Chocolate Show Travels Far Beyond Caramel, Nuts
By Lauren Weber
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Once, the most unusual thing you might find inside a chocolate was a gooey maraschino cherry.
Now a bite might yield tea, tangerine or hibiscus.
Fritz Knipschildt, 30, a Dane who has been experimenting with chocolate since he was 12, offers melt-in-your-mouth flavors including tangerine with red chili, white chocolate with cardamom, and apple with rosemary.
Knipschildt said his unusual tastes spring from his work as a pastry chef in Europe, where he experimented with savory flavors in his desserts.
"I like playing around with the spices," he said.
How about a rose or violet truffle? These are available from Philippe Bouvier Chocolates, based in Rennes, France. If flowers don't appeal, the company also offers fennel, pepper and Darjeeling tea. Most are topped with a clue to their contents -- hibiscus or tea leaves, for example.
These confections were on display at the weekend Chocolate Show in New York. Featuring more than 50 top chocolatiers and demonstrations by pastry chefs, the event attracts as many as 20,000 chocolate fanatics during its three-day run.
"We have more unusual flavors this year," said Stephanie Teuwen, a spokeswoman for the show. "The people who are experimenting with these flavors are small artisanal chocolate makers who want to do something beyond caramel and nuts. They want to so something more creative."
The clientele for these exotic chocolates are high-end buyers who follow favored candymakers the way others follow basketball hero Michael Jordan's sports career.
"They have a faithful clientele who trust what they do," said Teuwen.
Those clients are doing their part to drive the chocolate business to new heights. The $13 billion industry looked set to finish 2002 with growth of about 3.6 percent, according to the Chocolate Manufacturers Association.
At Jacques Torres Chocolates, the New York company owned by the former pastry chef at the restaurant Le Cirque 2000, the big seller is Wicked Hot Chocolate, a rich drink that harks back to the confection's South American roots.
With ancho and chipotle peppers, cinnamon and allspice, it tastes like something that could have kept Montezuma happy. The Aztec emperor reportedly drank 50 cups of chocolate a day.
For those who don't like it hot, a Torres chef suggested putting the beverage in the refrigerator, where it thickens into a pudding. In the freezer, it becomes a nice sorbet, he said.
For people who prefer chocolate's childhood associations to its gourmand possibilities, there's Sweet Bliss, a New York-based company started by Ralph Lauren's former personal chef, Ilene Shane.
Shane's buttercrunch and chocolate-covered potato sticks were so beloved by the Lauren household that the designer himself urged her to start marketing her creations. Ultimately he lost a chef, but she gained a following for her treats.
"We take traditional flavors, things we grew up with, and make them fun using great chocolate," said Iris Libby, Sweet Bliss's vice president of marketing.
They are a big seller at luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman, which is offering a Sweet Bliss chocolate house for the holidays this year. It costs $295 and provides a guaranteed sugar rush. Sweet Bliss, which launched in February, already has sales "in the mid-six figures," said Libby.
IT'S ALL IN THE BEANS
For the specialty food makers, chocolate is a labor of love, and cocoa beans are their muses.
After his illness took him out of medicine, Dr. Robert Steinberg sought a new calling. He found it during two weeks studying artisanal chocolate-making in Lyon, France, in 1994.
When he returned to the United States, he and a former patient, John Scharffenberger, joined forces to create high-end candy bars and baking chocolate for home chefs. |
