Recipe: Seedless Raspberry Chocolate Ganache

This dark chocolate ganache is bursting with raspberry flavour and can be enjoyed two ways:

1. Pour it on a cake as a topping to replace a sugary icing.
2. Make balls or squares of ganache and roll it in cocoa powder for a blast of chocolate truffle bursting with raspberry flavour. Or, if you have the skills, you can dip it in tempered chocolate and make your own chocolate truffles.

Recipe: Seedless Raspberry Dark Chocolate Ganache

You need:

• 1/2 cup of raspberry jam (seedless is great, but if you just have the regular, you can sift out the seeds [see below])
• 6 ounces of semi-sweet dark chocolate (I used Camino 56% Organic and Fair Trade couverture, but you can use a Lindt 300g semi-sweet dark chocolate bar, or dark chocolate Callebaut chips or another brand from a bulk food store, or even the large Belgian dark chocolate baking bar from Walmart)

Instructions:

1. Chop your chocolate into 1" cubes and place in a heat-proof bowl.
2. If your raspberry jam has seeds in it, warm it in the microwave for 45 seconds. Then pour it through a sifter over the bowl of chocolate. Stir the jam in the sifter and press it down with spoon to squeeze as much jam through as possible.  Discard the seeds.
3. Stir the mixture a few times and then place in the microwave for 1 minute on half power, and then stir until smooth.  Alternately place over a double boiler and melt, stirring constantly until smooth. Then immediately do one of the following...

To ice a chocolate cake:

1. Immediately pour the mixture over the cake and spread it to the edges.  Let it drip down the sides a bit, if you wish.  Chill the cake until it sets (thickens).

To make raspberry truffles:

1. If you are making truffles, prepare a small 8" loaf pan or  small 5" square plastic container by lining it with plastic wrap to cover the bottom and up the sides about 1". Pour the warm mixture into the pan, then immediately cover with plastic wrap.  Let set on counter overnight, or in the fridge for 4 hours.
2. Remove the truffle mix from the refrigerator and take the top plastic wrap off.  By holding the edges of the lower plastic wrap, lift it out of your loaf container and place on the counter. Using a sharp knife, cut 3/4" squares of the mixture. Separate and roll these in a small dish of cocoa powder or dip in tempered chocolate (for tempering instructions, click here).
3. To serve, place each truffle in a mini cupcake paper and cover with plastic wrap until ready to eat. Or layer on waxed paper and freeze to eat at a later date.

Tips:

• If you roll your truffles in cocoa powder, be sure to seal them in an airtight container right away or a crisp outer edge will develop. 

• If you are dipping the ganache in chocolate, be sure these are fairly cool, or they will be difficult to pick up with your dipping fork.  But with all ganaches that have been cooled in the refrigerator, you will have to be conscious of cracking (in other words, you may have to double dip these!).

• If you have a silicone ganache mould or silicone ice cube tray, pour your warm ganache into each mould and then freeze - you can then use a spatula or knife to help pop these out onto some waxed paper. That's how I did it - see the picture on the right for an example!

• I put this ganache on a delicious flourless chocolate cake (see the picture below). Check out where I got the cake recipe from in the next blog post.

East Van Roasters: Simple Ingredients, Complex Flavour, Positive Mission.

East Van Roasters is a relatively new, socially responsible bean-to-bar chocolate maker in Vancouver.  They do not sell online, and since I am on a mission to taste all of Canada's bean-to-bar chocolate, I was excited to get my hands on a few of their chocolate bars.

The Canadian bean-to-bar, craft chocolate movement is very new and several of our chocolate makers are still producing rough-textured chocolate, as they get settled and work towards funding better equipment. However, many do make very smooth chocolate (see photo on the right of some great Canadian chocolate makers) and East Van Roasters is certainly one of those.

When I last checked, this not-for-profit chocolate maker was removing the cocoa bean shells by hand, so I was expecting a rougher textured product. I was surprised and delighted when, upon tasting it, the texture was very smooth and full of cocoa buttery goodness. In fact, I liked it so much, I brought it to a tasting session with CBC Radio's Up North afternoon show.

I tasted two of East Van Roasters origin chocolate bars: the Dominican Republic 70% Dark Chocolate Bar (batch: DR115) and the Peru 70% bar (batch P125).  The Peru bar was full of those bold, acidic flavours that I associate with most Peruvian chocolate. The Dominican Republic Bar was fruity and had a hint of citrus-orange flavour. Both were delicious and excellent quality for bean-to-bar, origin chocolate.

They sell bean-to-bar chocolate and coffee roasted on site, and they also sell couverture wholesale to local chefs and businesses. You can find a list of retailers in BC on East Van Roasters website.

What's most interesting about East Van Roasters is their mission: to benefit the women residents of the Rainier Hotel (social housing for addicted and mentally ill women) by providing training and employment. There was a good article published in the September 2013 issue of the Globe and Mail that discusses the good things accomplished by East Van Roasters, read it online here.

East Van Roasters is closed for repairs until January 13th, but definitely will reopen, which is great because I am looking forward to getting my hands on more of their chocolate!

Here are the package details from the chocolate that I wrote about here:

Dominican Republic Dark Chocolate Bar 70%, 50g (Batch DR115)
East Van Roasters
www.eastvanroasters.com
Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar, organic cacao butter.

Peru Dark Chocolate Bar 70%, 50g (Batch P125)
East Van Roasters
www.eastvanroasters.com
Ingredients: Organic cacao beans, organic cane sugar, organic cacao butter.

Price:
These chocolate bars cost $6.49 each in early December (2014) at La Tablette de Miss Choco in Montreal (plus shipping with online purchase).

Whether Jamaican Chocolate or Peruvian Chocolate I love it all, but these origin chocolate bars are exceptional

Soma Chocolatemaker is certainly one of Canada's most dynamic craft, bean-to-bar chocolate makers. Their product offerings change regularly, which accommodates the chocolate aficionado's need to regularly try new origin-based chocolates. I certainly never get bored on any visit to Soma's two locations in Toronto, or on a visit to their product catalogue on www.somachocolate.com.

In November and December, I held two chocolate tasting workshops that included some of Soma's newer creations. In any tasting workshop, I like to discuss chocolate made from a range of cocoa origins, as well as a chocolate made from different types of cacao (i.e. Criollo, Trinitario, Nacional, etc.). The two bars that I am reviewing today perfectly fit that range. So let's get started...

Soma Peru: Nacional 70%: DNA tests were performed on the Peruvian beans used to make this chocolate bar to be sure it was pure Nacional bean type, the same as the now-famous Ecuadorian Nacional fine-flavour bean. The chocolate bar was as perfectly smooth as Soma's always is. It had a classic chocolate smell, and a sweet and slightly fruity taste. What's more, it offered a beautiful lingering aftertaste of roasted cocoa bean, and a very slight smoke flavour in the breath.

Soma Microbatch Black Science 'Bachelor's Hall' Jamaica 70% is spicy and sweet like berries, with a smoothness on the palette that leaves a lingering honey flavour. In fact, its oh-so-smoothness shows that just the right amount of cocoa butter was added to enhance that honey taste. There is very little acidity, although it is still noticeably there. This chocolate bar is a good neutral one for those who do not like bold or harsh origin flavours.

Soma says they 'wanted to honor the cultural connection between Jamaica and Toronto for many years' (ref: Soma packaging) and in 2014 they finally received an interesting sample of Trinitario cacao from a plantation in St. Thomas Parish. The resulting chocolate bar was well worth the wait.

So what's next?  On January 3rd of this new year, Soma tweeted that they have gotten their hands on some coveted Venezuelan Porcelana beans (http://t.co/GLiCVOQ39R). I am definitely looking forward to their next creation!

Here are the key package details from the chocolate that I wrote about today:

Microbatch Black Science 'Bachelor's Hall' Jamaica 70%, 80g
SOMA chocolatemaker (Toronto, Canada)
www.somachocolate.com
Ingredients: Cacao beans, organic cane sugar, cocoa butter. May contain trace amounts of nuts, gluten, soy & dairy.
Batch: BH2
Bean type: Trinitario
Bean Origin: Jamaica

Peru: Nacional 70%, 80g
SOMA chocolatemaker (Toronto, Canada)
www.somachocolate.com
Ingredients: Cacao beans, organic cane sugar, cocoa butter. All natural and may contain trace amounts of nuts, gluten, soy & dairy.
Batch: Per2
Bean type: Nacional
Bean Origin: Peru Maranon River Valley

Madre Chocolate's Triple Cacao: Chewy, Chocolaty and Completely Unique

Finally, finally, FINALLY I have tasted Hawaiian-based Madre Chocolate's award-winning Triple Cacao bar. On day three of 'firsts', I dove into this tiny chocolate bar packed with all that the cacao tree has to offer: dark chocolate made from organic and 'ethically-sourced' cacao beans, cacao nibs (broken pieces of the bean before they are ground into chocolate), and cacao fruit pulp, a rare ingredient in chocolate.

Cacao fruit pulp is the white pulp that surrounds cocoa beans inside the pod, which is normally an underused part of the cacao fruit for consumption, although it is used to help in the fermentation process by simply leaving it on the beans to develop a good cocoa flavour.

Madre has found a great way to use the pulp and to introduce its existence to chocolate lovers. I paid a lot for the 43 gram Triple Cacao bar ($13.49 CAD), but it was worth the price. There is a nice upfront roast flavour. The bits of cacao fruit pulp have been dried so they are soft and chewy. I do not normally like dried fruit in chocolate, but this is not overly sweet, and it has a very soft and nice fruity flavour.

Because of the 'chewiness' of the cacao pulp, one hour after tasting this chocolate the delicious tang of the pulp still rests in the back of my teeth (I suppose I should brush, but why brush away this goodness?). The pulp stood out, so it seems fitting that it lasted the longest.

Madre Chocolate's Triple Cacao chocolate bar has won numerous international awards, including a Gold at the 2012 U.S. edition of the International Chocolate Awards and a Silver at the World-wide awards of the same year, as well as a Gold Seal at the Good Food Awards.

Madre Chocolate is made from bean-to-bar in Kailua, Oahu in Hawaii.  They make many flavours of bean-to-bar chocolate, including a bar made from Hawaiian-grown Criollo. In Canada, in addition to La Tablette de Miss Chocolate, you can find Madre in Edmonton. In the U.S. you can find Madre Chocolate in many, many locations.

My first taste of Madre's other chocolate bars was in 2012. You can read the review here.

Here are the ingredients and key package details from the chocolate that I wrote about today:

Triple Cacao Dark Chocolate, 70% cacao, 1.5 oz (43 g)
Madre Chocolate (Honolulu, Hawai'i)
www.madrechocolate.com
Ingredients: organic cacao beans, organic sugar, organic cocoa butter, cacao pulp, cacao nibs, Mexican whole vanilla. Made in a facility that also processes nuts & milk.

Vietnamese Origin Chocolate by Marou: Bold Flavour, Great Story

As I mentioned in yesterday's article, I decided that in the first days of 2015, I would experience some 'firsts' in chocolate tasting....well, firsts for me anyway. Until January 1st, I had never tasted Marou's bean-to-bar chocolate, a brand that I heard so much about. And since it is made in Vietnam by two French men, it is difficult to buy in Canada (outside of Quebec).

Marou not only makes chocolate from the bean, but they make it at its source.  The cacao is all grown in Vietnam and their mission was to make "unadulterated chocolate made from nothing but cocoa and sugar" (ref). And that is exactly how they make it today.

I purchased only one bar of Marou's, Dong Nai 72%, and I am already regretting not purchasing others. The chocolate was just what I thought it would be: a serious, get-straight-to-the-cacao-flavour kind of chocolate. Bold flavour, bitter dark with the kind of tanginess and acidity only created by an excellent chocolate maker.

Marou's website described their Don Nai bar as made from 'pod-to-bar'. It is made with cacao produced at Marou's own drying and fermentation station in the Dong Nai Province (ref), and so the chocolate makers really have control over the entire process to develop its unique flavour profile. To me, this was a bar that has fruity zest and hint of spice with a lovely roasted aftertaste.

 

Vietnamese cacao has not been easily found in origin chocolates until Marou began boldly introducing it to the world.  And so this was not only a first for me in terms of tasting a new brand of chocolate, this was a first for me for tasting Vietnamese-origin chocolate.

In Canada, I was able to buy Marou's Dong Nai 72% chocolate bar from La Tablette de Miss Choco in Montreal, a bean-to-bar retailer who just launched an online sales site. You can also buy other flavours of Marou's chocolate and a few bags of beans from Vietnam on the same site.

Here are the key package details from the chocolate that I tasted this week:

Marou Faiseurs de Chocolat, Dong Nai 72%, 100g (3.5oz)
Marou Chocolate Company, Ltd. (Saigon, Vietnam)
http://marouchocolate.com
Ingredients: Cocoa and cocoa butter (72%), cane sugar (28%). Soy, gluten and dairy free.

Fruition Chocolate: It's all about the Brown Butter, Flor de Sal and Rustic Crunch

I decided to start the New Year by experiencing some 'firsts'.  I wanted to taste chocolate that I have never tried before, and learn about more bean-to-bar chocolate makers.  Fruition Chocolate is one of those chocolate makers. I figured yesterday - the first day of 2015 - was the perfect time to taste the craft bars that I ordered just before Christmas.

Fruition offers a unique mix of bean-to-bar chocolate flavours, the most unique being Fruition's Milk Chocolate 'Brown Butter' bar. It has that quality that all milk chocolate has, where your mouth waters for more after just one piece. And yet it is not super sweet, with its rich 43% cocoa solids. The 'browned butter' is churned at a farm local to Fruition (Shokan, New York) and adds a hint of butter flavour that gives the bar more of a melt-in-your mouth quality and a milk chocolate truffle-like taste.

Fruition's 56% Dark-Milk with Flor de Sal (sea salt) chocolate bar was very tangy, and definitely not sweet. The lack of sweetness is partially due to the addition of salt. I find dark-milk chocolate (above 50% cocoa solids) can be confusing on the palette at times, and I am often left wanting something more bitter, or something sweeter. If you have ever made a dark chocolate glaze made with sour cream, you will know what I mean when I say that it tastes a little like that. It is certainly a savoury treat, and it grew on me with every piece that I ate.

The final bar that I tasted was Fruition's 70% Rustic Crunch, a unique combination of coarsely stone ground dark chocolate, cinnamon and small, but chunky, cocoa nibs. The result is a slightly cinnamon-sugar style crunch with an after taste of chocolate and bitter cocoa, as you chew the nibs long after the chocolate has melted away. I really enjoyed this bar.

I am really looking forward to trying Fruition's Hispaniola 68% chocolate bar, simply because I love the taste of chocolate made from cocoa beans grown in the Dominican Republic. Also, I'd like to try their Maranon 76% bar made with Peruvian Nacional beans and only two ingredients: cocoa beans and organic cane sugar - a chocolate meant for tasting!

Here are the package details from the three Fruition Chocolate bars that I tasted this week:

Chocolate Maker:
Fruition Chocolate (Shokan, NY)
Website: http://www.tastefruition.com/

Brown Butter Milk Chocolate, 43% cocoa solids, 60g/2.12 oz
Ingredients: can sugar*, cocoa butter, cocoa beans*, nonfat milk powder, butter, vanilla beans* 
*organic.  Contains milk. May contain traces of nuts.

Rustic Crunch, 70% cocoa solids, 60g/2.12oz
Ingredients:
Cocoa beans, cane sugar*, cocoa butter, vanilla beans*, cinnamon
*organic.  May contain traces of nuts and milk.

Dark Milk with Flor de Sal, 56% cocoa solids, 60g/2.12oz
Ingredients: Cocoa beans*, cane sugar*, whole milk powder, cocoa butter, salt, vanilla beans*
*organic
Contains milk. May contain traces of nuts.

Three Chocolate Paté Recipes: The Perfect New Year's Eve Dessert

Several weeks ago, I posted a recipe for milk chocolate paté, which is delicious. Since then, I have been experimenting with a few other kinds chocolate paté recipes, using both milk and dark chocolate, and some fun toppings. And since this is a 'snack' type of dessert, served with cheese spreaders or butter knives and cookies, it really is a great dessert to serve at your New Year's Eve party or New Year's Day gathering.  

This is also a fantastic way to use up all that extra chocolate that you bought for baking before Christmas, or that you found in your stocking (let's face it, there are always too many treats in the house on January 1st!). So feel free to use my recommended chocolate brands below, or replace with chocolate chips, baking chocolate, Lindt chocolate bars, or whatever you have on hand!

Be sure to check out the 'Tips & Substitutions' Section at the end of this article for some alternate ideas (i.e. the best cookies and chocolate to choose) and what to do for your gluten-intolerant friends.

Here are the recipes...

Vanilla Bean White Chocolate Paté with Fresh Blueberries

You need...

• 8 ounces of white chocolate (see tip at bottom of this article for choosing white chocolate), about two-and-one-third 100 gram bars
• 1/4 cup of whipping cream
• 1/4 cup of butter
• 1/8 tsp ground vanilla bean, or 1 the scrapings from 1 vanilla bean (or use pure vanilla extract if you have no access to vanilla beans)
• 1/2 cup of fresh blueberries

Instructions:

1. Line a small loaf pan or a cupcake pan with plastic wrap.
2. Break or chop your white chocolate and place in a heat-proof bowl.
3. Chop your butter and place in a medium saucepan with the whipping cream and vanilla bean or extract.
4. Turn the heat to medium and stir using a wooden spoon or small silicone spatula until the butter is melted fully and the mixture comes nearly to a boil.
5. Pour the cream/butter mixture over the chocolate and stir until smooth.
6. Pour into your prepared pan.
7. Let sit on counter overnight or for 8 hours. Then refrigerate for 1 hour until firm. 
8. When the pate is set and about 2 hours before serving (or before your party), flip the pate upside down onto a serving plate and remove the plastic wrap.  Then place the blueberries on top, or press them into the top and all around the sides. You can also sprinkle with white chocolate shavings if you like!
9. Add a cheese knife or butter knife, and shortbread or other cookies of your choice to your platter to serve (see tips below for choosing the best cookies). 

Hazelnut Milk Chocolate Paté with Caramel

You need...

• 8 ounces of a Hazelnut milk chocolate bar (see note below on the chocolate bar brand that I used and my reasoning for using it), about two and one-third of a 100 gram bar
• 1/2 cup of whipping cream
• 1/4 cup of butter
• Dulce de Leche sauce, butterscotch sauce for ice cream or SKOR bits for decoration and added flavour

Instructions:

1. Line a small loaf pan or a cupcake pan with plastic wrap.
2. Break or chop your hazelnut chocolate bars and place in a heat-proof bowl.
3. Chop your butter and place in a medium saucepan with the whipping cream.
4. Turn the heat to medium and stir using a wooden spoon or small silicone spatula until the butter is melted fully and the mixture comes nearly to a boil.
5. Pour the cream/butter mixture over the chocolate and stir until smooth.
6. Pour into your prepared pan.
7. Let sit on counter overnight or for 8 hours. Then refrigerate for 1 hour until firm. 
8. When the pate is set and about 2 hours before serving (or before your party), flip the pate upside down onto a serving plate and remove the plastic wrap.  Then place press the SKIR bits into the sides, or place your caramel sauce into a small sandwich bag and cut a tiny hole off the corner to drizzle your sauce over the pate. You can also garnish with whole roasted hazelnuts or chopped hazelnuts!
9. Add a cheese knife or butter knife and shortbread or other cookies of your choice to your platter to serve.

Dark Chocolate Peppermint Paté with AfterEight Crumble

You need...

• 2/3 cup of whipping (or heavy) cream
• 1/2 cup of butter
• 5 ounces of 55% to 70% (see note below on how to choose the percentage of dark chocolate), you'll need nearly two 100 gram bars.
• 1 to 1.5 tsps. of peppermint extract (or 8 to 10 drops of peppermint oil)
• about 5 or 10 AfterEights or two mini candy canes

Instructions:

1. Line a small loaf pan or a cupcake pan with plastic wrap.
2. Break or chop your dark chocolate and place in a heat-proof bowl.
3. Chop your butter and place in a medium saucepan with the whipping cream and peppermint.
4. Turn the heat to medium and stir using a wooden spoon or small silicone spatula until the butter is melted fully and the mixture comes nearly to a boil.
5. Pour the cream/butter mixture over the chocolate and stir until smooth.
6. Pour into your prepared pan.
7. Let sit on counter overnight or for 8 hours. Then refrigerate for 1 hour until firm. 
8. When the pate is set and about 2 hours before serving (or before your party), flip the pate upside down onto a serving plate and remove the plastic wrap.  Top with chopped AfterEights or crushed candy cane pieces.
9. Add a cheese knife or butter knife and shortbread, chocolate or other cookies of your choice to your platter to serve.

Tips and Substitutions:

For those gluten-free folks, be sure to buy some gluten-free cookies and place them on a separate plate with some additional pate, to be sure that everyone can enjoy your delicious dessert.  Attach a little sign on a toothpick to indicate that it is 'gluten-free'.  If there is only one person who needs 'gluten-free', you can make mini pate's in a mini cupcake container at the same time as you make the larger ones (see picture of the mini pates to the right).

For the white chocolate pate, Green & Blacks has a nice white chocolate bar, or use Joe's (sold at Walmart and other places), or try something at the bulk store, lke Bulk Barn.  Try to choose something with natural vanilla flavouring (not vanillin or artificial flavour) or it will be too sweet tasting.

For the hazelnut milk chocolate pate, I used Camino's Hazelnut 38% Milk Chocolate bar because the hazelnuts are broken up in small pieces, which makes the resulting pate easier to cut through and spread on crackers.  Some hazelnut bars have whole hazelnuts in them, so just be sure to read the package first.

For the peppermint dark chocolate pate, choose your chocolate percentage based on how bitter you like your dark chocolate, BUT keep in mind that by adding the cream and butter, you will be reducing the sugar, so a 70% will taste much more bitter than the 70% dark chocolate that you may be used to). I used about 1 and a half bars of Green & Blacks 70% dark chocolate - it's Organic and Fair Trade, and it was definitely very bitter. Semi-sweet chocolate chips and semi-sweet baking chocolate have a lower percentage of cocoa solids and would be a nice fit with peppermint.

Shortbread cookies really are the best with all three flavours of the pates, and if you want to make your own, you can find my recipe here. Ginger cookies (like the spicy Mary's gluten-free ginger cookies) go well with the white chocolate pate, and chocolate wafer cookies go well with the dark mint chocolate pate (or just spread it on an AfterEight instead of a cookie!).