Today we went to Teuscher Chocolate, a previously visited chocolatier. We were going to go to andSons across the street, but the shop was closed, so Teuscher was the next option. I spent a while looking at the individual truffles, and eventually decided on a dark praline cup, a dark hazelnut and honeycomb cluster, and a milk salted chewy caramel. This was also the first time I started recording the flavor notes in my journal.
The first one I tasted was the dark praline cup. We went over to the Brighton Coffee Shop to taste the chocolates and get water to clear the palate. The praline cup had a very hard snap, which I thought was unusual, because cups usually want the sole focus to be the filling, so the layer of chocolate is quite thin, resulting in a softer snap. The cup had bloomed (a discoloration caused by sugar and fat crystallizing incorrectly) on the bottom because the filling carried moisture into the chocolate, which was then verified when the filling was found to be extremely dry. There were notes of nuttiness (though that might just be the nuts) and a very faint trace of caramel.
The next one was the milk salted chewy caramel. It had a decent snap, which was normal for a caramel chocolate. The caramel itself was, as promised, quite chewy, although not as much as I would have hoped. I applauded the ratio of salt to caramel to chocolate, which was near perfect. As for the notes, there were some very odd ones, cinnamon and raspberry.
The third and final was the dark honeycrunch, which is crushed hazelnuts and honeycomb encased in a cluster of chocolate. Sorry if I make you hungry. It had a great crunch (you judge clusters by their crunch, rather than the snap) and had almost no notes I could detect, except for a faint trace of rose around the edge. And another successful chocolate day concluded.
Here I am at Teuscher. They have a very colorful, decorative shop. I greatly appreciate that, as it adds to the overall appeal and makes it more kid-friendly.
This is me tasting the dark honeycrunch at the Brighton Coffee Shop, which is quite literally next door. The hexagon you see on the page of my notebook is called a Profile Map and lets me rank the different aspects of the chocolate, like eye-appeal, flavor, and texture.
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