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Last year on February 11th I was in London to attend a tasting of Seventypercent.com with Art Pollard of Amano, which I enjoyed very much. This year on February 11th I was in Kortrijk to visit my chocolate friend Geert Vercruysse ( www.patisserievercruysse.be ).

I met Geert at a chocolate symposium for professionals arranged by Hidde de Brabander, a talented patissier/chocolatier in the Netherlands, May last year. I represented Original Beans (I am their ambassador). Geert was very enthusiastic and I was impressed by his tasting vocabulaire. It took a lot of months before I had the opportunity to visit him. But finally....

What a beautiful shop he has! Pastries, homemade chocolates and a fine selection of bars. Original Beans' had just arrived and were already displayed on the counter. First I had to taste some delicious pastries and chocolates. My favourite was a chocolate with a Pacari Raw ganache. Geert makes everything on his own, unbelievable! After that there was some work to do: making chocolate cakes with a mousse of Valrhona's Tanariva and a mousse of Amano's Madagascar, see photos below. Gorgeous!

At last I did some research in the shop. Could I find a bar I didn't taste so far? Yes! Bouga Cacao and the Heritage Limited Edition of El Ceibo.

February 14th is my birthday. I will treat my colleagues on Geert's fine chocolates. I'm sure they'll love it!

Thank you Geert for your warm welcome. I had a wonderful time!

Last week, we have finally received our sample of cacao beans from the cooperative we work with (Jose Olaya - Article on our website here ).

With that cacao we made the first steps of chocolate making with Sr Walter Campana in the city of Cusco in Peru.

This video will show you the first steps of our artisanal chocolate process : Toasting, Husk removing, winnowing and grinding.

ChocoMuseo Working with cacao - Trabajando con cacao

Please watch our website ChocoMuseo Peru for more information on our work.

As first and only Chocolaterie in the Netherlands, we yesterday received Duffys Chocolate, the second, artisan bean-to-bar company in the UK, in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire.
All bars are single origin, so all from one harvest, one certain area in a certain country and therefore all of them with a certain tast profile Each batch of beans is conched between 40-70 hours.

The bars we have in our Chocolaterie in Amsterdam are:

• Corazon del Ecuador- 43% milkchocolate,
• Corazon del Ecuador72% and 83% dark chocolate. The beans are from Calceta in Ecuador.
• Star of Peru - 70% dark chocolate
• Simply the ultimate is the Indio Rojo, made of the 72% Xoco Criollo from Honduras.

All chocolate is also single origin, handmade, fairly-traded and organic.

ChocoMuseo, the cacao and chocolate museum in Cusco, Peru will open soon.

To have an idea of how it will look like, please look here for taking a 3D virtual tour.

Next step will be to have a real virtual tour where you can read every sign and learn about cacao and chocolate.

Tomorrow, stone-grinding machines will arrive from the US and we will finally be able to taste and make chocolate with our organic fermented cacao beans obtained from the Jose Olaya Cooperative.

We will tell you more about it in the next post.

The Taza chocolate Mexicanos have finally arrived in our Chocolaterie in Amsterdam!

The authentic stone-ground chocolate from Somerville, MA, is direct trade, gluten, dairy and soy free and comes in 8 different varieties: Yerba Mat, Cacao Puro, Salted Almond, Vanilla Bean, Guajillo Chili, Cinnamon, Salt&Pepper and Coffee.

We also have the chocolate covered Cashews, and they're treat.

Great packaging also.

Jean-Paul Hvin, Patrick Roger, Un Dimanche Paris I was certainly getting around to my favorite chocolatiers during my last weeks in Paris. But in the very last few days, I made visits to two brand new chocolatiers: Chloe Chocolat and Franck Kestener.

My own copy of Chlo Doutre-Roussels bible, The Chocolate Connoisseur (2005), is a tattered, stained mess from all the bonbons I consumed while reading about Criollo trees and the tempering process. And when I spoke with Chlo at the Salon du Chocolat in October about the chocolate salon she was opening dangerously close to my apartment, needless to say I was as giddy as a kid in a candy shop. She debuted her two-story sliver of a salon just days before my departure, so I got to sit and chat with her and taste some mighty good chocolate.

What distinguishes Chloaside from being the former chocolate buyer for Fortnum & Mason and one of the very few female pros in an industry dominated by menis how no-nonsense she is. She doesnt scold about cocoa percentages or eschew milk chocolate for dark. She doesnt make you feel like a chump for liking chocolate even if its not wrapped up from a beans to bar artisan or stamped with organic approval. Dont worry about where the beans come from, she insists. When you buy chocolate, youre buying an emotional experience; its sensory. Ah oui, merci!

Thats not to say shes not on a crusade to make the world filled with better chocolate and more appreciation for it. Indeed, the intent of her new Marais home is to school both amateurs and connoisseurs through classes ranging from an introduction to chocolate to comprehensive international trends. She also offers two-and-a-half-hour walking tours that pay visits to some of the citys most prestigious chocolatiers. And, once youve worked up a chocolate appetite, she offers milk and dark chocolate tablettes (in adorable packaging), both of which are divine and can be paired with carefully selected teas.

Across town, Meilleur Ouvrier de France Chocolatier, Franck Kestener offers a different, more decadent chocolate experience. Its a posh shop near the Luxembourg Gardens, peddling marzipan, macarons, mendiants and more.

I went straight for his ganache-filled bonbons, which come in a beautiful and inspired range of flavors, from buttery tarte tatin to crisp mint to fruity juniper.

I saved my square of Atlantiqueshortbread and salted caramel, topped with 66% dark chocolatefor the plane ride home, but piggishly ate two Nuages while strolling the streets of the sixth arrondissement. Another one of the young chocolatiers specialties, these treats look like cannels but are filled with a light and fluffy whipped chocolate marshmallow.

Its been over three weeks since those visits. My cupboard is finally depleted of the bars and bonbons I brought home with me. I think I need another Parisian chocolate run.

While opening the Cacao and Chocolate Museum in Cusco, we decided to travel to the "Valle de la Convencin" (5 hours from Cusco), region where most cacao is produced in Peru.

Talking to some producers or cooperatives, we saw that in fact cacao is not or poorly fermented in these region because farmers do not receive enough money to ferment their cacao so they prefer selling it without fermentation.

A lot of people here in Cusco prepare and produce what they call "Chocolate para taza" which is mainly cacao paste (or cacao liquor) that people use to prepare hot chocolate mixing it with hot water or milk. And in fact a lot of these producers do not know about fermentation and the impact that it has on the flavour of chocolate.

At ChocoMuseo we have decided to work with a small cooperative called "Cooperativa Jose Olaya" to be able to get some good fermented cacao. All the producers seem to be enthusiasmed by the project. For the moment, only 5 or 6 will ferment their cacao properly but the objective is that the whole 104 farmers in a few years will produce high quality cacao and find other buyers who can assure them good prices.

In a week we will receive our first batch of fermented cacao (Chuncho and Hybrid) and we will make our chocolate and see how it will come out. Very exciting in fact! We'll tell you more about it on our blog/website - http://Peru.ChocoMuseo.com

For two months now, Clara Isabel and I are in the fantastic city of Cusco, Per.

Our objective is to open the new cacao and chocolate museum in this city.

For almost 1 month we looked for the perfect place to install this museum. We finally found a great place in the center of Cusco, on the wonderful Plaza Regocijo.

We now have 3 to 4 weeks before opening the museum and we are in the most interesting part: Cacao sourcing. We went to Quillabamba (6 hours away from Cusco) in the jungle to work with some cooperatives. We are now waiting for the cacao to arrive in Cusco and to start preparing our own artisanal chocolate.

We also work with different artists in the region and in the sacred valley to prepare some souvenirs and art pieces for the museum.

We hope to be opening between the 14th of february and the end of february.

Please check our website: http://peru.chocomuseo.com to have all the information about this future place to exchange about Chocolate in Peru

Source: http://ruraldevelopment.info/cocoa.aspx