sauvignon by Coturri Winery in Sonoma Valley. It was incredibly interesting - an exploration of the vast flavors and textures of the cacao bean. The souffle was mild and gentle on the palette, yet it had a lot of flavor. The smoothness of the souffle was a big contrast to the extremely crunchy, lively texture of the tartlet, which was intense and explosive. And the sherbet was just barely sweet, a little bitter, and had a focused, even, deep cacao flavor. Overall, the dessert made a pretty good pairing with the Cabernet, which was rich and port-like, though the souffle got somewhat overpowered and would have been better with a gentler, airier wine.

In addition to the truffles, the other items we picked up at Chocolate Bar in New York over the weekend were 6 of the Chocolate Bar's Retro Bars. The Retro Bars are solid chocolate bars with really fun, retro-classic fillings like key lime pie and raspberry jam. We broke them out after we got back from a really rockin' soccer game on Saturday night. We were starving.

Key Lime Pie: Key lime cream wrapped in dark chocolate. You couldn't mistake the key lime in this one, that's for sure, though I was hoping for more actual filling. The chocolate itself was pretty thick and over powered the filling a bit.

Coconut Cream Pie: Coconut cream wrapped in dark chocolate. Pretty nice. Just coconut-y enough - though it wasn't all that creamy. Kind of the same thing as with the Key Lime Pie; I wanted more coconut creaminess but it was overpowered by the chocolate.

Raspberry Jam: Raspberry jam wrapped in dark chocolate. This one was my favorite. Bill's too. Lots of raspberry, fun contrast in textures.

Salty Pretzel Milk: Milk chocolate with salty pretzel pieces. This one's a classic - sweet, crunchy, salty delicious... Dan voted this bar his number 1.

Salty Pretzel Dark: An interesting contrast to the milk... this one was Kristi's favorite. She really liked the dark chocolate salt combination.

Caramel Apple: Apple-infused caramel wrapped in milk chocolate. This was my second favorite. Very apple-y - more so than I expected - with a nice filling-to-chocolate ratio.

Before we left New York earlier today, I stopped by Kee's Chocolate in SoHo for the first time. I had heard a lot about Kee's over the past couple years, then a couple friends urged me to check it out earlier in the weekend, so I made sure to swing in before our little NYC excursion was out. The shop was totally empty when we arrived with nothing to look at except the display case holding the truffles. Totally bare walls, nothing on the shelves... Maybe they are in the midst of renovating or something. I wanted to ask, but we had a plane to catch. (We made it, but only just.)

Kee's makes the kind of truffles I love more than any other - the kind that taste the way truffles do when a skilled chocolatier is making truffles at home in preparation for a dinner party for her close friends. Fresh, delicious, and full of love. There is one other chocolatier I've posted about recently that I placed in that category, and that's XOX in San Francisco. Kee's truffles are incredibly soft, so soft that they barely hold their shape and need to be kept cool so they don't get all melty and flatten in the summer air. The taste is big and explosive, deep, rich, and extremely memorable. The ones we tried were hand-rolled with a classic ganache center and a rough coating, one rolled in black and white sesame and the other in chopped, toasted pine nuts. (Note that Kee also does molded and dipped chocolates that sport a smooth tempered chocolate coating, but we didn't try any of those today.) I'm really into the rough coating - on one hand, it's a way to get out of tempering a melted chocolate coating if you don't feel like it, and on the other hand and more importantly, it adds awesome texture and can make the overall experience of the truffle really exciting.

I'm in love with Kee now. Really.