When we think chocolate, we think love, romance, and deliciousness!
One of the miraculous compounds in dark chocolate is literally the same your brain produces as you fall in love: phenylethylamine. Chocolate also releases serotonin which helps stabilize your mood and regulates well-being and happiness! Even better, cacao trees make for fantastic carbon sequesters. Meaning, they suck out CO2 from the air more efficiently than non-tropical trees and greatly benefit the environment. Enjoying chocolate helps us feel in love and at the same time love our earth!
– Chef Paul Joachim, The Chocolate Genius
When we imagine Valentine’s Day, images of gorgeous red roses, crisp pink rosé, and elegant chocolates take over. Let’s bring the entire experience of Valentine’s Day together into one stunning rosé and milk chocolate tasting!
Rosé is the perfect Valentine’s Day wine with its soft pink hues, luscious red fruit, and floral profile that’s extra bright and crisp.
Did you know? Rosé now outsells white wine in France!
High-quality milk chocolate tends to be incredibly smooth with caramel and vanilla profiles that go perfectly with your rosé. Purchase the best quality milk chocolate bar you can find, and then the real romance is set to begin: drizzle on caramel, rose petals, roasted hazelnut, dried red berries (raspberries, strawberries, or cherries can often be found in the produce section at the grocer), vanilla bean, and a high-quality sea salt such as fleur de sel. Be careful not to put on too much rose. We want the rose to pull out the existing floral profiles, but don’t put on too much and unbalance the flavors.
Pour a glass of your favorite rosé. Take a small sip, then eat the entire chocolate. Take your time, and while you are experiencing all the flavors, take small sips of more rosé on the way down.
When tasting the pairing, expect the smoothness of the milk chocolate to take center stage with the divine dance of textures filling you with warmth and lovely notes of nuttiness, red berry, and citrus, while ending with subtle salted caramel and smooth vanilla.
A Unique and Sexy Twist on Blackberries
Reconstitute them in bourbon!
Dried blackberries remain firm and incredible once they soak up the bourbon!
Also, soaking the blackberries in bourbon makes for a blackberry-infused bourbon at the same time!
Forget dipping cookies in milk! Dip them in blackberry-infused bourbon. Indulge!
Put the bourbon-soaked blackberries on ice cream, eat them with salty chips, perhaps an old-fashioned with blackberry instead of orange, or even in chicken salad!
Ingredients:
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1/2 cup dried blackberries or other dried fruit
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Enough of your favorite bourbon to just cover the blackberries
STEP 1: Place your dried fruit in a cup and just barely cover with your spirit of choice.
STEP 2: Soak between 1 hour and overnight depending on the consistency of the fruit. If you leave it soaking too long the fruit will be mushy and not so nice to eat!
These blackberries are firm and could easily be soaked for a while. A raisin for example would need to be soaked for a much shorter time span. I’d make them in the morning and start taste-testing them each hour. You can’t go wrong with that technique! Once you have the perfect consistency, pour the infused spirit into a separate container and enjoy!
History of the Quintessential Heart-shaped Box
History of the Quintessential Heart-shaped Box
Over 6 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate find their way into our lucky hands each year. The boxes symbolize Valentine’s Day, gift-giving, romance, and love. SO, how did it get that way in the first place?
Richard Cadbury, son of Cadbury founder John Cadbury, was looking for a way to increase sales. A marketing genius, he came up with the idea of creating heart-shaped boxes for Cadbury chocolates in 1861. He designed them with highly decorated covers adorning images of flowers and family making them wonderful keepsakes. “Once the chocolates had been eaten,” NPR reports, “the boxes were deeply prized by sentimental Victorians, who stored love letters, lockets of hair, and other treasured mementos inside.”
* Image courtesy of Candy Favorites