| Where to find quality chocolate in Calgary |
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| Written by Shani Krammer |
| Friday, 16 April 2010 13:03 |
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Chocolate stores in Calgary are upping their game in the production of cocoa-filled treats. The shop called Choklat in Inglewood, as well as the various Bernard Callebaut stores in the city, offer chocolate that is of a higher quality than what someone would find in the neighborhood grocery store, according to employees. The shops use fewer additives and inspect ingredients carefully. “I got the hard job; eating chocolate all day,” Choklat employee Jeff Crawford jokes. “I tell you, it’s just horrible. It’s a tough one but like they say, someone’s got to do it!” Choklat boasts quality treats that are made straight from the cocoa bean, with a shelf life of up to 10 days only, as it says on their official website. Crawford says that word of mouth about this shop is getting out around Calgary. “There’s a lot of people that have heard about us,” Crawford says. “Most people that come in that are new customers say, ‘Oh I’ve heard all about you!’” When asked what he thinks of working at Choklat, Crawford laughs and says, “Hate it. Worst job ever. Somebody, hire me. “No, it’s so much fun, playing with chocolate all day long is a like a dream come true. As a kid, me and Grandma would be making the little turtles at Christmastime and stuff. It’s really just a lot of fun to hang out and melt down some chocolate and make some baked goods.” Crawford says that there is an intricate process that goes into making the confections at Choklat. “The first step I guess in making chocolate is roasting the cocoa beans that we get,” he says. “Then we extract the shell away from the cocoa bean and we grind that up. Ground up cocoa bean is what we ‘nib.’ “We take the nibs and cocoa butter, sugar, and vanilla, and we refine that for about two days. And at the end of the two days you get liquid chocolate and then we go from there. “We pour that into bars and make a series of different eating bars of three different intensities (including) milk chocolates, dark chocolates.” The Choklat website says: “Unlike chocolate itself (which has a very long shelf life), the delicate and smooth buttercream centers of high quality chocolates, have a shelf life at room temperature of approximately seven to 10 days before beginning to go rancid or mouldy. If refrigerated, they can last up to 14 days before becoming inedible.” Quality is important at Choklat. Crawford says that there is a difference between the products he makes every day and some of the chocolate bars at the supermarket. “It’s definitely a factor (making chocolate from scratch) in the final product,” Crawford says. “You can taste the freshness and how good ours is in comparison to somebody who’s had their chocolate made by a European company and it sat in their warehouse for who knows how long. “The chocolate you’re getting (at Choklat) is quite a bit fresher than that. It definitely plays a huge role in the final product.” Crawford says that one important factor in the overall taste and quality of the treats at Choklat is that there are no shelf stabilizers or flavour enhancers included in the list of ingredients. “Each cocoa bean has a different flavour so it’s like, a world of difference.” Crawford says. Crawford says that he has his Red Seal Certificate from SAIT in the culinary arts program. He says it is helpful that he is trained in cooking and working in a kitchen, because the store isn’t so much a factory as it is a kitchen environment, essentially. “I appreciate it (chocolate) like wine, truthfully,” Crawford says. “It’s a shame that it has become such a junk food. A good chocolate is just so delicate, and the flavour complexity behind it is just like nothing else, absolutely nothing else. I still love chocolate, and eat it all the time. I can’t get enough of it.” Paul Thornton comes to Choklat about once or twice a month to indulge his sweet tooth. Brownies are his favourite treat from this small chocolate shop, he says. He has tried three different kinds of their chocolate bars, but he says in his opinion, the bars only released their flavours fully when they were melted, and they tasted better when they were drizzled over something like fruit, he says. Thornton says he thinks chocolate and ice cream don’t mix well, because the chocolate freezes on contact with the ice cream and again, the flavours are lost. He thinks of himself as someone who appreciates chocolate and he likes to pay attention to the quality of the chocolate he eats, which is why he enjoys coming to Choklat for brownies mainly. “When I binge on chocolate, I want it to be good,” Thorton says. That being said, he doesn’t eat large amounts of chocolate on a regular basis because it isn’t inherently healthy; he says it has a significant amount of sugar that he believes can cause diabetes and is said to be a stimulant. Despite that, he enjoys chocolate as a treat. “To be honest, you smell that (chocolate), and it’s like ‘oh my God!’” Another chocolatier is concerned with the quality of chocolate, and has turned to organic ingredients in the name of flavour and overall quality, and that is Bernard Callebaut. ‘I have been around [making chocolate] for 27 years,” says Callebaut, who has nine stores in Calgary bearing his name. Some of the types of confections offered at the Bernard Callebaut stores include truffles, Ganache Cream chocolates, Hazelnut pralines, seashell chocolates and Butter Creams. Callebaut says that there are two main types of chocolate treats he offers in his stores; ones with a short shelf-life of around 10 days because they contain more dairy products, and those that can last for between six months to a year. He points out the difference between his company and the company Choklat, in terms of methods used to acquire ingredients: “Ultimately, my business, I am like a chef in a restaurant,” he says. A chef buys its pig, or what have you, from a trusted farmer; all ready to be made into a dish, he says. That is how he buys his chocolate; he gets it from people who know how to grind cocoa and the like, he says. While Choklat employees make everything fresh in-store, Callebaut says he buys his chocolate products and ingredients from other people, but they are people he trusts to provide good quality. He says he doesn’t make the chocolate straight from the cocoa bean, because that that is a whole other specialty. With the 60-odd ingredients in his chocolate, Callebaut says it just isn’t possible for him to have his ingredients prepared in his stores. Callebaut explains his opinion that as a chocolate maker, you have to select the right ingredients when making chocolate, and that, to him, is just as important as the making it from scratch. Knowing which ingredients will make the chocolate taste good and be of a high quality is just as important in the end product, he says, as it is to making the chocolate by hand. Among the organic ingredients he has recently begun using are organic cream and butter, which have no antibiotics or unwanted chemicals in them. This affects the taste of his chocolate, he says. It makes his chocolate taste better overall. As well, all of the sugar in his chocolate is organic cane sugar, which tastes better, he says. It has a hint of caramel flavour in it that works nicely in the chocolate. |
