New Flavors

We had an interesting discussion today about new flavors. We've actually got enough chocolate to last a while but I just bought an aquarium heater that I think will make it easier to keep the tempered chocolate at just the right temperature and I want to try it out.

So I asked Keli what kind of new flavors she might be interested in and she came up with the idea for a pumpkin pie flavor. It would include nutmeg, cinammon, cloves, vanilla and ginger. Sounds really good.

We started talking about the quality and nature of the ingredients we put into the chocolate. Keli is always focused on getting the absolute highest quality ingredients that are available. That means whenever possible using ingredients that we have grown and processed ourselves, like the cacao, the chiles and sugar. Next best is going to a farm like Villa Vanilla where we can see the way they grow their products and we can confirm their claims to being organic and bio-dynamic.



We have lots of vanilla and cinammon from Villa Vanilla, (http://www.rainforestspices.com) a bio-dynamic farm in Costa Rica. The other spices will be the highest quality that we can find in Sonoma.



The sugar for this batch of chocolate, like the last, will be from our own farm. Its kind of a hassle - but worth it.

I don't know why I look so sad in this picture - I'm gathering the cane for making sugar. I do know that you have to keep alert for snakes when you are in the cane field!


When I'm preparing the sugar for our chocolate, I first have to chop the sugar up into small pieces (it comes in 1 pound cakes, made with molds carved out of tree trunks,) dehydrate it, then I powder it and dehydrate it again so it will be dry enough to place in the chocolate. If there is even a small bit of moisture the chocolate will be ruined.