Category — Gourmet Food Information

Wait.. you’re thinking.. “it’s Thanksgiving Season, Holiday Season, Shopping Season, but Chocolate season?”

Yes, Chocolate Season at Touch of Europe… because we only ship our Touch of Europe Gourmet Chocolate during cold months to ensure you get the freshest, best condition product in your shipment.

So this time of year, we can’t WAIT for the new chocolates to come in and there are some GORGEOUS chocolates this year. They are perfect stocking stuffers, hostess gifts, teacher and neighbor gifts.. the list is endless, because really, not many people don’t like chocolate and this year we have something really cool for the guys !

For the Guys ! Swiss Army Knives Swiss Chocolate.

And for ANYONE.. the NEW Large Size Gavottes Dark Chocolate Crepe Dentelle Cookies – 720 gr

Gavottes are a range of fine biscuits (cookies in Europe, Australia etc are called Biscuits), delicate plain or chocolate coated crispy crepe dentelles, perfect for snacking any time of the day.

The authentic Gavotte crepe dentelle is a fine biscuit made following a recipe handed down since 1920. Gavottes are light and golden, composed of super fine crusty layers all rolled up. The absolutely unique manufacturing process is a closely kept secret,and these cookies are exported world-wide. Great on their own, with coffee, Champagne, or wine, as a finishing touch for an ice-cream or creme dessert.

This box contains about 150 pieces, and is designed with a dispenser.

We also have all sorts of chocolates in gift boxes, bars, spoons and more at Touch of Europe ! So take a look and pick yours early.

Enjoy !

June 19th is the day we celebrate our guys and it’s just around the corner.

Whatever the man in your life is interested in, and whether you want it to be

fun or functional, we have you covered.

For the chef, we have new spice combinations to add to a marinade or rub

Crazy salt, great for marinades and rubs

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…and Dad will look handsome in his new apron

The Wicked Traveler

display books with style by using attractive nesting boxes to hide small items
and the ever important remote

If you have the opportunity to drop by the store you’ll find fantastic frames, loads more food items and a plethora of presents for your papa, popi or pere.

Mademoiselle de Margaux is a French company, founded in 1969 in Margaux, in the Medoc Region on France.

The company is known early on for their chocolate and liqueur fruit confections and their chocolate bars mostly used for baking. Their oldest product is the ‘Guinette’ a cherry bonbo in liqueur surrounded by chocolate – luscious!

In the late 1970s an error happens during production.  One of the machines producing the bars gets twisted somehow, producing a new type of bar, fine and serpentine in shape.  And thus the ‘Sarments du Médoc’ are born.

The product is rewarded in 1983 by a Candy Award at the Fancy Food show in Washington DC.  This prize is given to the best confection imported to the United States.  They are available in different flavors.

These sarments, are fine S shaped twigs of chocolate, flavored with fruit or other flavors such as coffee.    Delicate and refined enough for the most elegant party.  They melt in your mouth but are also crunchy!

Marrons Glacés are called this way even in Italy and essentially translate to ‘glazed chestnuts’, a term that does not do these amazing delicacies justice.

The origins of the candy are fairly confusing, but probably date back to the Crusades, when sugar was introduced into Northern Europe. Mostly they were made in Italy and France, mainly Piedmont (NW Italy) and in different areas of France. The first known records were written by the French and their popularity was very high in Versailles in the court of Louis XIV. The first known recipe is in a cookbook written by Sieur Francois Pierre la Varenne in 1667.

Toward the end of the 19th Century, Clément Faugier in Lyon is trying to find ways to revitalize the depressed economy of Lyon. In 1882, he and a local candy maker (confiseur) set up in the Ardèche region, and the first factory to produce the marrons glacés industrially is born. Even so, most of the nearly 20 (!) yes, twenty steps, to produce the candy, are still done manually.

A few years later, Faugier introduces the Crème de Marrons de l’Ardèche, a sweetened chestnut purée or cream, made from marrons glacé broken during the production, with some vanilla added in. Other products such as Marrons with Cognac, Natural Cream of Marrons and plain chestnuts in water, are all introduced later.

The chestnut when picked, and then shelled, has an astrigent skin, a pellicle, that must be removed. Because of the fruit’s structure (see the deep groves), they are fragile and easily break during the production of the candy.

Candied chestnuts are without question a labor of love. The chestnuts are first sorted to eliminate those that are not perfectly round or smooth. They are then boiled, peeled by hand, and sorted once again. Finally, the chestnuts are cooked for two days in a rich vanilla syrup until the flavor seeps into the very heart of the chestnut.

This heavily manual process explains the price of these candies. They are also, of course, seasonal, depending on the Fall chestnut harvest. In Europe they begin appearing in stores in the Fall and have become a very popular luxurious holiday gift. In Italy they are so popular that almost all highway rest stops have big displays of them in their food and delicacy shops.

Marrons

A lot of the information here is taken from the Wikipedia listing for Marrons Glaces.