Ihope you will love this book as much as I did! A charming memoir of 25 years in business at the Washington, DC chocolate shop of the same name. A boost to every entrepreneur, dreamer, and chocolate lover.

Read all about it!

What do you call the neighborhood shop that represents thedreams,hard work, family loyalty, and enduring passion for chocolate of two very special sisters? Chocolate Chocolate.

Read all about it on The Chocolate Tourist blog!

...and finding it (eventually).

A morning in Georgetown leads us on a wild goose chase! But chocolate always comes through in the end.

Read on!

Ahhh, Monday! The first day of a new week. The first week of a new month.

The first opportunity for hot chocolate. And joke recipes!

Find the full recipe here!

Mmor own Koko Samoa Tea One of the most popular hot drinks at the High Tea Szaln is Mmor Koko Samoa Chocolate Tea. We have been serving this innovative new "tea" to Australians for three years now and finally wed like to reveal how we make it. Our customers are a sophosticated group and we present them a menu with forty different teas. Yes, we do serve a Haute Supreme Hot Chocolate, which uses a variety of dark chocolates. But this new hot chocolate drink has also found a group of gourmands coming back for it.

First off, its not actually tea per se, in the sense that it does not come from a tea leaf or herbal leaf. Mmor Koko Samoa Chocolate Tea actually comes from raw organic cocoa beans that we bring in directly from cocoa farmers that we personally know in the Pacific island of Samoa. Its the favourite beverage of Samoa where it is called Koko Samoa. Traditionally, it is made from fermented or unfermented cocoa beans, water, a bit of raw sugar, and perhaps some liquid coconut cream. It is a usual part of the village meal in Samoa. Considering how much they drink, this might explain why Samoans are some of the happiest people in the world!

This is the way they drink it in the islands, grits and all! In the video youll see how we actually make Mmor Chocolate Tea. We start with fermented and dried raw cocoa beans. First we sort them because large and small beans do not roast the same length of time. Its important to inspect the beans for any imperfections and throw away any beans that dont meet the gold standard.

Using a light aluminium tray, we first roast the beans for five minutes at 160 C and then reduce the temperature to 130 C for a total of eighteen minutes. Subjecting the cocoa beans to a high temperature initially, slowly reduce the temperature and stop the roast when the beans are "cracking", but before they start to burn. The initial high heat lets the beans gain some thermal momentum and allows for a good separation of the husk and nibs as the beans expand. You lower the ambient temperature so as not to burn the outside of the bean, but let the interior continue to roast. Finally, the cocoa beans will start to pop and crack as water vapour is explosively released. This happens when the cocoa bean temperature is around 150C. Experience and smell are the key indicators when the beans are roasted.

Pure raw and organic cocoa beans from the Pacific island of Samoa Roasting accomplishes a number of things: It helps separate the outer husk from the inner bean and makes cracking and winnowing much easie. It kills the embryo and sterilizes the cocoa bean. Various chemical reactions occur when cocoa beans are roasted and proper roasting is integral to good flavoured chocolate.

After roasting, the woody husk of the cocoa bean is removed in a process called winnowing. There are big machines that do this, but we mostly use our fingers and a rolling pin. This separation step also breaks down the cocoa bean into small 2-5 mm irregular-shaped fragments known as cocoa nibs. The goal here is to crack the cocoa beans into pieces and then separate the husk from the nib. To make chocolate, this husk needs to be fully removed. Then we use a hair dryer set at cool to blow off the husks. We collect the husks and make . . . another chocolate tea which is absolutely delicious. It is called Cocoa Husk Tea and is also full of theobromine (no caffeine) so has wonderful properties but is also calorie free.

San Diego is so cute.

Between the sunshine, the water, the palm trees, and the colorful little neighborhoods dotting the landscape, San Diego beckons to visitors and makes you want to explore. Since I was there for the race last weekend , I went in search of chocolate.

And I found Caxao Artisan Chocolates in Little Italy, as well as Eclipse Chocolate - a brunch, dinner and truffle cafe near Balboa Park. Each unique and wonderful

Readall about it

Hello everyone,

I am doing a Booster.com campaign to help me raise funds to get started in a commercial kitchen and increase my chocolateproductions. I have been trying to get up and running for over 7 years. My passion has really turned into agreat business. As a single mother, I want my children to know that dreams do come true if you work hard, give it your best shot and never give up. I want my chocolates to inspire others to dream big and success is possible. Please help me prove to my children and the world that dream can be as sweet as chocolate.

Take a look at my Booster page.

https://www.booster.com/turtlemonkey

Tomorrow is the first day of the CHOCOA conference on sustainability in cacao and chocolate in Holland and this is the first time I have been to Amsterdam - this is my third visit - where I have had a free day. I am going to be slamming busy from tomorrow (Thursday) through Monday, so I have decided to enjoy the day: get a late start and be a tourist and enjoy the city by walking around.Amsterdam is often called the most bicycle-friendly city in the world. The same cannot be said for many of the bicyclists themselves, unfortunately. Bicycle-friendly also means Pedestrians Beware as many cyclists ply the roadways with a ruthless casualness.It's not as if the bicycles themselves are anything special. The vast majority are single-speed antiques with coaster brakes that look to be built neither for comfort nor speed but for durability. Bikes with ten or more gears are so rare that they call attention to themselves, as is a bike painted anything other than black.Despite the wheeled menace, Amsterdam is a lovely city to walk in, and one that is surprisingly hard to get lost in. Looking a lot like a spider web with spokes radiating from the center (the Oude Kerk, or old church) and concentric rings. Sometimes the spokes and rings are canals and sometimes they are streets.The scale of Amsterdam is very manageable and there are about a thousand ways to get from where you are to where you want to go - no matter where that might be. So even if you do get lost and take the long way 'round, you actually haven't gone all that far out of your way -- and if you pay attention you're likely to see some very interesting architectural details dating back 300 years or more.This morning I walked from the apartment where I am staying (on the Amstel River not far from the Magere Brug (the tiny bridge) and the infamous Amstel Hotel) to a neighborhood called the Jordaan. There, on Hazenstraat, is Chocolatl, a store that rivals the best chocolate bar stores back home in New York City. There you'll find dozens and dozens of bars from around the world. Yes, many of the expected American brands are there (including the Mast Bros - which phenomenon I do not understand), but, for an American, what's fun is looking at European brands I can get back in the US. And, unlike New York State, it's possible to mix the sales of alcohol and food, so I picked up a couple of bottles from a local craft brewery - Oedipus - and I will carry them back home to share with friends. They also serve excellent coffee and there's some nice seating that makes it a pleasant place to relax and step out of the weather. (It started raining hard and I did not have either a hat, raincoat, or umbrella.)From Hazenstraat I traced a meandering path to the flower market. Yes, there were thousands if not tens of thousands of tulips, amaryllis, and more - both blooms and bulbs. But I can't bring the bulbs back with me through US customs and while there are tons of flowers, it's a toss-up as to which there are more of; flower shops or souvenir shops. The market is also book-ended with a Starbucks at one end and a McDonalds on the other. Sigh. There's just no escaping them, I guess.From there it's a matter of just a few minutes to Dam Square, which means you are in shouting distance of the Red Light District. But if you are in Dam Square you are also close to the other great chocolate shop in Amsterdam as well as a very decent wood-fired oven pizza restaurant (da Portare Via; I managed to spend three days in Italy without having pizza once).If you stand in the square directly in front of the Grand Hotel Krasnopolsky on your left hand is Warmoesstraat and about 100 meters from the Dam is Kees Raat's Metropolitan Deli. While the selection of chocolate bars is not nearly as broad as Chocolatl's there's not a lot of overlap. PLUS you can get bonbons, gelato (and house-made frozen yogurt), hot chocolate, baked items, panned items, cacao beer (!), and more. And coffee drinks. Good coffee drinks. I don't think I've had a bad anything made by Kees and if you look closely in the back of the store you'll see a CocoaTown grinder ... Kees makes his own chocolate from the bean as well as his own nut pastes for his gelatos. It's an eclectic place that mirrors Kees's eclectic creative energy. But - what may be best of all - it's open until midnight, so after a night of drinking (ahem - you are in Amsterdam) you can head over to the Metropolitan Deli for a chocolatey delight before heading to bed.

As I hinted to many, my March trip to Europe was going to start with a special visit. I did not want to jinx the visit by mentioning it and then not being able to make it. But it happened!Following the path of my Chocolate Life has led me to interesting places and to make interesting decisions. For some reason, many of those decisions seem to involve travel. For example, on my first trip to Bolivia I flew to La Paz then scrambled to catch a flight to Santa Cruz to be met by Volker Lehmann. After freshening up and a short nap we drove downtown to run some important errands before dinner in advance of catching the overnight bus to Trinidad. Where we got a taxi from the bus station to the commercial airfield to catch a small plane (a six-seat Cessna) to Baures to hop a jeep that forded a river on a small boat to reach Tranquilidad, the cacao operation that Volker operates.Although not in the same league as the trip to Bolivia my visit to Monsummano Terme to see Andrea Slitti had some of the same air: walk to a train to catch a bus to a plane to fly to Milan (7 hours) to get picked up in a car to go to the hotel to drop off my bags, take a quick shower, and then get back in the car to be driven 4 hours for a one-hour appointment with Andrea before getting back in the car to make the return drive of four hours. In the rain.By the time Giuseppe and I left Monsummano Terme we'd spent three hours with Andrea visiting the factory, the retail shop, and having an impromptu tasting of some chocolate and Solbeso (a distilled spirit that is made from fresh cacao fruit juice that is one of the projects I am working on) I brought with me to share.I've known of Andrea Slitti since maybe 2001. And when I say known of I mean that I've tasted the work of the man who may be the most highly-awarded chocolate maker in Italy; the man who is probably the inventor of dark-milk chocolate - what he calls lattenero.My companion on the drive from Milan was Giuseppe di Chiano, the sales director for FBM. (Slitti has a lot of FBM equipment, much of it custom-designed for him.) We were going to drive for eight hours to have one hour to talk chocolate with Andrea and to take a tour of his workshop -- something that relatively few outsiders, especially in the chocolate industry -- are allowed to do.Picture taking inside the factory is not encouraged, so words will have to do.The workshop building is deceptively small because not all of it is above ground. What is also not immediately obvious is that it might be the greenest chocolate factory anywhere in the world - and the vast majority of the design and specification was done by Mr Slitti himself. There is a rainwater diversion and collection system that takes care of all of the gray water needs of the factory. There is a significant solar power installation. Heat from the HVAC system is captured and used to meet all of the hot water needs of the factory. The building is oriented so that the temperature-sensitive parts of production are on the north side of the building. The exterior of the building is all double-wall construction. All of the interior walls are SIPs (structural insulated panels).And if all that is not enough, all of the corner, edge, and cove molding between the walls and the floor and the ceiling is steel. And all the joins are welded. No insects or rodents are making their way into this building. Air curtains are installed in production areas with doors to the outside to keep flying insects outside.There is an entirely separate room for making and working with ganaches. And a separate room for panning. Every production work space has its own independent HVAC system to enable the temperature and humidity of each room to be controlled precisely. And independently.All of this makes it the coolest (in all senses of the word) chocolate factory I have ever been in - and it might just be the coolest chocolate factory anywhere.And that's before we start talking about equipment.Separate roasters (at least 250kg each) for cocoa and coffee. The primary piece of chocolate production equipment is a Netzsch ChocoEasy. There are tempering machines everywhere ranging from 18kg up to 45kg (135kg/hr). I lost count of how many tempering machines there were. At least two enrobing lines - one with a 17-meter-long cooling tunnel! There is a custom bar depositing line that FBM made for Andrea that can do over 1250 100gr bars per hour that does not have a cooling tunnel attached to it. (Technically, this might have been one of the most surprising things I saw. The exit section of the bar molding line ends up inside a huge cool storage room and there are special racks to hold the molds while they cool.)And to top it all off, amazingly, a lot of wrapping is still done by hand. While machinery could obviously be employed here (and bars are flow-wrapped and boxed), Andrea insists on doing as much as possible by hand because it means that there is a final visual inspection before pieces tha leaves the workshop.While all of the above is impressive, what may be even more impressive was just how clean everything was. Nothing was out of place. The floors and walls were spotless. All of them. There was no dripped chocolate on the outside of any of the tempering machines. The belts on the enrobers were as clean as any I have ever seen. The work tables in the wrapping room are all attached directly to the floor so no dust collects underneath them making the floors easier to clean.And all this attention to detail shows up in the finished product. I don't think I have ever seen the chocolate surfaces of a piece with a transfer on it shine they way Slitti's do.The Slitti family made their name as excellent coffee roasters and it is Andrea who expanded the business into chocolate. The expertise in roasting is the first thing you notice in tasting Slitti chocolates. I have a large selection of bars from 100% to 35%, including one milk, one lattenero, and one origin bar (Pru). Plus two jars of chocolate spread. I have to wait to take photos of the bars before I start opening them, but a marathon comprehensive tasting session is in the offing and I will share my thoughts on these when I get done.The Slitti factory and retail shop in Monsummano Terme is in what locals call the chocolate valley. Paul DeBondt's workshop is not far, neither are Amedei and others. While you may not get the chance to tour the Slitti factory, the shop is well worth a visit. The coffee is excellent and there is a large selection of confections that don't make it to the United States. Monsummano Terme is not far from Pisa (hello, leaning tower) and, as the name suggests, the area is home to many thermal hot springs. You are also not far from Parma, home to ... well, too many good things to eat to even begin trying to list them here. The only disappointment I have for the day is not being able to stop at at least one local market to browse the bounty that the region offers. Not that I would be able to bring most of it back through US Customs -- assuming any of it lasted that long!

Chocolate messages and Chocolate posts

Increasing trend of Chocolate Greetings and Personalized Chocolate Gifts

Chocolate presented as gifts develops an emotional connection between people. One can find chocolates in various forms, like chocolate bars, chocolate candies, chocolate desserts, fondue and chocolate fudge. From small children to big adults, all are fond of chocolates. Chocolates can be presented as gifts on various occasions like Birthdays, Weddings, Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Easter, Christening and most popularly on Valentine's Day. They are not only inexpensive but also express love and emotions of the person gifting it. They also make unique 'thank you' and 'congratulations' gifts as well. You can even customize the chocolate wrappers and make the gifts look even more interesting and unique.

Just imagine, in a situation when your loved one is angry and you want to bring a sweet smile back on their face, a will surely do it all for you. You can even use differentcoloured-blocks to make your chocolate post look moreattractive and appealing. This indeed will be the best way to say special love messages, like thinking of you, love declaration, sorry, and thanks.

Chocolates are not only popular as personal gifts, but they are even used as corporate gifts or birthday greetings as well . These products are extremely flexible, inexpensive and reliable for promoting your services. You can even design chocolate gifts especially for conferences, seminars and product releases. Personal Greetings are an attractive way to deliver your message to the ones. You can make a lot of chocolate designs, like chocolate mobile, chocolate pen, or even chocolate shaped in the design of some product of your company. Such chocolate gifts will definitely result in enhancing your sale figures and your company's reputation too. This is indeed the simplest and the quickest way to stay in good terms with clients and customers on regular basis.

Everybody likes when their work is appreciated, and you don't need to gift your employees with expensive gifts to appreciate their work. Just gift them with a box of chocolates with a 'thank you' chocolate post and make them feel that the company cares for its employees and appreciate their hard hard work and sincerity

[Note: Edited to remove inappropriate links. The author is owner of a company providing personalized chocolates available only for delivery in India.]