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Event Wed May 26 2010
Chocolate Outside of the Box
This year the Sweets and Snacks Expo featured hundreds of booths dedicated to chocolate, with over thirty exhibits dedicated to natural and/or organic chocolate. Luckily for me, there were plenty of samples to go around.
Chuao (Chew-Wow) Chocolatier makes bonbons, truffles, hot chocolate and chocolate bars. Everything is made with Venezuelan chocolate and blended natural ingredients. I tried the new Honeycomb bar and was pleasantly surprised by the smooth finish with the snap of the caramelized honey layered throughout. The bars are widely available everywhere from Dean & Deluca to Walmart.
Dove Chocolate featured a wine and chocolate pairing. The idea is to be able to pair affordable wines such as Red Rock Merlot, Mirassou Pinot Noir, Gallo Sonoma Cabernet Sauvigion and McWilliams Shiraz with Dove's Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and Smooth Peanut Butter any night of the week. The best part of the tasting was how fruit forward the Red Rock Merlot tasted when paired with the Dark Chocolate, and the idea of entertaining without having to visit numerous specialty shops.
The hippest chocolate came from The Cholive Company which are cocktail chocolates. Shaped like olives and served on stirrers, these peanut butter filled candies were delicious when eaten alone and outstanding when mixed with Castries, a peanut butter liquor. Cholives are making the rounds to bars and restaurants and will hopefully by available in stores soon.
The most inspired chocolate I came across was from Fearless Chocolate. Their raw organic chocolate bars have a nice bite and are gooey in the middle. The Goat Chevre & Fig bar was unlike anything I had tasted before and made me crave wine. Currently the bars are only available online.
Another nice surprise was Tom and Sally's Skinny Bars. The bars are handmade organic Belgian chocolate and come in ten flavors. They are 200 calories each. I ate about a quarter of one bar and was full. The depth and richness was satisfying enough that I didn't finish the whole bar, which is rare for me.
