ChocolateBet: October 4, 2008

Chocolate of the Day:

3 oz. bar
Scharffen Berger
Milk Almond ("Sea Salted Almonds and Milk Chocolate") bar
Very Good+
Calories: 420 calories for 1 bar
Cost: $ 5.00
Purchased from: Scharffen Berger, in Berkeley, CA

I prefer dark chocolate, but this was good milk chocolate. This 41% cacao Scharffen Berger Milk Almond bar had a very nice caramelized flavor.

I've been told that, legally, a chocolate product can be called "dark" if it contains over 35-36 percent cacao solids. High-end chocolate makers tend to include more/higher quality solids and to take steps in the manufacturing process that makes -- well, let's just cut to the chase -- their milk chocolate taste a lot better! In fact, I started out eating just part of this bar, and then...What do you know, it's all gone.

ChocolateBet: October 3, 2008

Chocolate of the Day
1 oz.
Scharffen Berger
Finisterra ("they go to the ends (finis) of the earth (terra) to get the best for you")
10th Anniversary Limited Series Blend (bar)
"Dark chocolate featuring cacao from Venezuela, Trinidad & Madagascar"
Very Good + - a nice dark blend
Wt.: 1 oz. (28.3 g.)/3 oz. (85 g.) total bar
Calories: ~ 134 calories
Cost: $6.50 in total bar
Purchased from: Scharffen Berger, in Berkeley, CA

Buying any food closer to its source increases the odds you'll get to see and hear where it came from. We do like our stories. Scharffen Berger (which was bought by Hershey's a few years ago) is a Berkeley, CA, (San Francisco Bay Area) chocolate maker. You may not get the chance to visit a cacao plantation in your lifetime, but if you sign up for the Scharffen Berger tour, you'll get to hear a great story about their chocolate (and you'll at least see nice color pictures of cocao plantations and pods). The title "chocolate maker" means the company is involved with making chocolate from the cocoa pod stage to the finished product stage.

On the tour, after you hear the story of chocolate and see and taste roasted cocoa nibs and samples of final product, you'll get to walk through their factory, peer into (from a safe distance) vats of chocolate, and watch little dark chocolate bars being poured into molds and shaken slightly (to get the air bubbles out).

Our tour of the Scharffen Berger plant was followed by a chocolate shopping spree in the gift store - which offers a full range of their products and a few other items (e.g. a chocolate-themed book and/or music CD, cocoa/chocolate drink machine, etc.). The tour is free, but bring your wallet if you want to pick up something on the way out.