Video Recipe for Caramelized Dark Chocolate Hazelnuts
A delicious recipe for Caramelized Dark Chocolate Hazelnuts.
Created by Saratoga Chocolates, and filmed for the TASTEABLE CALIFORNIA television series.
Food TV Celeb Alton Brown & PopSci on Tour
Food Network Superstar and TASTE HALL OF FAME‘s Alton Brown has a new tour, and part of it is based on food and science.
Alton Brown’s first food hack (he prefers the term “hacking” over “inventing”) took place during season one of his Food Network show Good Eats, when he made a fish smoker out of a cardboard box. Naturally, since then he can count the staff of Popular Science Magazine a part of his large and loyal fan base.
He invited PopSci to his secret workshop, where they made carbonated chocolate ice cream in 10 seconds, used lights to cook a pizza in three minutes, and answered a few questions about his favorite hacks, affirming that everyone’s home has a lab (the kitchen!), and why it’s a good idea to take apart the lawnmower.
Mega Bake
If you’ve ever played with an EZ-Bake Oven, you’re familiar with the concept of cooking with the heat produced by a light. Alton’s Mega Bake takes the concept to a whole new level, using 54 one-thousand-watt lights to get the oven to over 600 degrees.
Brown used it on the Edible Inevitable tour to make pizzas in under three minutes, and showed us how he does it.
For more related to this topic, here are a few of our picks:
Why we love Guittard’s EPIQUE 70% Chocolate Bar
One of our favorite new dark chocolate bars is not from a young upstart artisan bean-to-bar maker, but from a traditional and historic bar maker with a new product line.
Guittard’s new 70% cacao EPIQUE Blend No. 49 bar is squarely in our “can’t stop eating” list. With chic packaging and color schemes, as well as an included description that this bittersweet chocolate bar has “dried red fruit notes and anise end notes,” the EPIQUE sounds almost like a wine varietal. This particular chocolate varietal includes Forastero, Trinitario, Criollo.
As such an esteemed vintage, it is also a bit more expensive than its E. Guittard predecessors, but well worth it.
Weighing in at 70% cacao, EPIQUE lacks the slightly bitter notes that one could expect in a dark bar over 68%. In addition, a creamy and delicious texture places this product in the “addictive even to non-dark chocolate lovers” category.
It is not an inexpensive snack, but at a $5-$6 price point this still comes in at the lower end of the premium artisan bar scale as far as cost, especially when considering so many artisan bars are now on the shelves at $10-$15.
We have long been fans of the Guittard product line and family, and even included their history in our bestselling book, FRENCH CHOCOLATE (also known as Chocolate FRENCH).
It could be argued that with EPIQUE, Guittard is using this product to appeal to a more costly market while not alienating its current customers. If that is true, then bravo on a job well done! Either way, we love the end result.
Four Top Caramels you have to Taste
If you have love caramels, then you have to try these four Gold Medal award-winning selections from the 2015 International Chocolate Salon’s Artisan Chocolate Awards.
Luxx Chocolat Bees Knees: Caramel and ganache infused with honey and Jack Daniels Honey Whisky, 1800 Resposado Agave Tequila and fresh organic apple cider. A dash of fennel citrus sea salt.
GOLD: Best Exterior Design, Most Unique, Best Overall Chocolate Artistry
Luxx Chocolat CinnaFig: 72% dark chocolate (Venezuelan). 2 layers, one made with creamy cinnamon caramel with Black Mission figs and the other, a ganache made with mascarpone and goat cheese.
GOLD: Best Exterior Design, Best Ingredient Combinations, Best Overall Chocolate Artistry
Phillip Ashley Chocolates Chelonii™ – salted caramel pecan praline
GOLD: Best Taste
ChocolaTas Milk chocolate covered salted caramels. Smooth creamy caramel in milk chocolate, with a sprinkle of fleur du sel.
GOLD: Best Packaging
Series – Land of the Chocolate Giants Part 2
Courtesy of TasteTV
Creating compelling images using food is not new, but it is a growing trend in the world of the art.
Profile here are excerpts from TasteTV’s new photo-miniature series — soon to be a web video series, entitled “Land of the Chocolate Giants.” The entire series will be unveiled in late 2014 by TCB Cafe Publishing and TasteTV.
The chocolate included in the photo above comes from Toffee Talk
