I won! I won! I won! I won this bar of chocolate through twitter. I just started my new Chocolate Advocate twitter page and these fine folks, Chocolat Moderne began following me. They run a weekly contest about art. Guess the answer correctly from a series of tweets they send out as clues and you just might win. Granted when I won, it took me about 20 guesses. I am a total dunce about anything related to art. But needless to say their patience made it fun to guess and the very next day they sent me this fun bar of chocolate.
Chocolat Moderne is located in New York with Joan Coukos at the helm. Her biography:
Joan Coukos, Chocolatier & CEO of CHOCOLAT MODERNE, is a Native New Yorker. She graduated magna cum laude from Duke University with a degree in French and Russian, and received an MBA from UNC Chapel Hill before entering the New York banking scene. Her extensive career included six years in Moscow during the rough and tumble days of Russia’s transition to a market economy, after which she returned to New York and Wall Street in 1999.
Open to new inspiration and challenge, in December 2000, on a trip to Brussels, she fell under the spell of old world, hand made chocolates and began creating recipes back in her tiny Manhattan kitchen. Her co-workers became the first enthusiastic guinea pigs, and upon receiving repeated accolades, she began taking formal steps to becoming a chocolatier.
Since that memorable day on the Place du Grand Sablon, she has studied chocolate and confectionery arts with a coterie of world-class French, Belgian, American and Swiss chocolatiers in NY and at The World Pastry Forum in Las Vegas. She is also a member of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance. Now, after five years of honing her craft, Joan is creating sumptuous assortments of luxury gift boxed chocolates in her own chocolate laboratory on West 20th Street.
Chocolat Moderne has a lot going on with the products they sell. From Salt Caramels, to truffles, and hot chocolates. But more importantly they have Bistro Bars. Bars with fillings such as Banane Flambe which is caramel with bananas and cognac.
They are a courverture shop using Valrhona blends as their base for their chocolate creations.
So what exactly have I won? It's called Red Fruits. It's one of their chocolate and toffee bars. Butter toffee infused with cherry, raspberry, and strawberry and crumbled into dark chocolate, 65%. I am totally ready for this.
Ingredients: Dark chocolate (cocoa beans, sugar, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, natural vanilla), butter, cane sugar, salt, cherry, raspberry, strawberry.
Click images to enlarge.
One thing to note about this bar, it was sweating a little bit when I opened it. My apartment is a very dry place so it was interesting to see the bar sweating. Because of this, it had a messy appearance. However, it smelled wonderful. Like flowers, fruits, and butter. That's a winning combination for sure.
Very soft bar. No snap sound whatsoever. A little acidic and sharp at first taste, a combination of the chocolate and the fruits. Nice consistency throughout the bar of soft flavorful chocolate and crispy yet chewy toffee bits. Extremely tasty and not dominated by the fruit like the title suggests.
Really nice bar. Fun, flavorful, and a mixture of textures. Very enjoyable.
I will look forward to trying their Bistro Bars and their Hot Chocolate collection soon. Their hot chocolates are called Cocoa Casbah and they have some really interesting flavors. I hope they expand on it and make more combinations.
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