Cacao fruit leather!

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I made fruit leather from cacao pulp. It’s very easy and one of the best applications for cacao pulp that I’ve discovered yet. It doesn’t need much processing and it keeps in the heat, on a shelf, for many months.
Very simply I just pureed the freshly frozen pulp and put it in the dehydrator. In the past I have put it in the oven at low temp (160 F) and let it dry out over the course of the day or overnight. Sometimes you need to open the door to let out the moisture. After 6 or 8 hours, it’s done.
I like it as is, but you can add other stuff to it. I’ve added cacao nibs and ginger which was nice. It’s quite sweet and tart on its own so no need to add sugar or acid although you can have fun experimenting.

Fresh cacao pulp thawed out and pureed.
Pureed fruit before dehydration.
Dehydrated cacao fruit aka cacao fruit leather!

I’m Back!

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This is my first post in a long time. I think it’s been 8 years! It seems strange to pick up this blog again after so long but I’m compelled to do it because I’ve learned so much about the cacao industry and issues of sustainability since 2012. I’ve also learned more about how I want to express myself as a chocolatier, an academic and chocolate connoisseur and I’m ready to share it.
After a 3 year stint in Germany with my husband and 2 children, I started grad school in Vermont which I completed in 2018. My degree is in the field of sustainable development, which looks at ways to improve the methods by which progress is achieved without damaging the environment and or the livelihoods of people. Apparently the term sustainable development is already outdated since critics question the validity of attempting to sustain a system that is no longer feasible.
My topic of research focused on cacao, of course, and how to support farmer livelihoods when prices for cacao fluctuate wildly(mostly dropping) and there is a push by the big chocolate firms for farmers to plant cacao in a way that benefits them and not the farmers. These corporations then make claims about sustainability, but what it really means is they can sustain their need for cheap cacao in order to continue swamping the market with their candy.
In my thesis I argued that one way to improve the livelihoods of farmers isn’t to have them grow more cacao which is what is at the heart of these sustainability initiatives, but for them to capture more value through things like profit sharing or chocolate processing. I specifically looked at ways to use the cacao baba, which is the pulp of the cacao fruit, as another way for farmers to make money.
It’s been 2 years since I finished my degree and I am realizing that some of the ideas behind my thesis are just that-ideas and in order to realize them, I will need to engage with them and actualize them. One way to do is that is to turn these ideas into viable products and test them out on the market. This blog is meant to document some of these experiments.

I’m currently developing recipes using chocolate and cacao pulp which will include CBD and eventually THC. My business partner, Sara and I want to create a line of edibles that will help women manage issues related to hormonal fluctuations. I’m especially excited about using cacao pulp because I want people to taste and learn more about this delicious fruit which has the potential to increase the income for cacao farmers everywhere.
I will try to post lots of recipes using the cacao, updates on our business as it develops and any information related to cannabis, especially its effects on women’s health.

Touring the Zotter Factory

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During Easter vacation we decided to visit the Zotter chocolate factory in Riegersburg, Austria which is about 1.5 hours south of Vienna in the middle of nowhere.   For those not familiar with the Zotter brand, he is a famous Austrian chocolatier who those zany truffle bars with unique flavor combinations such as cheese and wine, peanuts and ketchup (the American bar), celery root and pineapple, and pork cracklins- which sounds really weird but is actually pretty good.  Since 2008 I have sold his bars on and off at Kerstin’s Chocolates. He also makes chocolate bars, a line of drinking chocolate, and many other things as I soon discovered. The tour of the factory is really a multi-sensory experience that allows you to see and learn about how things are done in the factory all the while eating your way through all the Zotter creations. For 12 euros (and a little less for kids) you can taste everything he makes, which is about 300 varieties! The tour starts at the Chocolate “theatre” where you see a film that shows Zotter sourcing his beans in India.  I found this interesting because India isn’t well known as a cocoa growing country. It made more sense once we learned that he has started a project where every time he sells a bar made with Indian beans, one child in the program gets served a meal.  To learn more, click here:  http://www.zotter.at/de/das-ist-zotter/projekte/schokolade-macht-satt.html According to the movie, he pays twice the market price for organic beans and he can trace the beans back to the individual farmer in India.  There is a big focus on tranparency, not just in the sourcing of the beans, but in the factory tour as well, inviting visitors to get up close and personal with each stage of the chocolate making process from start to finish. The first stop is the loading bay.   You see piles of jute bags filled with cocoa beans from different countries through a viewing window. In the adjacent tasting room, you can sample these beans in their raw form to taste the differences depending on the bean’s origin.  Next we see the chocolate making equipment as our audio guide explain the uses of each machine.   The chocolate is available to taste during the different stages of processing, including the nibs, the 100% liquid chocolate, and the powdered form  before it hits the conche. The next section is where things get more exciting. At the “Shokotankstelle” or the chocolate filling station, we sample the different types of chocolate in liquid form, all of the Zotter blends. You might be compelled to stick your head under the tap and pour the liquid chocolate straight in your mouth, but instead you are asked to  use a ceramic spoon that is given to you at the beginning of the tour.  You can fill it with whatever and however much you want.  I tried to pace myself but it quickly turned into a free for all as I began to realize just how many different kinds of chocolate Zotter makes and that they are all there to sample.  After the “tankstelle” we were invited to climb the “chocolate stairway to heaven”.  Here you could try all the different “Lambooka” bars which start with flavored white chocolate bars such as strawberry and banana and end with a pure 100% bar. The chocolate stairway faces a series of conveyor belts where the ganaches are poured, enrobed and cooled and where the finished ganache bars are packaged.  Unfortunately we picked Good Friday to visit so we couldn’t see any work being done, but  I didn’t really care at this point because I was on a sugar high and heading towards the hot chocolate station. When I got there, an attendent behind the bar  was waiting to hand me a cup of hot milk.  She told me to chose a hot chocolate flavor from the miniture gondolas that encircled us overhead and around the room.   I chose chili, and plopped it into my milk (it was a solid piece of chocolate) and began whisking with my own personal whisk.  All of this was really fun and pretty soon I was no longer a reviewer but overcome with the same enthusiasm as all the other Zotter customers. After the hot chocolate station, there was the Nougat station (the walnut was really good), the Bollero station (the fruit and nut one was my top choice) and it all ended to my surprise with the Zotter filled bars. How could I have forgotten about the filled bars? And how can I eat any more chocolate?    Of course, I could eat more chocolate and I did.  I tried all of them because, finally I could! The tour was a blast and I thought they did a great job of both educating customers and entertaining them at the same time.  Zotter really has a cult of personality thing going on and we gobbled it all up.

Discontinued Zotter bars ended up in a graveyard.

Chocolate heaven in Bern, Switzerland

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I’ve never been to Switzerland before.  Even though I love Swiss chocolate.  Since I am living so close to Switzerland now, I accepted  an invitation from Felchlin to meet with their reps at a confectionary show in Bern.  I started using Felchlin chocolate in 2005 to start my  Chocophilia line and the more I work with it (and taste it) the more I’ve grown to love it.  Felchlin does a lot to promote fine chocolate by seeking out high quality, rare and otherwise interesting cocoa beans.  Their Cru Sauvage chocolate made from “wild” Bolivian cocoa beans is one of the best chocolates I’ve ever tried and their Maracaibo 65% won best couverature in the world in 2004!

Knowing all this, why have I waited so long to go to Switzerland?  I don’t really know.  But I’m glad I finally did.

I planned to head over to the event as soon as I got to Bern,  but  through the window of the tram(the tram system in Bern is really good, by the way), I saw the pink sign for “Beeler Chocolatier”-one of the shops I wanted to visit.  I jumped off and with suitcase in tow,  descended upon the shop.  I usually hesitate when I buy chocolates because you never know what kind of chocolate they use and I hate being disappointed by an overly sweet or otherwise lackluster bon bon.  Happily  I saw some truffles  labeled “Maracaibo” and the shopkeeper confirmed it was Felchlin(it always pays to ask!).    I noticed right away that the Swiss make chocolates differently  than the French.  It’s kind of a combination of French and the Belgian chocolate styles, where they use molds like the Belgians rather than cut ganaches but the chocolates are less creamy and more chocolatey like the French.   There is a lot of stuff with nuts like Gianduja or “pralines”.   I had one of Beeler’s classic Caramalina, which was a milk chocolate cup filled with hazelnut praline and  topped with caramalized hazelnuts.  One bite and I knew Switzerland and I would get along very well.

When I finally got to the event,  I first went to check out the Swiss Chocolate Masters.   The Chocolate Masters is a competition where pastry chefs vye for a spot to compete for the worlds in Paris.  They are judged on the taste and presentation of their pralines, tortes, plated desserts and chocolate sculptures.  I got there in time to see the judges taste and judge the desserts, which was the final event in the competition.  The winning dessert , made by the young pastry chef who would end up winning the competition, was two “rocks” stacked on top each other that when split open, oozed a liquid filling over the chocolate “rock” cake below it.  Pretty cool!

Back at the show I visited the Felchlin booth, which was decked out to look like a cafe complete with coffee bar, tables and servers.  On the menu was a hot chocolate made with their new Grenada chocolate(delicious) and a parfait of sorts with chocolate ice cream, fruit, rum and sponge cake(also delicious).   I devoured all this quite quickly as I waited to speak to a representative.  The very nice woman who had attended to me introduced me to Mr. Schoenbaechler  who is the head of innovation and quality at Felchlin.  I told him that I have been using Felchlin for nearly 10 years in Canada and that this fantastic chocolate was one of my inspirations to travel the world in search for cacao with my family.   He told me about the time he first tasted the Cru Sauvage beans at an organic food show in Germany and instantly saw something special in them.  He worked with Volker Lehman(the man who “discovered” them in Bolivia) to perfect the fermentation until they had a product he was happy with.   He also gave me some recommendations for chocolate shops in Bern.   He recommended I try the custom 70% Cru sauvage bar that Felchlin makes for Sprungli(I did and it was great!).   Sprungli, I learned, split off from Lindt in 1836 to focus exclusively on making confections, while Lindt continued on to make bean to bar chocolate.    I left the show a happy camper with a bag filled with assorted Felchlin chocolate and an invitation from Mr. Schoenbaechler to visit the factory in the town of Schwyz.  Can’t wait to go back!

Announcing our final appearances in 2012

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Thanks again for coming out and rediscovering Chocophilia this fall.  We have a quick update for you about where we will be this month:

  • We will be at the City Market Downtown in City Hall  on the following Saturdays from 10am to 3pm: Dec 8th, Dec 15th, Dec 22nd
  • We will also be at the St. Albert Christmas Farmer’s Market on Saturday, Dec. 22nd, 10am to 3pm.
  • For those of you who have been asking for a non-Farmer’s Market location this month, we have partnered with a cool local shop called Sabrina Butterfly inHighlands (6421-112 Ave.). They will be carrying a limited selection of our products for 3 days only, Dec 19th (11-5pm), 20th  (11-8pm) and  21st (11-8pm).

We will be bringing out our handmade Chocphilia Bars, 6-packs, Chocophilia-dipped candied fruit, Chocophilia gift boxes, tins of hot chocolate (necessary for everyone’s pantry for Christmas), melt-aways and more. Get some for the stocking or pick some up a for a gift. Hope to see you then, and have a Merry Xmas. 

The Bark Trio is back.

From Dec 15th to Dec 22nd, the Chocophilia Xmas trio will returned this year. For our dark chocolate barks, Angie has made Dark Chocolate with Toffee and Fleur de Sel, Dark Chocolate with Nuts and Dried Sour Cherry and Dark Chocolate with Gingerbread with Candied Orange and Ginger.

In the milk chocolate box you will find Milk Chocolate Chai Granola, Dark Milk Chocolate with Toffee and Fleur de Sel and White Chocolate with Orange, Cranberry, and Almond.

Hope to see you there!

At the Royal Bison and the Westmount CL Hall this weekend.

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We will be at two locations this weekend. On Sat and Sun, Dec 1st and 2nd, Chocophilia products will be out in force at the Royal Bison Craft and Art Fair. It is just north of the Strathcona Farmer’s Market. This is a great place to look for local, handmade stuff!

On Sunday, Dec 2nd, from 10am to 4pm, we will also have a booth at the Westmount Community League Hall for their “Shop the Hall” event.

How can Angie be in two places at once? It is all through the magic of cloning! 🙂

 

Turin and Nutella Brownies

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Giant Gianduja

Lavazza made some unique coffee drinks

Cyrus with a coffee 

 

Tastes better with a double dose of nutella

Two weeks ago, Cyrus and I went to Turin for the Slow Food Festival.  While we were there, we sampled many regional Italian specialties like wine, cheese, prosciutto and a type of chocolate called Gianduja.  Giaduja was invented in the mid 19th century in Turin when there was a shortage of cocoa beans.  The locals replaced hazelnuts with cocoa beans and Voila!  Gianduja was born! Nutella is a form of gianduja using hazelnuts and cocoa as well as other ingredients such as oil and lots of sugar.  Perhaps it’s the original(commercial) hazelnut spread, but many have surpassed it(my personal fave: Jean-Paul Hevin).   While in Turin I picked one up at a famous local chocolate shop.  It sounded good:  Olive oil, dark chocolate but when I tasted it, I was underwhelmed.  The chocolate is super low quality and there is little if any hazelnut flavour.  I hate to be reminded of my bad choices in chocolate so I was desperate to find a recipe to use this stuff up.  The first thing that popped up online was this super simple recipe that takes about 5 min. to prepare. Here it is:

1 cup nutella

10 tbl. flour

2 eggs

Mix Nutella with eggs until smooth.  Stir in flour until just blended.  Fill muffin tins half way(you should be able to make 12 mini brownies). Bake at 350 for 12 min.

I found 2 sources for this recipe.  I used the first recipe with the hazelnut spread from Turin.  It miscalculated the amount of flour needed and left the brownies in the oven too long.   The result was terrible but it did use up my spread.  Intrigued by the simplicity of the recipe, I bought some Nutella and tried it again.   This time it came out much better although by leaving it in the oven for 15min. rather than the recommended 12, I felt I overbaked them a bit.  To compensate, I put nutella on top as icing.  Not bad!

Here’s the website I got it from:

Three Ingredient EASY Nutella Brownie Bites

A visit to Kallari

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Kallari Chocolate Bars

My favorite part of the trip happened at the end of our tour, when we visited the Kallari cooperative in the the Amazonian rain forest.  The trip began with a long but beautiful ride into the eastern part of the country.  The air got thicker, the roads bumpier and the conversation deeper (it was a 6 hour drive so we discussed chocolate — a lot). I was thrilled to be heading into the heart of cacao country.  According to studies tracing the origins of cacao,  Theobroma cacao is native to exactly where we were heading, the Amazon basin.

Fermentation Bins

 

We were here to visit  a cooperative of indigenous people living in the Napo region of the Amazon called the Kallari cooperative. They harvest, make and market their own chocolate.  The Kallari story is a fascinating one.  It began in 1997 when a group of Quichwa leaders decided to help local farmers to earn more money for their beans.   With the help of  Judy Logback, an environmentalist and volunteer working in the region, they began selling the beans directly while improving on their fermentation and drying techniques.  Several years later, they decided to take it a step further and actually began making their own chocolate.  They asked John Steinberg, one of the founders of Sharfenberger chocolate to help them develop their first prototype bar and the first shipment of bars went out in 2008.

 

Beans drying at the collection centre

To learn more about Kallari’s journey, and the people involved, check out these two articles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/dining/05choc.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.sagemagazine.org/pdf/sage4-1.pdf

 

Tasting the Fresh Bean

Shortly after arriving at our Amazon lodge, we visited the Kallari headquarters to watch a slide show presentation about the cooperative and to taste some chocolate.  Prior to this visit, we had toured the chocolate factory in Quito that manufactures the Kallari bars.  When I  tasted the bars then and I liked them a lot.   The chocolate is mellow and fruity with an excellent mouthfeel that signifies good conching techniques and a high cocoa butter content.

 

The opportunity to see this cooperative in action in the region where the cacao is grown,  really made me feel connected to the chocolate.   As a result, it tasted even better than before.  It just goes to show that the story behind a food is very important in increasing your pleasure of it.

 

Nacional Pods

On the itinerary for the next day was a visit to a traditional family farm.  The Quichwa use a system of agriculture called chakra where different crops are planted alongside each other to promote biodiversity.  Next to cacao plants were medicinal plants, vegetable ivory, and tropical fruits, such as coconuts, and plantains.  I learned that this system is also a way to preserve a traditional way of life that is threatened more and more by the encroaching western culture and economic pressure.  For example, if the Quichwa families didn’t make a secure income from selling their beans, they would probably resort to logging vital Amazonian trees as a way to make money.  This destruction of the forest threatens their environment, and hence, their way of life.

 

On the way to the farm

The very last stop before heading back into Quito (and our farewell dinner) was a tour of the cocoa collection center.  Unlike some of the others we’d seen, this one was clean, well organized and busy.  I saw a lot of pride in the people working here just like I had seen in the workers on the farm and in the office the day before.  It struck me that Kallari could be a really great model for other cooperatives in other cocoa growing regions. Instead of being at the mercy of multi-national companies who force down the price paid to cooperatives for their beans,  the Kallari cooperative retain 100% of their profits from the finished chocolate, the Kallari bars, all of which go directly back to their members.  That is a massive achievement and definitely something to be proud about!

 

At the Cacao Collection centers in Quevedo

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beans drying at collection center

On the 3rd day, we visited several collection centers around Quevedo.  These centers are where farmers in the area drop off their beans and collect their money.  Usually the beans are already fermented and dried, but if the farmer doesn’t have the equipment or wants money quickly, he can drop off the fresh baba.  These collection centers are very convenient for the farmers but leave a lot to be desired in terms of promoting quality beans.

In two of the three collection centers the beans were dried using powerful blowers instead of natural sunlight.   Beans are “blow dried” to hasten the drying process so that it takes 10 hours rather than 4 days.  I asked Steve Devries his opinion regarding this method, and he is convinced that it kills a lot of flavors that come out of drying the beans naturally.

We sampled some beans at random and found that many of them were under fermented as well.  The beans we split open at Samuel’s farm were brown with nice even cracks, while these were mostly purple.  Under fermented beans means the chocolate will taste astringent and will ultimately have to be masked with lots of sugar or vanilla in order for it to be palatable.

Steve pointed out that bean quality is compromised when you mix all the beans from different farms together, because they will have to be roasted to the most common denominator.   The fact that some farmers bring in perfectly fermented beans won’t matter because others might not care as much about the quality of their beans.   This problem is worsened by the fact that collection centers accept both Arriba beans and CCN-51.  We noticed that very little is done to prevent them from mixing once they got past the door.  So, even if your bar of chocolate claims to use only Arriba beans, chances are it’s not.

Probably the biggest issue threatening quality is cleanliness.   I saw animal feces on the floors of the dryers at one (a good argument agains raw chocolate) and at another, there were chickens nesting in an unused fermentation bin.  At one point we saw workers scrambling to clean up an overflowing toilet that threatened to leak on coffee beans  which were laying out on the floor to dry!  Minutes later we watched in amazement as trucks drove over the those coffee beans.   This is just one example of why it’s very important to know where you food comes from!

I felt that the visit to these centers made one thing very clear:  there is really no better way to insure quality and consistency than by working directly with a farmer.

 

Samuel’s Cacao Farm, Quevedo, Ecuador

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On the road to Samuels Farm.

On day 2 of our trip, we had an early breakfast and then caught the bus to Quevedo, a city in the Los Rios region of Ecuador, and one of the top cocoa bean exporting centers in the country.

Samuel in the plantion.

After a long but picturesque 6 hour drive narrated by our excellent guide, Pablo, we arrived at Samuel von Rutte’s farm.  Samuel is a swiss immigrant and former Nestle employee who moved to Ecuador years ago to become a cocoa farmer.    He now has thousands of trees and supplies many local and international chocolate companies with premium quality beans.  He also supplied us with a premium quality meal of  homemade empanadas and chocolate mousse, which we hungrily gobbled up before  taking a walk around the plantation.  Samuel’s trees are purely Arriba Nacional, a type of  forestaro cacao that is indigenous to Ecuador and considered to be a fine flavor bean.   The success of the cocoa industry in Ecuador is linked to the  Arriba cacao because it is said to have a distinctive flavor profile(floral) that can’t be found in the CCN-51, the other and perhaps more common type of bean available in the country.   The demand for Arriba cacao is so high now that  farmers are encouraged to plant them over the CCN-51 even though the latter are easier to grow.   Whether or not the Arriba can still be found in its pure form is another story and I’ll go into that later.

The men on the drying pad.

After our walk we saw Samuel’s fermentation and drying set up.  Samuel has a special technique to ferment the beans.  Instead of dumping all the baba (raw beans with mucilage) into fermentation bins and rotating them over the course of 4 or 5 days, he does something called dry fermentation.  Once the beans are removed from the pod, he spreads them out to dry for several hours.  He then piles them up overnight to allow them to ferment for 2-3 days.  In wet fermentation, it takes days for the enzymes to permeate the husks.  Using Samuel’s technique, the moisture is removed from drying the beans first, which allows the fermentation to start more quickly.    By doing this, the bad-tasting acids that normally stay trapped in the wet process, are eliminated straight away and the chocolate tastes less bitter and astringent.

After our tour, Samuel let us try some of his 100% chocolate and it was amazingly sweet, smooth, and lacked any bitterness at all.  We all bought lots of bars to take home with us.

 

Dry fermentation in progress.

A perfectly fermented bean.

 

 

Opening the cacao pod.

 

 

Beginning a chocolate tour of Ecuador.

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This post is being released out of chronological order.  I will report on what happened in Peru and Bolivia in May and early June soon.  Thanks for your patience.  

(Events from mid June 2012)

I decided to treat myself(as if traveling around the world wasn’t a treat enough)by partaking in a chocolate tour at the end of our trip.  The tour was put on by Ecole Chocolat (http://www.ecolechocolat.com) which is an online school based in Vancouver that offers classes in chocolate making, chocolate manufacturing and chocolate tasting.  I am not a graduate, but I do use their website as a resource for finding ingredients and equipment. I sometimes fantasize about participating in one of their Master Classes which bring students together to the kitchens of highly acclaimed chocolate companies such as Valrhona or Felchlin in order to hone their chocolate making skills.

On perusing their website, I discovered that there was a plantation and factory tour scheduled in Ecuador at the end of June.  Not only did it fit exactly with the dates that we planned to be there, but it was lead by my chocolate hero, Steve DeVries!

Steve Devries is my favorite bean to bar chocolate maker in the United States.   His chocolate is a revelation.  He coaxes out amazing flavors and texture without the use of vanilla, cocoa butter or too much sugar.  During the tour, I discovered that this is a testament to his knowledge of cocoa processing techniques and a love for antique chocolate making equipment, which he insists makes much better chocolate. For those interested, his chocolate will soon be available online only which he ships from his shop in Denver, Colorado (http://www.devrieschocolate.com).

To begin the tour,  our group met in the lobby of Hotel Quito in Ecuador, which would be our hub for the week.   The plan was to take side trips to 3 different regions in Ecuador and then reconvene back in Quito.  There were 12 of us including Ecole Chocolat founder,  Pam Williams and her husband, Daryll, and on this first evening we shared dinner and stories of chocolate at a nearby restaurant.    It was the only time I would be away from my family during the entire 10 month trip and after meeting my new travel companions and fellow chocolate enthusiasts, I was excited to do my my own thing for a week.

The photos below are of some of the participants!

 

Was your Fleur de Sel bar too salty?

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To my customers and Fleur de Sel fans:

SaltIf you’ve tried the Fleur de Sel bar that you purchased at a farmer’s market recently and found it to be super-salty, it’s not because I changed the recipe. It’s because I must have accidentally doubled up on the salt! Please come and see me at the market to exchange your bar for a fresh one. If you’ve already eaten it or given it away as a gift, I’ll still be happy to give you another one. I’ll be at Callingwood Market October 7th and then I’ll be at the City Hall market for the winter season. Sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll be handing out extra treats for your troubles. My apologies, and thanks for your support!

 

Chocophilia bars return to Edmonton tonight.

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Here is some good news for Chocophilia lovers in Edmonton! The long wait is over. Your favorite Chocophilia bars and other Chocophilia products are once again available, fresh and delicious as ever.

The Chocophilia Line

After shutting down the shop in April,  I  approached my sister, Angie, about the possibility of continuing to make the bars herself.  Angie was with me in the kitchen from the very beginning in 2005 when we first developed the bar flavors and started producing them in a downtown condo for our first wholesale customers.   After careful consideration, Angie has decided to carry on the line, but on a smaller scale that better suits her situation (she has two little ones).  We made chocolate together this summer, went over all the key recipes, and I am very certain that she can make all of your favorite Chocophilia products perfectly. Over the last month or so, she has been busy making bars, cocoa nib caviar, hot chocolate and other confections with the goal of  selling them at farmer’s markets around the city.  I am so excited to see Angie grab the baton and run with it!
Sales restart this week!
Angie and your favorite Chocophilia products will be at the Highlands Farmer’s Market(112th Ave and 65th St), TONIGHT, Thursday Sept. 20th

Angie Roos

from 7pm to 9pm and at the Callingwood Farmer’s Market (69th Ave and 178th St.) this Sunday, Sept 23rd from 10am to 3pm.  She will do a repeat appearance the next week: Highlands on Thursday Sept. 27th (7pm to 9pm) and Callingwood on Sunday, October 7th (10am to 3pm).

So where is Kerstin?
Thank you everyone who has been following my global adventures on the blog.  I promise to continue writing and to keep you posted on my chocolate discoveries here in Germany.    Right now I am  very busy settling in and getting adjusted to living abroad.  While I have no plans to begin making chocolate here on a professional basis right now, I hope to perfect the recipes that I’ve collected on my trip around the world for a book that I am writing.  Please stay tuned for more on that!
Thank you all for your unwavering support,
-Kerstin (and Angie)

New look for our blog. What do you think?

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We just upgraded our blog to the latest version of WordPress, and a new template called “Fanwood”. Also added a lightbox feature for photos (just click on a photo and use the arrow keys to see all the pictures in a post). What do you think of the new features? Any requests?

Sapecho, a cacao town in the Alto Beni region of Bolivia.

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For several years Kerstin’s Chocolates has been working with Edmonton-based charity Change for Children that helps fund projects around the world to improve the lives of children. I became interested in them because of the work they do in countries and communities where cacao is grown. Over the years, we’ve donated money and chocolate to support their projects in South American and African countries. I’ve always wanted to get a first hand look at the work they do and when we had the chance to visit Bolivia, I contacted the president of the organization, Lorraine Swift, to see if she could arrange for us to visit. Lorraine connected us with the folks from Fundacion Renance, a grass-roots organization which helps people in several different regions in Bolivia. They work with women, helping them understand their legal rights and teaching them ways to improve nutrition and farming practices. We met Oscar, the founder, and Odalis, one of his colleagues, the day after we arrived in La Paz and made plans to visit the region of Alto Beni later in the week.

There are only two ways to get to the Alto Beni, flying or driving. Deciding against risking the drive down the infamous “death road”, we took instead a small propeller plane from La Paz to Rurrenabaque in the Amazon jungle (La Paz is one of highest cities in the world at an elevation of 3900m above sea level, and “Rurre” is only 200m above sea level, so it is quite a drop). From there we hired a cab to the town of Sapecho in the Alto Beni region, which is about another 6 hours on very bad roads from Rurre. During our hot, bumpy and dusty drive, we had a chance to talk to Odalis at length about the region, its people and the problems that people are having there.

The Alto Beni is Bolivia’s bread basket, the place where most of the country’s fruit grows, including its cacao. The region has seen a lot of changes in the last 40 years. Originally inhabited by tribes such as the Moseten Indians, many migrants arrived in Alto Beni in the 60’s and 70’s from the Altiplano or the highlands of Bolivia after competition for land and resources began to push them out. The new farmers and the indigenous people were given 40 hectares of land each to farm, which they used to plant crops such as mandarins, cacao and bananas. Many farmers concentrated on one or two of these cash crops. They get relatively low prices for all of these crops, and cacao is much harder to grow and process than either bananas or mandarins.

Oscar (who is from Sapecho) noticed a need to educate the farmers on how to grow a bigger variety of crops so they can better feed their families and not become dependent on one crop should it fail one year. Many farmers would grow veggies and fruits to sell at the market or ship up to La Paz, but they did not consume them themselves. Instead they ate processed foods, fried meats and drank sweet sodas. One of the roles of Fundacion Renace is to provide farmers with vegetable seeds so they can grow crops for their own consumption and improve their families nutrition.

Odalis and Oscar now hold regular workshops to teach women how to make nutritious foods using local ingredients. They teach them how to make juices, fruit breads, jams, yogurts, even sausages and chocolate. When we were there, they were teaching women how to cook with pumpkin, a new food for them. Their goal in the next few years is to establish a breakfast program in the far reaches of Alto Beni where families are the poorest and where kids walk long distances to get to school. They want to hire some of the local women which they’ve taught to prepare nutritious foods, to cook a healthy breakfast for the kids. It struck me that Oscar might be the Jamie Oliver of Bolivia!

In her excellent English, Odalis told me about her plans to help the female cacao growers of the Alto Beni. She wants to create a project where women process their own cocoa beans into cocoa liquor and then invent cacao-containing products to sell in local and foreign markets. She is passionate about improving the livelihood of local women by increasing the value of their cocoa beans. Cyrus and I promised to help her find a good cacao roasting machine and cacao grinder to help her accomplish this goal. She already got word from Change for Children that they will fund the purchase of a grinder. We also discussed the possibility that I would eventually purchase some of this cacao paste to make products of my own. Its extremely exciting to finally realize my dream of helping a cocoa growing community gain independence through their cocoa products. It’s better still to find someone equally passionate as Odalis is to share that dream with me.

A voyage across Cuba to find cacao.

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For those of you who have been following my adventures around the world for the last 8 months, you know that I have been to Europe, Africa, Asia and Mexico in search of chocolate knowledge. Despite going to all of these places, I feel like  my holy grail has still eluded me. I had tasted the best chocolate in the world, the most expensive chocolate in the world, the most ancient chocolate in the world and yet I had not found what I was looking for. Until I came to Cuba, that is. My answer has arrived, but not in learning what chocolate is, but rather what it isn’t.

 

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Visiting the CASFA cacao growers in Tapachula, Chiapas

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The day after our tour of the Tapachula chocolate museum, we met Don Rubiel, a representative from CASFA, the biggest cooperative in the area.    Don Rubiel’s job is to make the rounds at the plantations to insure that the farmers are properly fermenting the beans or pruning the trees regularly.   Don Rubiel took us to meet a cacao farmer named David, who showed us around his plantation.  David owns 10 hectares of land, half of which is cacao and the other half, bananas.   It was interesting to see the difference between the two.  The banana plantation was totally uniform, growing exclusively bananas and  in contrast, the cacao plantation was more diverse, mixing cacao trees with fruit trees and flowers.  The trees provided plenty of shade and food to support the local wildlife.  David told us that parrots came to feed on the fruit in the afternoons.  There was even an eagle’s nest nearby.   Here was proof that cacao  plantations help support biodiversity.
After we got our fill (quite literally) of the plantation, we took a long hot drive to the coast to visit another plantation.  This one looked quite similar to David’s, except it had way more mosquitos!  I was really excited to see for the first time, a theobroma bicolor tree.   Bicolor is a relative of theobrama cacao but the seed does not provide anything nearly as tasty as its cousin’s.  Locals do use the fruit to prepare a drink called “pozol” which combines cacao and bicolor with corn.  It’s quite delicious if you ever get a chance to try it.  I recently learned that bicolor might benefit cacao by helping it resist disease.  The ancient Mayans may have grown them next to each other for that purpose.  Amazing!
Although the kids were quite fed up by now with our cocoa explorations, we took another long and bumpy drive to the town of San Jose, where we visited a chocolate factory.  One of the owners, Bernadina Marciel, showed us around.  There was no chocolate  being made that day because the harvest season was still a couple of months away yet it was interesting to see the equipment nevertheless.   Bernadina walked us past the roaster and the winnower,  and straight to the melanger.  We soon found out that the melanger was her domain and it is where she grinds the rough cacao paste into smoother liquor.  Next she took us  to the tempering room, where they mold the chocolate once it is out of the melanger.  Mexican chococlate is never conched, which is why it tastes so gritty.  I suppose this step isn’t necessary if you drink the chocolate like the Mexicans do. Apparently, it also retains more of its beneficial antioxidants if processed this way.
After taking a peak at the roaster and winnower which were  fairly old but looked to be in good condition, we went outside to say goodbye.   I told Bernadina that I was inspired to make chocolate after seeing her operation. I think by seeing a female chocolate maker, I felt less intimidated by the  prospect of making chocolate from the bean.

Visiting Don Isidro’s Cacao Farm in Huehuetan, Chiapas

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A young boy climbs a cacao tree to pick a ripe pod for us!

 

On Saturday we met a cacao farmer down here in Soconusco, Chiapas, named Don Isidro.  He took us to meet his family and have dinner with them.  The day started by meeting him at a highway gas station.  Since we were late, he had been waiting at least an hour in the stifling heat. He was pretty  cool about it though, and invited us to come to his house and farm where he grew cacao.  First we went fishing! Don Isidro wanted to feed us fresh fish, so he took us to a talapia farm where a teenage boy dragged nets across a pond to scoop out fish.  Once we had the fish(it took over an hour to find the boy and to get the right sized fish), we drove to his farm which was located at the very end of a dirt road that led through cacao and mango trees.   Don Isidro grows both of those as well as coffee, which he told us, is his most profitable crop.

He showed us his cacao, which wasn’t ready to harvest yet.  The peak harvest season in Chiapas is June where the pods turn bright yellow and are ready to be cut from the tree.   The pods we saw were still green, although when we tasted them fresh, they were already sweet and delicious.

He then invited us into his house to meet his wife, Herminia and his six children.  It was hard to keep track of all the kids because four of them are girls and seemingly close in age.  Darius made an interesting observation.  He said that if you have 6 kids back home, they make a TV show about it, but here it’s quite normal.  I explained that farmers generally have more kids so they can help around the farm.

After a few glasses of lemonade, Don Isidro showed us where he dried the cacao.  We walked up several flights of stairs to the top floor with the best view.  He preferred to dry the beans there, away from the chickens and the dogs (for obvious reasons), but it was also a pain to bring the beans downstairs every time it rained.  He told us that his wife and daughters did most of the drying work and they also sorted through the beans picking out the bad ones.  He still had some beans from the previous harvest in September and he showed us the difference between well fermented and poorly fermented beans.  The well fermented ones had cracks in them and there was a difference in colour, too, although Cyrus and I couldn’t quite understand what that difference was.  My Spanish is pretty much non existent and Cyrus struggles with the technical terms.

It was getting quite dark now and the kids were bored and hungry.  Luckily dinner was ready.   Herminia cooked us a wonderful fish dinner.  One for each of us!  They declined to join us for dinner because they had friends visiting later and wanted to eat with them.  I felt bad eating my whole fish in front of the family, but I was starving and the fish was delicious and that overrode all sense of propriety.

Once we finished eating, we left fairly quickly.  Everyone was exhausted from the day, including the family who had made such pains to host us.  We were very grateful to Don Isidro and his wife, for being so generous with us and our kids.
 

 

Luis Robledo, from the Salon du Chocolat to Mexico City

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Last week we visited a chocolate shop called Tout Chocolat in the Condessa neighborhood of Mexico City.  It took some work to get there: dragging the kids through the busy Mexico City subway system was no fun, neither was getting turned around several times before getting the map right. We were hot, tired and disgruntled by the time we got to the shop and we made it just before the afternoon rains.


Luis Robledo,  owner and chocolatier extraordinaire was there to greet us as we stumbled into his shop.  Cool, mellow and self-effacing, he instantly made us feel welcome and at ease (Darius later pointed out that Luis shares these characteristics with many other chocolatiers we’ve met).  He seemed genuinely surprised that we made the trek to visit his shop after reading an article about him which counted him as one of the 10 best chocolatiers in North America.  In appreciation he gave us a plate of his favorite chocolates to try.


We, of course,  ravaged them, fighting over the ones that peaked our curiosity such as the lime caramel and the white peach and apricot(the one for which he was now famous).  They were all amazing.  The lime caramel blew me away with its intensity.  The spiced caramel was rich and complex and so was the single origin ganache made with 100% Mexican chocolate.  It was exciting to taste these bold flavors and meltingly smooth ganaches and centers.  His execution was nearly perfect every time.  This is not by accident; Luis Robledo has an impressive CV.  He has worked with Daniel Boulud, Francois Payard and Canada’s own Thomas Haas in New York. He also counts Le Circque and the Four Season’s New York as his past employers.  Little did we know, but we watched him compete for Mexico at the World Chocolate Masters at the Salon du Chocolat in October!

[See the photos that we took of him in Paris at the end of this post.]

Since I was fresh out of chocolate, I needed to stock up for the next little while.  I bought a large box of chocolates (the largest), a couple of bars (he uses Valrhona) and some fruit and nut bark (which ended up being one of my favorites).


These items brought us great pleasure over the next few days in Mexico City.  I might even go so far as to say I had a revelation about chocolate while tasting his spiced caramel bon bon.  But more on that in the next posting…

[Mini Gallery of Photos from the World Chocolate Masters at the 2011 Salon du Chocolat in Paris]

Mexico City Treats

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Churreria “El Morro”

The first thing we did when we got to Mexico City was go for churros and hot chocolate. Mexico City is crowded and hectic and I couldn’t face it without some ammunition.

El Moro is an old school Churreria that’s been around since 1934. The atmosphere is no nonsense cafeteria style with good cheap eats. The restaurant is large, with at least 50 tables that were all full when we got there at four in the afternoon.

We found a table and ordered off a board that gave us four choices of hot chocolate, each accompanied by 4 churros. The choices were, Especial(bitter with cinnamon), Frances(vanilla), Espanol(sweet and thick), Mexicano(with water and vanilla). Since there were four of us, we ordered all of them. They came fairly quickly with a family sized plate piled high with churros. I tried the hot chocolates first and they were all yummy, although the Spanish one was a bit too sweet. The “especial” was my favorite, which was good for me since it was the one I had ordered. The real winner, however, were the churros. Freshly made and piping hot, they were sweet and crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. The sweetness of the hot chocolate was perfectly balanced by the not too sweet churros center. It was a heavenly combination that fortified me to venture out amongst the masses.

 

 

 

The end of a chapter, but not of the story…

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Dear Customers,
As you probably know, Kerstin’s Chocolates has been bringing great chocolate to Edmonton for the last 8 years, and I would like to thank you, our loyal customers, for your support.  I began my journey offering specialty chocolate through chocolate education workshops in 2004 and then began manufacturing my own brand of bars, called Chocophilia which were sold in specialty shops in Edmonton and around western Canada.  In 2008 I began selling them along with other specialty chocolates in my downtown shop on 112th st.  It has been an exciting ride in which I learned many things and met many wonderful people, but the time has come for me to begin a new chocolate adventure.

It is with a sad heart that I must tell you that Kerstin’s Chocolates will be closing its retail shop on April 14th, 2012.  There are several reasons why I had to make this decision.  The first one is that due to family circumstances, I will be moving to Germany in September. The second reason is that although I enjoyed many aspects of owning a retail store, I don’t feel it fully expresses my potential as a chocolatier.  As my family and I travel around the world this year visiting plantations and chocolate makers, I have been learning more about the sources of great chocolate and the complex web of relationships that exist around chocolate. I hope that I find new ways of using chocolate to make a greater impact on the quality of people’s lives.  There are many impoverished cocoa growing regions out there where there is a potential to develop sustainably through cacao.

I feel that this is not the end of Kerstin’s Chocolates but the beginning of a new journey.  I hope that you will continue to support us as we grow and evolve. Please stay tuned for updates on our web site.

Yours truly,

Kerstin

Closing Sale

Beginning Tuesday, March 13th, we will be discounting items throughout the shop by 15-40%. Stop by the shop to find out what’s on sale and  follow us on Twitter and Facebook for daily specials. Our final day at the shop will be Saturday, April 14th. *Please note that discounts do not apply to Easter items.*

The Tokyo Salon du Chocolat

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It’s been 8 years since I was in Japan last and have been enjoying every minute since our arrival 2 weeks ago(hence the long pause in blog postings). One of the things I was really looking forward to was getting at some good chocolate in Tokyo. All my European favorites are here including Hevin, Marcolini, and Bonnat and I planned to see them all at the Tokyo Salon du Chocolat.

I slowly made my way to the Isetan department store in Shinjuku, which has been hosting the salon for the last 10 years. I was excited to walk around a bit by myself, without kids, and husband and luggage and I breathed in the atmosphere of one of the busiest and brightest districts of Tokyo. When I couldn’t control my curiosity anymore, I took the elevator up to the 6th floor of Isetan and stepped into the overheated and crowded exhibition hall.

The first thing I noticed that was different from the Paris salon was the lack of space; every booth was crammed next to the other. The second thing I noticed was the lack of samples! That was one of the best things about the Paris salon. The third thing I noticed, which may be tied to the second thing, was that the prices were outrageously high. The average price for a assorted box of about 10 chocolates was a whopping $50!!!! That’s $5.00 per chocolate. The prices scared me so much that I bought only a few gifts for friends, and nothing for myself(ok maybe a couple of things).

I took great interest in watching the buying habits of the Japanese and what they were interested in. The Japanese are very savvy about food and they know and love chocolate. Many MOF’s(meilleur ouvrier de France) were present at the salon and people were gobbling it up. Most chocolatiers were French but brands from Switzerland, the U.K and the U.S. were also present. Popular items included chocolate bark in various flavors, cute, animal shaped chocolates, and beautiful hand-decorated chocolates in extravagant boxes. The Japanese are really conscious about presentation and aesthetics, so packaging is as important as the product itself. One could say the chocolate here is over packaged, they are often wrapped individually or presented in such a way that they don’t touch each other. I guess if you are paying $5.00 per chocolate you want them to be spotless when you pop them in your mouth.

I decided to escape the mob and take a hot chocolate break at Jean Paul Hevin cafe. I chose the yuzu(a type of Japanese citrus fruit) hot chocolate for $12.00. It was rich, hot and not too sweet. The yuzu was concentrated on top so you would get a whiff of it’s aroma as you drank it but it didn’t overpower the drink. I was happy to be in the land of chocolate again. If the Tokyo Salon was a bit disappointing, my cup of hot chocolate was decidedly not.

 

Marou Chocolate, bean to bar in Ho Chi Minh City

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(After visiting Hoi An and Nha Trang, we headed back to Saigon for our final first true cacao encounter in Asia)

Back in October we were contacted by Samuel Maruta, a chocolate maker in Vietnam, who had seen our blog. He had invited us to visit his operation in Saigon. Over e-mail we were able to able to arrange a meeting for our last day in Vietnam with the only artisanal bean to bar chocolate maker in the country.

Samuel picked us up at our hotel early in the morning and took us out for breakfast. He told us about how he and his business partner had come together to create their company, Marou Chocolate. Like many chocolatiers, they came from non-culinary backgrounds. Samuel worked in international finance for many years, and was living and working in Vietnam when he decided to take a year off work and learn Vietnamese. During this year off he happened to learn about the local cacao business, and decided that making chocolate would be a unique venture that he could attempt. His friend Vincent was also looking for something new to do, and happened also to be fascinated by cacao.  They brainstormed for a while, and then everything fell into place.

The first thing they did was buy 2 kg of cacao beans from a farmer on the outskirts of Saigon and made some preliminary experiments roasting, winnowing and grinding them.    To their surprise, they loved the taste of the chocolate! They went deeper into the Mekong Delta, found more beans, and made more chocolate. They discovered that the regions around Saigon were producing very different beans, and each chocolate was reflecting the terroir it was grown.  

Confident that they could make a go of it, they found some financial backers and started to build up their operation quickly. They rented the small bay that we visited, in an industrial building on the outskirts of town, bought some classic equipment, and began to make large batches of bars.

After breakfast, Samuel drove us out to his factory and gave us a tour.  We started with the roaster, which was a big old machine that he and Vincent had shipped from Europe.  There were still some freshly roasted beans inside which we tried. They were dark and flavorful.

Next, Samuel let us try the chocolate straight from the conching machine. It was delicious.  There’s nothing quite like freshly roasted and freshly ground chocolate.  We continued on to the tempering room where the bars are made. He showed us how quickly the machine can temper a batch(approximately 20min) and then we had a mini tasting of all 4 kinds of bars. All of them came from different provinces in Vietnam and they were all distinctive. One fruity, one spicy, one earthy.  Samuel explained that he wanted to produce something beautiful that was distinctively Vietnamese and I believe he did it with these bars. So far they are only selling the bars around Saigon, but they hope to begin exporting them out of Vietnam soon.

After the factory visit, we drove back to Ho Chi Minh to have lunch with Samuel and his family.  Our kids really hit it off with his kids, and we discovered that Samuel’s wife, Sam, had gone to school with Cyrus back in 1982. You can read more about this on the Marou Chocolate blog.

All in all we had a fantastic time with Samuel and the folks at Marou chocolate. We can’t wait to get back to Vietnam and experience more of the culture that this great country has to offer.

Chocolate in Hoi An

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It’s been a while since I’ve had chocolate and the bar of Beschle 64% with pistachios and salt that I purchased in Singapore was polished off weeks ago. I am in Hoi An, a picturesque but touristy town in central Vietnam which for hundreds of years served as a major port to Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese traders. Not surprisingly, the food here is delicious. As a former French colony, Vietnam also has many patisseries and one such place is Cargo, which I recon is one of the best in Hoi An. Darius and I go there to indulge our sweet tooth and judging by the gorgeous cakes on display behind the glass case, we will not be disappointed.

We order the two best looking(or biggest) items, the double chocolate cake and the passion fruit mousse cake. My Latte comes out first, and it arrives with a square of chocolate. I’m excited to see that it is a single origin chocolate from Vietnam. When I try it, I discover that it’s good, well balanced and fruity. It’s exciting to see locally made chocolate in a world dominated by Cadbury and Nestlé.
We try the cakes and they are delicious too! Now I want to meet the pastry chef who has the know how to put single origin chocolate on the menu and make excellent desserts. When I do the next day, the chef tells me that they use the same brand of chocolate in their desserts as the square I had, but the bean origin is different. On the web I find out that the brand, called Grand Place is a Belgium company that has subsidiaries in Vietnam and Japan. They mostly source beans from Africa but have recently begun making this single origin chocolate from Vietnam. I contact them to see if I could visit them in Ho Chi Minh since we are flying out from there. Really I want to do a tour of the plantations but unfortunately, we haven’t given ourselves enough time to go back to the Mekong Delta.

When I get to HCMC the following week, I meet with Yung, a nice salesman who tells me that Grand Place is the biggest chocolate company in Vietnam and supplies chocolate to much of Asia too. He gives me some samples to take home but seems a bit confused as to why I am there since I don’t want to buy chocolate. I am beginning to wonder that myself and when he tells me that they do tours of the plantation and factory for customers, I realize that’s where I really want to be.
It’s easy to lose focus when you are travelling. You think you have to see and do everything of interest and pretty soon you are as busy as you were at home. I have forgotten that by narrowing our focus on cacao, we also hone in on a very specific culture of farmers and the artisans, that could provide me with understanding that is more meaningful than what we might glimpse on the tourist trail.

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