Oh, Chocolate!

I have several posts in mind but after last nights experience I couldn't resist.  A couple of our homeschool groups will offer the opportunity for the occasional Mom's Night Out.  It's a chance to just have a lovely evening with other lovely ladies.  Last night eight of us had the chance to experience chocolate in a whole new way.  We drove to a lovely little shop called TIFA Chocolate.  They offer chocolate tasting parties and boy did we get an education ; )

Our host was amazing.  She started us off with some wonderful information as to growth of beans and manufacturing.  Along the way she gave us some great historical information, story/industry tid-bits and explanations about generic chocolates compared to more true chocolatiers.  Great information and here I thought I was a chocolate lover ; )

O.K., lets get to the chocolate.  We each had a glass of water, some wafers, a serving of raspberry sorbet (to cleanse our palates of course) and an extremely nice young lady refilling our needs.

She started us off with  two samples of white chocolate containing about 30-35% chocolate.  Each sample after that grew in percentage and was plain cacao or small blend.  She was very descriptive and talked us through experiencing each one: touch, smell, taste.  There was something different about each.  That difference depended on the origin of the bean and the maker for sure.  After 11 samples came the big one: 100% Dark Cacao (blend) from Pralus, Indonesia - France.  Wow! Our grocery store buys don't come close to these delights.

Wait!  It didn't end at that.  Then she talked about chocolate confections.  We tried real truffles, lavender chocolate (my favorite), a spicy pepper chocolate, an amazing blue cheese chocolate, Jasmin chocolate, and even a bacon chocolate just for fun ; )

Aaah, to end the evening we all got to take home a small cup of absolutely delicious liquid chocolate flavored with our choice blend.  I picked lavender.  I absolutely savoured my cup this morning; delightful, to say the least!

I had a great time with the ladies last night.  I couldn't imagine a more pleasing way to learn about chocolate than with a group of friends.  My wheels are turning and my search engine is hot for some chocolate history titles.  If you know of any good ones, please share ; )