A dark chocolate truffle from Carolina Confectionery is filled with fresh
strawberry-infused ganache.
It’s Valentine’s Day.
Naturally I’m eating chocolate. Euphoria-inducing, seratonin-boosting, bliss-provoking dark chocolate. Pralus, to be exact. Seventy-five percent cacao, from Venezuela. Dense, tasting of dark fruits, some leather, maybe a trace of vanilla, with a long, lingering finish.
Pralus is French, of course. And so are a lot of the best bars. But eventually even Pralus’ Pyramid Tropique—a square stack of 10 delectable single origin bars the size of child’s palm—will be just a memory. Happily a serious craving can be assuaged with chocolate made closer to home.
At Carolina Confectionery, lawyer-turned-chocolatier Mary Butler uses Valrhona to make small batches of truffles in appealing fresh fruit flavors. A dark chocolate truffle dusted with pink pearlized sugar was filled with a strawberry-infused ganache; another, faceted like a gemstone, tasted of luscious, sweet-tart pomegranate. In spring, look for fresh blueberry and key lime infused truffles. Butler’s buttery walnut-almond toffee, based on a family recipe that inspired her new career, is a perennial favorite.
All these confections are handmade in the spotless Carolina blue and white shop in a small strip center on the north edge of Cole Park Plaza. Carolina Confectionery, 11624 – A U.S. 15-501 N, Chapel Hill, NC. 919-967-7500. www.carolinaconfectionery.com.
If you’re craving the impossibly rich, so-thick-you-can-stand-a-spoon-up-in-it, hot chocolate you had on your last trip to Paris, go straight to 3Cups and order a cup, or maybe two, of the new, deep, dark Euro-style drinking chocolate. Each cup is made from a nearly three ounce disk of chocolate ganache infused with a touch of cinnamon and star anise. Melted into a scant half cup of hot milk and frothed for 45 seconds, it is the sort of luxurious indulgence that can make you hunger for a cold, rainy day. The ganache is a blend of bittersweet Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja (70 percent cacao) and heavy cream, so oozingly soft that they have to keep it refrigerated.
The genius behind this new offering is Jonathan Wallace, formerly of the Harvard Libraries, who’s fortuitously returned to Chapel Hill to pursue a degree in French and international relations. His chocolate tasting classes at 3Cups have been sold out, and no wonder. He is knowledgeable, articulate and possessed of an extraordinary palate. At last night’s class, he led a small group of us in a tasting of Valrhona and Pralus single origin bars from Madagascar, Venezuela and Trinidad, guiding us through the confusing world of snap, aroma and mouthfeel—not to mention flavors like raisin, earth, leather and smoke. If you ask nicely, he will give you a list of his favorite Paris chocolatiers. To see photos of Jonathan's own chocolates, as well as macarons from Pierre Herme and more, go to: http://flickr.com/photos/54727746@N00/
3Cups, 431 West Franklin Street, Suite 15, Chapel Hill, NC 27516. 919-968-8993. www.3cups.net