Soooooo. The chocolate tasting last Thursday...it was one of the best experiences of my life!! I am so thankful to my darling Lee for this amazing birthday gift.
The chocolatier, Gail Ambrosius, uses only single source chocolate for her truffles. This means that the chocolate is all grown in the same region. We learned alot about how Cacao trees grow, and the farming practices involved. It was actually very fascinating. For instance, the Cacao beans are surrounded by a sweet, white pulp when they first come out of the pods, which enables a fermentation process to occur. Apparently this fermentation is critical to the way the chocolate turns out, and "lesser" chocolates (ie: Hershey's) are generally made from beans that did not ferment correctly. Wow! We owe soooo much to yeast! Bread, Cheese, Beer and Wine, Bio-Diesel and Chocolate!
Anyway, we tasted 6 different chocolates, and it was great to taste the difference between them all. One tasted like bannannas, one like raisins and dried cherrys. There where earhty flavors, nutty, toasty, roasty, spicy woody, even floral (one was like having a maw full of orange blossom, yum!). My favorite smelled like wild flowers and herbs, and tasted like a chocolate hazelnut tort witha smooth thick cakey texture.
mmmmm, chocolate. Lee and I want to ask Gail if she will sell us some of her chocolate
in bulk to use for baking.
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