If you are a person, chances are you like ice cream. I LOVE ice cream. Especially chocolate ice cream. After weeks of experimentation, I have come up with an ice cream recipe that will blow all the commercial chocolate ice creams out of the water. I still...
Before a cocoa bean is shipped off to the factory, it obviously must be grown and harvested from the pod. What is not very obvious is the complexity of the processes in between. A cocoa tree (theobroma cacao) grows from a seedling to pod-bearing maturit...
This past weekend Larry returned from Costa Rica after having a real chocolate adventure. Lauren and Larry traveled across the country meeting cacao growers and people in the cocoa industry, from the small plot farmer to the big plantation owner. A Tr...
Within the plastic constraints of a Spanish laden organic artesenal chocolate container were sticks of survivor’s- Caribbean survivor’s of repetitive and devastating fungal onslaught, drought, estranged and transferred ownerships. These survivors had eart...
With Chocorart in mind, I continued to hunt along the Caribbean for good cacao beans in Puerto Viejo, a world-renowned cacao growing region and beach paradise. Most of the cacao producers in Puerto Viejo have done a fantastic job forming cooperatives o...
Fungi Stories in the Caribbean Coast While I did not get to see cacao in Puerto Viejo (and I was unwilling to wander onto other people’s land uninvited), I did hear stories, and I head two particularly interesting stories about the recent outbreaks of fu...
More discoveries leading to the mysteriously good chocolate in Puenta Uva. During my first visit to Puerto Viejo I had called the number on the plastic container to learn more about Chocorart. I received no positive response. A friend in town told me t...
As birthday’s come and go we are occasionally held responsible for baking birthday cakes. This happy chore recently placed itself squarely in my kitchen and I set out to complete the task. I am no great baker, and rarely actually bake any pastries, so I...
So, a couple weeks ago several friends of ours were gathered at Carl's house for a dinner party. They were just settling in after gobbling up some fantastic homemade pasta when I brought out the dessert suprise: a Bonnat chocolate tasting. A sampling an...
Martha and Enrique opened the Chocolateria in Escazu, Costa Rica eleven years ago-one year after they moved to Costa Rica from the boat they lived on in the Jungle of Columbia- so that their daughter could grow up in a safe and tranquil environment. They...
Recently there have been several excellent articles in the New York Times that have focused on chocolate. More specifically, single-origin and small-production chocolates that have recently been making a big splash in the gourmet chocolate world. Links ...
The way chocolate is manufactured dictates how a chocolate will taste. It is very difficult to make great chocolate with nice flavor nuances using a low quality bean. And even if you begin with a very high quality bean it is difficult to make a chocolat...
Solar Ovens and Mixed Encounters My first encounter with chocolate was through an introduction to Georgie and Nick, a young couple who were traveling around the world learning about permaculture and solar-roasting ovens. They learned about solar-roastin...
This past week Joel and I did some extensive chocolate recon in Oaxaca, Oaxaca Mexico. Oaxaca could be called the Mecca of the chocolate beverage. For well over two thousand years the inhabitants of this area have consumed cacao as a beverage by grind...
