Piece, Love, & Chocolate

I was in Boulder, CO recently for a conference, and while there I found what I think is my favorite chocolate shop I've been to yet. It's the closest I've seen to what I would want if I finally gave up on grad school and opened my own chocolate shop:

Piece, Love, & Chocolate

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on me, and they don't seem to have any photos of the shop on their website. Which is a shame, because it's quite lovely. Probably a little more hippie than I would lean with the decoration, but it is Boulder. But it had loads more personality than most chocolate shops I've been in!

Then, of course, there was the chocolate. There's a counter with an array of pastries as well as a long line of truffles, a revolving cake display, and a menu of chocolate beverages. Then opposite the counter is the retail area - in the back, they have their own line of chocolate bars (with real examples of each framed on the wall, which was a cute touch), and next to that a wall covered in an array of truly high-end chocolate bars, probably the best collection I've ever seen. You won't find any Ghirardelli here - I don't think I even saw the higher-end grocery store brands like Scharffen Berger or Green & Black. Start with Vosges and Valrhona, then work your way up in price from there. The selection was dizzying!

Along the next wall you'll find even better goodies for the hobby chocolatier - an array of couverture discs, cocoa nibs, cocoa butter, cocoa powder, etc, in bulk baggies. Not things you find in most chocolate shops I've been to! Next to that, some savory chocolate items, such as chocolate pasta or cocoa-infused olive oil. On the floor between all this are shelves piled high with a variety of packaged tasties both from the shop's own brand and other small chocolatiers.

The truffle selection in the counter display was lovely. So many independent chocolate shops I go to have a huge selection, but it's the same 150 things you find everywhere. Worse yet, much of it looks mass-produced and possibly even made with "candy coating"instead of real chocolate. Not so here. They have a lineup of a few dozen flavors, and it's clear that each one was made in small batches with attention to detail. They do sell a few other companies' products here, but most are made in-house. And the flavors range from the expected to the hard-to-find, such as Blood Orange or Bakhti Chai.

Sadly, we didn't try any of the truffles. We'd just finished dinner and decided to focus our limited stomach space on the pastries. My husband got a slice of their huge chocolate layer cake, while I got a caramel and sea salt "cookie torte" - two chocolate cookies dipped in ganache, with a layer of caramel mousse in between. We also each got a mug of sipping chocolate; mine with cinnamon, his with mint.

I had seen a package of the sipping chocolate for sale, so I knew it was 85%, but apparently this fact didn't make an impression until after I'd tasted it. It really is 85% dark! I'm more of a 70% girl myself, so I put a couple packets of sugar in mine - if you can do that to coffee, you can totally do it to hot chocolate, right? (The cinnamon probably added a bit of extra bitterness.) It was incredibly thick and rich, though, even more than I was expecting. We brought leftovers home in travel cups and the next day it was just as good, if not better, eaten with a spoon after it had thickened in the fridge.

The cake was great. The mousse layer was also a smidge less sweet than I was expecting from it, but still delicious. The cake itself was dense, and the frosting was thick and fudgy. But I have to say that my cookie torte was my favorite. The caramel and sea salt mousse was amazing (and, in fact, I found that I liked it mixed with the thickened sipping chocolate...), and there was just the right amount of it to smear on the cookies without overwhelming them.

So basically: These people are serious about dark chocolate. More than you might be expecting when you place an order, but that's not a bad thing. Just a surprise!

One last touch that my husband and I loved (in fact, he just came and reminded me that I had to mention it - like I would forget a thing like this): For $20, you can buy a huge three-dimensional chocolate (about 10" long and 5" diameter) molded into the shape of a cocoa bean. There are a million things in here to buy for a chocolate-loving friend, but that might be the ultimate chocoholic gift.

I am so excited to have found this place, and I'll be making a beeline the next time I'm up in Boulder. In fact, given our family's biannual trips to Denver, I may have to find my way up to Boulder just to come back! I just hope that next time I come with an emptier stomach and plenty of spending money.

(I'll be sure to bring a camera next time, too...)

Cream Puffs: In Which Alice Medrich Continues Her Reign as Chocolate Goddess

As I've mentioned before, Alice Medrich's Bittersweet is my personal chocolate bible.

I recently bought another book of hers, Chocolate Holidays: Unforgettable Desserts for Every Season, which is the paperback form of A Year Spent in Chocolate. I'll save a full review for after I've tried a couple more recipes, but I will say that if "Chocolate cream puffs with spun sugar" is any indication, my faith in Ms Medrich is well-placed.

I've never made cream puffs or puff pastry of any sort before. The only time I've seen them attempted was when a friend in college, who was born in France, tried to make some from an original French cookbook and failed miserably. I hope she's since found a recipe as easy and detailed as this one! As usual, the dense recipe text leaves nothing to chance, and my puffs puffed up in lovely fashion.

The chocolate custard filling was exactly what I expect from a Medrich recipe. It did an amazing job of highlighting the flavor of the chocolate I used (my standby Ghirardelli 60% chips) rather than overwhelming it in egg flavor. It was also surprisingly rich for having no cream or butter in the recipe - in fact, I used a mix of skim and 2% milk rather than whole! I think you could easily make it with all-skim and be perfectly happy with the results.

Happily, my camera is working again (it's been broken since Christmas, hence the lack of photos in recent entries). Here is a shot of the filled puffs, with custard oozing out of their little holes:



I was making these to bring to school to pass out, so I skipped the caramel glaze and spun sugar meant to turn the puffs into a croquembouche and dipped the tops in a simple ganache. Although made with the same chocolate, the ganache and the custard had distinctly different flavors, which was a nice contrast. Here are the final, dipped puffs:



Overall, these were a huge success! And if you thought people were impressed by homemade cheesecake (which they always are), wait til you hand them a cream puff!