(OFFER EXPIRED IN 2015)

Black Friday. Either you love it or you hate it, there isn’t much in between.

This year, we want to give you a gift for being such a great gifter yourself. Spend $50 dollars on our website beginning Friday (Nov 27, 2015: offer has expired), and we’ll send you three spectacular Amedei bars. Tis the season to treat yourself, after all. You’ll get Amedei’s Toscano Blond, Toscano Red, and Pistacchi. Keep them for yourself or gift them to your foodie friends, the choice is yours.

Simply use the code CHOCOLATE GIFT at checkout, then these bars are all yours.

Here’s how I’m gifting the deliciousness of Caputo’s this holiday season:

• Chocolate Gift Collections – We’ve curated the best selections of chocolate for any palate.
• Bitters and Bar Collection – What better way to start a home bar than with the classic essentials?
• Truffle Collection – For that foodie friend who enjoys the best the world has to offer.
• Caputo’s Tote Bag – Green shopping is so 2016, give your farmer’s market enthusiasts the bag they need.

Happy Thanksgiving, dearest Caputo friends. Have a delicious and safe holiday. And don’t get trampled while you’re trying to buy that TV at 4am on Friday.

Eating well and eating often is at the core of our values—not just as a business, but as a family. We’ll me enjoying the holiday, and we hope you have a foodtastic Thanksgiving with yours as well!

Please note: All locations of Caputo’s Market & Deli will be closed on Thanksgiving. 

It’s time, my friends. We’re all getting ready to travel, to cook, to deal with in-laws, and to enjoy Thanksgiving. Our menus are set, our plans have been made, and I just can’t wait.

With so much preparation required for such a meal, I love making as many things in advance as possible. The easiest one? Cranberry sauce. Cranberry sauce is my second favorite Thanksgiving meal component. It sits right behind stuffing, because, duh, stuffing. I’ve tried every kind of recipe that exists for this necessary component, and I still love the most classic ones. I don’t want my cranberries shrouded in some boozy port reduction or over-powered by spices and citrus. I want cranberry. The turkey wants cranberry, too. Just ask him.

Beehive Bitters makes my favorite bitters, Spiced Orange. The flavors are balanced, bright, and perfect for both cooking and cocktail-ing. Warm baking-spice flavors play a key role next to the bright, tangy orange note. Since both of these are classic additions to cranberry sauce, it only makes sense to add them right in to the recipe. You can make this sauce up to four days in advance before the texture becomes more jelly-like, but it will keep for over a week. Make this today, and save yourself the stress, there will be plenty of other things to worry about once Thursday rolls around.

Now, since the best part of the weekend after Thanksgiving is all the leftovers, here’s what I’m doing with my leftover cranberry sauce. I make my sauce with just a bit more water than is necessary. I’ll drain off the excess into a jar and use it as a flavored simple syrup for cocktails. For the sauce, I love to spread ricotta over freshly toasted bread and top with cranberry sauce and grated orange zest. Boom, Black Friday breakfast.

Enjoy the holiday, and enjoy your cranberry sauce!

Beehive Bitters Cranberry Sauce
Serves 4-6

Cook time: 15 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Bonus Points: Local Bitters, Make Ahead

• 12 ounces fresh cranberries
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/3 cup water
• Spiced Orange Beehive Bitters

Bring sugar and water to a boil. Add cranberries and reduce heat to medium. Continue to gently boil for about 10 minutes and remove to a serving bowl. Remove 1/3 of liquid to be used for other recipes (ahem, cocktails). Stir in 2 dashes of bitters, add more to taste. Serve at room temperature or keep refrigerated until the day of your meal.

Beehive Bitters Cranberry Cocktail
Makes 1 cocktail

Cook time: Less than 5 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Bonus Points: Local Bitters, Make Ahead

• 1 teaspoon cranberry simple syrup from cranberry sauce
• 1 dash Spiced Orange Beehive Bitters
• 6 ounces Prosecco or other sparkling wine
• Spiced Orange Beehive Bitters
• 1 orange, for garnish

Pour prosecco over cranberry syrup and bitters in a cocktail glass. Add more to taste if desired. Garnish with an orange wheel and fresh cranberries.

Each year, one craft chocolate maker is the featured guest. Utah’s best and brightest chefs incorporate this chocolate into one dish. Some highlight the chocolate’s sweet side, but many decide to show off chocolate’s affinity for savory.

Chefs are central to the event, but aren’t the only ones to demonstrate cacao based creativity at Caputo’s Chocolate Festival. Bartenders build drinks around the featured chocolate, local brewers use it in their beers,  and sommeliers and 3rd wave coffee roasters expertly pair their concoction with the featured chocolate.

Caputo’s donates 100% of the evening’s proceeds to non profit organizations who are fighting to preserve heirloom strains of cacao.

To view the entire gallery, click here. All photos by Two Paper Horses Photography.

The pictures are in! What a wonderful time we had at the 4th Annual Chocolate Festival, featuring Solstice Chocolate. Thanks to Two Paper Horses Photography for their work capturing the moment with their photo booth. Click here or on the photos below to see the full album from the event!

We can’t wait till the actual Chocolate Festival for you to see what’s on the menu, because it’s just so exciting! So here it is.

At this year’s festival, five chefs and local mixologists will use one of Solstice Chocolate’s five bars to showcase sweet, savory, and boozy applications of the Salt Lake City craft-chocolate maker.

The all-star culinary lineup includes Chef Logan Crew of Current Fish & Oyster, Chef Tyler Stokes of Provisions, Pastry Chef Courtney McDowell of Pallet Bistro, Pastry Chef Amber Billingsley of 3 Cups, and Pastry Chef Alicia Pacheco of Rye Diner & Drinks. The tantalizing evening will begin with an amuse-bouche prepared by Chef Marshall Bryant of Caputo’s. Wine will be served by Francis Fecteau of Libation, Inc., beers will be poured by Avenues Proper, craft cocktails will be mixed by Beehive Bitters and Sugar House Distillery, and pour overs provided by La Barba Coffee Roasters.

Caputo’s Chocolate Week comes at the perfect time of year. Our annual Chocolate Fest puts me in the mood and mindset for the holidays and festivities, but it also gives me a chance to start testing desserts for the family dinners and fun holiday parties to come. My family has a knack for making enough food to feed an entire village, but we do our best to minimize the menu as much as we can every year. We always make the usual pumpkin, pecan, and apple pies, and these are also often accompanied by another cream-based or chocolate-based pie.

This year, I wanted to find a way to incorporate a chocolate dessert without making yet another deep-dish pie. Chocolate pies rely heavily on cocoa powder for flavor, but I like having more control of the nuances. Basically, I want a chocolate pie with a third of the volume, no cocoa powder, and to be made exclusively with chocolate bars.

Meet the chocolate tart. Thin, sweet pastry dough holds a thin layer of rich, luxurious chocolate and a dollop of bitters flavored whipped cream. My first attempt was so successful it garnered a happy dance and a phone call to the family. Solstice’s Wasatch Blend bar made an earthy, balanced tart base that was enlivened with a Beehive Bitters spiced orange whipped cream. It was festive, delicious, and a quarter of the size and effort of our usual chocolate pie.

Save this recipe for your upcoming holiday parties. You can also use your favorite chocolate bars and bitters to make this your own.

Wasatch Blend Chocolate Tart
Serves 8-12

Tart Dough

• 8 tablespoons butter
• 1/3 cup sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon Beehive Spiced Orange bitters
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Mix all ingredients with a stand or hand mixer until there are no dry patches. Chill for at least 4 hours or overnight until firm. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Roll dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness or until there is an excess of about 3 inches in diameter to fit an 8-inch tart shell. Press dough into the shell and bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool before removing the tart ring from the shell.

Chocolate Ganache Filling

• 10 ounces heavy cream
• 7 ounces Solstice Wasatch Blend, or two dark chocolate bars, 70% cacao or higher
• Fleur de sel sea salt

Simmer a small pot of water. Set a metal or glass bowl over it, making sure there is air between the bottom of the bowl and the simmering water. Pour cream into bowl and heat until it’s warm enough to melt the chocolate. Add chocolate and stir to melt. Once the chocolate is melted, use an immersion blender or whisk to combine. Whisk until your ganache is fully blended. Stir in fleur de sel in small pinches, to taste. Set aside to cool for about 15 minutes, then pour into the tart shell. Chill until ready to serve, but remove about 15-20 minutes before serving

Bitters Whipped Cream

• 10 ounces heavy cream
• 3 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
• 2 teaspoons Beehive Spiced Orange bitters

In a medium bowl, whisk heavy cream, confectioner’s sugar, and bitters until whipped, but still loose. We don’t want stiff peaks, but enough volume to hold cream together when we top our chocolate tart with it. Adjust sweetness and flavoring with bitters before serving.

More from Chocolate Week:

A Primer on Solstice Chocolate

Solstice Drinking Chocolate Recipe

Caputo’s Solstice Chocolate Mini-Tartlets

A Retrospect of Past Chocolate Festivals

Recipe: Adri’s Festive Wasatch Tart

The Menu for Chocolate Fest Featuring Solstice Chocolate

Ask Matt Caputo: What is the Best Process to Taste Fine Chocolate?

It’s hard to believe that we’re approaching the 4th annual Caputo’s Chocolate Festival this week. What a delightfully delicious and cacao-filled fun ride it’s been!

Each year, our goal has been to highlight one craft chocolate maker—and this has varied from the best chocolate born abroad and in the United States—while also showcasing the dynamic culinary power of our local chefs. On top of that, it’s been a great way to get nerdy with the chocolate community and would-be chocolate connoisseurs.

Always educational and and brimming with tasty bites—the forthcoming festival featuring Solstice Chocolate surely won’t be any different. But before we get to carried away with excitement, let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

These vignettes just so happen to get us extremely excited about chocolate. So give them a watch.

Caputo’s 1st Annual Chocolate Festival, featuring Amedei Chocolate

Caputo’s 2nd Annual Chocolate Festival, featuring Ritual Chocolate

Caputo’s 3rd Annual Chocolate Festival, featuring Dick Taylor Chocolate

Salt Lake City’s newest bean-to-bar chocolate maker Solstice Chocolate is now part of our award-winning, craft-chocolate selection. Owner Scott Querry has developed his love and passion for chocolate over the last 15 years and is now the company’s sole chocolate maker.

“Using little cocoa butter, but no vanilla, their chocolate is one of the most well executed we have,” says Matt Caputo, CEO of Caputo’s Market & Deli. “From their unique and functional packaging to their flawless tempering, Solstice embodies truly incredible sophistication and depth of nuance.”

High-quality, hard-to-find, organic cacao beans are processed with organic cane sugar and organic cocoa butter in extremely small batches with a meticulous process and eye. The result is mature, full-flavored, single-origin bars that have stolen a piece of our hearts.

Here’s an added bonus: Solstice is not just delicious, there’s an incredibly pure, mindful process behind its deliciousness. The company strives to minimize its carbon footprint by eliminating waste during production and offering its chocolate in 100% biodegradable and resealable bags.

Don’t let this fool you into thinking they are just another marginal “artisan” or “craft” chocolate pop-up. You can tell this chocolate is chef-approved by looking at a number of menus around Utah. “The raw energy behind Solstice Chocolate has their vibrant chocolate popping up on the best menus around town,” Caputo says. “The restaurant industry has never shown this level of support for a Utah craft-chocolate company.”

Solstice’s skillful chocolate-making produces straightforward bars that scream the origin of the cacao beans loud and clear. Terroir is never a mystery with Solstice. “Some would call their style loud and brash,” Caputo continues. “When the notes are as clean and pure as this, I say rock on!”

Solstice Chocolate’s current lineup includes a total of five bars. One blend, titled Wasatch, and four single origins: Bolivian Palos Blancos, Madagascar Sambirano, Uganda Bundibugyo, Ecuador Camino Verde. Here’s some more information and tasting notes for each bar:

Description and Tasting Notes (provided by Solstice Chocolate):

Solstice Bolivian premium chocolate bars are handcrafted from Palos Blancos cacao beans. Palos Blancos is harvested from a damp rainy region of Bolivia. This climate gives rise to the unique qualities of this rich elegant chocolate. Tasting Notes: This deep rich chocolate has subtle notes of nuts, honey, and fresh cream.

Solstice Ecuador premium chocolate bars are handcrafted from cacao grown by Camino Verde Estate, a farm located near the southern coastline of Ecuador. This plantation uses unique fermentation methods to produce sweet decadent cacao. Tasting Notes: This aromatic sweet cacao results in a unique chocolate with delicious notes of brown sugar, caramel, banana, and cream.

Solstice Madagascar premium chocolate bars are handcrafted from Sambirano cacao beans. Sambirano beans are cultivated from a distinct tropical climate along the Sambirano River in Madagascar often referred to as “the green gold of Madagascar.” Taste Notes: This unique tangy chocolate has hints of citrus and berries believed to be a result of former fruit plantations enriching the soil during French Colonial times.

Solstice Uganda premium chocolate bars are handcrafted from fine cacao grown in Bundibugyo. This area is part of the flourishing growth of cacao farming in Uganda. Taste Notes: This dark chocolate has a subtle bitterness of cocoa powder with fresh, earthy hints of berries and tree fruit.

Solstice Wasatch Blend chocolate bars takes its name from the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, the home of Solstice Chocolate. This is an original combination of cacao beans created to showcase Solstice’s love of chocolate. Taste Notes: This unique blend of cacao creates a chocolate which is both mild and exciting, with an essence of cream and subtle sweet spice.

All images provided by Solstice Chocolate

More from Chocolate Week:

A Primer on Solstice Chocolate

Solstice Drinking Chocolate Recipe

Caputo’s Solstice Chocolate Mini-Tartlets

A Retrospect of Past Chocolate Festivals

Recipe: Adri’s Festive Wasatch Tart

The Menu for Chocolate Fest Featuring Solstice Chocolate

Ask Matt Caputo: What is the Best Process to Taste Fine Chocolate?

A chocolate and caramel tart created by Caputo’s Executive Chef Marshall Bryant, using one of the best local chocolates Caputo’s carries, this recipe serves a large group (or a smaller, voracious one). For a smaller batch, simply cut amounts in half.

CAPUTO’S SOLSTICE CHOCOLATE MINI TARTLETS
Makes 75 mini-tarts, or few, larger shells

COOKING TIME: 1 HOUR TOTAL

You’ll need:

• 12 oz. of Solstice Wasatch Chocolate
• 1 quart, plus 4 oz. of cream
• 1 lb., plus 2 oz. unsalted butter
• 1 lb. sugar
• Pre-made tart shells (we’re using the mini bite-size shells)

THE CHOCOLATE:

Melt the chocolate over low heat until all chunks disappear, then add 2 oz. of butter. Stir until the butter is completely incorporated into the chocolate, then add 4 oz. of cream, and stir until smooth.

THE CARAMEL:

Melt sugar until it is golden brown (approximately 315 degrees). Remove from heat. Stir in 1 lb. of butter, then slowly add in 1 quart of cream. Stir until smooth.

THE FINALE:

First, fill the tart shell about half of the way with caramel. Add chocolate mix until tart shell is filled to almost capacity. Finish off the tarts with a very light sprinkle of fleur de sel. Serve to guests. Accept compliments graciously. Save a large number for yourself.

Guys, IT SNOWED! Never mind that it lasted 15 minutes, and never mind that none of it stuck around. The important fact here is that frozen precipitation fell from the sky the first week of November. I began dreaming of all the hot drinks in my near future as I watched those big, fluffy flakes fall gracefully to the wet ground. Cider, hot toddies, tea, but most importantly, drinking chocolate. Not the powdered milk and cocoa with weird dried marshmallows, but real drinking chocolate.

The key to this recipe is high-quality chocolate. Any low quality bars won’t create the right consistency or flavor that you and your loved ones deserve. With so few ingredients, we rely heavily on the flavor of our chocolate to make this drink shine. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Solstice Bolivia bar. Notes of honey, cream, and very subtle warm baking spices are the perfect flavor I want when I’m craving drinking chocolate.

We made chocolate cake pops just a few weeks ago with a special focus on ganache. For cake pops, the ganache served as a binder to keep the cake crumb together and on the pop sticks. Here, we’re making what I like to call a “loosey-goosey ganache” that is the perfect consistency for drinking. This is the same process as making a thick ganache, we’re just using more cream than chocolate. The very nature of drinking chocolate is luxuriously
thick, so a little goes a long way here. I only need about 1/4 cup when I make this on special occasions with friends, so let’s not lose our marbles over the use of heavy cream. However, should you feel that your marbles are still in jeopardy of being lost, use whole milk or half and half.

This is a fun, easy, and quick recipe that comes together in less than 10 minutes. Make this with your kids, your friends, or your family. This is my favorite and most decadent way to welcome the cold weather. Blankets, thick socks, and a fire make it the perfect early winter evening.

SOLSTICE DRINKING CHOCOLATE
Serves 4

• 14 ounces heavy cream
• 5 ounces or two dark chocolate bars, 70% cacao or higher, preferably Solstice Bolivia
• Fleur de sel sea salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, whisk 4 ounces of heavy cream until whipped, but still loose. We don’t want stiff peaks, but enough volume to hold cream together when we top our chocolate with it. Set aside.

Simmer a small pot of water. Set a metal or glass bowl over it, making sure there is air between the bottom of the bowl and the simmering water. Pour 10 ounces of cream into bowl and heat until it’s warm enough to melt the chocolate. Add 5 ounces of chocolate and stir to melt. Once the chocolate is melted, use and immersion blender or whisk to combine. Whisk until your ganache is fully blended. Stir in vanilla, then add fleur de sel in small pinches, to taste.
Pour into small espresso cups, Mason jars, or other small glasses. Spoon whipped cream on top and serve immediately.

This is an easy recipe to add your own unique twist. Here are a few easy ways to make it your own:

• Steep the cream ahead of time with your favorite spices
• Add a cinnamon stir stick upon serving
• Add a dash of cayenne for a spicy kick
• Add booze. Any booze. I’m a personal fan of whiskey or Bailey’s
• Mix equal parts drinking chocolate with coffee
• Top with marshmallows or whipped cream
• Substitute your favorite bitters for half of the vanilla extract