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Chocolate Advocate's 2013 Valentine's Day Picks

 

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As of now, you have plenty of time to think about a well thought out chocolate gift for your loved one. Chocolate is loved by everyone. EVERYONE! Valentine's Day is obviously the day for chocolate gifts of love. So why not be creative about your choices? Don't just do a generic box of chocolates and flowers. These are my picks for cool Valentine's day chocolate gifts.

 

1. The first and most obvious choice for an awesome Valentine's day gift is Alma Chocolate's (Portland, Oregon), Chocolate Icons. These are the coolest edible chocolate art out there. They have chocolate Jesus, Guadalupe, Sacred Hearts, Swallows, Buddha, Ganesh..... It's awesome. My personal favorite is the anatomically correct heart. But the rock-a-billy designs are fantastic too. Nothing says I love you like handing someone your heart. And then they can eat it! It's ill, trust me.

 

   

 

2. For a little less conventional chocolate treat, try EH Chocolatier (Somerville, Massachusetts) Caramel Box. It's a set of 9 pieces with 3 different flavors. Bourbon Caramel, Honey Caramel, and Salted Caramel. These are delicious caramels beautifully decorated and well balanced with flavor. These would be fun to pair with cocktails instead of traditional wine pairings. Get a classic cocktail book and whip up something bourbon and fun and then share this caramel collection for something a little unconventional but sexy and fun.

 

 

 

3. For the hipster in your life, go with a 4 pack collection from Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate (Arcata, California) 4 Bar gift set. Two origin bars and two flavored bars. It comes artfully wrapped and is very hip. Their chocolate is bean-to-bar and fantastic and it will introduce your loved one into a new American craft chocolate brand. This is a very unisex gift. If you are from Brooklyn, then you already know about Mast Brothers. Surprise your hipster partner with Dick Taylor instead. They probably hate that I often describe them as hipster chocolate, but they make craft furniture and boats and oh yeah they happen to be chocolate makers too. Their website has old time-y wime-y photos of them too. Como se Dice "hipster" en Espanol? Their packaging is great which is why I suggest the 4 pack. You will get a variety and nice gift wrapping with it.

 

 

4. Something a little more classic in the same line of bars of chocolates as gifts, try Valrhona's (France) Vintage Origin Box. It's a little pricy, but you can't go wrong with Valrhona. Their vintage box set contains Single origin bars from rare and old plantations from around the world. Beyond single origin, this single estate sourced cacao. Some of the finest cacao from Venezuela, Madagascar, and Trinidad. This is for real chocolate lovers who like to sit and take their time with chocolate. Valrhona offers wine and beer pairings for these chocolate's on their website. You can send a personalized message with your order, and it comes a black wooden box. Very elegant and sophisticated.

 

 

5. In my house, no Valentine's Day is complete without L.A. Burdick's (NH, MA, and NY) hot chocolate. In this city, their hot chocolate is the best thing in the world on cold days. Believe me, Boston knows cold days. Pick up a hot chocolate kit from them and some famous Burdick's mice or penguin truffles in a wooden box for a lovely gift. The hot chocolate can be bought solely or with a mug and saucer for a complete gift. They offer single origin hot chocolate's but it's only sold in store. If you are in store to pick up hot chocolate, their pastries and cakes are fantastic. If cute animal truffles aren't your bag, go with the pastries instead.

 

 

Images for Burdick's via Spilling The Beans, Waterside Plaza, and Serious Eats.

 

6. This can be as gluttonous or as sexy as you wish to make it. The Meadow (NY) sells a Chocolate Fondue Starter Set with a pink Himalayan sea salt bowl. It includes a pink salt bowl, orange bitters, and Felchlin Cru Savage 68% chips. This is a fantastically cool and a different way to go on Valentine's day. A way for both parties to be interactive with chocolate and have a little fun.

 

 

 

7. You could always bake something nice. I would recommend trying Vosges' Caramel Toffee Chocolate Chunk Brownie kit. Or if you are more adventurous and know your way around a kitchen, try Joanne Chang of Flour Bakery's Milky Way Tart recipe.

 

Both of these are out of this world good. I had the Milky Way tart from Flour Bakery for Thanksgiving and it's just awesome. Light mousse filling, yet super rich caramel filling anchoring the tart. Everything you need after a super filling turkey dinner. I ordered and made the brownies and they were some of the best brownies I have had from a box. You melt caramel toffee pieces on top of the brownies and you mix in chocolate chunks through out the batter. It's fabulously and disgustingly rich and oh so good.

Get the Milky Way Tart recipe here: Leite's Culinaria

Milky Way Tart Image via Leite's Culinaria.

 

8. Soma Chocolate (Toronto) Single Origin Truffles. This one I am going blind on. I have not tried Soma yet, but according to all my chocolate pals, cronies, and nerds they swear this is some of the best chocolate makers in the world. I promise to order them and get a review up soon. But if my friends are telling me this is some of the world's finest, I trust them. The origin truffles are Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania, Santo Domingo, and Venezuela.

 

Image via Doreen Pendegracs for Travel + Escape.

 

9. Chocolate books. Along with fine chocolate, perhaps a book about chocolate history might be a good accompaniment to the chocolate. Why not learn about origin chocolate and the history of the beans while eating it? 

  1. The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe.

  2. The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural & Natural History of Cacao with Recipes (2009) By Maricel E. Presilla.

  3. Couture Chocolate by William Curley.

 

Enjoy your Valentine's Day. Please feel free to post comments about what you are planning on buying for your special someone.

Valrhona ~ El Pedregal 64%

 

 

 

** Archived Notes

This is my first time with Valrhona's vintage plantation series. I took these notes a while ago, but wanted to get them posted anyway.

El Pedregal is a vintage single estate cacao plantation in Venezuela with rare Criollo and Porcelana beans being cultivated and revived.

Via their website:

In order to further progress with our knowledge of the cocoa, Valrhona bought its first plantation El Pedregal in Venezuela 20 years ago, followed more recently in 2011 by Loma Sotavento in the Dominican Republic. For Valrhona, these company-owned plantations are living laboratories for research and exploration on several levels; they contribute to significant progress in certain crucial stages of the development of aromatic characteristics, such as fermentation and drying.

They help us in our experiments into responsible and sustainable farming. Valrhona works together with local experts to convert plantations into natural botanic gardens that create a new balance between the flora and its ecosystem.

El Pedregal plantation has enabled us to develop a vintage estate grown chocolate, with unrivaled delicacy: Porcelana El Pedregal (available November 2011)

Just like a fine vintage wine, the estate grown chocolates are the fruit of the yearly harvest of a single plantation, and the passion of a cocoa farmer. Each vintage thus offers you the opportunity to discover new facets of its personality. Valrhona also invites you to taste these vintage chocolates with unique and outstanding aromatic characteristics, Palmira from Venezuela, Gran Couva from Trinidad and Ampamakia from Madagascar.

Three years ago, an ambitious and highly innovative project was founded in Venezuela, called the Cambios project. It focuses on the principles of sustainable, quality cocoa farming, respectful both of the environment and people, focused on the preservation of a dying variety, Porcelana. It involves, among other things, the creation of biodiversity corridors within the plantation itself, up keeping the cocoa plantations in the manner of forests, and planting other crops so that the local population has another income and training.

 

El Pedregal 64%

 

Type: Bittersweet, 64%

Bean Varietal: Criollo, Porcelana

Ingredients: Cacao beans, brown sugar, cocoa butter, soya lecithin, vanilla.

Sample Size: 75g or 2.6oz

Lot #: LP7511245

 

Appearance: Ignore the scratch mark on one of the tablets. I scratched it by accident opening out of it's foil wrapper but there was some long line surface marks I didn't cause. Long tablet with wide, fat tablets, monogrammed molding, shiny surface, medium dark brown color, not too dark, superficial fill lines on the back surface.

Score: 89

Snap: Good clean snap with nice crisp snap sound. Firm with clean break lines.

Score: 93

Aroma: Slightly floral out of the package, roasted with a slight char aroma, savory, inky, cocoa-y.

Score: 91

Taste: Sweet, slight spicy note, very delicate flavor at first, brown sugar molasses, inky, bready, cereal grains, slight hints of leather, dried fruits and tiny bit of resin or rubber from retro-olfaction. Clean finish. Very complex.

Score: 93

Texture: Hard at first, opens up with a medium-slow melt time, creamy texture but also a bit drying.

Score: 90

 

Very interesting chocolate. Delicate and simple aroma. Nothing too crazy going on there but a deeply complex flavor albeit not as strong as I would have liked. It opens up really soft and sweet. Very soft and almost boring. At first I thought this would be incredibly weak chocolate. But then it opens up a bit more and some deeper flavors come through. The brown sugar's molasses does interfere a bit. It wasn't overwhelming but definitely noticeable. Bready and yeasty with cereal grains, pen ink and dried fruits.

It's almost like this cacao wants to be bigger. But you can't drag out the flavors with more sugars or brown sugars. Sugars tend to bring out more fruits, but these beans apparently are so soft that the sugars ended up interfering with with it. There is a boldness to this chocolate and a deep richness. But also layered with soft floral notes and subtle inky flavors.

I don't know what to make of it honestly. I appreciate it for it's softness and hidden aggressiveness. But I doubt it would be this rich without the sugars. It tastes great, but in my honest opinion it's fairly boring and some of the flavors feel forced. The emphasis on these rare beans is very important. Criollo is the true original cacao bean. But I tend to like more richer, and bolder flavors. I want to be kicked in the face with raw flavors. Not so raw like Taza flavors, but a bit more bold than this. 

This will sound very rude but I am going to be completely honest and say that this is over hyped chocolate. Sold for it's rarity and labeling of Procelana beans but there really isn't anything too spectacular about this. Perhaps it's different right after it's been molded and packaged and eaten when it's no older than one month. But for now, as cool as this single estate chocolate is, it's just not all that for what it's supposed to be.

Having said that, this could be good for people with sensitive palates. But again it's true nature is clouded a bit with the brown sugars and the molasses in it.

And just for fun, I just found out that Valrhona has taken the time to do some beer pairings with their chocolate and not just wine. Craft beer is often better paired with chocolate than wine. Especially with the American craft beer scene with the amount of new styles. They had different flavor profiles in their tasting but I agree with the recommendations.

EL PEDREGAL Dark Chocolate 64% (Venezuela) - This chocolate has soft, earthy flavors of mocha and coffee bean that are complex, yet mellow, with a dusty texture and slight bitterness on the palate. For a taste to complement these characteristics of the chocolate, an Irish Stout would offer texture and rich, hearty, aromatics without overwhelming the palate. The slight bitterness of the chocolate would match with an Extra Special Bitter which, despite the name is mildly aggressive, but not overpowering and will balance with the taste of the chocolate.

FInal Score: 91.2

   score
  B+