today was a fun day.

I love cocoa butter painting, man, I do.

These are testers for a fundraising project we’re working on for May! That’s all I can say right now…

 

my gals

ARE INSANE AND I LOVE THEM SO

2012 Highlights (from the entire Lagusta’s Luscious crew!)

Here’s how my little chocolate business has gone:

In 2003 Jacob and I started making truffles for family gifts, inspired, like all good things are inspired, by an article in Martha Stewart Living. I didn’t know what on earth I was doing.

In 2004 everyone we gave the truffles to in 2003 wanted more of them. And I saw that this was a little hole in the vegan marketplace, so I decided to start selling them on the internet. I made them once a month, in-between cooking for the meal delivery service I ran, and kept a little email mailing list I’d announce the shipment on. People would email me back to order, I would send them a PayPal invoice, and off their chocolates would go.

Things went pretty much like this until 2010. Over the years we got a website, a fancier ordering system, and a bunch more customers (not just friends). I made chocolates once a week, not once a month. It was nice. The chocolate holidays (Christmas, Easter, and, of course, V-day) slammed me, made it difficult to get my cooking work done and difficult to sleep. The chocolate side of things was growing, without me feeding it. (The meal delivery would have been growing too, but it was so exhausting that I kept it to 20 clients or less so I could manage it and have a reasonable life, too.)

In 2010 I decided to shut down the meal delivery service and focus on a sweeter life, with less onions to peel and less pots to scrub.

Here’s the difference, dish-wise, between the two jobs:

• Meal delivery dishes took hours of scrubbing giant pots, leaving you with oniony, wrinkly hands and exhausted arms. 
• Chocolate dishes can go right into the dishwasher with no scrubbing, and make the entire kitchen smell like hot chocolate.

Looking back, the choice was easy.

In 2011 we scraped up our pennies and borrowed pennies from wherever we could and bought the building. It was an 11-month-long odyssey, my friends (buying a building in foreclosure with almost no money—patient persistence is necessary, and since I am the most impatient person in the world, it was constantly tough for me. Thankfully, Jacob is amazing at smooth-talking banks and having patience, so while I was ranting and renting my garments with stress, he was cooly Making It Happen. It’s all detailed here, along with some TMIness about my own internal state at the time.)

Then began the renovation process (detailed rather haphazardly here). The word “renovation” still fills my heart with a cold chill. Oh, the months!

OH, THE MONEY! The delays, the work, the schlepping, the buying, the designing!

It was so much work.

(Was it worth it? Every night when I switch off the lights and lock the door [yes sometimes it's technically morning when that's happening, but still], I take a moment to look at the shop and get the same frisson of pleasure that I got the first day we opened. Opening the shop is my favorite thing I’ve ever done, and I love it every single day.)

We finally opened on June 28, 2011. (Jacob’s birthday! He was on tour in Europe at the time, and I sent him a photo of the shop and told him that instead of any presents [I was a little busy and a lot cash-strapped at the time, OK?], I got him a chocolate shop.)

It was fun from the start.

2012 was our first full year of being open, and it brought lots of changes in our Luscious little world. Here’s a rundown of the biggest ones:

• 2012 was the year we went from being a micro-business to a small business.
• It’s the year I had to learn how to be imperfect in front of other people, too. 

The biggest change in my personal work world was how many more people I work with on a day-to-day basis.

As late as June of this year I was still clawing on to Solitude Sundays (what I always called them in my head) where I worked alone. Alone! It was super tough, yes (every time we had a party of five who all ordered Drinking Chocolates, I’d set a new record for how fast one person can stir ganache into hot almond milk, top it with almond whip, marshies, and cinnamon, pour it into a cup, put a lid on it, and get it to them), but I loved having a day all by myself at the shop, so quiet and still in the back of the house.

I could use all the space, live completely in my head, work on secret formless projects I didn’t have to chat about to anyone until they were more complete, nailed-down, ready to be tasted. Sometimes things like Thyme, Preserved-Lemon and Sea Salt Caramel need a little marinating time in one’s own head before they’re ready to be trotted out for a tasting. I’m like that (I used to be like that?)—I want things to be perfect before anyone sees them.

I’ll never go back to Solitude Sundays, I know that.

That’s a good thing, but it’s a little bittersweet, too. Change is good, Lagusta! Moving forward is good!

Now I work more collaboratively, and it’s one of the most exhilarating processes I’ve ever participated in. I’m continually blown away by the brilliant ideas of the women I work with, how they help me solve problems and come up with amazing new ideas. If I don’t have an idea down perfectly, I know I can bring it to them and they’ll help me make it better.

It’s terrifying not to perfect things before I show them to other people, but I’m getting better at it.

Around August, we ramped up like crazy for the chocolate season ahead. It’s good that we did. We needed every body we could cram in those 1000 square feet. And I LOVE the amazing women we hired. Still, it’s been a major shift for me in the way I always figured the shop would run. It’s so strange to me when an order, or even a Drinking Chocolate, goes to a customer and I didn’t have a hand in any of it—I didn’t make the ganache or fold the boxes or dip the truffles or even ship out the package. (I started doing this thing where I write “Enjoy! XO, L” on all the packages I ship out, like I’m a fancy person, like people should be excited to get packages from the great Lagusta herself!! Oy!)

All this is strange.

I know in the scheme of things we are still a very, very small business, and always will be, no matter how much we grow. But I always thought we’d be a micro business. Just me, with Maresa helping out when she wasn’t making cupcakes and cakes.  And it went like that for a long time—I’ve been unable to get rid of Maresa since the day 5 or so years ago when she showed up at my old kitchen in Rosendale and said she’d work for free. Now I’d pay her anything she asked because she’s not only the sister I never had, but also so essential to the business that I sometimes wake up from nightmares where she went on a short vacation (really though, Reesey, you should take more days off!). We’ve had other people working on the shop since it opened, but never more than 3 of us at a time. From when the Oprah thing came out (keep reading!) in November until we went to Hawaii we were averaging 5 people a day working in the shop, and there were a few days when I looked up and we’d crammed SEVEN PEOPLE, each working with elbows tucked in their little stations, stirring flavorings into ganache or checking the temperature of caramel.

Unbelievable.

• The finishing of the façade.

This article came out about Chocolate in the Hudson Valley in the early part of 2012 in one of our the fine local alt-weeklies.  It mentioned all the chocolate shops in the HV except us. Our customers kept coming in and saying “Why didn’t they mention you???”

Everyone working in the shop was kind of outraged.

Secretly (ok, maybe not so secretly), I was pleased as punch. Do you know what this means? I kept saying to the little crew. We’re still an underground business!! 

The publisher of the magazine, however, happens to be a regular shop customer. One day he came in and apologized profusely about the omission. He didn’t happen to see the article before it went to press, otherwise he would have made sure they covered us. He promised some press to come to make up for the oversight.

I was honored, of course, but also a little rueful.

Being an underground business REALLY pleased me.

If it were up to me, we wouldn’t even have a sign on the door. I had this idea that we’d be a secret around town that you had to know someone to find. You’d open this unmarked, plain teal door and walk into a wild chocolate wonderland. How cool would that be?

As everyone reminded me, banks need mortgage payments in exchange for the building, and utility companies need money in exchange for power to power tempering machines. And student loans from a certain someone with a double major in English and Women’s Studies (oh, and the French minor) still has student loans to pay. So, concessions needed to be made.

Our friend Molly made our amazing sign. I liked it. Most particularly, I liked that it didn’t tell what we sold. Keeping the mystery!

In time though, everyone else got REALLY tired of saying, “We’re a chocolate shop!” to people who popped in just to ask what the crap it was that we sold.

So. Over my objections, we got these fancy letters for the front of the building. I got to pick out the font, and I picked Futura, so we could seem as much like we were living inside a Wes Anderson movie as possible.

Speaking of the chocolate letters:

• I made this really cool banner for the website. 

Maybe it’s not a year highlight to you, but to me, who manages to screw up the website majorly every time she touches it, who has pretty much been taken off website duty by Erin and Jacob, who are constantly tinkering and improving and fixing and perfecting, being able to make and upload the rotating banners on the top of the page was sort of a minor miracle.

How Wes Anderson-y does it look??

• I created the hardest, bestest recipe of all time. 

Oh, Peanut Butter Toffee Crunch Bars! Your butterfingery devils, you. How we love to hate you. 

• Pate de Fruits.

I love these little gems. Finally making them after years of wanting to was so satisfying. The cantaloupe was my favorite, but I loved them all.

• Ice cream. 

I LOVED making ice cream this summer (and milkshakes!). And we’ve got so many fun summery plans for cold treats to come, I can’t wait to share ‘em…

• Ridding the shop of corn syrup

I’m so proud of our Innovation of the Year: homemade organic cane syrup to replace corn syrup!

• Flowers. 

Candied homegrown flower tablets. Sigh. My heart is bursting.

• Molly’s window project

Our resident genius artist, Molly Rausch of Postage Stamp Paintings, painted our windows so beautifully, I don’t think we’ll ever take it down.

• Oprah Magazine + press

I guess I should stop with things that were important in my personal soul and all that and get on to the actual tangible markers of the year.

One of those was that we got some mega press.

We were in a bunch of local magazines and papers, and that 1/4 page mention in Oprah magazine sure raised our profile quite a bit. From when the magazine came out until the end of the year, we were solidly slammed with orders.

• Donations

Not being so terrified that we weren’t going to make mortgage payments every month has meant that we can afford to do more donations!

I knew there was a reason why being a bigger business was good—this is one of the major reasons.

As someone who always figured she’d be a penniless activist for a “living,” doing good is a huge part of our mission at the shop. Nothing feels better than being able to support the groups, people, and work we believe in. Here’s a partial list of donations we did in 2012:

• We donated to the animal shelter my mom volunteers for, CARE.
• We made sure our pal Nicole’s dog Beija got medical care when she desperately needed it.
• We donated a lot to Friends of Animals—when you buy our Rosemary Sea Salt Caramels boxes, $10 of each box goes to FoA’s fine work.
• We continue to give shop-discounts to members of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary and Catskill Animal Sanctuary. We also do chocolate and cash donations to them whenever we can.
• We made a few hundred dollars for Family of New Paltz, our local food pantry, and so much more.
• We raised over $2000 to the Teal Cat Project in March, through sales of Tabby Toffee chocolates!
• We donated lots of Peach-Tarragon chocolates to Phillies Bridge Farm’s annual Meal in the Field dinner.
• Lots more donations I can’t remember/forgot to enter into my accounting program.

• The wildest Halloween ever.

There were so many sad events in the wider world this year. They’re beyond the scope of this blog post, but it’s crushing to remember them.

Hurricane Sandy was responsible for the cancellation of the Google NYC Halloween party, for which the Google folks had ordered hundreds of chocolates from us. They said we should give the chocolates out to New Paltz trick or treaters, which meant we had the craziest, most fun (in spite of the Sandy sadness living in our hearts) Halloween ever in the shop, which was crammed with people for hours and hours—long after the chocolate ran out, actually. My oh my does word spread fast in this town.

• The dough sheeter!

We bought a dough sheeter, thus ending 10 months of a croissant desert that we (me!) barely survived. Croissants are back forever, woo!

• The launch of the Savory Dinner Series
  

The most fun and the most work I’ve had in a long time (which is saying a lot—I have a lot of fun and work a ton on the regular). I hope it continues forever. We did two dinners last year (you can see millions of photos of ‘em at the link above), this year I’m hoping to do one a month March-October.

• Partnership with Tuthillltown Spirits

Tuthilltown has quickly become a household name in the Hudson Valley as well as the country (the world, maybe?) for well-crafted whiskies and more. We were honored when they asked if we wanted to partner up on a special chocolate to be sold in their distillery shop. Our Four-Grain Bourbon Caramel Chile Bars are one of our best-sellers, and it’s always so nice to meet people who found us from a bar they tasted at the distillery.

The whiskey is delicious on its own, too, which is nice for a whiskey drinker like me. Manhattans (and chocolate!) for all!

I asked everyone who works at the shop for their best-ofs, too:

• DawnMarie: Unlike everyone else, is probably out having fun and not immediately responding to emails, so I’ll update this post with her best-ofs when I get ‘em. (I’m hoping one of her favorites will be that crazy day she wrapped ten zillion bars…)
• Favorite thing to make:
  Sundaes in the summer!  Especially with gooseberries on top. (Customer-”you mean the ice cream, marshmallows, AND whip are all vegan? *face lights up*)
• Favorite thing I ate:
  Chocolate- ginger orange blossom truffle
  Cupcake- pistachio & rosewater
  Savory- latkas with sour cream & apple sauce!
  Drink- lavender lemonade
• Highlights:
  -Learning from and working with empowering, progressive, and witty women. Plus Jacob!
  -Actually being able to eat anything in the shop without worry of the ingredients.
  -Listening to good music all day
  -Maresa’s cake scraps!
  -Lagusta’s training nights & whatever she cooks for us.
• Favorite moments:
  I was having just your typical case of the rainy-pms-ing-monday-finals week-blues. My day turned around when I walked into work and my senior recital was being played as the shop’s music. What a supportive, loving feeling. And then I got to make chocolate all day. Chocolate shop therapy at its finest.
• During one of our busy days, I messed up and used black rasberries instead of red rasberries for a recipe and I already added in the balsamic syrup. I felt awful even telling L since we were pressed for time but  she didn’t even break a sweat. She just looked at it and went, “don’t worry- I’ve got an idea!” And just like that she made a tangy, fruity, amazing truffle out of my mistake- with black rasberries, balsamic syrup, lemon, lime, and strawberry that the customers all loved! Lesson learned: when life gives you lemons, make a new chocolate.
• Jayme: 
• Favorite thing I made: Holler Mountain bark. The first thing I made from start to finish.
• Favorite thing I ate: Pear, clover, & brown sugar cupcake.
• Beet coriander truffle!
• Highlights: when Non vegans walk in and are surprised & impressed that we are a cruelty free/Vegan shop. When vegans realize they can have ANYTHING they want! Putting bows on a zillion barks.

• Eating any food that Lagusta makes us (awww). Learning some real knife skills. Being able to work in an amazing, caring, human/animal/environmentally conscious environment.
• Favorite Moments: Working from 10a-730p with Maresa & Lucy without sitting down once and then enjoying a Taco Shack feast before finishing up the last 3 hours of work.
• Erin:
• Dipping truffles. (LY note: Erin is really great at dipping truffles!)
• Making ganache start to finish is pretty fulfilling- from the recipe, to flavoring, piping, rolling, dipping, decorating…
• Favorite moment was the night we all did yoga together, talking about our favorite poses. (very inflexible LY note: THIS WAS MY LEAST FAVORITE MOMENT.)
• Favorite eating was shiitake sea salt truffle, RSSC (Rosemary Sea Salt Caramels, natch), and turtles- and mac and cheese! (LY note: I like making snacks for the crew!)
• Funniest was when I called her “teal nail girl.” (LY note: Maresa and I almost hired her right off the bat because her nails matched our logo. [Even though you're not allowed to paint your nails in a food service environment. But this was just at the interview, so it was OK.])
• Fave customers- maeve and julian
• Fave times- when vegans come in expecting one or two vegan things and get SUPER EXCITED when they fing out every last thing is vegan. (LY note: this is my fave time too.)

• Jacob:
• STUMPTOWN! And indulging in a coffee obsession and taking it to unforseen heights.
• Maresa’s macarons!
• Sweet Pea Green Tea chocos.
• 
• Lucy:
• Turtles. (Lucy is our turtle expert, for sure.)
• I loved learning how to make caramels.
• Christmas rush. in the middle of it, I realized how much all of us has learned and how we could just bang it all out and do a good job.
• Favorite eating was pickle tempura, and chocolate lemon confit caramel.
• Fave customers- any shy old men. and the Smylies. also, the guy who gets gifts for his girlfriend “just because he loves her” and is always really polite.
• BOTH Erin and Lucy loved the chocolate tasting night!
• Maresa:
• Favorite eating: every last bite of the savory dinner (LY note: Maresa came as a diner! It was so great to cook for her.). and, apple caramels. and maui macadamia cream.
• Successfully making pb bars in less than one day (this happened once. it’ll go down in history like rudolph).
• Favorite customer: susan blickstein, who was with us through our coffee evolution, and would always give the lowdown on town-happenings.
• Favorite moment: sitting on the bench with L, eating pistachio ice cream, and comparing legs. also, realizing that our gals are totally the best ever. (LY note: this is my favorite moment, too.)

• Jeeeze, there’s a lot more!

Fun events, amazing customers (truly, amazing), delicious tempeh, our anniversary party, so many delicious chocolates (cream eggs!), wrapping paper with yours truly’s mug on it, the back room renovations, PARIS, that crazy cute caramel apple I made!

But this is getting too long, and I’ve got to start my New Year’s Eve dinner preparations.

If you have Lagusta’s Luscious-related highlights to share in the comments (or on Facebook or Twitter), I’d be honored.

Cranberry Citrus Compote and Candied Orange and Cranberry Bonbons

 

As I write this at 1 am on Halloween (I’m a night owl!), I can’t quite wrap my mind around November being here already. But here it is, and I’ll welcome it warmly, because this last week has been so tough for so many of us that turning the page seems like the best thing to do.

We’ve had a wild month at the shop, too, but less fraught, thankfully. Oprah and Halloween (which brought with it a truly bittersweet surprise) bookended a month of intense busy-ness, which will (hopefully!) only intensify as the holiday season approaches.

Which brings us to this month’s chocolate: Candied Orange and Cranberry Bonbons, which are inspired by an amazing Cranberry Citrus Compote I make every year for Thanksgiving, and think about making the rest of the year but never do because of that weird thing where it’s almost impossible to make holiday foods when it’s not that particular holiday.

In case you’d like to start and end your holiday meal with the fresh flavors of cranberries and zesty citrus, here’s my recipe for the compote, which I adapted from Fine Cooking magazine years ago. Don’t forget the chocolates, too!

No photo of the compote, but I’ll add one after Thanksgiving!

 

CRANBERRY CITRUS COMPOTE

Makes 5 cups

Keeps a week. If making far ahead, stir in scallions at last minute. Let come to room temperature before serving.

19 oz. fresh cranberries, picked over and rinsed

optional: 5 oz frozen currants. I like using currants because you can get them locally. I usually freeze some during the summer for this dish.

zest of 2 lemons

zest of 2 oranges, preferably blood oranges

3 shallots, finely chopped

1 ¼ c sugar

½ c orange juice

1/3 c thinly sliced scallions

pinch salt

1. Heat oven to 350. Combine cranberries, currants, zests, shallots, and sugar in a bowl and mix thoroughly. Turn into 2 (2 qt.) baking dishes and drizzle orange juice over the mixture.
2. Bake, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is dissolved and a few berries have popped open, about 30 minutes.
3. Remove from oven, let cool thoroughly (the pectin in the excess liquid will firm up when cool), stir in scallions, cover, and refrigerate.

Take my recipe—PLEASE! (How to make your own Butterfingers!)

OK, you can also buy them from me, but I HIGHLY

HIGHLY

HIGHLY

recommend making them yourself.

Because if you don’t, we have to make them and…um. I know I’m not supposed to say this, because candy-making is supposed to be all rainbows and sunbeams, but

MAKING THESE IS PURE TORTURE.

But we’re going to keep making them forever, because they are, horribly, one of the tastiest things we’ve ever made.

After we sent these out to club members as part of the Chocolate of the Month, we almost instantly got a bunch of reorders. Here’s what one said:

Just a note to say that yes indeed, I intended to order 20 of the peanut butter bars. My husband requested one a day for a month, and we compromised at 20. They are phenomenal!

And

This bar blew my mind! The flaky layers on the inside—not too hard, not too crumbly, not too sweet, just perfect—replicate, nay, upstage and outshine the “real” butterfingers of my youth. This is by far the best vegan candy I have ever tasted. Make it a staple!

And

OMG I love this bar!! And I never liked Butterfingers. That is all.

And

I don’t eat candy and I ate an entire one last night. It was so good.

And

I just had one – and…. Yes, you are going to be making them for the rest of your life!

And

It really rocked!

So, well—argh.

Here’s the recipe. Please share my pain at what a pain it is.

Let us begin our journey.

Peanut Butter Toffee Crunch Bars

(that’s what we call them since we can’t really call them Butterfingers)

Oh wait, we also call these:

The Ridge Bar

Because their beautiful striated layers are reminiscent of the gorgeous mountain range 10 minutes from the shop, the Shawangunk Ridge, which is famous for its stratified folds.

Enough chitchat.

1. CLEAR THE ENTIRE DAY. You will have 24 bars at the end of this epic saga. We do four times this recipe, and we swear like sailors the whole time. In fact, I whined so much about making these that in the end Maresa took over the recipe (now we call these bars Mareese’s!) in order to save everyone’s sanity from my endless whimpering.

I could just tell she thought I was protesting a bit too much about what an ordeal it was. Because of this, I greatly looked forward to her whack at the ol’ recipe.

About halfway through, she turned to me and said, “You know what? This is ridiculous!!“

And I laughed and laughed, safely on the other side of the kitchen, deep into the wonderful world of truffle-making I was ensconced in—beautiful, beautiful truffle-making! How unpeanutbuttery it is! How many you can make at one time! How not molten hot it is! (Even though other chocolatiers gasp when they find out we make hand-rolled truffles—no one does it these days because it’s so time-consuming, instead everyone makes these square thingies with something called a guitar cutter and an enrobing machine but not only do we not have those expensive pieces of equipment but also!!! Truffles are called truffles because they’re handmade looking, like truffle mushrooms, and round, like truffle mushrooms, and AHHH SQUARE TRUFFLES!! DON’T GET ME STARTED!!—making truffles is pretty much instant compared with these PB bars.)

Here’s Mareesey after finishing a portion of the batch of bars:

Ready to feel the same way?

Let’s go.

Have you ever made croissants? If so, you’ll have a slight jump on this recipe, which is basically the croissant-making technique (puff pastry) crossed with molten hot sugar that requires you to work superfast. It’s a technique called leaf croquant, if you wanna get technical about it.

2. Make your filling.

400 grams peanut butter. We use organic, salted, smooth pb.

60 grams confectioners’ sugar

30 grams cane syrup—we make our own based on this recipe. You could use glucose syrup or corn syrup or probably even brown rice syrup or agave syrup.

1. Melt pb in a bowl in a double boiler. Add sugar (sift it in) and syrup and knead until malleable and smooth.
2. Form into a square 10” x 10” (mine in that photo is pretty ragged, yep.). Keep warm in oven.

3. Make your caramel. This is a dry caramel. It takes a bit o’ practice, but it’s a fun technique (I’m not being ironic, I really do enjoy dry caramel making). This photo shows a gross looking scale, because I melted my scale by putting the hot caramel pot on it when I added the cane syrup to the caramel, as described below. Fun times! The scale still works! (It also shows the filling recipe in progress the one time I forgot to sift in the powdered sugar—look at those lumps! Oy. That was a fun batch [I am being ironic, it was a giant pain.])

¼ tsp lemon juice

450 grams sugar

60 grams cane syrup (see above)

1. Rub lemon juice into sugar. Make a dry caramel by cooking, stirring slowly but constantly, until sugar is evenly melted and becomes a medium amber color (about 10 minutes. Sugar will not be perfectly dissolved and smooth when the color is medium amber, but if you keep cooking it to try to get it perfectly smooth it will burn and you won’t realize it until later. This is hard to explain.). Turn heat to low, add syrup (it will bubble up, and if you’ve burnt it you’ll realize it now because it will get really dark.), and stir until emulsified.
2. Pour caramel into a 12” x 12” square on a silicone baking mat (a Silpat) or parchment paper on a full size sheet pan. (MY GOD DO NOT SKIP THE STEP OF PUTTING DOWN PARCHMENT OR SOMETHING BETWEEN THE CARAMEL AND THE SHEET PAN! I can’t even imagine what fresh hell you’d be into then, trying to scrape magma-like sugar off your sheet pan for the next hour or so.)
3. Place the square of pb filling onto one end of the caramel, leaving approximately 1” on all sides. Or thereabouts.
4. Fold mat and caramel over the filling to enclose it.
5. Peel mat off and tightly seal edges of the caramel to envelop filling.
6. Put sheet pan in a 200°F oven as necessary to keep warm. You’ll know when to put it in the oven—when it starts driving you crazy and hardening up and cracking, like this:
7. When it comes out of the oven, the caramel will sometimes get so melty that it spills over, like this. That’s OK. Just work fast.
8. Roll slab into a thin rectangle then fold into thirds.
9. Roll slab to ½” thick, to a 12” x 12” square. Fold into thirds again. You’ve done one turn. Repeat steps to do four more turns, putting the sheet pan in the oven as necessary in order to make the dough workable.
10. Obviously, working as quickly as possible will make your life a lot easier. But try not to burn yourself with all this business of taking pans in and out of the oven and handling super hot sugar dough. Oh, and around the second to third turn, your arms will start really aching. This dough is really hard to roll out, what can I say.
11. After the fourth turn, cut the 12″ x 12″ sheet into 3 rows by 8 rows, to make 24 bars.
12. Dip into tempered chocolate (uhhhh…Google it? Buy a tempering machine? Just smear melty chocolate over ‘em!).

Just typing that up exhausted me.

Luckily, I happen to have a certain indescribably delicious candy bar right here to pep me back up. HOLY CRAP THIS BAR IS SO GOOD!

no secrets

A fellow chocolatier in London recently contacted me saying she wanted to add a vegan line of chocolates to her business. She asked for some tips on how to make vegan ganaches, caramels, and white and milk chocolates. Yay! This is exactly why I’m in business—to make tasty things that are so ridiculously delicious that no one cares they’re even vegan (um, except for us vegans). To make treats so amazing that they reassure aspiring vegans that vegans can have treats that are just as decadent and amazing as ones made with dead and dying animals. To this end, I don’t really have secrets. Here’s what I wrote back to her:

Hello xxx!

What a lovely email! Your chocolates look so great. I’m so happy you’re working on a vegan range!

OK, here are my tips:

Our “white chocolate” and “milk chocolate” aren’t truly tempered or anything, they’re more like ganaches. I make the white chocolate with coconut milk, coconut oil, cocoa butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and sea salt. We just melt everything down and process it in the food processor and it hardens up just fine, though you can’t use it like regular tempered chocolate, obviously. We mostly use it as a filling. Then our milk chocolate is just the white choco plus regular tempered chocolate.

I’ve talked with some bean-to-bar makers around here who have said they could make me real white and milk chocolate that’s vegan with coconut milk, but I’d have to buy big quantities, so it’s a dream for another day.

As far as caramel and ganache—we mostly use coconut milk and coconut oil in everything you’d use butter and cream for. Coconut oil is about 15-20% more fatty than butter, though, so you need to use less of it and play around a bit. We use a refined coconut oil that doesn’t taste coconutty, and the coconut milk doesn’t taste coconutty once you add chocolate or make it into caramel.

Let me know how it goes!

Sweetest,

Lagusta

Mother’s Day

First: if you want a daily dose of chocolate gorgeousness and general Lagusta’s Luscious TMI, Facebook is really the place for you. Or Twitter, if that’s how you roll.

Nextly: Mother’s Day is coming up. I wanted to take a moment to inform/remind/enlighten you to the fact that we make an entire line of chocolates named for the womens, including one named for my very own mom, one Pauline Benjamin Dubkin-Yearwood, that being Peanut Butter Cups (get it? PB!).

Moving along: Did you see this insanely lovely blog post about us? No, Well, go forth, then.

And finally: this very Sunday we will be at the New Paltz Regatta selling gorgeous hand-painted (and handmade, if you want to get particular about it) chocolate ducks to raise money for our local food pantry, Family of New Paltz. Every year hundreds of rubber ducks are raced in the Wallkill River to raise money for Family (personally this doesn’t seem super duper earth-friendly, but I’m told scrupulous care is taken to remove them all [but then where do they go?]), so that’s why we’re making ducks. 50% of the sales of each duckie will go straight to Family, so come on out!

Onward.

Yours,

Lagusta Pauline*

*You’re right that Jews aren’t supposed to be named for living people, and that my lovely mom is still very much living. Tell that to my goyishe dad!

discount password, new chocolate drink

Hello hello!

It’s a post-Valentine’s world in Lusciousland, and we’ve been using the wonderful calm to get reorganized and invent some new tasty treats. Here we go:

I’m very pleased to announce our new drink menu item:  Caffè Cacao!

Caffè Cacao is our regular (insane, insane, insane) Drinking Chocolate with an ounce of beautifully crafted slow-drip coffee added! KAPOW! Topped with our almond and cashew whipped cream and garnished with cocoa powder, it’s a real eye-opener, on about a million different levels.

And also–I just announced a special discount code today which is only available to Facebook fans and Twitter followers. If you’re not already one or the other, or both, go join the club and get your discount code! We usually only do one sale a year, so now’s your chance!

Good night!

-Lagusta

 

Valentine’s gift guide

We’re in full Valentine’s mode now–the busiest three weeks of the year are here! If you haven’t made your selections yet, here are some ideas for your loved ones, or, even better, to Valentine yourself.

• The biggest and fanciest of our Valentine selections is the My Heart is Yours collection. It’s a giant 6″ chocolate heart filled with nine special chocolates. It’s truly special, and a truly huge amount of chocolate, too.
• Our Intense Anatomical Heart is one of the most wild and crazy chocolates we make. Not for the faint of you-know-what, it’s tangy, fruity, bitter, and salty, an entire rollercoaster of flavors unfolding one after another on your tongue. It’s for the kind of love that leaves your heart pounding and your mouth dry—that wild kind of relationship.
• The White Chocolate Strawberry Bark is red and swirly and perfectly suited to your Valentine who maybe doesn’t love deep dark chocolate but just wants something fun and snackable.
• All of our truffles are, of course, classic symbols of love, but the new Harlot Box is especially lovey because it includes pomegranate truffles garnished with gorgeous organic rose petals.
• If you want to extend your love to animals this loving season, not only is the Rosemary Sea Salt Caramels (we just call it RSSC) box our bestest seller of all time, but half the cost of each box goes to Friends of Animals as well.
• The feisty feminist women in your life will be honored to receive any of our Bluestocking Bonbons, each of which is named for an inspiring woman. The Raspberries de Pizan are particularly perfect, since they’re filled with fresh raspberry puree. 
• And, of course, Furious Vulvas. Of course!

the most ridiculous blog post ever

When I need to add a photo to the website, I’m supposed to upload it to an FTP thingie. But my FTP program thingie is always annoying, and uploading photos to this blog is so easy! Thus, the purpose of this blog post is to upload this photo of the Luscious Locavore box (<—- fabulous new name, as mentioned in the post below, is thanks to Facebook pal Erica!). It’s a truly beautiful thing, this box in this beautiful porcelain container. Read all about it here! 

Hey, a blog post with Valentine’s ideas is coming soon! The February Chocolate of the Month is already up though, and it is GIANT and amazing.