Innovation in flavor is not an easy job. The key is to be able to take a little bit of chocolate, a little something something creamy, a touch of something the french would have an exotic word for, mix it all up and only taste a morsel. Yes, only a morsel. Then do it again. And again. And again. At this point all those morsels build up to a point where your eye balls are vibrating and you could very well find yourself hoolahooping on a table in front of several strangers.
 
At this juncture is where you would separate the pro's from the ...um... not-so-pro. A pro will be able to tell which of the hoolahooping-inducing , eyeball-vibrating experiments is the one that stands out and should be investigated further. The not-so-pro would be half way down the block singing 80's remixes of Madonna, a hop skip and a jump to Nivana. Hmmm...pro or not, chocolate flavor innovation is sounding rather win win.
 
This is a pic of the latest jerry-rigged choclate machine at the factory. Chocolate is all about chemisty. This was a promising investigation into the air flow that causes oxidation and flavor development...
 

 
Another point of flavor experimentation...there have been several superlative recipe discoveries made because an accident in the kitchen. A cat split over a bottle of this or that, or someone in the kitchen slipped on a grilled cheese sandwich left on the floor and subsequnetly poured half a carton of this or that into the recipe...etc etc. The cat's name was Roger and why the grilled cheese sandwich was on the floor will be in a future blog post. The invention of the chocolate chip cookie has such a story, so too does the chocolate ganache and the technique of conching chocolate to extract more flavor from cacao beans has its roots in a blunder. To stay on course here, a serious philosphical point to discovering other worldly chocolate flavors is a healthy dose of messy play in the kitchen. In the factory we keep notes of such philosophies up on the wall. Here is a pic of one of our little reminders...
 
 

 

A proper attitude, an appropriate volume on the sound system and a curiosity about sweetness on tongues can only end in something delicious. Today's experiment was a hazelnut chocolate spread. It was a quickie as I've been working on this recipe for a while and only wanted to tweak part of the texture from a previous creation. Accorinding to the morsel I had tried, the tweak required a dose of sunflower oil. I wondered into the store and bought some. When I was pouring the sunflower into the recipe I noticed that the label read safflower oil...hmmmm