Just in time for an early spring – cross your fingers, anyway – Kakao Chocolate has doubled the number of floral flavors in its Bouquet of Chocolates.
“We’ve always done the lavender and the rose,” owner and chief chocolatier Brian Pelletier told us, “but we added to that the elderflower, which is a French liqueur, which is really wonderful. And we’ve also started using an Austrian violet liqueur and infusing that.” He called the two additions to the assortment “really, really exquisite. They’re very different, even though they’re both floral, and really make a nice combination with the other two.”
Another new nonfloral confection, the Girl’s Best Friend, has also been popular. “It’s the [strawberry] paté de fruit that we’ve been making,” Pelletier said, “but then we’ve also added Champagne to it, so it gives it a little bit of a wine taste, and then dipping that in white chocolate and then sprinkling it with a larger sugar that looks like diamonds. Those are really popular and really a lot different than anything we’ve made here before. They’re really beautiful.”
Other new temptations at Kakao: pink Champagne marshmallows and meringue made with a toasted, organic coconut. “It hardly weighs anything – you have to hold it down so it doesn’t float away,” Pelletier noted, likening the meringue to sweet snow.
This article appears in Feb 1-28, 2010.