COCOBEAT

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Unique modern pastry from Méert in Lille, France by  Flora Noël , Cocobeat European reporter from Paris, France. Pastry time at Méert Lille, France If you are interested in seeing more Méert creations… Méert

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Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the weather has finally gotten hot. That means ice cream season of course, but cherries are in high season also. They have a short season, but are abundant in markets everywhere right now… sweet and juicy, and looking beautiful! I love to eat them plain, but then I get flashbacks of when I used to eat Ben & Jerry’s  “Cherry Garcia”  ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream was (and I guess still is) so popular with their unique combinations of flavors, such as  “Chunky Monkey”,   “Chubby Hubby”  and  “Mint Chocolate Cookie” , with a lot of nuts and chocolate… mmmm. I wasn’t so crazy about some of the others, with over-mixed flavors and too many ingredients. But I loved  “Cherry Garcia”  …maybe because I love cherries and dark chocolate. It’s a simple but great combination, which I always thought was a brilliant idea. Needless to say, it was often in my freezer. However, as with Häagen-Dazs ice cream (I also on...

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From Fermented Drink to Smooth-textured Bars Our love of chocolate goes back at least 3000 years to South and Central America, where a fermented beer-like drink was made from the sweet, milky pulp surrounding the cacao beans. Later, the trees were grown by the Maya and then the Aztecs, who used the fire-roasted beans in a beverage that was considered an aphrodisiac. Cocoa beans were in such demand that they became a form of currency, and in the 1500s, one bean could buy a ripe avocado, 30 beans a small rabbit, and 100 beans a slave. When the Spanish Conquistador Cortés was served a cup of xocolatl (“bitter water”) in 1519 by the Aztec ruler Montezuma, it was nothing like today’s chocolate beverages. The dried, roasted cacao nibs were ground into a paste and mixed with hot peppers, spices and dried flowers. It was bitter, lumpy, typically served cold, and solely for men of high status. Although Columbus first introduced cocoa beans to Europe decades earlier, when Cortés brought the bean...

Dark Chocolate: Semisweet and Bittersweet Contains at least 35% cacao (aka chocolate liquor or ground cacao nibs) and no milk. If  labeled 60% cacao, it contains 40% other ingredients, mainly sugar. The terms are not standardized, so semisweet and bittersweet can be the same thing . Milk Chocolate Contains at least 12% milk solids and 10% cacao solids (chocolate liquor) in the US; mostly sugar, which explains the lack of much chocolate flavor. “Dark milk chocolate” has 30% or more cacao. Couverture (aka Coating Chocolate) Dark chocolate with a high cocoa butter content (at least 32% by the French definition), which improves texture and sheen, making it best for dipping, coating and molding. Unsweetened/Bitter/Baking Chocolate Created by grinding cacao beans (cocoa solids and cocoa butter) to a paste, which then hardens (aka solid chocolate liquor). No sugar or extra fat added. Unsweetened Cocoa Powder Created by sending cocoa liquor through a hydraulic press and separating the dark sol...