A Classic Name in Baking Chocolate: Scharffen Berger.
A man who loved chocolate passed away- Robert Steinberg
There was a sad obituary in the LA Times that caught my eye a while ago: Robert Steinberg, who founded Scharffen Berger chocolate, passed away. They called him the creator of the “new age of chocolate.” I love his smile on the entry page! I know I would have liked him.
I wrote about this news story in my cartoon blog, before I started this site:
Still, that’s total hyperbole in the Times article, to call Steinberg the creator of the new age of chocolate. People can say what they want, but everyone knows that the new age of chocolate started when my chocolate book, “What Do Women REALLY Want? Chocolate!,” was published, in 2004.
And to continue this forward movement, I’m pleased to announce that I just bought a new domain: chocolatecartoons.com.
Good try, though, Mr. Steinberg.
So here we are at chocolatecartoons.com! Now known as Chocolate Arts.
Review of Scharffen Berger baking chocolate
To get back to Mr. Steinberg’s product, when I buy Scharffen Berger baking chocolate at Whole Foods, it doesn’t taste
that fresh to me. However, one of their reps gave me a bar of their baking chocolate at a Western Foodservice Show, and it was quite good! I made a butter icing with it for a cake from Rose Beranbaum’s wonderful book, The Cake Bible, and my friends said it was the best ever! (It was.)
(FYI: Rose Levy Beranbaum, one of the most famous cookbook authors of our time, also wrote the forward for my book– the first time she’s written one!)
What do others think about Scharffen Berger chocolate?
Here’s a review at Chocolate Obsession that compares Scharffen Berger chocolate to wine. I’ve noticed several reviewers do this. I think a review should do the opposite: compare wine to chocolate. 🙂 There, fixed it.
This reviewer at Candy Addict says she prefers their milk chocolate bars to the dark chocolate. The Food Paper agrees with me on the baking chocolate, and says:
Martha Stewart and Julia Child both are fond of it.
Then there’s Pioneer Woman’s comparison baking of brownies using Baker‘s Chocolate, a Betty Crocker box mix, and Scharffen-Berger chocolate, on Serious Eats. Take a look. Scharffen Berger won. So how come I still think Pioneer Woman is…strange?
Caption for Google: “Oh, my. It smells wonderful in here, Iris. Chocolate-scented kitty litter?”
Nothing at all to do with Scharffen Berger chocolate, of course. And you can find dozens of varieties of the real thing at Amazon.
Have you tried baking with it? What did you think?
