Cacao: My love affair with Chocolate continues

Hand crafted premium chocolates, pastries and more (including those addictive European Macaroons). What's not to love? If you're a choco-phile, like myself, there is nothing better than a simple espresso laced dark chocolate truffle, rolled in cocao powder, and because Cacao makes these in small batches by hand, you won't find any fresher. They use 100% cocao butter for a truly rich experience.

Truffles can be purchased in several gift box options and the prices are very reasonable. It's the perfect house gift when you don't want to bring the obligatory bottle of wine and better still, you can pick up something for your own selfish indulgences!


Cacao Fine European Chocolates
7129 Bethesda Ln
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 215-6945

Chocolate Indulgence

There’s great stuff going on in the Chocolate world these days. Artisan chocolate companies are popping up all over the country like mushrooms in spring.

In Columbia, Missouri, Alan McClure is producing an amazing product. Alan is the owner and solitary force behind Patric Chocolates (Yes, there is no “k” at the end. No, I don’t know why). Alan produces micro-batch chocolates from scratch, by hand, doing all the work himself from start to finish. He offers two varieties of chocolate bar. The first is a 70% dark chocolate bar, and the second being a 67% dark chocolate bar, the later slightly mellowed by cacao butter that Alan also makes himself from scratch by hand, culled from raw cacao beans.

The first bar has only two ingredients, chocolate and sugar; the second, chocolate sugar and cacao butter. As quoted in a recent article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch “If you have to add vanilla, the quality of the cacao you're using isn't good enough to begin with."

He has elevated the simple chocolate bar to highest level of culinary delights. The flavor of his product is almost indescribable. It’s as if you are tasting chocolate for the first time. Like a great glass of wine, the experience floods you with the flavors and aromas of citrus, chicory, berries, spice and more. You can purchase his products on the internet and they are well worth the investment.

www.patric-chocolate.com

Vosges Haut Chocolat

Looking for a unique experience? May I recommend Mo’s Bacon Bar by Vosges Haut Chocolat? Yes, that’s right: Chocolate Bacon Bar. In fact… if you have not tried any of Vosges' Exotic Chocolates yet, you should drop what you are doing right now and run to your nearest
Whole Foods Market or, for those of you with no access to Whole Foods, go online and order anything this treasure of a company has to offer. But back to bacon… applewood smoked bacon bits are laced inside a 41% Cacao deep milk chocolate bar with alder smoked salt to complement.

Strange?
Yes.

Delicious?
Absolutely.

Vosges Haut Chocolat