Barry Callebaut volumes surge as more firms outsource chocolate making

UPDATE 2-Barry Callebaut volumes surge as more firms outsource chocolate making

1 chocolate and cocoa-product maker, said on Thursday that more outsourcing deals from food groups and strong demand from bakeries and restaurants lifted volumes by a better-than-expected 8.2 percent in the nine months to May. Outsourcing, such as its ...
Barry Callebaut Epands Chocolate Factory In MexicoPerishableNews (press release)
Barry Callebaut opens second factory in MexicoCandy Industry
Firm sales extend bounce in Barry Callebaut sharesAgrimoney.com
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Adelaide Chocolate School in North Adelaide to run school holiday classes this ...

The North Adelaide chocolate school is having basic chocolate making and Christmas in July classes in the school holidays. Owner Anna Hofmeyer says children, and adults who want to join in, will learn how to make a 3D chocolate house and decorate it ...

Rich chocolate and strawberry cake

To make the chocolate panels, cut non-stick baking paper into four 7 x 60cm strips. Place the strips on a clean work surface. Place the dark choc melts in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (make sure the bowl doesn't touch the water ...

Greenville chocolate maker turns to crowdfunding for help with expansion plans

Duncan got her start in chocolates as a student at Johnson & Wales in Charleston, but really, her love of desserts started much earlier. As a child, Duncan remembers discovering the wonders of sugar, flour and butter at her grandmother's knee. The two ...

Oak Cliff shop releases barbecue chocolate made with Lockhart's sauce

To make the chocolate, Chef Clapner and Chef Ulysses Galvan used Lockhart's barbecue sauce in a sugary ganache along with rendered fat from candied bacon, all of which was then put in the middle of the candy mold and covered in dark chocolate. This all ...

Video feature: 'Institute for Chocolate Studies'

A person can almost taste these and other delectable derivations of Theobroma cacao's bitter seed as Greg Owen muses about his plans for the Institute for Chocolate Studies (ICS) student club. A rising junior at Princeton University, Owen is the ...

Chocolate as medicine: a quest over the centuries

The rehabilitation of chocolate has occurred only in recent times. The pages of scientific magazines have been positively recaptured and chocolate's reputation is being restored to the value that Carl Linnaeus credited to this food, when he named the ...

Why Alain Ducasse Says Making Chocolate Is Like Cooking Carrots

Making chocolate is not very different from preparing gourmet dishes, says Alain Ducasse, who has a new passion after opening more than 20 restaurants around the world. “It's the same with cocoa beans and carrots,” says the chef, who is planning to ...

The best (and worst) chocolate frostings

There's nothing tricky or difficult about making chocolate frosting. Dump a few ingredients into a bowl, beat for a few minutes, then taste, tweak and frost.

But for those who need to make dessert on the fly, pre-made frosting can be a lifesaver. It comes in a handful of flavors, including vanilla and citrus, but the flavor that dominates store shelves is chocolate in all its lush variety: milk, dark, fudgy and decadent. Most stores carry at least two kinds of spread-and-serve chocolate icing; some carry as many as six.

It's important to note that none of these frostings are made from all natural ingredients. Most contain at least a touch of hydrogenated fat, as well as artificial colors and flavorings, and a list of questionable ingredients you won't find in many pantries.

Calliope’s Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream

Evan Sung for The New York Times

 

The Restaurant Takeaway column is devoted to restaurant dishes you can make in your own kitchen, tweaked for home cooks. 

I didn’t plan to order dessert after my recent lunch at Calliope in the East Village. But the waiter told me the chocolate hazelnut ice cream was extraordinary. I don’t often say no to extraordinary, even when I’m skeptical. Was there really anything that could raise this chocolate hazelnut ice cream that far above the usual stuff?

In a word, yes. And the answer is butter.
It’s what gave the ice cream its voluptuous, velvety texture, almost like frozen chocolate mousse, but denser. It was utterly creamy and completely without ice crystals. The waiter was right.

Moving Chocolate Sculpture Illusion Is Mesmerizing (VIDEO)

Prepare for your minds to be blown! A YouTube video posted to Reddit shows a swirling chocolate sculpture that, under blinking lights, appears to come alive. The construction is a zoetrope, a device that creates the illusion of motion by presenting a series of still images or objects. In the case of this zoetrope, the blinking lights prevent the moving sculpture from appearing blurry by creating visual gaps and our brains interpret the result as movement. It's on display at Phillip Island Chocolate Factory in Newhaven, Australia, about an hour and a half outside Melbourne. The attraction is also home to a couple other cool things, like the world's largest chocolate waterfall and a chocolate sculpture of Michelangelo's "David."

Open up and say: Yeah!

Behind How Chocolate Makes You More Productive

New research suggests that the components of cocoa make you more content. And that leads to creativity. Open up and say: Yeah!

Stop for a minute and savor cocoa's accomplishments: battler of stroke, diabetes, and heart disease; booster of blood flow; and now, research suggests, calmer of the mind.

While there are many excellent qualities to chocolate, research at an Austrailian university shows that the polyphenols in chocolate can make people feel more calm and contended.

So what else can the lovely stuff do?

Downtown Cocoa Beach - Super Boat Grand Prix

Thunder on Cocoa Beach - The Space Coast Super Boat Grand Prix is here! Get ready for more off-shore power boat race action than you can handle on Cocoa Beach from May 15th - May 19th, 2013. Race weekend kicks off with an early VIP Sponsor Party on Wednesday, May 15th at Juice N' Java Cafe in Downtown Cocoa Beach from 6pm - 11pm. Party-goers can enjoy live musicplus complimentary food, beer, wine and soft drinks.

Race Director Kerry Bartlett told us, "This is our 4th annual race and we're expecting this year's Thunder on Cocoa Beach to be bigger and better than ever. We've got more boats lined up than last year and have added some awesome newperks for our VIP Pass holders."

The Chocolate & Confectionery Production industry

The Chocolate & Confectionery Production industry has found itself in a sticky situation during the past five years. The onset of the financial crisis and the United Kingdom's descent into recession have gradually eroded consumer confidence, sharply constraining spending on chocolate and confectionery products. At the same time, rising cocoa, sugar and milk prices have increased production costs, but weak demand has limited producers' ability to pass these costs on to consumers, resulting in falling profitability. According to IBISWorld industry analyst Patrick Ross, “the organic and fair trade movements have gathered momentum over the past decade and created niche segments across the food and beverage sector”. Rising health consciousness has drained demand away from industry products in general, but also created opportunities for producers to develop low-sugar products. Imports have been capturing an ever greater share of domestic demand and become a threat to UK operators. In the five years through 2013-14, industry revenue is expected to decline at a compound annual rate of 2.8%. In 2013-14, industry revenue is forecast to decrease by 2.1% to £4.8 billion, its lowest value in over a decade.

National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day

National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day: 6 Recipes to Celebrate

It's National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! Half of all cookies sold today in the U.S. are chocolate chip, but the popular cookies were actually invented by accident. The story goes that in 1930, Ruth Graves Wakefield mix

Recipe: Mom's chocolate chip cookies

Note: This recipe comes from my mother, who was a home ec teacher. It's the one she taught me and my sister, and our friends from high school -- all of whom would gather in our kitchen after school. She added the oatmeal because it was a Quaker

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnuts

There are only a few times I miss gluten at all anymore. Mostly I eat better than I ever did before I had to cut gluten out of my life. However, when friends of mine started raving about Kim Boyce's whole wheat chocolate chip cookies

'Sexual Chocolate' Wine Ads Feature S & M Scene, Man In Banana Hammock And More (NSFW VIDEO)

But forget most of the wine world cliches - there are no beautiful images of grapes ... getting high and a S & M sex scene. WATCH (this may be NSFW for some): Sexualized wine not your thing? There's Sexual Chocolate beer as well

Why handling chocolate requires a chemist's touch

Chocolate is the intersection of food and science. When you understand that it needs more of a chemist’s touch than that of an artist, chocolate can be a chameleon of taste and structure. To learn the tricks of handling this malleable, yet delicious dessert staple, Globe Life turned to Canadian chocolate master, Chris Kwok, who finished second overall in the Canadian Selection Competition for World Chocolate Masters this winter.

Get a thermometer

For anyone who has attempted to temper chocolate, this advice comes as no surprise. Kwok is very precise in listing off temperatures for tempering: melt at 40 C for white and milk chocolates, 45 C for dark; cool a portion of the melted chocolate down to 28 C with a marble board, working the liquid to the point of soft peaks as you spread it with your spatula, before adding it back to the rest of the pot and getting the temperature back up to 31 C.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Aubrey Woods dead at 85: British actor was best-known for his role in ‘Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’
The theater veteran landed his signature role in 'Willy Wonka' and was asked to reprise his sweetshop owner’s song, 'The Candyman,' by fans through his final days.

Woods delivers his big musical number in 1971’s “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.” Adoring fans requested that he sing “The Candyman” through his final days.

Aubrey Woods, the British actor who made the sun shine for generations of fans of the film, “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” died last week at the age of 85.

The classically trained theater veteran died in a Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, hospital of an undisclosed illness, his wife, Gaynor, told the BBC.

Chocolate and Vanilla Dream

Chocolate and vanilla is a terrific combination, and cooks use it whenever they can. Black and white cookies, also called halfmoons, are big cakey discs covered with chocolate and vanilla icing sold at Dean and Deluca in New York City. A black cow is a chocolate soda with a vanilla ice cream float, and a hot fudge sundae is a scoop of vanilla ice cream with thick chocolate sauce running down the sides.

Black Bottom Pie is another twist on the chocolate and vanilla theme that’s hard to resist. Technically it’s a layer of chocolate covered with rum-flavored vanilla Bavarian cream and decorated with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. According to the late culinary guru, James Beard, recipes for Black Bottom Pie began showing up in cookbooks about 100 years ago.

Handmade truffles and bonbons

Bernachon

Thanks to a strong culinary tradition and top chefs like Paul Bocuse, Lyon is often referred to as France's gastronomic capital. Strengthening that moniker is the city's own Bernachon, one of the most famous chocolate makers in all of France—and the world. Started in 1953 by Maurice Bernachon, the shop is classically French in style but has a bean-to-bar approach that began well before its time.

Will travel for chocolate

Taza Chocolate

In my hometown of Somerville, Mass. (three miles from downtown Boston), Taza Chocolate brings cocoa beans to Beantown and transforms them, Mexican-style. Cofounders Alex Whitmore and Larry Slotnick keep things authentic by opting to produce chocolate using hand-chiseled Oaxacan molinos (stone mills). Unlike ultra-smooth European-style chocolate, the resulting texture is decidedly gritty, with remaining bits of cacao and raw sugar crystals (plus any flavorings). With few ingredients and minimal processing, the "chocolateness" of the bars is heightened. The bars are 100% organic, and just about anyone can enjoy them since they are vegan, kosher, and free of dairy, gluten, and soy.

Duck fat, lamb sausage, bittersweet chocolate at a North Hollywood warehouse sale

The anticipation outside Epicure Imports on Saturday morning was as thick as the French accents inside. Customers of the gourmet warehouse sale, which happens seven times a year, lined up in this industrial part of North Hollywood well before they would be let in, like teens at a rave -- except here, instead of a DJ, it was the late-arriving truffle-butter vendor who cut through the fawning crowd.

A manager came out to apologize for the delay -- it was already 9:35 a.m. -- and invited the crowd inside. Someone at the front shouted “Charge!” and others scrambled for one of the many mismatched carts (Ralphs, Target, 99 Cents Only Store).

The Chocolate Ladies share the sweet life

Satisfy your sweet tooth with homemade chocolates and candies from The Chocolate Ladies.

How did your company get started? I always enjoyed making candy and working with chocolate. Then, I started teaching chocolate-making classes. As (my daughter and partner) Susan got older, she would want to give gifts to her friends for Christmas and Valentine’s, so we started doing chocolate. People started to ask, “Can we purchase your products?”

Why chocolate? I was a member of home demonstration clubs. The home demonstration agent who worked for the Ag extension did a demonstration on homemade candies. I was hooked from then on.

Mothering With Chocolate

In 2012 consumers in the United States spent an average of $152 dollars for Mother's Day gifts. A good portion of that was spent on slathering our mammas with chocolate treats. Earlier generations of women, some of the them childless due to their religious callings, have concocted and savored chocolate; they have contributed to the bountiful chocolate appetite evident in the current celebrations of our moms.

Aztec women received godly instructions to produce the first chocolate by beating cocoa bean paste with water in gourds. According to those earliest of chocolate sources in Aztec traditions, the beloved god, Quetzalcoatl, was said to have planted a cacao tree, collected its pods, roasted the cocoa beans, and then showed only the women how to process the beans into a spicy chocolate drink. Women guarded and transmitted those techniques.