El Rey Archives – The Chocolate Website

Apr28 0

What did I do last Saturday? It seems to me something unusual happened. It’s coming back to me… Ah. Yes. Saturday involved chocolate royalty and making my very first chocolates. 🙂

(Disclaimer: If melting down existing chocolate to make other chocolates is cheating, then I cheated. Because it’s simply not possible to grow my own cacao, roast it, grind it, conch it, AND mold it within the space of a few hours, which is all the time I had.)

I’d be happy to recount my day with El Rey, which totally involved cool photo ops like this one:
My Day with El Rey Partially Chopped Chocolate

Dec07 0

The Many Diverse & Delicious Chocolates of Venezuela

El Rey. Nestle Savoy. Kakao. Mantuano. Paria. Sinfonia.

Chocolate with red pepper. Chocolate with Earl Gray tea. Chocolate with sea salt, coffee beans, ginger, granola, and rattlesnake*.

Venezuela, home to the prized criollo bean and exporter of over 8000 tons of cacao per year, manufactures chocolates that are just as diverse as its wide range of landscapes. This is no small feat, considering Venezuela boasts beautiful tropical beaches, lush jungles, the world’s tallest waterfall (Angel Falls), and a desert that could easily pass as the Sahara. (I kid you not.)