Archive | cafe

The 16th Street Factory Opens April 19th!

April 15, 2019 by Karen Solomon

After four long years of construction, permit mayhem, and more setbacks than Annie would care to recall, our new home on 16th Street between Alabama and Harrison in SF will open its doors to the public on April 19th. Inside you’ll find our largest chocolate factory to date; the comfortable sit-down Bloom chocolate salon serving breakfast and afternoon desserts; a multipurpose classroom and event space; a casual cafe for hot chocolate, mochas and pastries on-the-go, and our third retail shop in San Francisco.

The Factory

If you’re interested in chocolate machines, you should come see Caitlin and her production team’s new hydraulic-powered Bean Room, their bright yellow 70-kilo Diedrich roaster, vintage Refining Room ball mills and roll mills, and so much more. Choose your own adventure for getting to know how we make chocolate: either sit in the new bleacher seating sipping a Mission Mocha, or sign up for a tour of the factory floor. Speaking of tours…

Classes and Tours

School is in session in our flexible, multipurpose classroom and event space, and Cynthia and the Chocolate Experiences team have an expanded menu of chocolate classes, tasting sessions, making sessions, factory tours, and trips to origin to deepen your knowledge of craft chocolate at every level. Tasting, History, Sourcing, and Making courses are now available for sign up, as well as numerous kid’s classes, hands-on family learning, and family-friendly factory tours. We now have the capacity for private events like team building, baby showers, birthday parties, or whatever kind of gathering you’re planning. Our philosophy has always been that learning is more fun when there’s a hot chocolate at the end.

The Chocolate Salon

Bloom, our chocolate salon, is nestled next to the windows that face the street, and for weeks now, curious eyes have been peeping the glimmering brass wall and ceiling tile, the deco-inspired geometric tile, oversized banquettes, and the supermodern lighting. Lisa and the kitchen team are putting the finishing touches on recipe testing, plating, and menu planning the likes of market quiche with greens and cacao fruit vinaigrette, and brûlèed brioche with Camino Verde, Ecuador chocolate hazelnut spread and cocoa nib cream. And Indica and Michelle in Creative have been hunting down teaspoons, saucers, serving vessels, and so much more to match the quality and thoughtfulness of the food they will serve.

Café and Retail Shop

If you’ve grown used to grabbing a mocha at the Ferry Building or on Valencia Street, you’ll also be able to get your drink fix here. There’s a full café onsite serving all manner of grab-and-go hot, cold, chocolate, and coffee drinks. In addition to our full pastry selection, there will also be a few new menu items in the mix, such as Kouign-Amann with a generous dollop of chocolate ganache at the center. The retail shop will stock all of our gift boxes, plus single bars and bar sets, and of course, tastes of all of our origins to help you pick a new favorite.

We cannot even begin to calculate the labor and the love that have made this dream of ours a physical space that we can now touch and see. The first batches of beans are roasting, the tempered chocolate is flowing, and that familiar scent of fresh chocolate is wafting into every room. And very soon, you’ll be here with us to engage with the best chocolate we can make.

4000 Years and Counting: A History of Drinking Chocolate

February 16, 2019 by Amie Bailey

Amie Bailey is the General Manager of our soon-to-open 16th Street Factory, and she just started with us in January, 2019. She is a food blogger, a pastry chef, a hyper-organized person, and a fan of chocolate in all of its drinkable (and non-drinkable) forms.

For most of my childhood, the process of making hot chocolate started by opening a packet. I, for one, have always loved that aroma coming from the little foil envelope that can only be described as “sweet.”

These days I’m more likely to be enjoying a Mission Hot Chocolate at our Valencia cafe, or whisking up our Hot Chocolate Mix at home, and as a result I’ve been digging into the history of drinking chocolate. While bars of chocolate and confections are available around the world, historically we as humans have preferred drinking our chocolate over biting into a bar.

Let’s go back about 4000 years to 3300 BCE to prehistoric South America, in what is now known as Ecuador. In October of 2018, archeologists from UC Berkeley uncovered ceramic pots from the Mayo-Chincipe people with traces of cacao residue on them, making chocolate one of the oldest beverages known to humanity.

The Maya continued the tradition of drinking chocolate and passed it along generation after generation. It took many centuries for the Maya (and then the Aztec) people to develop the techniques for making chocolate into a beverage worthy of the devotion we pay it even today. Highly prized, chocolate was a reward, a sacrifice, a currency, and sometimes exclusive to royalty and the military (Montezuma II reportedly drank 50 golden goblets of hot chocolate per day).

It’s tempting to think that chocolate was only for the wealthy in ancient lands, but in ancient South and Central America, chocolate was truly a group activity. It’s a lot of work to grow, harvest, ferment, roast, and grind chocolate into a paste and then convert it into a drink. Our melangers refine our chocolate for four to five days after we roast and winnow the beans (depending on the origin), and they run on electricity! Imagine doing that by hand! Consequently, and up until very recently in history, chocolate has been hard to come by. While maybe not *everyone* got 50 cups per day in Mesoamerica, it’s likely that everyone got a taste of it.

Chocolate was also a decidedly different experience back then. None of these cultures grew and processed sugar, and honey was harvested in the wild and by chance. Chocolate wasn’t just “not sweet”; it was pretty bitter – more akin to coffee than what we think of hot chocolate. It was also mixed with a variety of spices, vanilla, ground corn, or almonds.

None of these cultures were traditional herding cultures either, so the chocolate was made with water rather than milk. The texture came from pouring it from cup to cup to create foam. Today, Mexican Hot Chocolate is made with a molinillo, and the foam is considered particularly desirable.

Cruising right up to 1500 AD, the Spanish invade and conquer these cultures in a brutal fashion, taking not just their gold, but their cacao (and the skills they developed to make it into chocolate) as well. Cortez presented cacao for the first time in Europe, and from there drinking chocolate found favor and fame throughout the continent. Sometime in the 17th century Europeans began to eschew adding spicy chili pepper to their drink in favor of sugar, which was expensive but available.

The pirate botanist (what a job title!) William Hughes published a book in 1672 titled The American Physitian that devoted an entire chapter to “The Cacao Nut Tree” and the ways in which it could be prepared for drinking, going so far as to call it “The American Nectar.”

In the 18th century, we see chocolate houses rising right alongside London’s famed coffee houses as places to gather, gamble, and carouse. At this time and in these places, chocolate had reached its most opulent form to date, with sugar being bountiful and using dairy instead of water to make the beverage. Many of these places still exist in London today and you can see them, or at least the outside. White’s is one of the best known. This is where Prince Charles had his bachelor party, and it does not admit any woman other than The Queen of England. You can also view The Cocoa Tree on Pall Mall in St. James’s London which is now The Royal Automobile Club.

17th century British chocolate house

From there, mass availability followed lock step with the industrial revolution. It wasn’t THE first thing to be made in a factory, but it was really close. In 1828, Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten invented the process of extracting the cocoa butter from chocolate leaving a cake that is pulverized into powder. With this invention we enter the era of Hot Cocoa (made from cocoa powder) taking the lead over Hot Chocolate (made from the paste of cocoa nibs) and making the drink widely available (unless you were a very, very lucky child) and what we all grew up with.

With small-batch and bean-to-bar chocolate gaining a wider and wider audience, I think we live in one of the best times for enjoying Theobroma cacao, the scientific name for chocolate, meaning “food of the gods” in ancient Greek. From enjoying single-origin chocolate bars to drinking a spicy Mission Hot Chocolate at our cafés, I hope you’ll join us at our shops or online to explore.

Learn more about the history of chocolate.

Resources:

Science Magazine Online: World’s Oldest Chocolate Was Made 5300 Years Ago – In a South American Rainforest

Smithsonian Magazine Online, What We Know About the Earliest History of Chocolate

Gastro Obscura, The Rambunctious, Elitist Chocolate Houses of 18th-Century London

Cooking In the Archives

Chocolate Class, Enlightenment-Era Chocolate/Coffee Houses

Pleasant Vices Video on Making Mayan Style Hot Chocolate in the 18th Century Manner

Hot Chocolate, William Hughes’s ‘American Nectar

Cookies for a Cause: DOUGH & CO and Dandelion

August 10, 2018 by Omar Mamoon

Since 2013, Omar has been running DOUGH & CO, a San Francisco-based purveyor of cookie dough meant to be eaten baked or unbaked (eggs are substituted for a slurry of white chia seeds). All proceeds from this collaborative cookie project will benefit La Cocina, a non-profit food business incubator for women and people of color where he’s been a long time volunteer. We are excited to have him write about the philanthropic side of his local business.

I started DOUGH & CO five-and-a-half years ago. Though I never went to culinary school or business school, I had a strong innate passion for food. This passion was further fueled by the non-profit La Cocina.

La Cocina helps primarily low-income immigrant women of color to start food businesses; I lived across the street, so I started volunteering. Seeing people go through the program was super inspiring. I quit my desk job and started renting commercial kitchen space from them on Sundays where I’d make small batches of cookie dough.

From day one of starting DOUGH & CO, I knew that I wanted to give back to the community somehow. Part of the company mission statement is to “doughnate” 1% of our profits, 1% of our time, and 1% of our delicious cookie dough to nonprofits and causes that are important to us. Since starting my business, I’ve helped raise and donate over $25,000 to various non-profits around the Bay Area through cookie dough collaborations with like-minded folks. It’s not a lot in the grand scheme of it all, but it’s something – and that something can make a difference.

I’m stoked and honored to collaborate with Dandelion, who generously provided their 70% Camino Verde Chef’s Chocolate (which I mixed in generously with a batch of my peanut butter cookie dough). It’s like eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, except in a sophisticated cookie form. All proceeds from the sales of this cookie will benefit La Cocina.

The Dandelion/DOUGH & CO chocolate peanut butter cookie will only be available at the Dandelion Ferry Building cafe. And, it’s only around for a limited time – August 10-17, 2018.

I really like it, and I hope you do, too.

-xx

Omar

New and Decadent in the SF Valencia Cafe: Camino Verde Coffee Cake, Chocolate Ganache Fig Tart, and More

July 25, 2018 by Karen Solomon

Ready to try something extravagant with your cacao nib brewed coffee? Come and see us at the SF Valencia street cafe for Chef Lisa Vega‘s baked goods featuring summer’s best fruit paired with chocolate.

Say hello to the fig tart with balsamic caramel, honey ganache, and crisp honeycomb.

Round like a bicycle wheel and named for a well-known French bike race route, meet the Paris-Brest pastry with hazelnut praline cream and chocolate ganache.

Ready for spooning, the chocolate pannacotta with rich tahini, nutty sesame soil, and tangy stone fruit is a contrast in tangy and sweet.

Don’t let the muffin shape fool you. This is our old-fashioned coffee cake with Camino Verde chocolate, bright cherries, and cocoa nib nut streusel.

We’re Brewing Cacao Nib Coffee at Our SF Valencia Street Café

June 22, 2018 by Jennifer Roy

Jennifer has handled the public relations for Dandelion since 2013, and she’s an avid drinker of coffee in the cafe. For this piece, she spoke with Voga Coffee’s co-founder and CEO Eli Salomon who, along with Josh Avins, CTO and scientist behind the technology, and Jason Sarley, co-founder and Chief Coffee Officer, are the creators of the Ground Control vacuum coffee machine.

Voga Coffee's Cyclops coffee machine in the Dandelion Chocolate cafe

The Ground Control Cyclops coffee brewer behind the counter at the Valencia Street cafe.

If you’ve been in our café on Valencia Street recently, you’ve probably seen a very futuristic-looking machine topped with hand-blown glass bulbs. It’s a new coffee machine called Ground Control® Cyclops from the innovative folks at Oakland-based Voga Coffee. We’re the first café in the world to have this machine, and it just won the Specialty Coffee Association 2018 Best New Product award. We’re thrilled to be serving both brewed coffee and brewed cacao nib coffee with Ritual’s beans.

Why add another machine in our café, and how did we meet the team from Voga? Eli Salomon of Ground Control was testing the machine near our Alabama Street factory, and he asked if he could experiment with brewing some of our cacao nibs. How could we say no? When we finally got to taste our nibs brewed with delicious Ritual coffee, we had an “aha!” moment where we were blown away by the taste. The cacao nib coffee is smooth, nutty, and full-flavored coffee without any kind of bitter aftertaste. Todd, Dandelion’s co-founder and CEO, exclaimed: “How could we not have a machine that brews the most delicious coffee made with our nibs?”

Keep your eye on the Cyclops when you next visit our Valencia café.

Since launching the brewed coffee and the cacao nib brewed coffee at the end of May, 2018, the feedback has been very positive. People love it! Cacao nib coffee makes you less jittery than regular coffee, and it has a more uplifting buzz. Along with the normal caffeine kick, it must be the theobromine from the nibs that helps give your mood a boost.

How does the Cyclops work? Salomon explains, “Traditionally, it’s been impossible to brew cacao nibs, because their high-fat content clogs brewing filters. When we first spoke with Dandelion, our team suggested the possibility of using Ground Control’s high vacuum brewing process to overcome this hurdle that has plagued the chocolate world for hundreds of years. After Voga ran a few brewing experiments, it became clear that our innovative, patented brewing approach was exactly what was needed to coax the delicate, beautiful flavor of Dandelion’s impeccably sourced single-origin cacao. It was through this effort that the world’s first cacao brewer was discovered.”

He adds, “In addition to brewing a delicious cacao-based beverage, Ground Control’s unique multi-stage brewing method extracts multiple layers of flavor from coffee or cacao, resulting in a delicate, multi-dimensional cup. Drinkers of Ground Control brewed beverages have marveled at their smooth, clean cup profile and the significantly pronounced sweetness that soars from the cup. Ground Control’s unique, carefully controlled process not only eliminates harsh bitterness but also presents delicate, nuanced flavors that would otherwise be obscured.”

Currently, we’re offering a Ritual single-origin brewed coffee from Guatemala as well as the cacao nib coffee with our Camino Verde, Ecuador nibs. We look forward to having you come by to try it. Let us know what you think!

Don’t worry; you still get one of our signature shortbread cookies with every cup.

Meet Our New Winter Pastries

January 22, 2018 by Molly Gore

We’re constantly experimenting with new flavors and formats in our pastry kitchen, and every few months, we like to roll out a new, seasonal menu.

We keep some pastries on our menu year round—the s’more, the brownie flight, the chocolate chip cookie—but when the season’s first figs or persimmons or oranges come to market, our kitchen team just can’t help but do those flavors justice.

Meet the newest additions to our menu! (Spoiler alert: the winter citrus is almost too delicious right now.)

Salted Caramel Éclair

This season, we swapped out our earl grey éclair for a salted caramel rendition. With salty, caramelized cream inside and a rich, chocolatey Camino Verde glaze on top, it’s our new, delicious take on a classic.

Creamsicle Panna Cotta

Winter citrus, meet chocolate. This season’s version of our panna cotta is infused with nibs from Camino Verde, Ecuador and topped with chocolate orange streusel and citrus. Infusing nibs in cream creates a panna cotta that tastes like chocolate but looks like white cream, and when we mix that with blood orange? It’s a luxuriously rich and delicious creamsicle.

Chocolate Bostock with Roasted Apples

Our almond-laced, Camino Verde custard-filled bostock gets dressed up with roasted apples just in time for the chilly weather. We recommend it with a hot chocolate and a warm, cozy sweater.

Lime Macadamia Tart

Last but not least, a chocolatey, zested zinger. Meet our newest tart: a little bit tropical, a little bit tart, and a whole lot of delicious.

Our Week in NYC

December 2, 2017 by Jennifer Roy

We’re almost at the end of our nine-day pop up in New York City, and…WOW. We are just so humbled.

Day in and day out, our tiny little corner café in Chelsea has been flooded with such warmth and enthusiasm, and we can barely keep the s’mores in stock! Chef Lisa and her team have doubled down in their little commissary kitchen, rolling out impossible numbers of cookies and tarts and brownies and more. We’ve made more hot chocolate this week than we thought we ever could, and we’ve been teaching chocolate making classes to the best and most welcoming crowds.

We have a few more classes and book events before we hit the road back to California on December 3^rd, so come see us before then! The full list of events is here.

Thank you New York. We really do love you.

(And we hope we’ll be back!)

Thank you Gennaro Pecchia for the photos!

To the Tokyo Kitchen and Back

November 2, 2017 by Meredyth Haas

Recently, our head of kitchen R&D, Meredyth Haas, traveled to Tokyo with Chef Lisa to visit the pastry team at Dandelion Chocolate Japan. Below, she tells us a little about workshopping pastries, and what makes Tokyo so different (and not so different) from home.

At our factory in San Francisco, our pastry menu changes every few weeks. New things come into season, and we love keeping things fresh and working through all the ideas on our back burner (which is a very full back burner). The pastry kitchen at Dandelion Chocolate Japan in Tokyo serves more or less the same menu, but their ingredients and techniques are a little different over there. So this past April, Chef Mai invited Lisa and I to the Tokyo kitchen to spend some time workshopping pastries and updating the menu.

We hopped on a plane with seven new pastry recipes in our pockets and a suitcase filled with canelé molds and aprons. We boarded our 13-hour flight with nervous energy and anticipation.

So far from home, but so much like home.

Tokyo is more than 5,000 miles from San Francisco, but stepping into DCJ for the first time felt a lot like home. The distinct scent of chocolate, sounds of the roaster and winnower, English descriptions of the chocolate making process on the walls, and the same Japanese-made ceramics being used in the café made the space feel familiar. I immediately felt at ease despite not being able to communicate much beyond the occasional smile and awkward head bow. After meeting some of the café and kitchen staff, Lisa and I checked into our nearby Airbnb and prepared for a week of work ahead in the kitchen.

Just as we have two pastry kitchens here in San Francisco (one on Valencia Street and an upcoming one on Alabama Street), DCJ has two pastry kitchens in Tokyo. Lisa and I worked at Honjo, which is their external factory location. There are many, many differences between the DCJ kitchen and ours back in California. Some I noticed right away, like the windows (our kitchen is windowless)! A full gas range (we use induction burners)! A walk-in refrigerator (we only have reach-ins)! A sheeter (machine used to roll large batches of dough and make laminated pastries like croissants)! Upon closer inspection, I noticed their ingredients were also different. They don’t use brown sugar, the egg yolks are a different orange, the butter has a higher water content, and the flour was more pillowy and less dense. Their kitchen had temperature-controlled cabinets to keep chocolate melted or in temper. Their stand mixer was twice the size of ours, enabling them to make enormous batches of marshmallows at once. Their oven fan had six different settings, compared to the simple choice I make every day: On or Off.

It took me a while to learn the flow of production in their kitchen. The team had one pastry assistant on staff who knew some English and was able to translate some for us. Other than that, there were a lot of hand gestures and laughter as we tried to communicate, but we managed. Luckily for me—since the only Japanese phrases I know so far are “I’m lost” and “ramen please”—teaching our new pastry recipes to the Honjo team is largely a visual exercise.

We spent the week workshopping our tiramisu, bourbon caramel tart, almond tea cake, mocha paris-brest, celebration cake, yuzu chocolate cheesecake, and canelé. After five days, Lisa and I spent the weekend in Kyoto, and the Honjo team buckled down, mastering the new recipes. By the next week, they’d mastered each and every one beyond a level of perfection I would have ever anticipated (especially considering we couldn’t even really talk to each other!).

Tokyo is a really exciting place to be a visiting pastry chef. Some of the world’s most well-known pastry shops have branches in Tokyo, including Pierre Hermé, Bubo, Dominique Ansel, Pierre Marcolini, Ladurée, Jean-Paul Hévin, and Janice Wong. It was interesting to see how international brands brought their specific aesthetic to a cosmopolitan city like Tokyo. I ate some really incredible pastries, but I have to admit, it’s the savory food that really blew my mind. I had the best sushi of my life at a 15-course Omakase in Ise, and ate tuna sliced and served to me within hours of being caught at the famous Tsukiji Fish market. I ate fresh uni out of the shell, waited two hours for Michelin-starred ramen (worth it!), had pork katsu cut by a 100-year-old zen master chef, and copious amounts of matcha soft serve. On our weekend, Lisa and I spent the day at a traditional Japanese onsen, relaxing in an outdoor spring overlooking the Kyoto foothills.

It was a surreal experience watching our pastries come to life on the other side of the world. Though ingredients and kitchen equipment and units of measure may differ across countries, the joy of eating delicious food is a universal experience, and it’s a joy to be reminded of that so far from home. Thank you, DCJ!

Four Years In

September 11, 2017 by Lisa Vega

Four years ago, our Executive Pastry Chef, Lisa Vega, joined Dandelion. She’s pretty much the best, and here’s what she has to say about the past four years working here. (We love you Lisa! Happy Anniversary, and thanks for all the treats.)

As I celebrate my four year anniversary (with a giant oatmeal cookie next to me) I wanted to share some of my favorite memories, and what I am excited about for the future! It really does seem like yesterday when I walked into the factory here at 740 Valencia and met the whole team, including Todd, Greg, Cam, Caitlin, Norah, Jennifer and of course Meredyth, my first pastry assistant. At that point in my career, after 12 years working in fine dining kitchens I was looking for something different, even if I didn’t know what that might be. Luckily, Dandelion was looking for something different too.

Back then, the factory had just come off a summer of pop-ups; each week, a different chef took over the pastry kitchen. It was exciting and delicious, but hectic. In those days, Dandelion Chocolate was a small, 20-person company (compared to the team of 80+ that we’ve grown into now).The cafe was open five days a week, not seven, and the hours were shorter too. When I got the job, I rolled up my sleeves, and put refrigerators anywhere that had a plug, even a hall closet. I began to learn the challenges and thrills of working with single origin chocolate, having no cocoa powder in my kitchen (which was unlike any other pastry kitchen I’d worked in, ever), and learning the ins and outs of some tech language (for the first few months, I called our company-wide “all hands” meeting a “hands-on” meeting).

Prepping the bostock for our Friday tasting.

These were challenges I had never thought I’d have. I really never imagined four years later I would be a co-author of our book, Making Chocolate (which launches November 14th!), see Dandelion expand to locations in Japan where they make the same original pastries and drinks we worked on very early on, and a kiosk at the Ferry Building. I never thought I’d have traveled to origin in Belize (with a hair dryer and no hiking boots), help organize our annual 12 Nights of Chocolate where we’ve hosted some of the chefs I admire most, (Emily Luchetti, Dominique Crenn, Matt Siciliano and Ramon Perez, just to name a few). And I never imagined I’d have managed the cafe for nine months while still keeping the kitchen running, and last but not least, have a kitchen team of five pastry assistants whom I admire and adore.

Francis Ang, Matt Siciliano, me, and Ramon Perez at the 12 Nights of Chocolate

Working on a book was fun and challenging, and lasted two whole years! Just when I would start to lose momentum during an eight-hour photo shoot with our photographer Eric, somehow working with him was still, always, more than inspiring. His photos gave new life and energy to our hot chocolates and pastries. I never imagined a pile of marshmallows could look so stunning and mesmerizing! Towards project completion, the pressure intensified. Many tears were shed in the bathroom at Souvla next door and the factory became a dark scary blur when a measurement came back to edit or the wrong photo had been inserted. But come November 14th, I am humbled and excited to share what I love doing most. In the book, you’ll learn how to make all of our favorite pastries and drinks, as well as how to make chocolate from scratch, source beans, and basically get a full look at everything we’ve learned about making chocolate and working with cocoa producers.

Eric Wolfinger and I, strategizing, probably after 12 hours of shooting.

Meredyth and I at Ise.

I have traveled to Japan to work with their dedicated and awesome kitchen team and have fallen in love with Japanese culture. The work ethic, the food, the hospitality, everything spoke to me. This past May, I was able to bring Meredyth, who manages our kitchen R&D and it was so special to see the s’more and nibby horchata on the menu in the tiny coastal town of Ise. Ise is about an hour train ride from Kyoto and one of the most famous and sacred places in Japan, it is home to the Ise-jingu shrine which, now, is just a few steps away from the most charming hot chocolate stand.

My day always starts checking in with Mary or Roman, who do the weekly 6am bake. I can always tell within seconds how things are flowing. The telltale signs that things are going smoothly or not: If they don’t look up (super focused, good), if Mariah Carey is blasting (then it’s a great morning), if there are no visible coffee cups (everything is good), if they’re talking in accents (always an excellent sign, especially before 8am). Regardless of the early morning vibes, their passion and energy are never wavering. Around 8am, Meredyth comes in to chip away at our long list of R&D ideas, but first usually bakes off biscuits from her stash in the freezer and scopes out the morning bake 2nds that didn’t pass our quality inspection. She researches and tests recipes over and over and then over again until they are perfect, and we as a team, along with Todd, taste her week’s research every Friday. And every Friday Todd admits it’s his favorite meeting of the week. Just last week we tasted eight different varieties of bostock (coming to the cafe soon) with almond or pistachio frangipane with chocolate-soaked brioche, or just chocolate chips baked on top, square sliced and round. Meredyth doesn’t stop testing and tasting until we all decide on the perfect pastry. We have worked side by side for the last four years and her love and dedication to our kitchen has contributed to its success and growth.

My team is the best team. From left: Roman, Mary, me, and Meredyth.

On Saturdays and Sundays, Ellie and Zach—who spend the week prepping drinks, doughs, and endless amounts of marshmallows—work in the kitchen in our Valencia Street factory. If you have ever been in the Valencia cafe on the weekend around 1pm when the line is out the door, the marshmallow bowl is never empty, and you can’t walk a tray of cookies through the crowd, these two are in the back hustling a busy service with precision and stamina. I am so fortunate to work with Meredyth, Mary, Ellie, Roman and Zach; they are five very different individuals with different skills, past experiences and palettes who work thoughtfully and with a sense of humor.

Since the day I walked through the door, it has been an adventure and every day gets more exciting. There are new projects, new locations and of course new pastries. I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for the book to come out (so soon)! We are starting to work on ideas for our upcoming chocolate salon in our upcoming factory on Alabama Street (a pastry dream come true!), an elevated experience from what our current locations offer. And hopefully, fingers crossed, we will be moved into our beautiful brand new kitchen there soon. Working here has pushed my creativity, opened my eyes to different parts of the world and has allowed me to be a part of a team that is dedicated to creating the very best chocolate experience. We brainstorm, we taste a lot of pastries, we eat a lot of Tartine bread and butter, we push each other and we genuinely love our work and I love being a part of this team.

Nibs and hugs,

Lisa

Education Station: What’s Up with Whole Roasted Beans?

July 28, 2017 by Robert

You’re curious, so we find answers. Our education team fields lots of questions from our guests during classes, so we’ve decided to launch a series of monthly installments in which we tackle some of those questions and share the answers with the world. We call it The Education Station. This week, Robert addresses some questions about a product we sell in our cafes, and what to do with them.

At Dandelion Chocolate, most people know us for our chocolate bars, drinks, and pastries, but the one item our customers seem to be most curious about lately are whole roasted beans. We sell bags of them in our cafés, and after spending most of my time working at the Ferry Building as a cafe associate, I’ve heard a lot of questions about them: “Are those coffee beans?” or “Is that where chocolate comes from?” and of course, “What do I do with them?” Well, now is the time to grab a bag and come along to dehusk that question.

To start, Whole Roasted Beans (or as we often abbreviate, WRB) are cocoa beans. Yes, these are what we use to make chocolate. So nope, they are not coffee beans. After we finish hand sorting all of our beans—picking out the cracked, flat, and broken ones that might not taste good—we roast them, and then we crack, winnow and grind them down with sugar into chocolate. Roasting is a very important step in our flavor development process for two reasons: One, it helps bring out the flavors that we love in our chocolate and two, it’s the ‘kill step’ that ultimately kills any possible pathogens and assures that our chocolate is safe to eat. For our WRB, we use Madagascan beans from Bertil Akesson’s Bejofo Estate, and roast them a bit longer than we do if we were making them into chocolate. Why? The answer is simple. When roasted lightly, our Madagascar beans have the bright flavors we think taste amazing as a chocolate bar (after they’ve been conched and sugar has been added) but we don’t necessarily love those flavors as much as a stand-alone experience. So, by increasing our roast time, we’ve been able to skim off some of the sharper acidic flavors, leaving us with a nutty, citrusy flavor profile that we think is more snackable. If you want to learn more about the roasting process for our beans, we have factory tours and classes available to answer any questions you may have.

So, how do I eat them?

Snacking
One way people eat them is as a snack! You can squeeze one lightly and roll it between your fingers, just like cracking a peanut, to snap the skin and make it easier to peel off. You’ll end up with two parts; a peel, which we call husk, and the solids inside or the “meat of the bean,” which we call the nib. The nibs are what we refine down to make chocolate. This is the closest thing to eating 100% chocolate without the commitment. I often taste nutty notes in pure nibs, similar to a peanut or almond.

Topping
Using the nibs as a topping is always my favorite way to enjoy them. I like to have the crunchy texture and nibby flavor that it adds to things I already love. You can sprinkle the full nibs on top of yogurt, oatmeal, a salad or even ice cream! If you feel like getting creative, many people candy their nibs and use them as a delicious topping for desserts. Not only can you eat them as broken chunks of nib, but you can grind them up in a blender or food processor to make a nutty powder to boost your recipes. I suggest trying matcha soft serve, covered in ground nibs – yum!

Baking
Baking with chocolate is always fun, but with nibs, it’s even better! My favorite is making chocolate cherry bread using nibs instead of chocolate chips. Roasted cacao beans also make a great substitute for nuts. You can easily make banana nut bread by replacing nuts for nibs. We use nibs in many of our recipes here at Dandelion, stop by either of our cafes to try how our kitchen team incorporates them into our pastries and drinks.

Chocolate making
Although it’s possible, I wouldn’t recommend using these bean for home chocolate making. As I mentioned before, we developed a very specific roast profile that is intentionally different from the one we use for our bars, so we would hate for you to not get the result you wanted. If you’re interested in making chocolate at home we have a book coming out in November where we go more in depth, but if you can’t wait, sign up for our Chocolate 201 classes and let’s make a batch of chocolate!

Are there any other experiments I can do with them?

Absolutely! The great thing about working at Dandelion Chocolate is all of the tasting and experiments we do here—from our chocolate makers developing new bar profiles to our pastry team regularly adding new things to the menu. Everyone works hard in learning and creating something they’re excited about, so I wanted to share a couple of things that I made at home using my roasted beans.

Cracking and winnowing (removing husks)
If you want a quick, but slightly messy way to remove the husk off the beans, this has worked since the beginning of our chocolate journey. This is the same technique our founder, Todd, used when he was starting in his kitchen at home.

Put your desired amount of beans into a ziplock bag and make sure it’s closed all the way.
Using a rolling pin to go over the bag and break all of the beans. What you will have in the bag is a bunch of broken husk and nibs, all mixed together.
Place all of the broken nibs and husk into a bowl. I found that using a strainer helped me filter out some of the bigger pieces of husk before putting in the bowl.
Then use a blow dryer to “winnow” the husk off the nibs. Since husk pieces are light, they should blow away and the nibs should remain in the bowl. This takes a little practice of angling the blow dryer just right to allow only the husk to fly over the edge of the bowl, while the heavier nibs remain inside. As a warning, make sure you do not do this in a place where pets could eat them. Theobromine is very, very dangerous for dogs!
If you’re like me, and like things done at 110%, you can remove any remaining husk by hand. In our factory, we use the ten-minute rule: once you start picking nibs clean, cap yourself at ten minutes. Otherwise, you’ll be doing it for eternity.

I also tried seeing how long it would take me to remove the husk by hand, bean by bean, and got through half of the bag before my hands were covered in cocoa butter and smelled like chocolate. It’s not impossible, but requires more patience, a lot of podcasts, and may take longer than cracking and winnowing.

Cold Brew infused with nibs
After spending some time working at the Ferry Building one of my favorite things to do was to make our Ecuador Cold Brew. So I went home and made some for myself in a French press.

Start off by grinding your coffee at a coarse grind.
Optional: Use a spice grinder. I tried to match the same coarseness as the coffee.
Pour the coffee into the French press first and then fill it about halfway full with boiling water.
Next, add the nibs and stir everything together before topping it off with more water.
Remember to put the lid on, but don’t plunge it.
Leave it to brew at room temperature for 24 hours.
Plunge the coffee, and do it slowly so none of the grounds make it to your coffee.
Transfer to a jar and put it in the fridge to enjoy later.

Waffles with nibs

This was probably the most exciting thing I got to do. I bought a cast iron waffle maker and was finally able to put it to use. If you were wondering, this is where I used those nibs I winnowed by hand!

Here is a recipe I adapted from Flour Arrangements:

INGREDIENTS

1¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
⅓ cup cocoa nibs
2 large eggs
1¾ cups buttermilk
1 stick butter, melted
2 teaspoons vanilla
maple syrup, for serving

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all of the dry ingredients into a bowl.
In another bowl, mix the eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla.
Combine wet and dry ingredients.
Brush each side of the waffle maker with sunflower oil, or another neutral oil.
Pour 1/2 cup of batter into the pan for each waffle.
Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until golden and crispy at the edges.
You can use maple syrup if you like, but I used strawberries as toppings since I wanted to really taste the nibs.

I love incorporating roasted beans into my overall diet, especially if I want to cut out sugar for a bit. The possibilities are endless, and if you ever see me at an event or class I would love to hear how you used your beans. Or comment your favorite ways below! Remember there’s no right or wrong way to taste chocolate, so I hoped this helped answer some of your questions. There are lots more experiments that I wanted to try, like smoothies and candied nibs, so keep an eye out for another post soon.