Lil' Hot Cocoa Fest - Plush Puffs, Burbank, CA

How exciting is this? Starting on Friday, Feb 8th, Plush Puffs in Burbank, CA, will be having Burbank's first hot chocolate festival, the Lil' Hot Cocoa Fest! I've had the pleasure of working with owner Ann Hickey on coming up with some of the fun and unique flavors they'll be serving, a different one each day.

Some of these recipes I've worked here on the blog, others I dialed in specifically for the festival, and others Ann and her team came up with. It's so exciting to know that people are going to be able to walk in and order some of these amazing hot chocolates! Here's a list of the flavors that will be available:

• Peanut Butter Hot Cocoa
• Mexican Almond Hot Cocoa
• Cinnamon Bun Hot Cocoa
• Dark Chocolate Kentucky Bourbon Cocoa
• Sipping Chocolate (using Dandelion Ecuador 70%)
• Chai Spice Hot Cocoa

Most will be paired with a select flavor Plush Puff's amazing marshmallows, which, if you have never tried, you are in for a treat! In fact, I've featured their marshmallows here on the blog before.







If you can make it to the shop and want someone to chat chocolate with, send me a message, maybe I can swing by and hang out for a little! You can reach me through this blog or through my Instagram.

The Lil' Hot Cocoa Fest goes from Feb 8-15 over at Plush Puffs Cafe & Toasting Bar, located at 3811 W. Magnolia Blvd Burbank, CA 91505. They're open Tues - Sat 8am-8pm, Sun 12-7pm, and closed on Mondays. Hope to see you there! If you go, let me know how your experience was! Wouldn't it be incredible to be able to continue this as an annual tradition? Let's make it a success!

Review - Bottega Louie Fine Cocoa

One of my favorite things about living in Los Angeles is the diversity and the quality of the restaurants here. While an Italian restaurant isn't actually all that diverse, Bottega Louie is definitely one of my favorites.

The restaurant is very sparsely decorated, with bare white walls and vaulted ceilings. It feels very classy, although once you're seated and enjoying your meal it begins to feel very warm and comfortable. On the wall leading back to the kitchen there's a wonderful pizza oven, the fire inside giving off a warm glow to go along with the amazing aromas.

However, before you get to your table, when you first walk in the door, you are greeted by their bakery and gift shop. Sweets and pastries fill their display windows, along with an unbelievably colorful assortment of macarons. And tucked in there on the shelves among the little boxes of goodies and treats you'll find their gourmet hot chocolate mix and their marshmallows.

I've picked up this hot chocolate mix a few times now, as it's a great one. The package is wonderful and original, as well, and the vivid pink ties into the entire theme of Bottega Louie.





A couple of the ingredients were new to me. The first two are Noel chocolate and Jivara chocolate, and then it's rounded out with sugar, dry milk, Valrhona cocoa powder, and salt.

Doing a little research online shows me that Noel chocolate, or Cacao Noel, is a French brand. "Carefully grown and selected Equatorial beans are fermented and roasted at their factory on the Ivory Coast. A century-old manufacturer completes the selection blending in France. The result is a sophisticated chocolate line with an intensely rich, complex flavor." So there ya go, equatorial beans, roasted on the Ivory Coast, and turned in to chocolate in France.

The Jivara chocolate is actually a variety of Valrhona chocolate. I actually really like that Bottega Louie were so specific on their ingredients list, actually naming the exact brand and variety of chocolates they've used.

I usually make this mix as instructed on the package, which is 1 cup water and 6 tbsp cocoa mix. I've also enjoyed it using milk instead, and while it's a milder drink (typical when using milk instead of water), it's still absolutely delicious.

Made as instructed, it's rich and smooth, and very strong for a powder mix, with a very fudgey flavor. I'd go so far as to rate this sup there as one of the best powder mixes I've had. I really enjoy that rich fudge flavor, almost like you're drinking a warm brownie, so when I find mixes that have that flavor, I really embrace them.



Topped with those amazing, fluffy marshmallows, you can't wrong. Serve more marshmallows on the side, and include those chocolate ones for a super chocolate overdose!

To my surprise, you cannot order their cocoa or marshmallows online. That's a bummer! If you're in Los Angeles, however, it'worth a stop to pick some up, and heck, you could even enjoy dinner while you're there. You can visit their Twitter HERE. Be sure and tell them Melting Mug sent you! ;)

Review - Pitchoun Bakery, Los Angeles

My wife and I are on a constant search for bread. Yep, we know it's filled with carbs and generally bad for us, but seriously, can anything compete with a fresh baked loaf of your favorite type of bread? Nope. Especially if you've got an amazing drinking chocolate to go along with it!

What kind of bread do we search for? Mainly French baguettes. We got engaged in Paris, and you know that dream so many people have of walking into a little corner bakery in Paris and walking out with a still-warm baguette, nibbling on it as you walk down the street? We lived it, and it's every bit as fantastic as it sounds. So here in Los Angeles, we're trying to find a similar experience.

We recently found Pitchoun in downtown LA. On a Sunday morning, we took the subway down to give it a shot. On our way down, we checked Yelp for their hours, and it said they were "Closed Now". We trudged on anyway, figuring we could just find another bakery nearby if they really were closed. Thankfully they were open!

It's a cute place with a very nice patio out front, packed with eye-catching orange furniture. Inside, it was much bigger than we anticipated.

And right there next to the door, stacked up in the corner, the baguettes called to us. I think they knew we were coming, because there were tons of them.

Along with all their breads, pastries, and assorted baked goods, they also sold plenty of prepackaged candies and treats.

Their menu was gigantic, and quietly scrawled there on the bottom of the hot drinks was hot chocolate. I had no reason to think they would make anything other than the ordinary powder mix or syrup-in-steamed-milk most coffee shops serve, but of course I ordered one.

We actually ordered lots of things! More than we should have. But seriously, everything just looked so good, and amazing bakeries are one of our weak spots. We were kind of helpless. ;)

My wife started with one of her favorites, a palmier, aka elephant ear. She also chose a lemon tart. I started with a bacon ficelle, which is basically a small baguette with bacon in it. I also picked a chocolate eclair, which in my opinion is a great standard baked good to judge most bakeries on.

My bacon ficelle and chocolate eclair were amazing, both delicious, the perfect combination of savory followed by sweet. My wife enjoyed her palmier, but mentioned that it was a little dense, and that she prefers hers a little crispier. The lemon tart was spectacular, maybe the best pastry we ordered.

They have wine, as well, plenty of it. And some really cool lighting made from wine bottles.

Yep, we bought a baguette, and I'm pretty sure it was half gone by the time we got home. Absolutely wonderful baguette!

At this point, I know what you're thinking - "Let's go, get to the hot chocolate! This isn't a bakery blog!" Right you are!

The hot chocolate was excellent, definitely not what I was expecting! It tasted of real chocolate with a hint of amaretto or cherry. Milk-based and thin, not thick like a European drinking chocolate. When I asked how it was made, I was told the chef makes a chocolate ganache that they use for it. The ganache is made with Valrhona chocolate, but they were not sure what else. The bariasta who prepares it usually adds a touch of vanilla syrup, which may have been the extra sweetness I was tasting and thinking was amaretto. And be prepared - if you order the 16 oz, this drink comes in a soup bowl, not a mug!

Pitchoun is wonderful, and if you're looking for a Parisian experience in Los Angeles, this is as close as my wife and I have found.






If you happen to know of some places we should check out, please leave it in the comments! Until then, I'm looking forward to going back to Pitchoun.

Review - ZenBunni Chocolate

 

Well, this chocolate was certainly an learning adventure. I hope you're ready for something you've never heard of before, because this is about as original as it gets. Here in Los Angeles there's a trendy little street called Abbot Kinney. Lots of artsy places, stores carrying handcrafted products, and a coffee shop or two. And, happily, a little cubby hole of a chocolate shop called ZenBunni.

ZenBunni is a biodynamic chocolate company in Venice, CA, established in 2007. This was the first time I've ever come across the word biodynamic in relation to chocolate. Reading their website about how they source all their ingredients, I learned that biodynamic farming involves spraying the soil with crystal-infused water and takes into account the "influences and the rhythms of the sun, moon, and planets". The name ZenBunni comes directly from the two founders, Bunni and Zen. Everything they use is organic, raw, vegan, gluten free, and free of any refined sugars. Yep, I said raw. Meaning they do not roast their cocoa beans. And when they grind them, they do it slower, so the temperature doesn't get as high as it does with typical cacao processing. Heck, they even use omnidegradable packaging with vegetable ink!

The packages also have little descriptions on them of symptoms or issues that each chocolate should help with. For example, Mocha Mucha says it helps with fat burning, brain activating, cardiovascular protection, and increasing energy. I'm not sure if a tiny chocolate bar can really help with these types of things, but hey, who am I to judge.



I picked up a few bars during my first visit. Mucha Mocha, which includes biodynamic and organic hand-ground espresso, maple crystals, 70% cacao, and cane jaggery (and seems to now be called Mystic Mocha). Kathmandu Chai has biodynamic and organic ashwaganda, tulsi, vanilla, zenbunni chai spices, 70% cacao, and cane jaggery. Lavender Lamuria, which contains biodynamic and organic lavender flowers, salt, lavender labyrinth oil, 70% cacao, and cane jaggery.

So you can see there's a lot of unconventional ingredients in there. Not that this is a bad thing, of course. It's kind of neat and fun. The flavors are definitely original and the chocolate itself has a nice, not too sweet flavor. While all the ones I picked up were 70% chocolate, they taste like they could be 75%. Hopefully you also noticed in those ingredient lists above, instead of sugar, they are sweetened with cane jaggery. Basically, it's the boiled and reduced juice from sugar cane. Same raw materials as regular sugar, just not refined as much.

The bars are tiny, which makes them a bit expensive for their size, since they are $3 a bar.









I'm using two bars of their Original Topanga to make a drinking chocolate. While making the drink, it created an excellent froth, even though I used 2% milk. I tend to think a good froth is a result of using real chocolate, because the cocoa butter is still in there, which is the fat of the cacao bean. I have no idea if that's correct, it just seems to be what I've discovered. If I use cocoa powder as the main chocolate ingredient in a drink, it never froths. If I use whole chocolate, it usually will.

The drink is delicious! It's not very sweet and has a slight nuttiness, with just the slightest notes of almond. It also has a very creamy flavor, typical of drinks where I add some heavy cream to the milk. It's very pleasant to drink, and would make a wonderful midday or after dinner drinking chocolate.

And at this point, I was actually going to publish this post. Then, before I could, at my wife's workplace Christmas dinner, her coworker Angela surprised us with gifts of ZenBunni's actual packaged drinking chocolate! When I had visited, they hadn't yet been making this product. We left with the Kathmandu Chai Coco. I've enjoyed chai-infused drinking chocolates here on the blog before, and once I opened this package, like the other ones, I was blown away! The aroma of that chocolate mixed with the complexity of the chai spices is just magical. 

The packaging is extraordinary! Amazing artwork on the front, while the back has a bit of a Harry Potter feel, complete with a magical tale of creating the drink in a stupa high in the mountains overlooking Kathmandu.

In the instructions, they mention adding in a touch of grass fed butter or ghee. I made it as recommended, and even added that spoonful of butter made from the milk of grass fed cows.

Wow, creamy and amazing! Putting the butter in, I was a bit skeptical that I would be able to notice it, but in the time since my first mug of the drink, I've made it without the butter, and I really think it made it much creamier. It's really a wonderful drink, very relaxing and aromatic, and definitely out of the range of ordinary hot chocolates. They also have a Shiva Rose Coco, and I can't wait to have a sip of that! 

This drinking chocolate is definitely recommended, and if you order, be sure and mention you heard about them here on Melting Mug. And if you try it, please come back and let me know what you thought of it. 

Review - Lady Chocolatt, Los Angeles

Los Angeles isn't exactly known for chocolate, but we've got a few hot spots around town if you keep your eyes open. Lady Chocolatt is on Wilshire Blvd, and I'd driven by this place quite a few times before finally getting the chance to stop in. It's a small place, easy to miss, despite the vivid yellow storefront. On a nice, relaxing Saturday afternoon, my wife and I happened to be in the area, so we stopped in.

It's a cute, small place, very bright and clean inside. Everything is painted that pleasant yellow color, and the shelves were perfectly stocked. They have a nice selection of artisanal chocolate bars, as well as all the crafted chocolates in the display case.

Walking in, I was immediately excited by the menu! Check it out - there's just as much drinking chocolate as there is coffee! That's rare to find! We spoke with the owner, who served us our chocolate candies and my drinking chocolate. He also explained to us that Lady Chocolatt only uses imported Belgian chocolate in all their products.

The place is just filled with truffles. It's always hard for me to pick in these situations where so many look so good. I picked out an orange peel hazelnut, and when I mentioned I had a chocolate blog, the owner gave me the creamy hazelnut, saying it was their best one.


Orange peel hazelnut was great! The orange was subtle, but really nice. All the flavors were present and discernible. The creamy hazelnut was also great, very smooth and creamy.





In comparison, eating the hazelnut truffle second made the orange stand out more in the first truffle. The hazelnut is a really great truffle, I can see why it's their signature one. It's hard to decide which was better when both were amazing.

As for the drinking chocolate, I ordered the extra dark. It was very thick and rich, very dark chocolatey. The owner told me it was a 72% chocolate, a ganache made with a mixture of heavy cream and water. This drink wasn't sweet at all, which was nice, it made it taste more like an 80%. Also, after eating the sweet truffles, this drink almost seemed more like a coffee than a typical sweet hot chocolate.

Really great drinking chocolate, definitely on my Top 10 list of LA hot chocolates. I'm excited to return and try more of the flavors and learn a bit more about the chocolate used in the drinks. If you swing by Lady Chocolatt, be sure and tell them you read about them on Melting Mug!