Get into the Tu B’Av spirit: Shimmy in white & have some chocolate.

Image: OSU Special Collections & Archives

Tu B’Av was a joyous holiday in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, marking the beginning of the grape harvest. In modern times, it has become a romantic Jewish holiday, often compared to Valentine’s Day, and has been said to be a “great day for weddings, commitment ceremonies, renewal of vows, or proposing”. Also, “It is a day for romance, explored through singing, dancing, giving flowers…”

And giving chocolate, too, obviously.

If you are celebrating love this week, or courting a Hebrew speaking lady like myself, consider these gift options:

Perfume: A Classic Choice, With Added Cacao Notes

Leading Brands such as Missoni, Valentino have created perfumes based on cacao aroma notes.

Natural, artisanal perfumiers such as Demeter are using cocoa butter and essence to make some lovely seductive scents.

“The scent of dark chocolate is full, warm and slightly spicy” – Jo Malone.

You can also find scented candles that spread calm and the cacao aroma at home. Let the sweet aroma spread in your room, to inspire a mood for love.

Chocolate Massage

Inside the cacao fruit (pod), there are almond-like nuclei from which chocolate is produced – those cocoa solids you see consisting 70% or more of good quality chocolate. But around the seeds there is a soft white material, from which the cacao butter is produced. Cacao butter has few flavor residues, but mainly has qualities, similar to coconut oil. It is used in natural care products such as body lotion and bath oil. Cacao contains natural nutrients and antioxidants that can infuse the skin with all their beneficial properties. Some therapists add ground cacao nibs to add an element of cleansing body scrub.

With a Chocolate Massage you can indulge yourself with as much as you like, guilt-free. Therapists claim it reinvigorates the body and mind.

You can Do It Yourself, and get a kit for chocolate massage, that includes scented candles or incense sticks, and a cacao body butter. This combination will help you to create a true massage atmosphere for your significant other.

Can you imagine your loved one laying smothered in chocolate-y concoction from neck to foot?

Create a chocolate-y atmosphere

A Sweet Morning Treat

The Aztec emperor Montezuma II would drink enormous quantities of chocolate before visiting one of his many women. The Aztec women would not be given anything containing cacao, ever.

So why not use another ancient ritual – Tu B’Av – to rectify this historical injustice?

After a night of dancing in a vineyard, wearing her white dress, pamper your personal empress by bringing her a nice cup of cocoa to bed.

A chocolate macaroon = “Je t’aime”

A Ticket to Paris

Paris is the perfect place for both Love and Chocolate. Follow Ika’s address book to visit award-winning chocolatiers in Paris – in the Marais, Montmartre and Saint Germain.

Enter the beautiful havens of creativity and luxurious indulgence, then take a stroll along the river Seine, to get some fresh air. Look at the water and the trees and savour the memories of your sensual adventures at the Paris chocolateries. Then, head back again into the bustling streets for some more sumptuous pralines, until the moment you really must go back home.

For thousands of years, cacao has been considered a sacred food.

Kakaw for The Maya people was a gift from The Gods. A creature called The Plumed Serpent gave cacao to the Maya, so their mythic scriptures say. An annual spring festival celebration was dedicated to honor their cacao god, Ek Chuah, with gifts, sacrifices and what you might call today ‘cacao face painting’ – ear lobes in particular.

Depiction of the Cacao myths, from a Mayan painted ceramic vessel, Guatemala City Museum

Another version of the cacao creation story was offered by The Aztec civilization:

God Quetzalcoatl discovered cacao (cacahuatl: “bitter water”) in a mountain.

The Aztecs had cacao priests taking care of rituals, including some awful ones we won’t mention here… As long as there is constant supply of cacao, sure… By the way, the cacao beverage used for their ritual was only allowed for men, as it was believed to be toxic for women and children. This meant there was more cacao for the men, then.

The Spanish explorer Cortés and his entourage were curious to see the vast quantities of the cacao beverage the Aztec emperor consumed, when they arrived in the Aztec capital Moctezuma in 1519. They brought back to Europe some samples of cacao beans, along with other agricultural products, but it seems that the use of cacao in Spain started only in 1544, thanks to a visit of some senior Kekchi Maya nobles.

This introduction was the beginning of our own addiction.

These poor souls were brought from the New World to Spain by Dominican friars to meet Prince Philip; Later on, their native people would be humbled and exploited.

Being so good (as you well know), chocolate had spread to France, and to other countries in Europe. Demand for chocolate had to be satisfied.

The desire for chocolate led to establishing cacao plantations in the Caribbean colonies (by the French), while Spain developed cacao plantations in the Venezuelan and Philippine colonies.

Let’s stop here to look at why things happened that way, and the consequences of supplying huge amounts of cacao globally:

Six key fact to know about cacao trees:

1. Theobroma Cacao, which is the cacao tree’s botanical name, means “Food of The Gods” in Greek.
2. Theobromine is the ‘cacao’s caffeine’ – the name given to an organic compound that is found in cacao, affecting us humans for the better (yes!).
3. A cacao tree can grow only in a narrow band 20 degrees either side of the equator; it needs high humidity lots of rain to thrive.
4. Cacao tree will start to bear fruit at the age of 5, and usually live to age 100. The average cacao tree will retire from fruit growing when it’s about 60-70 years old.
5. The cacao tree needs the shade so it is often grown beneath other trees such as papaya, rubber, and mango trees.
6. Typically, a cacao tree produces about 1 – 1.5 lbs (~ 0.5 kg) of dried cacao beans annually, over two harvesting periods.

A Colombian farmer picking cacao fruit

Sticking with (and for) the trees, and moving in closer, to cacao trees,
can become a life changing experience,
and it has happened to Ika ten years ago.

Bathing in a rainforest is good for you

If you haven’t yet heard about “Shinrin-yoku”, the latest Japanese wellness trend, here is the gist of it:

Shinrin-yoku means ‘taking in the forest atmosphere’, or Forest Bathing. It is about the therapeutic effect of forests and trees in general. According to Wikipedia, there are over 60 Forest Therapy Camps in Japan today.

Some lovely books about Forest Therapy and Nature Healing came out recently, following the popularity of a positive new data: studies suggest that visiting nature parks has therapeutic effect. Spending time with trees seems to raise levels of white blood cells, which equals to a better immune system. Scientists found that “being among plants produced lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, and lower blood pressure.”

Just like the compound in chocolate being good for your health (releasing the “happy hormones” serotonin and dopamine), so are the phytoncides that trees emit into the air.

So let us suggest a visit to a cacao plantation!
This would be a most invigorating trip for the senses, surely.

If you are up for a once-in-a-lifetime journey, search for a meditation retreat, or a mindful exploration of cacao tree forests, to see how they are grown and harvested. Busk in the shade together with them.

Go to one of the “Cacao Belt” counties, such as Mexico, or Indonesia.

These special retreats offer unique ways to research the bean-to-bar chocolate trend, explore nature, and yourself, if you wish.

Maybe a place where the programme also offers chocolate tasting, making, cacao growing tours, and of course, meditation sessions under the trees. Perhaps even where an ancient cacao ritual is performed.

Until you go there, why not take some good quality chocolate to the nearest park, and sit under a big old tree? Perhaps bring a book, too.

Have a relaxing summer,

Ika

Interestingly, the most important chocolate terms start with the letter C!

Here are the 7 most useful terms you need to know in order to speak like a chocolate expert:

1. Conching

Chocolate’s smooth texture and refined flavours, are achieved thanks to the conching machine, where the chocolate paste is heated, stirred, and sort of kneaded, for as much as four days!

A minimum of 12 hours is standard in the chocolate industry.

The Swiss manufacturer Rodolphe Lindt invented this technique in 1879 (In French: Lissage).

The ground beans are stirred and blended together with sugar and other ingredients, until a smooth, homogeneous paste is ready to be poured into molds.

Conching combines all the ingredients into a unified mass, and eliminates volatile flavours, unpleasant odors, and bitterness.

Tasting the paste straight right out of the conching machine, at a chocolate factory, is an unforgettable experience, that we very much recommend trying if you get the chance.

Photo: Simon Pearson via Flickr

2. Cacao Belt

Cacao trees can only grow within 20° north and south of the Equator.

This geographical area can be imagined as a belt circling our planet.

Within this area are the original cacao growing countries like Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela; and thanks to globalization cacao now grows also in Africa and Asia – mainly in Ghana, the Cote D’Ivoire, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka.

3. Criollo

Criollo is a type of cacao tree that grows mainly in Venezuela. Most chocolate experts consider it to produce the best quality beans, with the most delicate flavour.

Criollo trees are quite rare, also because they are very vulnerable to disease.

Therefore, Criollo beans are more expensive, but we believe it is worth the investment when making top quality chocolate.

Photo: 3 types of cacao pods (=trees): Criollo, Trinitario & Forastero. Source: Wikipedia

4. Couverture

For dipping and coating pralines and other confectioneries, like candied fruit, it’s best to use chocolate with a higher minimum fat content, of around 35% cocoa butter.

This thin glossy mass is called Couvertour.

When your teeth encounter a thinly-covered praline, made by hand, you immediately feel the difference, and can better enjoy the right balance of flavours in your mouth.

5. Tempering

There is something magical about tempering – like watching a science experiment – seeing how cacao butter is transformed into a stable crystal form.

The process happens through alternate heating and cooling in very specific timing, to a point where cacao butter sets at its most stable point.

Tempering helps make the chocolate look smooth and glossy, and brings the chocolate to the exact stability, so it would break by your teeth in the most pleasurable way.

6. Gianduja

A paste made of chocolate blended with finely ground hazelnuts, it was said to be invented by 19th-century producers to cut cost of chocolate candy.

But no one can deny that cocoa and hazelnuts are a match made in heaven; Gianduja pralines tend to be best sellers.

7. Cru

The word Cru comes from the wine world, close in meaning to the word Terroir = the environment in which the plant is grown.

When talking about cacao, Cru is used to indicate beans from trees from specific areas. For example, Valrhona uses “Cru” with Caraïbe (Caribbean), Manjari (Madagascar), and Jivara (South America), to tell consumers where the beans were grown.

Expert tasters can learn and feel the characteristics of different Cru’s, and identify acidity, ripeness, and traces of charcoal and fruit, just like wine connoisseurs.

Photo: Papua New Guinea Praline by IKA Chocolate, made out of single origin Papuan cocoa beans.

So many factors influence the piece of chocolate you taste:

The type of trees from which the beans came, and their level of ripeness, the harvest, fermentation technique, drying, roasting, refining, conching and tempering, and then, the recipe and skills of the chocolatier.

Understanding how truly fabulous chocolate is made is a journey, one that is never too late to embark on.

Feeling all set to join a chocolate tasting club? Or want to start sharing fine chocolate reviews?

How about visiting an international chocolate industry event? Choose out of dozens of 2018 chocolate events listed here.

It seems like there is no place on the globe where people don’t love and celebrate chocolate.

Even if you just feel like browsing festivals’ photos online, we’ve created a long list of chocolate events worldwide,
that are worthy of entering your bucket list.

The obvious place to start a trip is Europe, but as we’ll find later, the natural starting point is actually a small island in Venezuela. We’ll get there, too for a visit at the Church of Cacao.

Travel from classic bonbons to bean-to-bar trade fairs in 2018!

Europe

Our first stop is:

Perugia, Italy

October 2018

Eurochoclate is the largest chocolate festival in Europe, held since 1993.

It attracts tens of thousands visitors each year, usually during October.

Besides many free tasting opportunities, Eurochoclate is also famous for its chocolate sculptures.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

24 – 25 February, 2018

Chocoa is 4 days of chocolate celebration, that puts an emphasis on the ‘bean to bar’ trend.
This means that you can participate in many lectures about sustainable cacao growing, and single origin chocolate making.

You can also expect a lot of the usual chocolate tasting, and trust the Dutch that beer tasting and drinking are also on the agenda.

Budapest, Hungary

16-18 September, 2018

Sweet Days festival celebrates chocolate, and candies in general. It’s more of a family and fun event. You can enjoy street food bars, live concerts, and kid-friendly programs. It sounds a bit like a Christmas market, only in better weather.

Brussels, Belgium

2-4 March, 2018

Belgium is an important destination to chocolate lovers all year round.

You can find over two thousand chocolate shops, and several chocolate museums.

The Salon du Chocolat is an international chocolate festival, that takes place in Brussels, as well as other major cities (we’ll get there, too).

Over 150 world renowned chocolatiers and pastry chefs from over 15 countries exhibit their exquisite creations.

You can spend a full day strolling around stalls, tastings, participating in workshops and lectures.

Special works of art made ​​of chocolate are created exclusively for the exhibition.

London, UK

October 2018

London’s Chocolate Show is a huge chocolate festival held in London every October.

It is a major event for professionals – a great place to learn about the most innovative techniques and industry trends.

The Show is part of the Salon du Chocolat organisation, so in a way you have a choice:

Go to London, Brussels, Paris, or many other places on the Salon’s calendar;
it’s a traveling festival that passes through 15 cities around the world but its annual highlight is in Paris.

Paris!

October 2018

Salon du Chocolat, Paris, France – has been taking place since 1994.

Over 500 exhibitors present at this conference. The agenda is full of lectures, workshops, tastings and even recipes.

And the best thing – it’s in Paris!

Which also means that a fashion show is held for the world’s haute couturiers and chocolatiers.

Asia

The Michelin guide has published a fascinating article about “The Rise of Southeast Asian Chocolatiers”.

It gives you a better perspective about the way Asian consume and produce (yes!) chocolate.

Tokyo has also been hosting the Salon du Chocolat in the past seven years:

Japanese culture has a very high esteem of the art of chocolate, and they manifest know-how and connoisseurship.

Japanese chocolatiers like Sadaharu Aoki have won the most prestigious international awards, and opened their own boutiques in Paris, too.

So if you’re up to some serious travelling, and tasting exotic flavours in your chocolate,
head straight to Tokyo Salon du Chocolat during 20 – 28 January, 2018.

Australia

August 2018

Ika fell in love with chocolate making in Sidney, Australia, of all places.

Aussies are massive chocolate lovers and are quite knowledgeable when it comes to artisanal chocolate.

Smooth festival is a great event for professionals and tourists alike, offering a Lindt Lounge, and a Callebaut Test Kitchen.

To make itself attractive to locals, the organisers make a point of offering many vegan options.

New York and other cities around the USA

The Chocolate Expo is held annually in NYC and then travels throughout the United States – visit their website to check out 2018 exact dates.

San Francisco, CA

8-9 September, 2018

In the bay area, an annual festival held in Ghirardelli Square is very popular with locals.

The veteran chocolate manufacturer Ghirardelli takes over its surroundings, offering demonstrations, tastings and many live events.

It’s not a major crossing for international industry professionals, but hundreds of local artisanal makers and chef-patissiers from California exhibit what we’re sure is both yummy and cool.

Continue your trip and go down south to Latin America – a very important source for the chocolate industry.

The land of cacao growing

As you are probably quite aware, chocolate is made from cacao beans, that grow inside cacao pods, in very few countries.

In Peru, producers try to infuse more meaningful connection with manufacturers and chocolate makers, through the Salon del Cacao Lima.

It has been held since 2010, offering chocolate making demonstrations, business roundtables, and many other events relating to single-origin chocolate.

Other chocolate festival in Latin America:

Equador, September 2018

Mexico, October 2018

Venezuela, November 2018

It is said that the best quality cacao beans grow in Venezuela.

Cacao Venezuela is held in cooperation with the Italian commerce ministry.

The major attraction is a bean-to-bar laboratory, alongside the usual tasting bars and lounges.

The Chocolate Church in Chuao

We recommend visiting the village of Chuao, a small village located in the northern coastal range of Venezuela.

The beautiful church in the town square hold a special thanks ceremony to San Juan for a good cacao harvest.

According to Wikipedia, experts agree that the high quality of the cacao beans of Chuao is not only because the genetic varietal that exists in the plantation but because the intense work of La Empresa Campesina of Chuao during the pre harvest, harvest and post harvest.

Photos: Wikimedia, by Flickr users Electrolito & Veronidae

It’s important to get to these places and truly understand how chocolate tastes, and how it is made.

There is so much you can learn in trips to cacao farms, watching the production process, tasting the mass that comes out of the conching machine – it’s nothing like the chocolate you buy at the shop.

Another reason to go is to learn more about the people Seth Godin has named

“those who are creating the raw material for the magic we consume daily.”

“Worldwide, tons of cacao is grown, millions of bars are sold… But one number is astonishingly small: the amount the typical farmer makes in income. For many, it’s only $3 a day. They are among some of the poorest and least respected workers in the world.”
Seth Godin, Meaningful work

They certainly deserve our interest and respect.

I was very much inspired by this video, created by my favorite chocolate manufacturer Valrhona
– documenting a trip to a plantation in the Dominican Republic:

I am definitely looking forward to a year of flavourful new adventures.

Would you devote an entire year for travelling to chocolate festivals around the world?

Wishing you the sweetest year ever!

Ika

1. Terroir isn’t just about wine making

In some ways, chocolate is like wine.

The aroma, texture and taste of both pleasurable products depend much on the Terroir. Like wine, chocolate may be impacted by how it’s been grown: Location, geology and climate of the place.

In fact it’s among the few products with a broader flavour profile than wine.

Like grapes, cocoa beans are a fruit that goes through a series of various processes in production, all of which also affect its flavour; Fermentation and drying are extremely important for a quality chocolate. Fermentation is done on or near the farm, so the farmers’ skill has a large influence on flavour.

Conclusion: Chocolate lovers should pay more attention to cocoa farmers. Getting to know them will help us all treat them better, and in turn get better quality chocolate every day.

Did you know that cocoa trees can only flourish in tropical environments, within 15-20 degrees north and south of the equator? This is why cocoa is grown in very few countries around the world – among them are Brazil and Cote d’Ivoire. The origins of chocolate beans has an enormous impact on the flavour of a finished chocolate bar. Bars from Madagascar beans, for instance, are characteristically fruity while Ecuadorian bars are far more earthy.

Have you ever considered dividing Vietnam into individual regions, like we are so used to do to French wine growing regions?

2. Single origin chocolate tourism – the new global trend

The Chocolate Tourism trend is still mainly about a chauffeur driving you to shops around Paris.

But a new more exotic way to make chocolate the theme of your trip is to hop on a plain and then on a van, to visit cocoa farms around the planet’s equator.

More and more chocolate fans go to places such as Belize, Madagascar, where first-rate quality cocoa is sourced.

Traveling to Australia was actually what put Ika on her chocolate career path.

Travel is Ika’s second best thing to do after chocolate. When she was 35, with 12 years of experience as a radio sound engineer, she went to Australia, in search of a new vocation.

“I went to Australia to study for a master’s degree in marine science, but there I realized that what I wanted to do was chocolate. How did I realize that? When I saw that I was spending hundreds of dollars in chocolate boutiques. I was also constantly recommending to fellow travelers to ‘Go eat this macaroon, go eat those pralines.’ I realized I love it. Chocolate became a motivation for more cultural exploration.”

Returning from Australia, she became an apprentice to the leading Israeli dessert chef Claude Ben Simon. In 2011, after many more trips and much training – mainly in Paris and Brussels, she opened her own artisanal chocolaterie.

3. Original Middle Eastern flavored pralines – now a worldwide sensation

“Travel inspires my work, but I wish also for Israeli flavors and chocolate to travel. I want people in Europe and anywhere else, also in those far away places where farmers grow chocolate, to know our land. I want people all over the world to get to know the Middle Eastern Terroir. Lovely food and flavors grow here, too.”

One such special flavour is the Za’atar – a Middle Eastern herb.

This is now the 2nd year that Ika’s Za’atar praline made her a silver medalist of The International Chocolate Awards.

This innovation, combined with her professionalism, ranked her #22 International Chocolatiers of the prestigious Le Club des Croqueurs de Chocolat

In Papua New Guinea, Ika sourced a uniquely flavoured cocoa that won her a second ICA silver medal this year. The story behind the Papua New Guinea praline inspiration is just below – read our To Sin and Be Forgiven post.