Shave it, curl it, dip it, mold it, dust it, drink it—hotel banquets have chocolate covered. What about fat? Calories? Two years of reports promoting the health benefits of chocolate are chipping away at all that guilt. Who cares if that’s only the darkest of chocolate? Dessert companies all agree: feeling good about chocolate is towering up chocolate garnishes, flavoring cookies, breads, and muffins, and creating a market for virtually anything crammed with cocoa.

Health Benefits
Low carb, heart-healthy, dairy-free, sugar-free, vitamin enriched. Not slogans traditionally seen on chocolate bars. But the times, they are a changing. Europe is leading the way toward good-foryou snack food—a spoonful of sugar with the medicine as it were.

Chocolate is being created without sugar, stripped of carbs, and made without dairy. But even more aggressive than what’s left out is what’s being put in. Already there are chocolate bars in Asia and Europe with added polyphenols. That’s the antioxidant that’s creating all the health benefits, and it may soon be infused in any number of products to boost their “nutriceutical” status. Many polyphenols are lost in the heat of processing, so adding them back in at the end is a process companies like Barry Callebaut, based in Zurich,. Switzerland, are working on. And various herbs and energy boosters are finding their way into Power Bar-style products like SoBe’s Tsunami White Chocolate with Orange Infusion or Drive Milk Chocolate with Triple Shot Mocha Blast.

Savory
Too tasty for just dessert, cocoa is expanding its savory applications. An issue of the clubby Art Culinaire was recently devoted to savory chocolate dishes. Probably the best known, the Hispanic molé, is gaining increased prominence with a base of unsweetened chocolate.

Hershey gives a recipe using its special dark chips and cocoa for a Latin-style molé pot roast. Cocoa is being used as an innovative seasoning. Menus are sporting new dishes like cocoa vinaigrette, cocoa spaetzle, and cocoa chipotle butter. The raw cocoa bean itself is being used where nuts might be sprinkled or crushed.

One of the more innovative new uses in the kitchen is a product called Mycryo from Barry Callebaut. It’s a cocoa butter product in a dry, granulated form for use as a cooking fat in savory applications. Used in place of dairy butter or olive oil, cocoa butter is a pure vegetable fat, and one of the only ones hard at room temperature, hence, a butter.

“Use it anywhere you want to sauteé,” says Julian Rose, corporate chef and technical advisor for Barry Callebaut. “It has a nice covering quality for a finer coat, so you use much less oil. Pat it on a scallop or piece of meat, warm the skillet, and toss it in. You won’t burn the cocoa butter—it has a high burning point. It’s making a big impact in Europe in food preparation.”

The product can be mixed with spices and used to bread items even hours in advance and refrigerated. “It’s unsaturated fat and neutral on cholesterol—pretty much flavorless. It seems to preserve color better, so it’s great for sautéed vegetables.” The price point is like a good olive oil. But unlike olive oil or dairy butter, the cocoa butter won’t degrade at high temperature. And you’ll infuse an extra helping of vitamins A, B, D, and E.

Tasting
Following the same trajectory as wine, the American chocolate palate is leaping from its grocery store-generic rosé days into appellation-wise, hearty red territory. And the comparison to wine is apropos. “We’ve done taste comparisons with red wine,” says Ken Darling, corporate chef for Hershey’s.

As chocolates join other premium tasting treats, they’re increasingly being paired off with other gourmet complements. “We found the best pairing for our new 60 percent cacao bar was a Zinfandel or Merlot—the Cab Sav we started with was too bold. You have the cheese course. Chocolate could be a pre-dessert choice: red wines with high-end chocolates. Keep the chocolate as a pure delivery, not in a pastry, but a consumable bar or piece form. Guiness also goes great with chocolate.” Darling would like to see a dark beer tasting with a sampling of chocolate desserts.

Chef Rose also points to wine—as a metaphor. “There’s a heavy trend of selecting origin chocolates for confectionary applications—select cocoa beans from a specific region made into a pure chocolate. For pastry, you want the pure chocolate, to accent the high notes of one particular chocolate. Some are grassy/acidic, and end fruity/winey. Raspberry and vanilla add well onto the natural profile. We have origin chocolates from West of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Tanzania, South America, Cuba, Venezuela, Santa Domingo, Peru, and soon Grenada. It’s interesting to explore, and the flavor points where you need to go. Different origin chocolates are less like different Merlots than they are like completely different reds. There’s that much of a difference in flavor.”

Garnish and Containers
“Designs are becoming more three-dimensional, more modern, and more minimalist,” says Stanton Ho, corporate executive chef for Chocolates à la Carte. “Elongated images, height, and curvature are all components.” Diane Rudman, marketing manager of Chocolates à la Carte, agrees, “color, texture, layering—it’s all getting more complex and exciting. Impactful colors help chocolate take on the appearance of artwork. Customized cut-outs and new container shapes and colors are all new options. We have our own mold shop and our own silk screening.” Chocolates à la Carte is customizing central for chocolate items. For as little as $100, you can have a custom chocolate mold crafted for use ever after.

While the pastry chef focuses on the big picture, “to do all the ornaments and garnish himself for a 2,000-person banquet would be suicidal,” says Ho. “He needs to focus on the daily operation. We’re all watching out for the bottom line, and in the corporate world, labor is a big piece of that.” Sourcing out slick containers and garnishes and frozen desserts give chefs the “wow” they need without the work they don’t.

Dessert
Put three different little desserts on a plate with a garnish, and it’s a great little taste of everything. “We see the smaller sizes increasing in popularity,” says Evert de Boer of de Boer Food Importers. “The carrier with a filling (mousse, fruit, ice cream) is kept smaller for bite size—very popular now. People want combinations of little items instead of one big dessert. There’s also innovation in color combination, the look of the garnish and container.” The company has a fun mini-coffee cup container molded out of chocolate.

“Palates are becoming more educated,” says Philip Rotonto Jr. of Philip R’s Frozen Desserts. “For a while we’ve been using the Callebaut, Valrhona, the higher-end chocolates in our ice cream. It makes a dense chocolate flavor. In general, I try to keep the sweetness down—even in vanilla. They want the true flavor to come out, especially in chocolate.” Philip R’s Frozen Desserts is also working with innovative shapes and textures. Their ice cream pyramid with dulce de leche and textured chocolate is a multi-purpose example.

Preportioned ice cream scoops have been in high demand for larger banquets. “Higher-end banquets get the Valhrona pre-portioned for 3,000 to 4,000 people served no problem. The latest twist are dimension scoops: ice cream scoops in pyramid, cube, sphere, and cylinder shapes.”