Finally - The Chocolate Show

Live (several weeks ago!)! From New York! It's....the .....Chocolate Show!

Not just a place for those of you who hoard handfulls of M&Ms (and you know who you are!), or scores of Kit-Kats. This is THE show for artisan chocolate lovers to taste the goods of choco-delectables from near and far!

First, let me tell you, it's worth paying the service charge online to buy your tix before you get there, avoiding the long line that snakes out the front of the venue (especially on a rainy day!)

Here are a few photos from the event:

These beauties came from a Parisian chocolatier...simply gorgeous! Who wouldn't want to keep a box of those on the nightstand!












Sorry the images are not symetrical! I'm still learning how to use this blog software...these photos depict the Japanes chocolatier, Mary's Chocolates. I know, there is nothing Japanese about the name Mary and there is no Mary at the company. It's just a name they picked. But I enjoyed watching the Japanese artisans making the chocolates and people were lined up 4 and 5 deep at the counter to purchase these minature, edible artworks.

Chocolate Bat girl

Chocolate Iron Man

The highlight of the show for me was meeting Michael Ricchiuti who owns Ricchiuti chocolates in San Francisco...you can find his shop in the Ferry Building...i highly recommend the burnt caramels..yum! You'll find irresistable recipes on his site, too. Here we are below..he signed a copy of his book to me and wished me well on by brownie baking endeavors:

Michael Recchiuti and the Brownie Babe!

Well, my chocolate-loving comrades, this girls is whipped!

This week i'm busy baking brownies for coworkers, friends and neighbors and looking forward to my trip out west over the holidays...i hope to make a trip to my future competitor - Fairytale Brownies. I did see them at the show. They have a nice presentation, but it is not my preferred texture of brownie.

Thanks for hanging in there with me... Join me a the chocolate show next year!

Have Chocolate Will Travel

I'm working on a post for the NYC Chocolate show. In the meantime, i've just entered this as my "obsession" on the Recchiuti chocolate website. If they select your entry for the newsletter, they send you a box of chocolate!

The Ultimate Obsession


It was my turn to make the drive from the beautiful rolling Blackstone Valley hills in Massachusetts to the suburbial outskirts of Stamford, Connecticut where I spent the night at my boyfriend’s. We only see each other on weekends. Usually, the five days in between our time together has me surging with anticipation of the weekend ahead, and this weekend held an extra morsel of excitement: The New York City Chocolate Show in Manhattan! After a restful 8-hour sleep I was off early to the Stamford train station where I made my way into the city – sans boyfriend.

I walked every misty-and-gray-skied block from Grand Central Terminal to Pier 94, thankful that I had purchased my ticket online and could make my way to the front of the line to collect my ticket. Upon entering the show I started to make my way through the rows of chocolate vendors, artful and aromatic edibles, and hordes of chocolate-loving fans, all waiting like begging dogs for their chance to sample the most beautiful and palate-pleasing confections I have ever laid eyes – and taste buds – on!

I found the bookseller and hugged my copy of Chocolate Obsession as I stood there, a chocolate groupie, waiting for the book’s author to appear… I imagined his chef’s coat with spatters of chocolate drizzle – dark, milk, white….His hair streaked with ganache like artful lowlights just pulled through at the salon….His shoes dusted with cocoa powder and vanilla stains. Like a mechanic’s greasy fingers, I envisioned bits of chocolate stuck under his fingernails and staining his cuticles….and then he arrived. Michael Recchiuti himself, in the flesh – covered from head to toe in his pristine attire. Not a drop of chocolate anywhere. (Not even one stinkin’ burnt caramel in sight.)

He sat behind the table to sign books and I began to drill him on his chocolate adventure and shared with him details of my own chocolate dreams. Our chocolate obsessions were now intertwined as he signed my book and sent me on my way to drivel over the tables of samples from other chocolatiers. It’s now weeks since our meeting, and I’m still reeling with inspiration and thoughts of making my own chocolate dreams come true.

BGB Debut

Saturday, October 25th was the unofficial debut of Big Gun Brownies, publically speaking. I spent the entire day baking in the Big Gun Brownie kitchen (seen in the image on the right) for the "Figures and Forces" show at Counterpart Art Gallery in Lowell, MA, where my childhood friend Jeff Lipsky was showing off his totally eggsellent art!


Jeff has started an all-artist community on the virtual web world Second Life. There, Jeff is known as Filthy Fluno. So, for his show I wanted to create a brownie that would make Filthy Fluno proud. Filthy himself requested caramel and nuts, and so i worked to bake a batch of "Filthy Floownies" - my moist, dark chocolate brownie base, topped with pecans, 60% chocolate bits and homemade creamy caramel.



So...for some reason I can not get this image to load properly, but if you tilt your head to right, you can see my batch of creamy caramel cooling. It was very thin, so i had to let it cool completely before topping the brownies.


I baked a total of four batches, but only 3 made it to the show.

I tired adding the caramel as a middle layer to the first attempted batch of Filthy Floownies. The caramel was much too runny and ended baking into the batter, and never setting. Needless to say, these brownies went overbaked.

Of course, anyone arriving at a party (or an art gallery) with a giant batch of fresh-baked brownies is generally received pretty well.

As soon as the cover was taken off the serving tray, the brownies began ascending to to eager taste buds waiting to give them a try. I will admit, they were pretty tasty, but not my strongest presentation.

Turns out, Jeff's mom loves baking brownies just as much as i do and likes to bake them from scratch in her own kitchen. I have tentative plans for a baking party with Mrs. Lipsky after the holiday season! Can't wait! Nothing says "i love you" like baking brownies with someone you adore!

Sorry this posting has taken so long to get up. I have just returned from the New York City Chocolate Show and Tastings Show with many exciting chocolate stories to report back. I promise to get a few pictures and a review going in the next few days.

I have been invited to a small reunion party on Wednesday night at the home of my high-school classmate Lauren Beckham-Falcone who writes for the Boston Herald. Of course, i'll be bringing brownies!

Stay tuned...

In the beginning....

It all started around the age of 5. Baking with mom. Baking in my house was sometimes an all-day affair. My mom had a friend that would make loads of homemade cookies. We would make seasonal sugar cookies for school...my favorites were the Santa cookies we made every Christmas. We would cut shapes from Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough - you know, the kind that comes in that giant wrapped log in the dairy case - we would cut the right shapes to form a hat, face and beard. We added chocolate chip eyes and baked 'em. Once out of the oven we sprinkled red sugar crystals on the hat and put a red hot for Santa's mouth. Once the cookies cooled, we piped that tubular white frosting on his hat and beard. It would dry into a sugary crust. One bite sent you reeling. A whole cookie had you on a sugar high for a week.

My dad use to bake homemade French bread...i got to help. It was an all day affair, but i loved the feel of the cool dough as we kneaded and pounded over and over to reap the rewards of the hot, crusty loaves that emerged from the oven by the day's end.

As a child, i developed a love for baking brownies. Back then, I had only known the Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker mixes. Usually adding water, eggs and or oil to the mix. After the brownies had been put into the oven to bake, i can recall licking the spatula and running my index finger around the inside of the bowl, getting every last lick of chocolatey batter.

This was heavenly, until i learned to bake brownies from scratch. The first time i remember making brownies from scratch was in my 20s. I was a nanny in Newton, MA and in the family's recipe box was a very simple cocoction of butter, unsweetened and semi-sweet chocolate, eggs, sugar and flour. An hour later and there was a perfect 9"x9" square of Auntie Shira's brownies. It was Auntie Shira's recipe. She lives in Israel. I sometimes made them with nuts, sometimes without. They were usually requested for a special Friday night dessert. Sometimes we froze half of the batch to portion out when cravings arose (which was frequent in a household with 4 women and 1 male!).

Even though i left my nanny post years ago, i took Auntie Shira's recipe with me, refining it to my own taste over the years. I started using chocolate with a higher cacao percentage. I would add nuts and chocolate chips to the batter. They have become so rich and fudgy, that usually one or two bites will satisfy even the deepest chocolate pining.

In more recent years, i have discovered baking with artisnal and premium chocolates. Some of my favorites are Valhorna, Scharfen-Berger and Ghiradelli 60% chips. Needless to say, i haven't baked brownies from a box in more than 15 years.

Then there are the artisnal chocolate bon bons and bars from Rechiutti burnt caramels and wooden boxes of Burdick assortments, to Dagoba infused bars (especially the one with chiles), Green & Blacks and Equal Exchange fair trade bars.

I even have a coworker who has a penchant for chocolate. She loves milk. I prefer dark. I forget how it started, but we often surprise each other with new and different chocolates from our travels. It has become an unspoken custom, sometimes a few weeks in between exchanges, sometimes months. But no matter when they happen, it's like it's for the first time. There is never a bad time to receive a chocolate surprise, and it's usually just when you need it most.

I think the most exciting chocolate discovery i have made is a chocolate lovers travel club. They run lavish, first-class trips where you spend a lot of time talking about, tasting and learning about chocolate in some exotic destination like Hawaii or the Carribean. They have a trip in the spring where they will charter their own boat, stopping at islands where chocolate is grown. People from all walks of life go on these trips, their one common denominator is a passion for chocolate. I hope to go on one of their trips next year.

I can tell you about some of the most fabulous artisan chocolate...but i'm still yearning to learn more. Origins, manufacturing processes, how to taste, etc...

But getting back to the point, the one thing i have always loved is making brownies. Here i will share my quest to develop my own basic recipe...hopefully the one that will lead to the launch of my own artisan brownie business that i've already named Big Gun Brownies.

If you love brownies as much as i do, i hope you'll follow this blog as i try new chocolates, experiment in the kitchen, research the art, science and economics of chocolate and baking. There will be lots of baking, taste testing and sampling, photos and probably some silliness too.

Brownie up!