guittard chocolates - the motherlode- part II

All photographs
©2010 Ronald Dunlap/Doglight Studios

As you read these new posts, many of your may exclaim "Wow! Your photography has improved! These pictures look great!" However, as much as I would like to take credit for the amazing photos you will see in my next two blogs I can't. First because I didn't take them. And second, it is unlikely I could get away with it. These are all the work of Ron Dunlap. You can read more about Ron Dunlap, Doglight Studios and Ron's adventures at the end of this blog.

If you've read my last post, "Guittard chocolates, The Motherlode - Part I", you will already know that I received an eleven pound box of Guittard chocolates a week ago and have basically been in a chocolate coma ever since. This week I decided to tackle their chocolate bars, which all feature single origin cacao beans.

I already know your next question. "What is a single origin cacao bean and how can I use this new information to make my cocktail conversation more scintillating and make myself appear more knowledgeable and wordly?" Well, like like grapes or coffee, cacao beans have different nuances depending on where they were harvested as well as their post-harvest process. And that's it. It is as simple as that. Waving your hands around a lot helps for dramatic effect as well.

In my insane eleven pound box, Guittard included eight (8) bars. Because of the quantity, (yes even I can only eat so much chocolate), I had to assemble an impromptu, rag-tag, tasting group which included our enthusiastic neighbors, a foodie who has been hanging around ever since she saw my box of chocolates, and a few friends from the gym. None of us are trained connoisseurs, but the taste test was revealing and surprisingly entertaining. The more we ate, the more giddy we got and the more giddy we got, the more enthusiastic the proclamations. Honestly, a chocolate tasting ala E Guittard would be a great party theme, and you could introduce wine too, though might have to peel a few people off the ceiling afterwards. But, I digress. Back to the bars.

The eight bars we tested were: Ambanja, Chuchuri, Nocturne, Orinco, Quevedo, Quetzalcoatl, Sur del Lago and Tsaratana.

E. Guittard Ambanja 65% Cacao Bar

"Fruity and wonderful"
We started with Ambanja which is a city in northern Madagascar. This bar was a favorite among all of us and my personal favorite. It had a taste of fruit and the chocolate was rich and creamy. I could eat several bars of this in a row and I liked that I also liked that I could pronounce the name with some flourish.

E. Guittard Chucuri 65% Cacao Bar

These beans are harvested in the San Vicente de Chucuri Valley of Santander in Colombia. The chocolate has a sweet, honeyish taste. We all felt it was mellow and delicate and what a connoisseur would enjoy. I could imagine curling up on a cool summer evening with a good book and nibbling this chocolate.

E. Guittard Nocturne 91% Cacao Bar

This bar is for serious dark chocolate lovers only. I imagine this is the kind of chocolate that the Mayans would have eaten. It has a primitive, exotic taste, wonderfully sour and bitter at the same time. It's the kind of chocolate a real chocoholic worth his/her cacao bean enjoys -- a tough chocoholic, not a dandified sophisticate, the kind of chocoholic who would eat the bar and then might grunt at the end to show you that he (or she) can take real chocolate and not just sissy chocolate.

E. Guittard Orinco 38% Cacao Bar

This bar vanished within moments of its unwrapping. It had the best of the best milk chocolate qualities: creamy, nutty, buttery and subtle and silky. And to me it has all the hallmarks of being an excellent "I feel sorry for myself" chocolate. The kind of chocolate you eat when nothing is going your way and it really should because you know, you're a good person and what happened to karma anyway? For wallowing in self pity, I recommend six bars (adjust as necessary and grab a box of tissues.

E. Guittard Quetzalcoatl 72% Cacao Bar

Legend surrounds this bar. It is named after the Mayan god Quetzalcoatl who traveled to earth with a cacao tree imported from paradise and, as the legend implies, this chocolate is paradise for a dark chocolate aficionado. It has a dark, rich powerful taste that starts off nutty and ends with a satisfying bitter aftertaste. It does the Mayans, who worshiped cacao and the legend of Quetzalcoatl, the justice they deserve. A terrific bar that gets it just right so that despite the high cacao content, all the milk chocolate fans in our taste group gravitated to this bar.

E. Guittard Quevedo 65% Cacao Bar

"I don't know why, I just like it."
What makes this quote stand out is that it is from a taste tester who reluctantly admits he generally only consumes mass chocolates. Still, this was his favorite bar. The chocolate was mellow, smokey and nutty with a creamy texture. It is an excellent bar to introduce someone to the joys of dark chocolate -- unless of course your philosophy is thatif someone doesn't like it, there is more for you.

E. Guittard Sur del Lago 65% Cacao Bar

These beans are harvested from Venenzuela's Sur Del Lago region. We all felt there was an interesting complexity to this bar - a slight nutty and berry taste -- that made us keep coming back to this bar, over and over.

E. Tsaratana 61% Cacao Bar

We ended our chocolate odyssey on the Tsaratana bar and it was a wonderful. It was sweet like a flower and had a taste of vanilla. How to describe it? Does "mmmm, mmmm, yummy" work? It is the kind of bar that delivers on that abstract idea you have in your mind about the promise and experience of chocolate. This chocolate would work well both as a good "Sweetheart I Love (or Seriously Like) You" or "I am Really Sorry, Will You Please Forgive Me" chocolate, however in the latter case you I recommend at least two bars.

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All the wonderful photos you see here are the work from Ron Dunlap who happens to be a hero of mine. At 60 he got his masters in Archeology and now every year travels to Egypt to photograph objects that we will not see in our lifetime from the ongoing pyramid excavations, as photographs that document his travels to the far east which you can enjoy at RGD Travels.



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guittard chocolates - the motherlode- part I

Have you ever received a really great gift that was truly a surprise? Something you have never thought of asking for but that turns out to be one of the bestest gifts you have ever received? A gift you know you will remember forever and ever -- even when you are old and gray and living with 100 cats and the neighbors have called the authorities, numerous times? Well, this is what happened to me last week when I opened my door to find a box on my doorstep marked, "Guittard Chocolates". Now while this label was terrific in and of itself, it’s always happy times when chocolate shows up at your door, what made it truly exceptional is another marking that read, "eleven (11) lbs." Eleven lbs of chocolate. Do you have any idea of what 11 lbs of chocolate looks like? I will tell you what it looks like – it looks like you’re going to have a good day – or week, depending on how long the chocolate lasts.

Enclosed in the box were chocolate bars, cacao wafers, cocoa powder, drinking chocolate and chocolate chips, basically everything a chocoholic needs in case of a natural disaster.

Clearly, in order to review them all properly I had to immediately start on sampling them individually (and due to the quantity of chocolate, this review will span more than one blog post).

The first things that caught my eye were, the big boxes of E.Guittard Cacao Wafers: White Chocolate (31%), Milk Chocolate (38%), Semisweet Chocolate (61%) and Bittersweet Chocolate (72%). The boxes were nice and hefty, which I found deeply satisfying. I liked lifting them up and wielding all that chocolate. It gave me a sense of power and invincibility.

The wafers are marked “for baking and eating” and they are also outstanding just by themselves. All the chocolates are creamy and have a luxurious chocolate/nutty aftertaste. If you were so inclined to share, they would be lovely in a candy dish for guests. However, I was more intrigued by the recipe on the back: E.Guittard Chocolate Cupcakes and White Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting (though I used Milk Chocolate instead of White Chocolate for the frosting though.)

The recipe is very simple but produced great results (I have copied it below because I can’t find it currently on the Guittard website, but I encourage you to visit their site for other recipes created in their own kitchens). The wafers all melted so easily in the double boiler and the cupcakes turned out “delish.” The cake part of the cupcake was moist, flavorful but not too sweet and the sour cream frosting had a great balance of sour and sweet. The only thing lacking was my frosting skills, a deficiency that was probably were exacerbated by the fact I just let the frosting cool and didn’t beat it and refrigerate it overnight as the recipe calls for. But as my mother always said (while my sisters and I were beating each other for the best slice of frosted birthday cake, which is the corner slice that has the flower), it all looks the same when it’s in your mouth

While the cupcakes were cooling and awaiting frosting, I decided to make some drinking chocolate. You have to have something with your chocolate cupcake – right?

The drinking chocolate is heavenly from the moment you open the canister and inhale the rich chocolatey aroma to when you are sipping the unusually rich drink. Usually when I make hot chocolate, I make a mini paste of cocoa, sugar (& sometimes cinnamon) with a small amount of milk and then add it to my heated milk. But no matter how I beat the mixture, I always end up with sad little clumps of chocolate at the bottom of my pan. In contrast, this drinking chocolate just mixes so easily with no clumping – a real treat on many levels, including the assurance that you've got all the chocolate.

I know what some of you are thinking: hot drinking chocolate with a chocolate cupcake with chocolate sour cream frosting...chocolate overload. But for me, I say, bring it on.

Recipes

E.Guittard Chocolate Cupcakes
A rich chocolate cupcake is complimented with the color and flavor of white chocolate sour cream frosting. Makes 12 cupcakes.

1 ½ cups (8 ounces) E.Guittard 72% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Wafers
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 12 cupcake forms with paper liners

Melt wafers and butter in the top of a double boiler over low heat, stirring constantly until melted and smooth. Transfer to a large bowl and beat in sugar, then eggs and vanilla until glossy. Stir in flour just until incorporated.

Fill lined cups ¾ full. Bake 25 – 30 minutes or until tops are rounded and puffy. A toothpick inserted in center will still have moist crumbs clinging to it. Cool completely before frosting tops.

White Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting
1 cup (6oz) E.Guittard 31% Cacao White Chocolate Wafers
½ cup sour cream
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Melt white chocolate and sour cream in the top of a double boiler over low heat stirring constantly until smooth. Stir in vanilla, transfer to a large mixing bowl and chill for 2 hours or overnight. Whip for about 1 -2 minutes at high speed, stopping to scrape bottom and sides as needed, until frosting lightens in color and a good spreading consistency is achieved. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Frosting can be prepared in advance.



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