- Norman Love Confections - Norman Love
Valentine's Day is right around the corner and chocolatiers, bakers, restaurant pastry chefs and home cooks alike will all focus on some kind of dessert made with chocolate. For Valentine's Day, you will see some of the most beautiful chocolate pieces and the artisan chocolate competition is fierce. Originally used as a drink, chocolate is all grown up today and comes in many varieties of masterfully sculpted and painted creations. Confections like truffles, molded chocolates, cakes, cookies and even cupcakes are just a few ways chocolate is used and consumed today.
The chocolatier is a chef, an artist and a pastry maker all rolled up in one. Designing chocolates that are silky and tempered with hints of flavor like gianduia, vanilla bean, cognac, champagne, a variety of fruits, nuts, ginger, coconut, curry, peppers and cayenne. The list can go on forever when designing little confections that can sooth your cravings, imagination and soul.
Eating chocolates awakens all of your senses and like a symphony, they all come together in stages giving you the ultimate chocolate experience. The beauty of artisan chocolates, the smell, the taste, the creamy texture and the way it melts in your mouth and on your fingers are all part of the experience. Consuming chocolates triggers different parts of the brain to produces a feeling of euphoria but, it is believed that smelling chocolate could be enough to produce the same feelings. With its rejuvenating properties, the caffeine in chocolate stimulates the circulatory system thereby firming the skin, promoting cell renewal and moisturize all in one treatment. In the last decade, a number of spas and salons have added chocolate facials, massages, body treatments, manicures and pedicures answering expanding the way we consume chocolate today.
For years I told my mother chocolate was good for me, the rest of the world was a little slow to come around. Back then, chocolates were milk chocolate bars or simple boxed chocolate truffles. Today, chocolate has been elevated to artful chocolate consumption. An indulgence worthy of the hefty prices. Here are my favorites.
My local favorite and go-to chocolatier, not only for truffles but also for his mini desserts, is Norman Love Confections. A favorite of brides-to-be, his creations are like painted canvas that range from simple truffles, checkerboard chocolates made with white and dark chocolates, to more elaborate chocolates painted with a stained glass feel. His chocolates come filled with over thirty different flavors and he carries a variety of ultra premium dark chocolate, chocolate bars and single note sipping chocolates, Black, with cocoa from Venezuela, Madagascar, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Bolivia. Each varying in its intensity of the cocoa and flavors.
If you are looking for sweet and salty or purely exotic flavors, you can find them in these next two chocolate favorites. I received a small box of Frans Chocolates as a gift a few years back and fell in love with their salted dark chocolates and caramels. Frans Chocolates offers a variety of handmade truffles, caramels, chocolate-covered fruits and nuts, to name a few. Vosges is another chocolatier who is making chocolates with exotic flavors such as coconut cream and curry, Absinthe and dulce de leche and for those who love bacon, they make bacon chocolate bars that will satisfy your porky, salty, chocolaty cravings.
Finally, Elbow Chocolates, beautiful, artful chocolates sculptures filled flavors such as passion fruit, caramel with fleur de sel, lavender and vanilla cognac, just to name a few. Christopher Elbow's confections have made the pages of Food and Wine Magazine where he was ranked in their February 2009 article titled, Top 10 Chocolates, rating his No. 6 Dark Rocks chocolate #1. He has also made an appearance on the Food Network, the Neely's and has several boutique stores in the west coast. I personally love his caramel with fleur de sel, vanilla cognac and praline truffles and believe they should have made the list.
Chocolate today is more than just a peanut butter cup or milk chocolate bar. Artisanal and gourmet, it can be a way to experience what other cultures have to offer. A mini vacation in a little ball of cocoa, filled with the exotic flavors of the world.
