Chunks Have Returned!
Sam and I work for the same large corporation — albeit in different divisions — and we are both on the Foodies list. In a recent email thread about tempering chocolate and the chips one can buy for the purpose, she casually suggested the new Scharffen Berger chocolate chunks she was snacking on.
My breath caught, and I clicked the link. Could it be? It could.
Because these are not a new product. Scharffen Berger made these chunks a few years ago, but the process was too expensive given the demand. As I remember it, they had to stop their normal chocolate production, switch the factory over to a new mode, and then make chunks for a while before undoing all the effort to make normal chocolate again. I guess all that Hershey money has empowered them to start up again.
You can snack on these, as Sam was doing, or melt them down for tempering, as she suggested. But the baking chunks are perfect in the thick, chewy chocolate chip cookies I prefer. They become gooey pockets in the cakey mass, bigger (and better) than chocolate chips. They are also, it turns out, ideal for the “chocolate things” recipe in The Cheese Board Collective Works (a buttery yeast dough filled with chocolate bits). The recipe even calls for six ounces, which is the exact weight of one package of chocolate chunks.
So far, I've only seen them at the Scharffen Berger stores (at the factory and at the Ferry Building), but you can order them online. Here’s hoping they stay around this time so that I don’t have to go on another hoarding run when I hear they’re being discontinued.
- Milk Chocolate Bars
Not too long ago I was a bittersweet chocolate snob. I would only eat chocolate bars with a very high percentage of cacao, the higher the better. But I've discovered some milk chocolate recently that I really love. If you only eat high percentage...
- Chocolate Chunk Cookies Recipe
Is there a cookie more American than the chocolate chip cookie? I can't think of one. It was invented in Massachusetts after all. There certainly can't be a more popular cookie. I recently read that 80% of all cookies baked in American homes...
- Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival
This weekend started off with a search for a crepe recipe. Since my computer is in the shop, I didn't have access to my recipe collection including my no-fail crepe recipe. This prompted me to try a great Austrian recipe that used seltzer water! I...
- Hard-to-make Mint Chip Ice Cream
Photo by Melissa Schneider. Melissa and I don't always agree on the ice cream flavors that should go into the Glace-A-Tron 6000, but mint chip sits high in each of our pantheons of favorite combinations. My go-to ice cream book, Cook's...
- Scharffen Berger's Kisses?
Chocolate mega-corp Hershey has acquired Berkeley-based artisanal chocolatier Scharffen Berger. Here's the Chron's blurb. Both companies are saying all the things that companies normally say in this case: "Business as usual," "Access to greater...