"valrhona" news and stories

• Bon Appétit, Condé Nast's second-largest-circulation magazine, has moved to New York -- and is taking on stylish GQ editor Adam Rapaport as editor-in-chief.
• San Francisco won the World Series; now local chocolatier Tcho is looking to win over chefs. (Valrhona, watch your back.)
• Peels, a part-prep, part-punk restaurant downtown, offers fabulous appetizers -- but "the entrees are a mess."
• It's nearly winter, and thoughts turn to sunny Provence, with its deep, "brooding" Bandol red.

Many dessert recipes call for chopped chocolate, and there's a simple way to get evenly sized bits without using a chef's knife.

Happy Chocolate Cake Day!

Chocolate lovers, rejoice -- if there's ever a day to indulge in the decadent dessert, today would be it.

While the chocolate cake mix and frosting variety has secured a firm spot in our heart, we've set our sights on something slightly more ambitious as of late: Jean-George Vongerichten's Warm Soft Chocolate Cakes, teeming with dark Valrhona chocolate, rich as fudge but with a fluffier cake texture, served at a melt-in-your-mouth temperature.

What's your favorite chocolate cake recipe? Post links in the comments!

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The last time I was in my local up-scale, organic supermarket, I saw chocolate-dipped strawberries selling for $1.25 each. Sure, they were big, and they might have even had some white chocolate drizzled on there too, but a buck-twenty-five? That alone is enough inspiration for me to make them at home. Some would say that good fruit doesn't need any sort of help. I agree. The fruit I happened to have on hand, however, was a little less than spectacular, so I didn't feel the least bit bad about dipping it in some Valrhona Manjari (64%). I just put a handful of chocolate wafers into a double boiler (a bowl on top of a small pan of gently simmering water), let them melt, dipped my strawberries and orange sections and let them cool on some wax paper. I then slightly burned my fingers "cleaning" the warm leftover chocolate from the bowl.