california Archives – The Chocolate Website

Months ago, when the araguaney flowers were in bloom, I held my breath as I opened a special chocolate,
the Dick Taylor Northerner Blend bar. Would it be broken? Would it be bloomed? (Neither would be anybody’s fault but mine. Anybody crazy enough to subject her chocolate to a week-long many-stops journey is just *asking* for bloomed chocolate.)

I needn’t have worried.

Dick Taylor Northener Blend Chocolate Stilllife Photo

It was perfect.

Dick Taylor easily makes everyone’s list (including mine) of the prettiest, most intricate, and most recognizable chocolate molds. (They could even remove the logo in the middle and people from Australia to France would still have no trouble naming the maker!)

I could take photos of Dick Taylor for hours. In fact, I DID take photos of this Dick Taylor Northener Blend bar for hours. By the time I was done with the poor thing it was rather hard to pick up, but it was exactly the right consistency for tasting.

(Sorry, no more sneak peaks, aside from the ones below. Let’s just say it looks just as stunning with purple and with blue as it does with yellow!)

But these bars are not just for looks. They’re meant to be enjoyed (as reluctant as we all are to mar that gorgeous design).

That back includes the story of how the Northerner bar got its name. The packaging also includes the tasting notes: Dried Apricot / Honey / Cocoa

Dick Taylor Northerner Blend Chocolate Bar (Back of Wrapper)

Cool, no?

Dick Taylor Website: https://dicktaylorchocolate.com/
Dick Taylor On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dicktaylorchocolate/
More Original Chocolate Photography (by yours truly): https://www.instagram.com/thechocolatewebsite

Save

Whenever articles are written about the 5 or 10 or however-many best bean-to-bar/craft/artisan chocolates, I’ve noticed that Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco always makes the cut. Photos of their bars encased in thick gold-embossed paper wrappers often show up in my Instagram/Twitter feeds, and, not long ago, Dandelion expanded and opened several locations in Japan.

It was high time to pick a Dandelion to see what the fuss was all about.

Dandelion Chocolate Still Life Photo

Dandelion’s two-ingredient bars feature beans from different origins. I picked their Mantuano bar because the beans are grown in Venezuela, and I happen to be partial to Venezuelan beans.

Having a Dandelion bar in-house was exciting, but even the good press didn’t guarantee it VP treatment. In the end, it dutifully waited its turn just like all the other chocolate at my house until it got its moment in the sun. Correction: Half an hour in the sun (by the time I was done with it). By then it was the *perfect* tasting consistency.

My first bite certainly didn’t evoke any memories of chocolate consumed long ago during my childhood, because I don’t recall ever eating fine dark chocolate until a few years ago. (The normal chocolates of my youth was Hersheys, an occasional box of Russel Stover, and chocolate chips (dipped out from a 5lb bag from Sam’s Club!). Instead, the taste on my tongue was a subtle twist on the “new normal”; what I call “grown up” chocolate, the knock-your-socks-off vibrancy of beans that have different flavor profiles instead of always tasting the same.

Found on the wrapper: “In this bar, we taste notes of classic dark chocolate, roasted almonds, and espresso.” My untrained tongue did not pick up on any of the roasted almond notes, but there were most definitely hints of espresso. (It is actually quite amazing how many dark chocolates have coffee notes, despite not containing any coffee.)

High Time to Pick a Dandelion Chocolate

This is CHOCOLATE. No flavorings, no emulsifiers. All it takes to be an awesome chocolate is cocoa beans & sugar, carefully selected and ground and conched and tempered and packaged.

I understand the hype now.

Save