Santa Fe Chocolate
I realized that I left out some very important mentions in my writing about Santa Fe food. Yes, it really was so good that it deserved multiple posts. I mentioned all the chilies. But I did not yet mention all the chocolate! We visited three different chocolate shops on Saturday.
One was neat in that it had a lot of Catholic iconography. So pretty packages of fancy chocolates decorated with virgin Mary or various saints.
Our second stop was to Kakawa Chocolate House. This is what happens when a historical scholar type loves chocolate. The owner spent time researching historical chocolate drinks and offers them either fresh in the cafe or sells you balls that can be mixed with water to brew your own. We sampled many and brought the 1644 Spanish Elixir home with us; “Representative of the historic drinking chocolate of the Spanish court from the 1530’s to the early 1800’s. A recipe from 1644 written by Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma describes how the Spaniards preferred their chocolate - bittersweet with raw brown sugar, cinnamon, nuts and roses. This chocolate is highly aromatic with complex flavor notes. Traditionally made with water. Ingredients: 73.5% Chocolate, Evaporated Cane Juice, Almonds, Hazelnuts, Roses, Spices, Ceylon Cinnamon*, Red Chimayo Chile & Mexican Vanilla.” It has the perfect hint of spicy. Our first night home we made some for our neighbors who applauded our choice.
Our final stop was the piece de resistance, The Chocolate Smith. Once again we were offered sample after sample of the most incredible dark chocolate I have ever been privileged to taste. We bought a bark made with cranberries, poppy seeds and lavender. They don’t have small piece of chocolate or truffles. No, they have “pates”. They are big and thick and stick to your tongue for blessed minutes of blissful chocolate joy. They use roses and lavender, poppy seeds and chilies, peanut butter and raspberry. I think I’ll need to order from them regularly now for I’ve been ruined forever from regular chocolate.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Oh My God! I am salivating. I hope that they have overnight delivery to AK!
There is this one spice/chocolate shop in Anchorage that has chocolate with chilis and it’s amazing!
I bet all of this chocolate made the trip just that much better!
Thanks also for the tip on the sassy spoons! I will have to pick some up this weekend. The ones that were in the pictures don’t really do that well, considering there is no “bowl” on them.