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Awards for the 2009 San Francisco International Chocolate Salon came out on Thursday. Neo Cocoa did quite well taking First Place in the BEST TRUFFLE category!BEST TRUFFLEFirst PlaceBEST TRADITIONAL CHOCOLATESSecond PlaceTOP ARTISAN CHOCOLATIERSecond Place - sharedMOST LUXURIOUS CHOCOLATE EXPERIENCESecond Place - sharedBEST IN SALONSecond Place - sharedNEW PRODUCT AWARD - sharedWe are so proud to share some of the awards with chocolate makers and fellow chocolatiers. Congratulation to all!

Plattsburgh, NY March 26, 2009 Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates , an Internet-based gourmet chocolate retailer, will be participating in the 5th Annual Northeast Family Chocolate Festival from 10 am 5 pm on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at the Washington Avenue Armory&Sports; Arena in Albany, NY. Proceeds from the festival will benefit The Addictions Care Center of Albany, Inc. (ACCA), a community-based nonprofit substance abuse treatment and prevention education provider. For specific details, visit www.theacca.net/events.David Pearce, President of Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates said, We are very excited to be part of this years Family Chocolate Festival. I have seen firsthand the effects of substance abuse and alcoholism and what it can do to individuals and their families. Being part of the 5th Annual Northeast Family Chocolate Festival is a great way to lend a helping hand to help people struggling to overcome the effects of alcoholism and substance abuse.Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates is eager to work in conjunction with not-for-profit organizations by offering fund-raising opportunities. Interested parties should contact David Pearce for additional details.The Northeast Family Chocolate Festival is the primary fundraiser for The Addictions Care Center of Albany, Inc (ACCA). For over 40 years, ACCA has improved the lives of men, women, families and children healing from the effects of alcoholism and substance abuse. Through intensive, proactive educational programs aimed at preventing substance abuse and through state-of-the-art treatment services customized to individual needs, ACCA helps thousands of people overcome addictions and touches the lives of more than 6,000 Capital Region residents every year.Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates is an Internet-based gourmet chocolate retailer featuring gourmet chocolate bars , chocolate truffles , chocolate confections , and Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates specialty, chocolate samplers . Chocolate Gourmet Chocolates offers gourmet chocolates from top regional gourmet chocolate makers such as Chocolove , Chocolate Bar NYC , Garrison Confections , Knipschildt Chocolatier , Lake Champlain Chocolates and Perfection Chocolates with free Priority Mail shipping available on all orders within the continental US.###

Now Try This # 4 (b) Espresso Infused Cream based Filled ChocolatesThis recipe is for a cream based chocolate ganache (not condensed milk based) and the cream has been infused with espresso flavor. How is it possible to get the coffee flavor into heavy whipping cream and hence the ganache without making coffee? Chop up the roasted coffee beans and put them in the cream of course. But what if you dont want any coffee beans or grounds in the confection at all?Lets look at peanut butter. Which is most popular; creamy or crunchy? I like crunchy but that is not the question. I looked at the grocery store shelves and there was a great deal of space taken up in the peanut butter section by jars of creamy Jiffy. Someone likes creamy better, lots of people in fact.Some people just dont like crunchy espresso chocolates either. They would buy a nice creamy, intensely espresso filled chocolate truffle. I dont mean coffee with cream taste but dark, strong espresso that is smooth and creamy on the palate. How to do it?Heres a technique that I like and the nice thing; its variable. You can make the espresso taste stronger or less intense as you like. And, you can use decaffeinated coffee also.Lets just sum it up in one word: Quench.Thats it. Use the simple method that I showed in Now Try This #4 (a) to roast the green coffee beans in a hot-air popcorn popper like the Pop-Lite. Roast to the same level, not to overdone. And then, while the beans are still hot, dump them in a sauce pan partially filled with heavy whipping cream. This cream neednt be pre-heated as you would do with an infused cream because the coffee beans will be about 450 degrees F. when they hit the cream and it will boil up with the quenching process. I then cover the sauce pan with a sheet of plastic wrap to contain the flavor oils and steam. (For larger batches of coffee beans there are counter-top roasting machines made. Some operate on electricity, some on natural gas or propane.)Now, let the coffee beans and cream cool. When youre ready to make the ganache of chopped chocolate, re-warm the cream so it doesnt stick to the coffee beans. Pour into the espresso cream through a strainer onto the chocolate. And continue to process as you would any ganache.I usually dont at butter to my chocolate ganaches because the home roasted chocolate that I make still has all the cocoa butter in it and I even add several ounces of cocoa butter per 4.5 lb batch of nib liquor ; so I really cant taste any improvement if butter is added to the ganache. In your system, you may add butter if it helps.For decaf espresso, just buy decaf green coffee beans from the same source as regular beans (Now Try This #4 (a).What really amazed me with this method is the intensity of the espresso flavor in the cream. Its hard to describe how strong the coffee flavor is. Because the creamy ganache melts in your mouth you get a real rush of flavor on the first bite. Try it, youll love it.Until Next Time,Mr. WineCandyPS: on a second trail, I used Madagascar Sambriano Valley chocolate; what I call light milk which is 47% Cacao rather than the regular 55% Cacao milk chocolate. I used Sumatra Lintong Grade One coffee beans; about 2/3 cup of green beans then roasted and quenched in one cup of heavy whipping cream. This with the Madagascar chocolate did not have the intense chocolate/espresso flavor as with the Mexican chocolate. Also, the zingyness of the chocolate detracted from the espresso flavors. A less acidic chocolate than Madagascar would work best for this espresso cream method.

Now Try This: #4 (a) Franks Famous Chopped EspressoA friend and I have been experimenting with coffee beans in molded chocolate. Weve tried dark chocolate and dark milk chocolate shells; bite-sized molds and slightly larger molds ; one bean and two. So far, theyve not been flavored with anything else, just the coffee bean. And these are not confections coated with a hard sugar shell on the outside like some of the chocolate covered coffee beans or M&Ms. Nothing seemed to satisfy his desire for really intense coffee flavor; Ill admit, the chocolate having been roasted from the bean in my workshop is pretty powerful and so may have dominated the coffee inside.We came up with a solution; maybe two, that seems to solve the desire for really powerful espresso flavors in molded chocolate. Now this is off subject for Mr. WineCandy. For me its supposed to be all about spirituous jellies and ganaches inside molded from-the-bean confections. But, these coffee experiments have come out quite well and I thought I ought to share the unusual solutions.The objective here is not just to get a strong espresso flavor inside the chocolate for my friend, Keith (who has travelled the world, retired now, British Navy ; he has lots of experience savoring strong flavored foods) but also to get the crunch which is such an important part of the coffee bean /chocolate encounter. We dont want to do away with the bean, nor do we want to make it soggy or chewy inside the shell.Heres what I did to make the desired flavors and mouth feel. As you might have guessed; to get more coffee flavor, chop the beans into large pieces to more completely fill the shell. As you might not have known, cover the chopped coffee beans immediately after roasting them. And just as important to the flavor intensity, and what you really want; preserve the unique flavor of those unique coffee beans by not over-roasting them. You may have thought you wanted dark roasted beans to get the most intense espresso flavors, not so. These are oils in the coffee beans that we are dealing with, which carry the flavors. We dont want to burn off these flavor oils by over-roasting the beans.

Roasting coffee beans; easy. A small quantity, like half cup, can be roasted in 5 minutes in a hot-air popcorn popper. Presto Pop-Lite hot-air popper is the brand most often found at WalMart or the kitchen stores etc. For like, $20-$25. You can buy green coffee beans on-line, cheap; Sweet Marias or Coffee Storehouse or other sites have them. Or you could probably buy a half pound of green beans from your neighborhood coffee shop if they roast their own on site. The reason we wanted to roast our own coffee beans is that we wanted to get them sealed in the chocolate shells while flavors were still fresh. After about a day of resting the fresh coffee flavor of the beans will have out-gassed and will have been lost to the atmosphere.The important thing here is not to over-roast the beans. Heres how to roast just right. While roasting, coffee beans will first lose water content and you will hear a popping sound. Once dried out, the beans then heat up until the coffee oils begin to burn off and you hear a higher pitched snapping sound like RiceKrispies in milk. You want to stop the roast just when this crisping sound starts. Another way to tell when to turn off the heat is to look at the beans which will have been dark brown and dry on the surface then changing to a wet, actually oily surface and turning even darker when the crispy-snapping sound starts. Any given bean you use will lose its varietal flavor when roasted beyond this point. We used Colombian Huila Oporapa (from Coffee Storehouse) in our experiment and its intense flavor notes came through quite well , very strong and very espresso flavored at this roast stage. Not necessary , nor advisable to roast the beans real dark. Now, theyll have to cool.These coffee beans are about 450 degrees F. at the end of roast. I usually just pour them into a cool dish. We want to chop them up as soon as they cool enough to run through a mini-chopper and then real quick, put the chopped coffee beans in our chocolate molded shells and cover with the final layer of chocolate to seal in the flavors. We dont want to use our coffee mill to grind the beans fine, this would cause us to lose the desirable crunch of the beans. Ive got one of these little mini-choppers for small quantities of onion or parsley. It works great for chopping espresso.For this experiment we used Mexican Tabasco district, 66 % dark chocolate. If the chocolate shells have been made and chilled before we start the coffee bean roast; that would be best. I think youll find this espresso technique works very well for small scale confections. For larger quantities, a person might be able to buy hot, freshly roasted coffee beans from the coffee shop.Another method came to mind after doing the chopped espresso, this for times when you dont want crunch . I call it infused creamed espresso. Stay tuned.Mr WineCandyPS : Some people have tried the above chopped espresso and found it to be just too much coffee. Its easy enough to reduce the quantity of coffee in each bite to satisfy them.PPS: You could just as well use decaffeinated coffee beans if so desired. (Did you know that? It is the green coffee beans that are decaffeinated; the decaffeination process is not done to roasted beans.) You can order these from the above suppliers just as well.

I was honored to visit the operation of chocolate maker Carlos Eichenberger last week in Guatemala City. Me, just a mere student here for one year but he was nice and patient enough to take the time and show a complete stranger into his home and show me the complete process from bean to bar. Carlos buys the already fermented cacao and then starts with roasting and goes all the way to wrapping each bar himself. Everything about his process was precise and maniacally exact. If there was so much as a blemish in a finished bar, it was stashed in the reject pile for re-melting and re-doing. Isnt this what you want from a chocolate maker? Perfection.I admit I was a dark-chocolate snob but every ingredient is such a high quality that every chocolate he makes is exceptional. I take back all the bad things I ever said about white chocolate. I think my favorite is the 60% and 70% Cacao Las Acacias. The texture is extremely creamy and smooth and lasts for a long time in your mouth, if you dont chew, that is. I almost want to say that the chocolate is playful. There is a slight fruity-ness but not enough to pin down a specific fruit, for me anyway. There may have been a hint of coffee and somewhat of a smokyness, but it wasnt overpowering at all. I paired some of the 60% Las Acacias with a Guatemalan black tea called Te Chirrepeco and that was one exquisite dessert. If youre in Guatemala and want to take full advantage of true Guatemalan cacao, then you must have Danta chocolate.

Today I joined 40 other chocolatiers - bayside with seagulls - thinking: this is a perfect day for chocolate lovers in San Fran to collect at the waterfront wharf and celebrate chocolate. Look out! 5,000 of them turned up! I was next to Chocolatique from LA, Jade from SF, Amano from Utah, William Dean from Florida, and nearly 20 wine and liqueur makers, 20 artists....and thousands of enthusiasts sampling the wares. My observatons: chocolate is still recession-proof! People were buying, chocolate was selling. New products: it's all about the bean: chocolate-enriobed beans, chocolate-covered nibs, raw, roasted....lots and lots of beans. Also, spicy chocolate is still in - chipotle chili, wasabi, ginger top the list. Caramel and toffee...decidedly old-fashioned flavors... lit up the eyes of many SF foodies when they appeared on our menus. Even so, most attendees were looking for daring spices and innovation. Who will win the best in show? What did the bloggers have to say about the event? Was there a definitive chocolate photo of the day?? More will be revealed at www.tastetv.com.

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The apprentice season is about to start in the UK, quite similar to the US but with Alan Sugar instead of Donald Trump. This year, one of the tasks which will be aired in a couple of weeks (and no we won't tell you who won), involved chocolate and we were asked to help one of the teams.Great, we thought, as this was one of our favourite tv program.Unfortunatelty it was made clear to us that any mention of cocoa content or origin was far too esoteric for the average TV main stream viewers. They would go only as far as milk/dark/white/cheap/premium. Needless to say it was somewhat frustrating and made me wonder: were the producers just a bit limited? or is the average prime time TV viewer so dull?Still it was a lot of fun to do but it could have been a little more... aspirational and inspirational.