Posted by Jasmine

2000 years ago, the cacao tree was discovered in the rainforests of what is now Central and South America. The Mayan empire was the first to cultivate cacao, replanting the trees and harvesting, fermenting, roasting, and grinding the seeds. From the ground seeds, they created a spicy, bitter, frothy chocolate drink. The Maya also traded the cacao beans with another great empire, the Aztecs. These ancient cultures occupied the expanse of land now known as Mexico.

As part of the summer Goat Cheese Collection, Hedonist has included the Chile Cinnamon truffle. The 55% dark chocolate ganache is infused with Mexican flavors in tribute to chocolate’s ancient roots.

The first ingredient is ancho, a Mexican Chile that is ground down into a fine, richly flavored powder. The second is cinnamon, which originated in Sri Lanka, became popular in Mexico when it came with the Spaniards during the 16th century. This spice quickly became a staple in Mexican cooking and now finds a place in the Chile Cinnamon truffle. Cacao nibs, which are the edible part of cacao beans that have been roasted and hulled, also are mixed into the ganache for texture. And last, but not at all least, is the creamy chevre goat cheese that defines the Goat Cheese Collection.

After the ganache is cut into squares and enrobed in 72% dark chocolate, granulated sugar is sprinkled on top to give each truffle the appearance of a geode. Geodes, which are rocks filled with crystals, are common in Mexico.

The Chile Cinnamon truffle is available as part of Hedonist’s Summer Goat Cheese Collection. Other truffles in the collection are Black Current, Strawberry Balsamic, Fig and Honey, and Thyme Pepper Pistachio. Although Hedonist has made a few different truffles with goat cheese in the past, this is the first full collection to feature the savory creaminess of chevre cheese.

Hedonist’s Goat Cheese Collection is currently available at our South Wedge kitchen. When the weather cools down in September, you’ll also be able to order them from our website. If you absolutely must have them shipped during the summer, you can call us at 585-461-2815 and we will personally handle your order to ensure that it arrives safely.

Posted by Jasmine

This summer, Hedonist has introduced a unique collection for summer and fall. The combination of cheese and chocolate is unusual, but we think you’ll find it very tasty. Our five Goat Cheese truffles, featuring Finger Lakes chevre cheese from Lively Run Goat Dairy, are quite special and have become some of the most popular items in our shop this season.

‘Chevre’ is the French word for ‘goat’, and is a generic term used for cheese made from the milk of goats. The chevre we use is creamy and smooth, similar to cream cheese in texture. The cheese is all-natural, with no preservatives or artificial additives. Smooth yet powerful, goat cheese has a savory flavor that goes nicely with chocolate.

Since 1982, Lively Run Goat Dairy has produced all-natural goat cheese on their farm located between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes in central New York. Part of Hedonist’s inspiration to create the Goat Cheese Collection was of the owner’s passion for her product. We also wanted to incorporate more local ingredients into our products, and Lively Run’s high quality and delicious cheese was the perfect way to do that.

The truffles in the Goat Cheese Collection are: Black Current, Chile Cinnamon, Strawberry Balsamic, Fig and Honey, and Thyme Pepper Pistachio. Although Hedonist has made a few different truffles with goat cheese in the past, this is the first full collection to feature the savory creaminess of chevre cheese.

Hedonist’s Goat Cheese Collection is currently available at our South Wedge kitchen. When the weather cools down in September, you’ll also be able to order them from our website. If you absolutely must have them shipped during the summer, you can call us at 585-461-2815 and we will personally handle your order to ensure that it arrives safely.

Most people expect chocolate to fall into only one of the four taste sensations: sweet. Recent trends have introduced the concept of salted chocolate, but what about the other tastes of bitter and sour? An apprentice at Hedonist Artisan Chocolates explores all four tastes in an original truffle collection that will debut this July.
Ken Droz was a full-time father of two when he first set foot in Hedonist’s kitchen last September, seeking advice about how to create chocolates at home. After discussing the world of chocolate with the company’s co-founder Jennifer Posey, he was presented with the unique opportunity to apprentice in their kitchen and has never looked back.
On July 9, his journey will culminate with the launch of his first truffle collection. As an apprentice with Hedonist, Droz has assisted in creating and packaging chocolate truffles, bark and medallions, he has also developed promotional truffles in flavors like Nutty Irishman (Irish cream and hazelnut). After learning the techniques and philosophies of the kitchen, Droz then turned his attention to his own collection, which includes five original chocolate creations.

“At first I wasn’t focusing my attention on any particular theme. I was just exploring the most cherished culinary experiences I can recall from my own life, and imagining how I could recreate them using chocolate,” said Droz. Through this process, however, he realized that his fondest memories were of bold flavors across his palate, and he began targeting each of the four taste sensations that our tongues identify: salt, sweet, sour and bitter. “I’ve been experimenting with salt, lemon, malt and even vinegar as feature flavors, and have used a wide spectrum of chocolates inside and out to isolate and dramatically stimulate each basic unit of taste.”

The truffle flavors have only recently been finalized and are being announced here for the first time: Blackberry Lemonade, Cotton Candy, Salty Maltie, Mint Julep and Salt & Vinegar. Droz admits that he’s been reluctant to pursue flavor combinations that people expect to find at the center of their chocolates, or are likely to find again.
He added, “At the end of the day, it’s just chocolate. We take it seriously when we make it, but if it weren’t so much fun to eat, none of us would be here.” You can learn more about Droz’s experience as a chocolate apprentice and get insight into the creative process by reading his posts on Hedonist’s blog.

Join Hedonist Artisan Chocolates for the premier of Ken Droz’s BITTERSOURSALTYSWEET Collection on Friday July 9 from 6-8pm at the Hedonist kitchen and retail location: 674 South Avenue, Rochester, NY. This event is free and open to the public. Sample the new flavors, enjoy selected pairings and talk with their creator about his exploration of the craft world of artisan chocolates. If you can’t make it to the premier, there will be additional chocolate tastings leading up to the event including a chocolate and beer pairing at Tap & Mallet. Get the most up to date information on the Hedonist events page.

Additional Information
Hedonist chocolate truffles are available for purchase at their kitchen and retail location at 674 South Avenue or online at www.hedonistchocolates.com. They can also be purchased at Parkliegh on Park Avenue, Mise en Place Market and Coffee Connection on South Avenue and Max Market on Monroe Avenue. At the Hedonist kitchen and Parkliegh, chocophiles can create their own custom assortment at the chocolate counter. Prices range from $12-$64 per box.

For more information about Ken Droz’s BITTERSOURSALTYSWEET Collection and Hedonist Artisan Chocolates, visit www.hedonistchocolates.com, or call (585) 461-2815.

Hedonist Artisan Chocolates hand crafts truffles and chocolate treats with French chocolate and fresh, natural ingredients. Each piece of Hedonist chocolate has a character all its own because it is rolled, cut, dipped and decorated by human hands in small batches. A hedonist is someone whose life is devoted to the pursuit of sensual pleasures. Owners Jennifer Posey and Zahra Langford find their bliss in chocolate and hope to help you do the same.

posted by Ken

After learning to tie bows, pack boxes, make ganaches and chocolates, it’s great to finally get the chance to create a collection of my own. I’ve designed and tested five chocolates to premier on July 9. I’ll admit, getting this last one was the biggest challenge of all.

The first two chocolates seemed easy. In my mind, mint julep was in the collection before I made even my first chocolate. Salt and Malt resonated immediately and came out exactly as I had hoped my first attempt, so I thought that with experience, the rest would get easier. Blackberry Lemonade has been a tedious, evolving experiment that spans every expression of the two fruits to get them to play in clear, perfect harmony, but I found it once years ago and knew I could find it again. Salt and Vinegar Potato Chip came from an unexpected flurry of inspiration in my home kitchen after rattling my brain one night while I tried to sleep. But the last one seemed like it would never come. I tried Chocolate Lava Cake: Fail. Cream cheese frosting: Fail. Apple Riesling: Fail. Cherry cheesecake: Fail.

In fact, the elusiveness of #5 came to define it so aptly, that I toyed with the idea of just coming up with something delicious and calling it “#5,” leaving its true identity a mystery.

Thankfully, #5 has arrived. And given the difficulty I found in committing to it, it feels poetic to me that it enlists what may be the most elusive food there is at its very core. Although it’s an unmistakable element, getting a shell around it makes for a chocolate that is mysterious by that fact that it can even exist. So #5 became: Chocolate Covered Cotton Candy.

The first time I talked about it, I got a skeptical chuckle and this challenge: “I dare you. I dare you to try it.” And really, who says no to that?

Sure, it isn’t the complex journey of sophisticated flavors that I angled for with the other offerings in my collection, but its transformative texture and sweetness make it a unique, unforgettable chocolate experience. It doesn’t resolve like other chocolates, but you eat it with a sense that it’s been waiting patiently there for you its whole life to do something magical. So when you get into it, the subtle flavor of the cotton candy recedes pretty quickly into the sweet chocolate shell, and sugary bursts begin forming to create a coarse–but-creamy mouthfeel. And there’s an interesting satisfaction you get when you realize that the chocolate creation you are enjoying was actually brought to life after it entered your mouth.

They thought it couldn’t be done. July 9 it begins.

Posted by Ken

My blackberry lemonade truffle isn’t finished yet. I’ve got several prototypes and I’m getting very close, but it’s been a long confection in the making, and I wanted to share with you one example of the lengths we go to to meet the precise vision we have for the truffles in our collections.

It needs to be sour. It’s got to have the bite of the lemonade I used to drink with my grandfather and that reluctant sweetness you get from ripe blackberries. The flavor concepts I began experimenting with ranged from syrupy sweet to the deepest depths of bitterevil.

I found a blackberry liquor to work with that spanned the breadth of flavors I wanted represented on that side and set forth on my journey for the perfect lemony kick. Staying true to the ideals of the kitchen, my first thought was, “nothing says ‘lemon’ like a lemon.” So I started by zesting a lemon and combining it with the liquor but it was still too subtle to break through the dark chocolate I wanted to sink it in. It wasn’t sour. Lemon juice is sour. So I squeezed the lemon until there was no juice left and combined it with the liquor like a mad scientist , back and forth, hoping to strike the balance I needed, but every time I got enough sour the blackberry was lost. The other problem with juice is all the water that follows it into the chocolate, and water to chocolate is like eggshells to omelets. I tried dried lemon zest. It tastes plenty lemony but still no citrusy bite, and I used so much it got a little gritty, which told me it just wasn’t happening.

Back to the cutting board. Have you ever eaten a dried lemon? You shouldn’t. They kick hard. Just a pinch of the stuff sends your face into a pucker that will sting every gland in your face. Of course, having said that, it sounded to me like just the thing to give the blackberry enough room for expression without overwhelming my concoction with juice. So I soaked a stack of them in blackberry liquor and left them alone to marinate for a week. I came back expecting magic in the fridge, and after a week’s deliberation the verdict was in: no good. The infused liquor tasted like blackberries and fresh lemon… peel.

I just needed to take the peel out of the equation, right? So I cut the peel away from the dried lemons and attempted to cut them into a powder, and although it actually turned out to be a sticky mess, I can work with that, so I pushed ahead. As destiny would have it, the problem with this approach was that the sour came in finely diced chunks that kept mostly to themselves, such that that if you weren’t chewing on one you wouldn’t know it was there, and if you were, you’d quickly forget everything else in your mouth. I proceeded to flood the ganache with blackberry liquor and though the kick would strike whatever part of your mouth housed the dried lemon, but it made rest of ganache too sweet. I created a delicious fruity mess, but I still didn’t achieve blackberry lemonade.

Time to get out of the kitchen. When I returned next week, I came armed with lemon concentrate, lemon crystals, and frozen lemonade. Boiling down the concentrate almost worked, but it didn’t smell like any lemon I’ve ever seen, it wasn’t fresh, and I couldn’t handle adding the preservatives that made it shelf stable. I broke down, and started looking for citric acid, the magical chemical that makes citrus sting and sour candy punch. Those lemon crystals had it front and center. Born from lemons, removed from its liquid and mixed with sugar, that’s the stuff.

At long last, lemon achieved, but that’s only almost half the battle. So I made a ganache using the darkest chocolate we have in the kitchen, confident I could compete with it, and discovered that the ganache was more bitter than rejection. The good news was that since it defines just the center of the truffle, I wasn’t out of options yet. I enrobed it in a lighter chocolate and blasted the wet shell with lemon crystals until they bounced off, and finally got the lemonade I wanted.

Next time I’m going to bring the chocolate in the ganache down a shade, and we’re ordering some quality fresh blackberry ingredients to try, but with the lemonade and chocolate finally settled, I’m already looking forward to the next creation for my collection.

Dark Chocolate Rice Vinegar & Sea Salt Truffle Rolled in Organic Kettle Chips anyone? Hmmm… maybe I should work on the name for that concept first.

Posted by Jasmine

During the Qing Dynasty (which lasted from 1644 to 1911 in China), an army unit passed through the village of Xingcu and camped in the local tea factory. After the soldiers left, the factory workers realized that there was no way to get the tea leaves dried and delivered to the market on time. They built fires of pine wood and hung the leaves over the flames to hasten the drying. The tea did reach the market on time, and the new smoky flavor created a sensation. Thus Lapsang Souchong tea was born, or so the legend says.

Lapsang Souchong is a black tea originating from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian, China. ‘Souchong’ literally means ‘sub variety’ in the Fukienese language. After being harvested, the leaves are withered over pine, cedar, or cypress fires. The leaves are then pan-fried, rolled out, and pressed into wooden barrels to ferment until they are fragrant. After fermentation, the leaves are placed in bamboo baskets and dried completely over pine fires. This intensive process results in a distinctive smoky flavor and aroma.

Hedonist has infused a milk chocolate ganache with all-natural Lapsang Souchong. After being cut into neat squares and enrobed in 72% dark chocolate, the truffles are topped with an almond and smoked black sea salt.

Lapsang Souchong truffles are available as part of Hedonist’s Spring Teas Collection.

Posted by Jasmine

Named after the second Earl Charles Grey of Britain, Earl Grey tea is a popular tea, especially in the U.S. and Britain.

Earl Grey is actually black tea infused with bergamot (a citrus fruit similar to oranges). The combination of bergamot and black tea is legendarily credited to a Chinese mandarin who gave the tea to Earl Charles Grey as a gift. Although the tea used to make Earl Grey was probably originally Chinese, most Earl Grey now is made with Indian and Sri Lankan (or Ceylon) black tea. Bergamot, a small acidic orange, is said to be natively Korean (hence the Chinese use of the sour fruit), but now is mostly cultivated in southern Italy.

Earl Grey has a light, slightly citrus flavor that pairs well with Hedonist’s chocolate. After infusing cream with all natural Earl Grey tea, Hedonist creates a ganache with the infused cream and 55% dark chocolate. After being cut into squares, the ganache is enrobed in 72% dark chocolate. Each truffle is topped with a delicate sprinkle of Earl Grey tea leaves.

The Earl Grey truffle is available as part of Hedonist’s Spring Teas Collection.

Posted by Ken:

I’ve been looking forward to developing a mint julep truffle since I started apprenticing with Hedonist, and with the Kentucky Derby now less than a week away, I can wait no longer.

If you’ve never had a julep before, you might be surprised by it’s unusual complexity for a drink so simple, and by how subtly the mint is actually featured. A proper julep is prepared in a frigid silver cup filled to the brim with finely crushed ice. Typically, the drink is mostly bourbon, sweetened with a splash of simple syrup once the cup is almost full, and sometimes a dusting of powdered sugar. That’s it, but once the beverage is made, a fragrant sprig of mint is thrown in for its aroma. The straws used to drink juleps are cropped very short so that as you drink the sweetened bourbon, you smell the mint right up close.

Our family throws an annual Kentucky Derby Party, and since we love that fresh mint, we infuse our simple syrup with several sprigs a day in advance. Consistent with our family recipe, I want to feature that fresh mint prominently in my interpretation, and am using the same bourbon people will get on the grounds at Churchill Downs.

I’ve been working on this one for awhile. In my first batch I used a dried mint, which ultimately gave off a kind of chewing gum vibe that I wanted to abandon quickly. My second batch had the mint right, but I found the bourbon to be far too subtle, so it wasn’t until my third try that I was satisfied with the truffle I imagined representing this traditional drink.

It’s been a tricky truffle to make, but I’m very happy with the results. First, I steeped heavy cream with finely chopped mint leaves. After the mixture was sufficiently fragrant, I poured it over white chocolate, which I’ve learned requires more tenderness to work with than its darker counterparts. Once that ganache was smooth, I let it cool just below body temperature and added the bourbon, careful not to stir too much, which can cause it to break. Finally I poured the final mixture onto a sheet to set overnight. The next day, I hand rolled each ball, dipped them in dark chocolate, coated them with powdered sugar and waited for each to set.

THEN I got to eat some!

Awesome.

These truffles are a special offering, available only from the kitchen while they last, or until the horses run at the Kentucky Derby (6:24pm, May 1). Best part: you can get them FREE with any purchase! I’ll make a version this truffle that will use mint from my own garden when my final collection debuts on July 9, though I’m afraid that the powdered sugar coating may not be feasible on a tighter schedule. You’ve got one week, you need to try it. I promise you, this batch is the real deal.

(Of course if you want to special order a batch for your own Derby Party, give us a shout, we can do special orders from the kitchen).

Posted by Jasmine:

Matcha tea originated in China, but was brought into Japan by Buddhist monks in the Middle Ages. Matcha has been a part of the Japanese tea ceremony for hundreds of years.

A unique tea, matcha is made from green tea leaves. The tea bushes are grown in the shade, which gives the leaves a darker color and sweeter flavor. After being handed picked and dried completely, the leaves are stone ground into a fine powder. This tea powder is a vivid spring green.

Unlike other green teas, matcha is not brewed. The traditional way of preparing this tea is to whisk the powder into hot water. Since the entire leaf is used to make the tea, the health benefits are greater than those of regular green tea leaves that are steeped in hot water. Matcha contains high levels of antioxidants and vitamins, making it one of the healthiest teas in the world.

Hedonist creates their delicately flavored ganache for the Matcha truffle by blending white chocolate and cream with matcha powder. After cooling, the square pieces of ganache are enrobed in 72% dark chocolate, then adorned with a green and white striped cocoa butter transfer.

Whether you experience the matcha truffle on its own or along with the rest of the Spring Teas collection, its bright green center is sure to stand out from any other truffle you’ve experienced.

Posted by Jasmine:
Masala chai (or more commonly known as chai) literally means ‘spiced tea’ in the Hindi language. This drink originated in India, and has grown to enjoy world-wide popularity. Traditional chai is made with black tea, milk, Indian spices, and a sweetener.

Hedonist has infused milk chocolate and cream with organic chai made with cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, clove, and black pepper. After being cut into squares, the aromatic ganache is enrobed in 72% dark chocolate. A dot of milk chocolate is piped onto a corner of each truffle, adding visual flair.

Matching the scent of chocolate with the fragrance of sweet and savory spices, these truffles smell as good as they taste. As soon as you bite into the truffle, the variety of spices explodes on your tongue. The milk chocolate ganache is perfectly suggestive of the milkiness of traditional chai. Without overwhelming your senses with too much chocolate or too many spices, these truffles melt in your mouth and leave you wanting more.

Chai truffles are available as part of Hedonist’s Spring Teas truffle collection. Next time you’re at Hedonist, try a chai truffle and experience the exotic flavors of India.