Rose's
Chocolate Treasures
1906 Post Alley in Pike's Market
866 315 7673
There is a certain tendency not to take chocolate seriously. This is
not to say that some people are not serious about chocolates. An awful
lot of them are, but they are serious about chocolate as chocolate, not
chocolate as food. Rose's has something for both types. They have the
usual collection of very good chocolate candies and truffles, all made
on the premises, and they offer something for us more general foodies.For example, they have a wonderful Mexican hot chocolate with lots of hot red chili powder in it. We love chocolate mole, and this was a perfect chocolate mole drink. The original hot chocolate was made with cocoa beans and chilis, so why doesn't anyone serve it anywhere? Well, someone does in Seattle.
They also sell unroasted cocoa beans. Seattle is a big coffee town, and you can find places that sell unroasted coffee. We bought a batch of beans, and we're dying to see if we can roast them up and make a really mole with them. As backup, we also bought some chocolate nibs. These are bits of the chocolate extracted from the beans after roasting. If we can't figure out the roasting, we can shift to plan B and try the nibs. Stay tuned to the Kaleberg site to see how this goes.
UPDATE 6 June
05: We finally roasted up our chocolate pods. It was pretty easy. We
put them on a pizza tray and popped them in a 350 degree Fahrenheit
oven for about 15 minutes. The air was soon rich with the scent of
chocolate. We let the pods cool for a few minutes and peeled the thin
skin from one of the pods. The insides tasted of bitter chocolate with
a rich nutty overtone, almost a hazelnut flavor. The secret of chocolate has been revealed!
