Aroa Fine Chocolate – Thanks and We’ll Miss You

And the phone call came in – “David we are no longer in business” said friend and Executive Pastry Chef Tim Brown. I am still sad over a month later not just for Tim who gave that business everything but as new as our business is, Aroa played a major part in where and why I started Boston Chocolate Tours.

Aroa for those of you not lucky enough to have enjoyed some of their fine Venezuelan chocolate was in the South End, on Washington Street, not far from Flour Bakery. It was a European style café where we started our South End Chocolate tour in front of the 16 framed photographs showing every step of the chocolate process, from pod harvesting to shipping preparations. It had an open kitchen that would allow guests to see and smell the chocolate as it would go through the enrobing and be stirred in the tempering machines. And oh yeah, the chocolate was amazing, El Ray owned it but Tim Brown’s passion brought it to life.

The South End Boston Chocolate tour is a great tour with more chocolate than we can include in one tour but Aroa was special and I will always be thankful for the welcoming that the Boston Chocolate Tour guests and for helping us start the tours and our company on the right note.

The Boston Chocolate Tour – From the Beginning

People ask me all the time: Why the Boston Chocolate Tour and why now? Here’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

A few years ago I took the New York Chocolate Tour with a great guide named Bert. I went with my 14 year old daughter as a way to bond with her before she left for camp for the summer. We had a great time, had some great chocolate and learned a lot. Chocolate was hot, literally and my daughter was hooked. It wasn’t the first culinary tour I had taken, but it was the best. Past tours included the Brooklyn Pizza Tour (with my wife and son), a North Beach and Chinatown tour in San Francisco (with my other daughter). I think you get the picture. Personally, I had found something that I personally loved to do – Walking through neighborhoods, tasting and learning and once chocolate was added, I was sold.

In the summer of 2009, I did my first Groupon, for the Boston Ghost Cruise. It was extremely successful and on that same day, a Chicago Groupon featured a chocolate tour with similar success. I knew that day in July, I would do a Boston Chocolate Tour and Groupon agreed to help me launch in the fall of 2009. My journey continued with another New York tour with Bert, a fantastic chocolate tour in Seattle with Michel, a Seattle Foodie tour, a San Francisco Chocolate Tour and the SF Chocolate Festival.

More to tell about the chocolate workshop and chocolate team building but that as they say, is a blog for another day. Come join us on a Boston Chocolate Tour. You’ll be happy you did.

The FANtastic Facebook Chocolate Workshop Contest

Ready to win a delicious and delectable chocolate workshop for you and a guest.  Every Saturday at 1:00PM plus a Special Mother’s Day Workshop on Sunday May 9^th, hundreds of chocolate truffles are being made in the private dining room of the Elephant & Castle Restaurant coordinated by our professional chocolatier.  The winner will learn more about chocolate and walk away with 30 – 50 homemade truffles to share or not.   Your guest will have their own stash.

How do you play?

Suggest our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/tasteofchocolate to your friends, colleagues, family and anyone who you think would like to be a fan.  On Friday at 4:00PM, send david@tasteofchocolate.com a list of people who became a fan  because of you and the person who is responsible for the most new fans, wins a workshop for you and probably one of your fans.  The hard part will be to choose just one!

Notes:  We have printed out the list of our current fans and only new fans will be counted.

Good luck!

Chocolate books to help you advance your chocolate making skills

One of the more common questions I receive during class is “what books on chocolate would you recommend for the beginner?” Ten years ago I would have struggled with this question. There just weren’t many books, good or bad, available for the home chocolate maker. However, with the growing appreciation of artisan chocolates it has become much easier to find a flurry of good fantastic books.

While I have professional training as a chef, I do not have a formal education in chocolate. My route to chocolate making was through a stint as an assistant pastry chef. Molded chocolates were on the menu and so the pastry chef gave me my first lesson in the art of chocolate making. From there I turned to books to refine what I had learned and to build new skills. As my chocolate knowledge grew so did my chocolate library. I often peruse my favorite books looking for technical advice (how do you fix a broken ganache?), inspiration (what new finishing techniques are people using) and new flavor combinations (my newest find is absinthe chocolates). So, without further delay here are my top 3 chocolate book recommendations for the beginner:

Chocolate Obsession by Michael Recchiuti & Fran Gage: Chocolate Obsession is filled with recipes for both chocolates and chocolate desserts. While this book is light on the number of chocolate candy recipes (about 20) the majority of the recipes are unique in flavor and can be used to make truffles, which gives you the option to coat your chocolates in something other than tempered chocolate.

The Art of Chocolate by Elaine Gonzalez – The Art of Chocolate is for the person who is serious about chocolate making and wants a good guide on getting started. Many tools of the trade are explained and there is a through section on tempering. There are lots of images that fully explain more advanced techniques and the book goes beyond making chocolates to using chocolate to make beautiful decorations like leaves, bows and chocolate bowls and boxes.

The Chocolate Bible by Christain Teubner – This book is filled with recipes for chocolates, cakes, petit fours and more with the majority of the recipes having a visual step-by-step guide perfect for the beginner. This was one of my first chocolate books and proved invaluable in learning more advanced techniques.

Valerie Conyngham teaches Taste of Chocolate’s Chocolate Truffle Making workshop. She is a self-proclaimed chocolatier and is currently satisfying the chocolate cravings of her individual and corporate client base.

See us at the The Boston Wine Expo January 23 & 24th

Taste of Chocolate will be partnering with Aroa Fine Chocolate at the expo and offering samples of their finest chocolate and discounts to our tours and workshops.  Visit us in Booth #273 and find out more about Boston’s Sweetest new company, our Boston Chocolate Tour, the Chocolate Workshop, Chocolate Team Building Alliance, Chocolate Tastings and Chocolate Scavenger Hunts.  Wine and Chocolate – the perfect pairing – see you there!