Chocolate - pieces of heaven

Last night I had the privilege of hearing from the owner of ChocAllure, Liron Gal, about how she became a chocolatier. The Israeli born owner was a software engineer for a cybersecurity company. But her passion was baking. While in Israel, she went to Paris to take classes in the art of French baking. The last two classes were all about chocolate, and that ignited a passion in her. In all her years traveling, she said she has walked around France and visited around 150 chocolate shops. She was patient with the crowd as we asked the difference between French chocolate, Belgium chocolate and Swiss Chocolate. The mission at ChocAllure is to deliver happiness by turning every day treats into exquisite and memorable fine art. While taste is important, the visual art that Liron creates is outstanding. 

Everyone was given six chocolates.

The first chocolate we started with was the bottom right one - silver and pink dots. It was a Strawberry Cheesecake bonbon. She instructed us to bite the chocolate in half, which we all did. The room was all in awe of the initial taste. We had a strawberry pate de fruit (French fruit confection, with strained yogurt and white chocolate ganache with a graham cracker praline crust. OMG. Heaven on earth. We then had our white chocolate chaser (the top right chocolate) which had a 35% cocoa butter content, which is high for white chocolate. And it was made with blonde cane sugar, which is unrefined, and contained less sugar.

The next piece was the bottom middle bon bon, which was a caramel hazelnut bonbon. Again, we bit the piece in half. Inside was a vanilla bean salted caramel and caramelized hazelnut praline. Stunning taste. Then we chased it with a 46% single origin dark milk chocolate from the Dominican Republic. It contains a very high cocoa solid content for milk chocolate which is more of a dark milk and was amazing. (BTW, did you know Valrhona chocolate knows all of its sources and can guarantee no child labor?)

The last bonbon of the night was the blue bottom left piece, which was a hot chocolate and marshmallow, which is a homemade chocolate marshmallow with a dark chocolate ganache from Madagascar. The very last piece of heaven was a 64% single origin dark chocolate from Madagascar, which was fruity. Delicious. Heaven again.

I can't wait to purchase more chocolates from this local artisan.

Cardamom Chickpea Cookies

 Another great recipe from the cookbook, Persian Food from the Non Persian Bride.

Ingredients:

2 cups chickpea flour

2 T all purpose flour

1 1/4 c powdered sugar

1 T cardamom

1 1/2 sticks of butter (or parve butter)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put a silpat on a sheet pan.
• Combine everything but the butter
• Melt the butter (on the stovetop or in the microwave)
• Mix melted butter into the dry ingredients. It will be VERY dry.
• Press the dough together and flatten to about an inch thick. Use a small cookie cutter (about an inch big) to cut out cookies and place an inch apart on the sheet pan.
• Bake 15 minutes; cool on wire racks. Cookies are very delicate and crumble easily.