Chocolate tasting party!

Last night we had some good friends over for a chocolate tasting party! YUM!!!

We started out the evening with tortilla soup and cornbread — it was cold out — not sure what it was with the windchill but the soup hit the spot! Plus who knows what would happen if we consumed chocolate on an empty stomach…!

We tasted different chocolates and voted for our favorite milk and dark chocolates! The contenders:

• Chocolove milk chocolate (33% cacao)
• Ghirardelli milk chocolate
• Newman’s Own organic milk chocolate
• Hershey’s milk chocolate
• Three varieties from Endangered Species Chocolate Company: Dark Chocolate with Deep Forest Mint (70% cacao), Supreme Dark Chocolate (72% cacao), and Smooth Milk Chocolate (52% cacao).
• Three varieties from Scharffen Berger: Bittersweet (70% cacao), Milk (41% cacao) and Extra Dark (82% cacao)

And the winners were …

Scharffen Berger Extra Dark and Endangered Species Smooth Milk! I guess this crowd really favors dark chocolate, although we did have one vote for Hershey’s!

Endangered Species also wins the prize for best wrappers — they just have the coolest wrappers! If you’ve never seen one you’ve got to check out their web site

We also had cacao nibs from Scharffen Berger and carob chips from Whole Foods to sample. Nibs are the shelled, roasted cacao beans — they are about as hard as peanuts but taste like dark chocolate! Of course, all the dark chocolate fans loved ’em — while the milk chocolate lovers were making faces. Carob is a chocolate substitute that doesn’t have caffeine.

To make it a fair contest, I stamped letters using the Hero Arts Signature Cap Alphabet (LL932) on a little card which I put on the plate with the chocolate and also on the wrapper. Then I put the wrappers in a bag until after the voting was complete!

To go along with the chocolate, we also had crackers, cheese, basil spread, strawberries, kumquats, bread, carob brownies, and a chocolate tart!

We finished off our chocolaty evening with steaming mugs of hot chocolate! What else?

Sure was good to visit with everyone and we had a ton of fun! Thanks to everyone for coming and bringing all the tasty treats!