Coco-luxe truffles

Coco-luxe Confections, a Bay Area-based chocolate company, recently opened a retail store in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district.  Though it was too warm out to try a drink from their hot chocolate selection, when I stopped by this afternoon I picked up four truffles: German Chocolate, Double Cherry, Mocha, and After Dinner Mint.

German Chocolate: Tastes sweet, not chocolatey.  The coconut bits work well, though - they’re moist, unlike the dry pieces in some chocolate.  While it had all the elements - chocolate, coconut, pecan - my co-tester thought it needed more of a German chocolate taste.  I know that this isn’t what Coco-luxe was going for, but I think that a dark chocolate coconut piece would work better.

Double Cherry: Definitely the winner in this group.  Intense cherry burst, followed by dark chocolate during the melt.  I’m surprised that I liked this piece since I usually dislike cherry flavor.  However, while the cherry flavor is strong, the piece avoids a syrupy sweetness with a hint of tartness.

Mocha: Way too gritty, which is a shame, because the subtle coffee flavor might have worked with a smooth ganache.  Since both the coffee and chocolate flavors are subtle, the grittiness is overwhelming, but I doubt that bolder flavors could save this piece.

After Dinner Mint: Smooth, soft ganache, in great contrast to the mocha piece.  The mint flavor was strong in my first nibble, but mellowed out as a I ate more.  The dark chocolate is very present in the taste.  Good balance between the mint and chocolate.

Overall, the truffles varied from surprisingly good (Double Cherry) to mediocre (Mocha).  The truffles were attractive, and the outer layer was good, thin and soft, not hard to bite into.  However, in two out of the four pieces I tasted, the flavors in the ganache need tweaking in order to be successful.

[In the efforts of full disclosure, I was afraid that I might be predisposed to disklike Coco-luxe because of of something their founder, Stephanie Marcon, say in an SFist.com interview: "Who has time to read?"  Really?  However, I take chocolate too seriously to let a statement like that sway my opinions.]

Super Intense Chocolate Chip Cookies

I see chocolate-related recipes that I want to try all the time, but this recipe for chocolate chip cookies in the New York Times and the related article filled with secrets sounded too good to pass over.  Since the cookies were so large, I halved the recipe and made 9 cookies instead of 18.  I ended up refrigerating the dough for 48 hours; when I pulled it out of the fridge, it was too hard to scoop out, so I let it sit out before molding them by hand.  There seemed to be a huge amount of chocolate in the dough, but since I used discs and not chips, there was a good ratio of cookie-to-chocolate.  I used two percentages of El Rey chocolate discs, 61% and 73.5%.  El Rey chocolate is pretty fruity, so it worked well in the cookies.

The cookies turned out to be tasty and addictive - crispy on the outside, and soft and chewy in the center.  Although I didn’t test to see whether the refrigeration period makes a difference, and vacuum sealing might have the same effect on the dough, the build up to the cookies made them even tastier.

Dolfin Milk Chocolate with Konacha Green Tea

Ingredients: sugar, whole milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, green tea (5%), natural vanilla, emulsifier: soya lecithin. Cocoa solids: 32% min. Milk solids: 20% min. I’ve had some good chocolate/tea experiences, so I had high hopes for this bar. Since it’s milk chocolate, it starts out sweet, and then the tea flavor emerges. It’s floral, and a little bitter, with the brown rice flavor that I associate with green tea. Similar to Dolfin’s dark chocolate with lavender bar, there are small bits that remain after the chocolate has melted, which in this case are pieces of tea. They’re mostly crunchy, but some are like threads. The bar’s too sweet for me, and I dislike the little bits left on my tongue. I think the bar would work better if they’d infused the tea in the milk instead of leaving it in. However, like the other Dolfin bars I’ve tasted, the balance between the ingredients was good; though the aroma of tea was very present, the chocolate dominated taste-wise.

Dolfin Milk Chocolate with Cocoa Beans from Ghana

Ingredients: sugar, whole milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, cocoa beans (10%), natural vanilla, emulsifier: soya lecithin. Cocoa solids: 32% min. Another Dolfin bar, and this one’s a winner.  The chocolate is very sweet and creamy, so the bits of bitter cocoa bean are a good balance.  I think I would prefer darker chocolate, as this is so sweet and milky.  However, unlike other Dolfin bars, there’s nothing odd about this one - chocolate and cocoa beans are a natural pairing.

Dolfin Dark Chocolate with Pink Peppercorns from Brazil

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, pink peppercorns, natural vanilla, emulsifier: soya lecithin. Cocoa solids: 60% min.

I was curious about pink peppercorns and chocolate, so it was nice when a co-worker came by today, offering pieces of this bar.  Pink peppercorns are not true peppers, but are actually dried berries.  They’re toxic in large quantities, though I can’t find any information about how large a quantity would have to be.  Some people may also be allergic to them.   (The amount in this bar is perhaps small enough to be safe for everyone.)

I appreciate that the pink peppercorns were the only added ingredients.  The bar has a mildly peppery taste and a bit of a crunch that goes well with the chocolate, which skews toward dark, and is pleasantly smooth.  It’s pretty good, but I think I prefer the oddness of the Dolfin Lavendar bar.  However, my other co-worker, Sneha, didn’t like the pepperiness at all, so this bar probably isn’t for everyone.

MarieBelle Mayan Chocolate Bar (Unsweetened)

MarieBelle Mayan Chocolate Bar, 70% Single Origin Colombian Cacao, Unsweetened

Ingredients: Cocoa mass, skim milk powder, cocoa powder, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, (emulsifier) (E322) soy lecithin, PGPR-90 polyglicerol polyricinoleate (emulsifier), natural vanilla.

I read a review of this bar on Candy Blog last month, and knew it was going to be an interesting tasting experience. It’s made by Eneh Compania Nacional de Chocolate (from Colombia) and distributed by MarieBelle, a chocolate company based in New York. I think seeing “Mayan” made me expect spice, but there aren’t any added flavors besides vanilla (and plenty of milk and emulsifiers).

The number of ingredients seems excessive, but the milk and emulsifiers must be doing a lot for this bar in terms of taste and consistency. It’s a fairly thick square, and looks like it should taste fudgy, but doesn’t. It also doesn’t melt quickly on the tongue like most chocolate, and when it does, it’s sort of like peanut butter - sticky, but not stick-to-your teeth-for-two-minutes.

Initially, the taste is very milky, almost like semi-solid chocolate pudding. But soon it turns dark, expressing its 70% nature, and tastes more like cocoa powder, even ending with a bit of bitterness. I don’t think I miss the sugar, since there’s so much else going on. The slow melt makes a small piece pretty satisfying, but since it was so strange, I ended up eating more. I’d be interested in trying the version of this bar containing panela, naturally processed cane sweetener, especially in comparison to this bar.

Stainer Marrakech

Dark bar with Marrakech mixture (Min. cocoa 70%). Ingredients: Cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, Marrakech mixture (green tea, nanah mint, wormwood, shiba), emulsifier: soya lecithin, natural vanilla.

Stainer is an Italian company that makes a variety of flavored chocolate bars. I was drawn to this bar because I didn’t recognize many of the ingredients. I’ve heard of wormwood, but only because it’s used in absinthe; from my friend wikipedia I learned several interesting facts about the plant, including folklore and its therapeutic uses. I also learned that nana mint is commonly used in a minty green tea. Shiba was a little trickier to track down, but seems to be an artemisia/wormwood-like plant used in tea.

Not knowing these ingredients, I wasn’t sure what the bar would be like. During my first nibble, I tasted various indistinguishable bits of plant (spice-like taste). As I ate more, the green tea started to stand out at the beginning of the bite, followed by the spices, and then the fruitiness of the chocolate. It ended with a smoky flavor. I liked how the chocolate wasn’t overwhelmed by the other additions, and the different flavors worked well together. While not amazing, it’s a solid bar.

Dagoba Conacado 73%

Ingredients: Organic Dark Chocolate (OG evaporated cane juice, OG cacao butter, OG cacao beans).

This 73% bar from Dagoba is from the Dominican Republic’s 9,000-member Conacado Cooperative, the largest organic fair-trade co-op in the world. More info on the co-op can be found at Dagoba or at the co-op’s own site.

Dagoba’s a good company, but this bar didn’t impress me. The texture was smooth and silky, but the taste wasn’t quite right. It started out woody, ashy and burnt tasting. A little bit of cherry emerged, but once the chocolate melted, my tongue felt really dry. The aftertaste is pleasant though - a milder burnt taste, closer to coffee (overroasted coffee, I guess, but not bad compared to the taste when I was chewing). Maybe Dagoba is retooling this bar, or they know it’s not a favorite, because it doesn’t appear in their online store for sale as an individual bar. I’ve enjoyed other bars from Dagoba in the past (unfortunately, too long ago to recall which ones), but I wouldn’t recommend this bar too strongly.

Some chocolatey sightings in Washington, DC

Chocolate mouse from the bakery

Chocolate pie that Meghan made

From the US Botanic Garden, the best tree of all, Theobroma cacao! (No pods growing.)

Also from the botanic garden, two more plants I noticed with “chocolate” in their description:

Cryptanthus “Chocolate Soldier”, from the Bromeliad family

And “Chocolate Plant”, Pseuderanthemum Alatum

Dolfin Dark Chocolate with Lavender

Ingredients: cocoa mass, sugar, cocoa butter, lavender, natural vanilla, emulsifier: soya lecithin. Cocoa solids: 60% min.

Dolfin is a Belgian company that’s been around over 20 years (based on info from their website). They describe their dark chocolate as “powerful, full-flavoured and sometimes extreme”, which is funny in comparison to the description of their milk chocolate as “soft and tender”. I would probably place a chocolate bar containing lavender in the “soft and tender” category, but it’s actually made with dark chocolate, with seriously intense results.

I’m not sure what drove me to pick up this particular bar, especially since it was next to Dolfin’s white pepper and cardamom bar, which sounds more to my taste. I’m not really into flowers - in fact, I’m allergic to the scent of lavender. I do like to try combinations that are new to me, and this bar is certainly unusual.

The bar smelled very flowery, like perfume, and it had a good snap. Taste-wise, it was dark, and the lavender was very present. It took me a while to place what the floral, spicy, heavy quality of the taste made me think of, and it’s musk (like in a perfume my mom probably had when I was a kid). There were little, bitter bits of lavender that remained on the tongue after the chocolate had melted, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about them. Some of them were small and nutty, and I liked what they added to the texture. Others made it too grainy. I even found a couple of thread-like pieces, which definitely didn’t work for me. At first, I was a little conflicted about this bar; the chocolate and lavender flavors were well balanced, but I didn’t like all of the lavender bits. However, I kept taking more and more of the bar, and decided after eating more than half of it that I will probably end up buying another one at some point (though not until I’ve tried some more from Dolfin).