Tag Archives: chocolate

Remy and the Chocolate Chip

June 18, 2020 by

For as long as chef Lisa Vega has been with Dandelion Chocolate, Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookie has been part of our DNA. For years, our chocolate chips were made in-house by the kitchen team, who hand-piped over 50 pounds of tempered discs a week. That is, until recently, when the Large Chip was born.

To learn the “making of” story we spoke with Remy Labesque, a talented industrial designer and good friend of ours who collaborated with Chef Lisa and the production team to make the perfect chocolate chip. Remy met Todd when he attended a Chocolate 101 class some years ago and so began a lasting friendship. Remy was working at Frog Design at the time (he’s now at Tesla) and he jumped at the opportunity to re-design the chocolate chip.

When the large chip was launched in May, Remy walked us through his creative process which led to the birth of these geometric beauties.

“The chip project began about three years ago. If my memory serves me, it was driven in large part by pastry chef Lisa Vega, who wanted something specifically tailored for her recipes. There are two chip designs: large and small (the large was released first, and the small will be at a later date). Their mass (3.5 grams and 0.8 grams, respectively), was driven by Lisa, and the prototypes were tested along the way in her recipes as part of the R&D process. Another consideration was that we also needed something that could be enjoyed as a chocolate-eating experience completely by itself — that’s where our unique shape comes into play.

“The shape of a typical store-bought chocolate chip is an arbitrary result of the industrial manufacturing process used to make it. As you might expect, a drop of molten chocolate is deposited onto a flat surface and left to cool. Chocolate chip taste varies widely by brand, but the shape of the chips does not.

“The shape of our chip is faceted: The edges of a Dandelion Chocolate chip taper to thin-as-we could-make-’em without compromising structure. This is because the thermal mass of a thin piece of chocolate melts more quickly on the palate. So when you put a Dandelion chip on your tongue, the thin, chiseled edges warm-to-melt nearly instantly. The 3D shape, while simple, we believe is also novel. And this is noteworthy because the world of industrial design is running out of simple forms that haven’t been claimed for something already. Beyond that we’re proud to have optimized the chocolate chip eating experience as a result of rethinking the humble shape itself.”

While the chip was created for baking, many of us at Dandelion Chocolate have reached for them to nibble because the mouthfeel is different from our bars; but make no mistake, there is nothing like the taste when these chips are baked in a gigantic chocolate chip cookie.

The chips are being released by origin, and the first two are especially suited to baking and confections:
Costa Esmeraldas from Ecuador, 70%, 2018 Harvest, with notes of chocolate buttercream frosting and banana; and Hacienda Azul from Costa Rica, 70%, 2019 Harvest, with notes of chocolate almond biscotti and buttery caramel.

We want to thank Remy for bringing his know-how and love of chocolate to the project. It’s great to finally to be able to share his story with you.

Sharing Gola Rainforest Chocolate

May 24, 2018 by

We are so excited to share Dr. Kristy Leissle’s most recent blog post about how the Gola Rainforest bar came to be. Dr. Leissle was the person who introduced Dandelion to the project team, and after Greg visited Sierra Leone in October 2017, we bought the beans and became the first U.S. chocolate maker to make Gola Rainforest bars.

Dr. Leissle is a scholar of cocoa and chocolate. Since 2004, her work has investigated the politics, economics, and cultures of these industries, focusing on West African political economy and trade, the US craft market, and the complex meanings produced and consumed through chocolate marketing and advertising. Her recent book, Cocoa (Cambridge: Polity, 2018) explores cocoa geopolitics and personal politics. Dr. Leissle is Affiliate Faculty in African Studies at the University of Washington. She lives in Accra, Ghana.

As a scholar of cocoa and chocolate, it is not often that I get involved on the trading side. But since early last year, I have been working with the UK-based organization Twin & Twin Trading, whose vision is development through trade, facilitating specialty chocolate market access for cocoa farmer associations in Africa. That means I help farmer groups to promote and sell their cocoa to specialty buyers—who may be paying premium prices for quality, and who may make these farmer groups visible to chocolate shoppers by putting their names on single origin bars.

Apart from Madagascar bars, it is relatively rare in the US to find specialty, single origin chocolate that uses African cocoa, at least compared with bars that use cocoa from Central or South America, or the Caribbean. I started writing about the invisibility of West African cocoa in premium chocolate some years ago; little did I think at the time that I would be part of a team helping to promote the region to specialty buyers.

Gola’s warehouse manager, Vandi, scoops up a handful of cocoa beans to assess them; photo by Kristy Leissle

But one container at a time, that’s what we have been doing, starting with Gola Rainforest cocoa producer organizations in Sierra Leone. With assistance from Twin and other partners, farmers in four chiefdoms on the edge of the Gola Rainforest National Park have organized into three associations to sell their cocoa: Malema chiefdom, Gaura chiefdom, and Tunkia and Koya chiefdoms, which, being a bit smaller than the others, joined together to sell their cocoa. Together, these farmer associations are working to conserve the Gola Rainforest, which is home to many threatened and endemic species, including the elusive pygmy hippo, and to strengthen their cocoa business practices.

Twin and its partners in Sierra Leone have been working for several years with these farmer associations to provide agricultural training, and to support best practices around cocoa harvest, fermentation, drying, and storage. My role has involved building capacity for farmer associations and the Gola staff around marketing, so that they can strategize from an informed position when negotiating with buyers.

Vandi with bags of cocoa at the warehouse awaiting shipment; photo by Kristy Leissle

When I started this work, bags of cocoa were sitting in the Gola warehouse in Kenema. Knowing we had superior quality cocoa and a unique opportunity to launch Sierra Leone onto the specialty cocoa map, we aimed high—the first container, the team agreed, should be pitched to the US craft market. To the best of our knowledge, no craft maker in the US had produced a single origin specialty chocolate bar from Sierra Leone before. As confident as I felt in the cocoa, though, I wasn’t sure if any of them would be willing to consider it. In my work over the past fifteen years, I have found that, apart from a very few exceptions (such as John Kehoe and Gary Guittard at Guittard Chocolate, or the folks at Tcho Chocolate), people are generally dismissive, wary, or simply uninterested in West African cocoa for any kind of premium product.

But some people in the chocolate industry are starting to think—and act—differently when it comes to African origins, and especially West Africa. In our conversations about Gola cocoa, these individuals spoke with humility, recognizing that they had a lot to learn about West Africa’s vast cocoa farming systems, and they were eager to begin. Among them were Greg D’Alesandre, who sources for Dandelion Chocolate, and Gino Dalla Gasperina, who founded Meridian Cacao Company. I had a lot to learn from them, too—and all of us had something to learn from the people growing the cocoa and the Gola staff who work with those farmers. Greg and Gino decided to visit Sierra Leone, to see the farms, learn about the  trainings, and discuss priorities and visions with the Gola team, as buyers and sellers of cocoa.

Photo with Greg (Dandelion Chocolate), Gino (Meridian Cacao), and the Gola team, on the wall at the Gola Rainforest Lalehun research center, where we held the season review last week; photo by Kristy Leissle

And then Greg made the decision to buy the cocoa, which meant Dandelion would make the first ever Gola Rainforest Chocolate bar! Will you forgive me for saying how very proud I am, how even now I have tears and goosebumps, remembering the collective effort it took, and from my gratitude to everyone for working with such dedication and tirelessness, such faith in Gola cocoa? So many people gave this their all, from the cocoa farmers through the Gola buying officers, the agricultural extension team at Jula Consultancy, the trading team at Twin, and right up to Ron Sweetser at Dandelion, who developed the profile for the bar—and, by doing so with enormous care and love, showed everyone just what Sierra Leone Gola Rainforest cocoa can do as a single origin craft chocolate bar.

I will leave it to others to give their assessment of the chocolate, as my own (five star) review of the (most profoundly chocolate) bar (I have ever tasted) will necessarily sound biased at this point. But if you are one of those people who likes chocolate, I do think the Gola Rainforest bar might be one that pleases you (so much that you buy out all the stock in your local shop and eat it for breakfast and create fashion accessories out of the wrappers).

Greg and the team at Dandelion took the first opportunity to share the chocolate with the women and men who had grown the cocoa. The three Gola Rainforest cocoa farmer associations held their season review last week, and I traveled to Sierra Leone to participate. Part of the work was to celebrate the successes of last season, and part of it was to strategize for the coming season. For this, I led a session on chocolate markets, outlining the different categories of chocolate and what advantages and disadvantages there would be to selling into each value chain.

Presenting to Gola cocoa farmer associations, while business manager Yambasu translates into Mende; photo by Felicity Butler

We talked too about the relationship between Gola and Dandelion, and with other potential buyers, and what they had discussed with Greg and Gino when they visited. I showed maps to chart the journey the Gola cocoa had taken once it left Sierra Leone, and photos of Dandelion’s Valencia Street factory, so that the farmers could see where it was manufactured into chocolate.

Showing where the Gola Rainforest bar is for sale at Dandelion’s Valencia Street factory; photo by Felicity Butler

Photos showing farmers their chocolate bar on sale at Dandelion’s Valencia Street shop; photo by Kristy Leissle

Admiring the Dandelion Chocolate bar wrapper, which says “Gola Rainforest, Sierra Leone”; photo by Felicity Butler

Staff members had taken turns translating my talk into Mende. But when I said that theirs was the first specialty chocolate bar from Sierra Leone in the US craft market, no translation was needed—the cheers and smiles were immediate!

Celebrating Gola’s success at the season review meeting; photo by Björn Horvath

Then it was time to share the Dandelion Gola Rainforest chocolate bar.

Dandelion Gola Rainforest Chocolate! Photo by Felicity Butler

Aminata, Supervisor of Cocoa Extension Team & Gender Coordinator for Gola, shares Dandelion’s Gola chocolate with her colleague Janneh; photo by Felicity Butler

Mohamed Fofanah, Managing Director of Jula Consultancy, tastes Dandelion chocolate; photo by Björn Horvath

So much of my teaching, research, and writing has been about the negative stereotypes that persist about Africa, and how these damage or undermine so many possibilities for real, material change. Superior cocoa grows in Sierra Leone, and farmers work hard to cultivate and process it. It is not easy to swim against the tide of negative stories about Sierra Leone and indeed all of West Africa. But this is necessary work.

Do the people who work so hard every day to grow excellent cocoa, and who buy and haul and store it, who steward it until it sails away on a container ship—do they not deserve to have their experiences, their labor, their cocoa recognized and esteemed? We all want to be seen, and for our work to be valued.

I think that even more than when they tasted the chocolate, when the farmers, buying officers, and agricultural extension staff saw the words “Gola Rainforest, Sierra Leone” on the Dandelion bar wrapper, they felt what they had achieved. I saw people’s faces light up with pride. I hope that there is more of the same to come.

Madame Jebbe, Women’s Leader of the Gaura Cocoa Farmers’ Association; photo by Felicity Butler

It is my privilege and joy to work with the farmers and association executives in Gaura, Malema, Tunkia, and Koya chiefdoms; with the staff (especially Björn Horvath and Katie Sims in Kenema) at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which has worked for decades to conserve and protect the Gola Rainforest and whose idea it was to start a cocoa business in the forest edge communities in the first place; my excellent colleagues at Twin & Twin Trading (especially Hannah Davis, who managed Twin’s contributions from the start, and Deborah Bickler, who kept us all going); Gino at Meridian Cacao, who has been generously helping to build capacity and cocoa expertise for both Twin and Gola; and, of course, Greg and the team at Dandelion Chocolate. Thank you for bringing Gola Rainforest Chocolate into the world.

Team members from Twin & Gola, looking forward to the future of Gola Rainforest Cocoa! Photo by Kristy Leissle

This post originally appeared on ChocoBlog by Dr. Chocolate, May 18, 2018.

Our Week in NYC

December 2, 2017 by

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 3rd, 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!)

Follow us on Instagram for more pics.

Thank you Gennaro Pecchia for the photos!

Dynamic Duos: The Inside Scoop on Pairings

May 25, 2017 by

Here at Dandelion Chocolate, we LOVE food.  The chocolate-y items, of course, but it doesn’t stop there. Talking about flavor and taste is an everyday occurrence around here. It’s also a big part of  our jobs. As the Event Manager, one of the things that I get to do is organize and enjoy all of our pairing events, which means tasting a lot of delicious things, with a lot of nice people.

I often think of pairings in the following way: individually, chocolate and another food item may each taste amazing, but when you pair them together, they could taste like pond water, soap, or an unidentified yuck. That’s what I consider a bad pairing. No offense to pond water. But, if you taste two yummy things alone and when they’re combined, they create a whole new taste sensation that calls to mind something that neither product was able to reveal on it’s own, that’s a great pairing. And sometimes a great pairing is also an opportunity to get to know your fellow tasters a little bit better.

 One of the things that I love most about these types of events is hearing what other people taste when we pair different things together. Barbecue potato chips? Margarita pizza? A rocky stream bed? Birthday cake? Chocolate croissants? Orange blossom water? What?! I mean yum! It is exciting when a particular pairing really invokes a specific emotional response for someone, like memories from childhood or travel. Usually these taste sensations are really, really specific and include time, place and people. Like the milk left over from that cereal with colored marshmallows. Or a bowl of summer berries with not-too-sweet homemade whipped cream. Or that time that you burned the chocolate chip cookies just a little bit, but ate them all anyways. It is amazing that so many nuances can often be discovered with such simple ingredients, like sugar and cocoa beans.

For me, it’s a treat to really get to savor a pairing combination. To spend the meditative time, projecting my laser-focused attention on the textures of a floral tea, or the peachy melon sweetness of an unpasteurized sake. To just think about the notes that I taste. That’s it. The slightly malty, slightly bitter quality of melting dark chocolate. The breezy berry notes and pinging acidity of an African coffee.The toothsome hamminess of a great gouda. It also helps that there are no wrong answers or very many rules. Everyone tastes differently and will prefer one pairing over the other. Sometimes, I even play Devil’s Advocate and try to match the two most outlandish items together — just for fun!

Hosting, planning, and participating in these chocolate pairing events has made me change my mind about what my favorite and not-so favorite Dandelion chocolate bars are – welcome back to #1, Madagascar! I the love the challenge of trying to find a good match for a strong Pu’er tea, or a bold blue cheese. If you think that you know all the nuances of your favorite Dandelion Chocolate bar, that there is nothing new left to discover, I invite you to pair it with a great quality cheese, sake, coffee or tea. See where it takes you. Hopefully to a newfound sense of excitement and curiosity about food and flavor.

Check our website here for the listing of our upcoming pairing classes in May and June.

History of Chocolate

April 5, 2017 by

About a month ago, a couple members of our education team, Kelsey and Cynthia, were asked to give a lecture on the History of Chocolate to an undergraduate history class at the University of California-Davis. They used the opportunity to create an outline for our newest class at Dandelion Chocolate: An Edible History of Chocolate. Here’s a look into how it went, what they learned, and what you can look forward to in our upcoming class!

When Cynthia and I were asked to give a lecture on the History of Chocolate, we thought, “Easy! we’ll just talk about what we do every day…to a bunch of history students… who probably know more about the history of the Americas than we do… and, wait, did you just say 300 of them? Oh. Well, here comes the crippling stage fright. What did we get ourselves into?”

I remember the lump in my throat as I read the email from Professor Andres Resendez, who has spent his entire academic career studying and writing multiple books all about the early exploration and colonization of Central and South America, imagining what we could possibly tell him (and a lecture hall full of students) about cacao, or about how colonialism introduced chocolate to the global trade system, beginning thousands of years ago. And, history, it’s so…old. How could we know enough to confidently explain it to an expert historian? We know chocolate, we’re neck deep in it every day. But talking about the history of chocolate to a room full of history students felt, well, intimidating.

I peeked over my computer at Cynthia. She too had an apprehensive look on her face after opening the last correspondence with Dr. Resendez. But it only took her all of 30 seconds to perk up and smile, as she always does, with a glow of confidence, “Oh! We’ve got this. I mean why not?” Cynthia has a way of boosting my confidence when it comes to these things, reminding me that in our little chocolate world over here we can sometimes forget just how much we’ve already learned about chocolate and where it comes from. I later told her she reminded me of Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus, what with her “Take chances, make mistakes and get messy!” attitude.

So there we had it, a month to pull together the curriculum and make a nerdy, but totally cool and engaging presentation. Happily for us, we’ve been dreaming about developing a full class about the history of chocolate for our customers for awhile now, and this was an excellent opportunity to pull that together. We spent the month compiling and formatting information, listening to podcasts, reading articles, looking at all kinds of books on Amazon. Finally, we had a week to pull together the presentation when Cynthia pulled me aside at our Valencia Street Factory and says, “I realized, I know way more than I thought I did and I’m pretty sure you do too. I’m really excited. We’ve totally got this, Kelsey.”

And that was all I needed to hear to be right there with her. She was right. I think we sometimes forget that no one knows it all. We don’t. Historians don’t. Other chocolate makers (probably) don’t. New discoveries are continually being made by scientists, uncovering new evidence extending what we know about the history of chocolate. And then there are the farmers, traders and makers of chocolate, who are regularly discovering new things about the industry. We’re both adding what we know to both ends of the story, the past and the present. You can be an expert and still not know everything; you can be relatively new to it and still know a lot. And that feels like the magic of chocolate; there is always something new to learn.

As P-day approached, we dove into the deep end. We reviewed the history of the Olmec, the Maya and the Aztec.; how cacao beans were at one point a currency, which would set the stage for the future of its influence over the rest of the world. We read stories of European royalty bestowing gifts of chocolate in marriage, a symbol of international alliances. We dove into stories about how the Quaker influence shows up in the modern day labor dynamics in the Ivory Coast. We noticed patterns, like the way different cultures throughout history had some spiritual or romantic association with chocolate, and many of them recognized some aphrodisiac property in theobromine. We even learned how chocolate was adopted by the masses in the United States through WWII. Cynthia pulled together 60+ slides, dotted with lore of Emperor Montezuma and his drinking obsession, and stories of the secret Monks of Spain and Hershey bars. And I got to make it pretty with silly animations and words. We worked until 10pm the night before, giddy with fun facts (which could have also had to do with the entire Marou bar I ate while working).    

We walked into the classroom, took a deep breath, introduced ourselves and proceeded to tell a room full of 20 year olds what we knew. And guess what? We totally killed it.

And even better, you can experience the whole thing in our upcoming Edible History of Chocolate class! The first one will be April 20th, from 7-9pm. Stay tuned for more info on how to sign up and future dates.