New Name!

So we know it was a quick change, but we are now called "Zest". Andy and I decided that it is both of our businesses so we need to have a neutral name, thus Zest! We use a lot of zest in our chocolates so it is only fitting.

I am quite excited because this weekend is Merkato, a local market done about twice a month. We are selling our chocolates there for the first time and we are hoping for a good response. We made 5 different kinds of truffles tonight, of which included two new flavors. The new flavors are chai-spice tea and curry lime. I will write up a review about those flavors after this weekend's response.

Along with our truffles we will be making cinnamon rolls to sell as well. One pan will be normal cinnamon rolls with a vanilla frosting. The other pan will be orange cinnamon rolls with a chocolate ganache frosting. I will be curious to see how people like them.

New Flavors

In my last post I talked about the bridal shower that I made truffles for. Here, I will talk about more about those truffles. We made five different kinds, but one of those was cinnamon-ceyenne pepper, which we have made before. So I will just talk about the four new flavors that were made. They were definitely fun to come up with and even more fun to eat and share with other people.

(Dark chocolate ganache with honey and black pepper dipped in white chocolate)

This truffle was Andy's idea. I loved how he wanted to put the delicacy of honey with something harsh like black pepper. The whole idea of our truffles is to match crazy flavors and put them in chocolate. Most of the time you think they wouldn't be good, but when you taste the truffle it is always a pleasant surprise. This was one of those flavors. When you bite into the truffle you immediately taste the honey. Then, by the time you have finished the truffle the pepper taste starts to come out and mingles nicely with the chocolate taste in your mouth after the truffle is gone. It's a bad boy meets good girl kind of truffle for sure!

(Dark chocolate espresso ganache rolled in cocoa powder)

This truffle was created more as a crowd pleaser. We figured that with all of our differently flavored truffles we should make a more simple truffle for those people with more simple tastes. It is very to the point and despite the little amount of espresso used in it, it was also very strong. Which is good because most people who like espresso like it strong. Among our friends this was a definite favorite even though it was rolled in cocoa powder and not dipped in chocolate.

(White chocolate ganache with ginger and lime rolled in coconut)

I was very excited for this truffle! I love ginger and I love lime so to put them together in a truffle was kind of a dream come true. After making it for the first time though, I can definitely say that it will be even better next time. The ginger was not so strong in this truffle, so next time I really want to magnify that flavor. I think I will also dip it instead of rolling it in coconut. The comments I received on it were that people loved the coconut but it took away from the flavors. I will just have to pass the coconut on to another truffle flavor in the future.

(Milk chocolate ganache with green tea, orange and jasmine dipped in dark chocolate)

I think this was my favorite of the bunch! First of all, we made these truffles square instead of round. It was actually easier to dip them in a square shape, rather than round. The flavor of these really popped. They didn't taste so much of green tea, but the orange and jasmine flavors really came out. The first taste was orange and then the jasmine kind of lingered in the background. I thought they were perfect, and beautiful too!

Bridal Party

Well, it's that time of year...Wedding Time! With warm weather, fresh flowers, greening trees, and love in the air, a lot of people decide to have weddings. Which is great! I love weddings and I love wedding food. It's free, delicious, and you get to eat it while mingling with beautiful people. But...before the wedding can happen comes the bridal showers. What better thing to have at a bridal shower than chocolate truffles! They are chocolaty, fun, flavorful, and pretty of course.

So, a friend of mine's daughter is getting married an for her bridal shower party she wanted truffles. Yay, business for me, but also exposure and a chance to try new flavors on new people. I jumped at the chance and Andy and I got to work on creating new flavors. We decided on five flavors and a total of about 40 truffles. I will talk about the flavors in my next post, but for now I'll just say they were all a hit. We even had leftovers of which we shared with friends who enjoyed them equally as much.

So this being my first party to cater with truffles, I was not sure how to present them. Andy and I came to the conclusion that we would deliver them in boxes, but then create a diagram of the truffles and which flavors were inside. Andy did a wonderful job of drawing up the truffles and writing their description. I made up a fun business card to display and presto, our truffles were set to go! It was so easy too. Now that I have done this party, I hope for plenty more parties in the future. Weddings are a blast, bridal showers are fun, and chocolate is always good! :)

Flavor experiments

Ahhh, the wonderful world of chocolate! Well my chocolate obsession has finally resulted in this, a blog. :) There is a lot to learn about chocolate, much experimenting to be done, lots of tasting, and now it is all coming together here.

This was one of my first experiments. It is a white chocolate ganache with lemon and honey dipped in white chocolate. I topped it with a bit of dark chocolate and some lemon zest. The taste was very delicate and much better than I would have expected. Most people were surprised by this truffle because they were not expecting the flavors to pop like they did. I will definitely make it again, but next time I will use more chocolate to lemon and honey ratio. The ganache was almost too soft to dip and that caused me a lot of problems.

This one is another white chocolate ganache with lemon and honey, except I dipped it in dark chocolate. The dark chocolate worked at holding the soft ganache together a bit better than dipping it in white chocolate.

This truffle is a dark chocolate ganache with cinnamon and ceyenne pepper. I have heard of this combination before so I decided to give it a try myself. It was surprisingly easy to get the flavor ratio of cinnamon to ceyenne pepper. The ganache also hardened really well for dipping, which made me happy since I had trouble with dipping the white chocolate honey lemon ganache. This was also a crowd pleaser. Although, who I am kidding, chocolate always makes people happy. :) I think people were shocked (in a good way) about the after taste kick that the ceyenne pepper gave. It was a pleasant way to finish off a piece of chocolate and have the flavor linger around for a little longer.