chocolate

A bit of Swiss milk chocolate

maki — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:52:08 +0200

I spent the last couple of weeks surrounded by chocolate bars.

First, I sent out 53 (plus a couple…I lost count) of chocolate bars to the winner of the Menu for Hope raffle. (It was sent out so late because the recipient was away from home.) The winner had requested that the selection be made up mostly of milk chocolate bars. Now, you might think that assembling 50 + different kinds of milk chocolate would be a tough call, but not here! There are many, many more than 50 kinds of milk chocolate sold in stores here - and I’m not even including the kinds with things like nuts or fruit or whatever mixed in.

Then last week, I got the ‘bill’ from my stepfather (who is an accountant) for doing my U.S. tax return. (Yes, all U.S. citizens must file them regardless of where they live.) He wanted some Swiss chocolate - milk, of course.

Nowadays, dark chocolate is in, especially since it’s supposed to be healthy or something. I do like that intense hit of cacao now and then, but I must admit that I am a milk chocolate kind of girl. Nothing surpasses the sensation of a combination of chocolate and smooth creamm melting smoothly on the tongue.

Here in Switzerland, it’s generally believed that the chocolatiers got a bit behind on the dark chocolate craze, and have been playing catchup to the Belgians and the French. These days there are all kinds of dark chocolate varietals and such on the shelves here. But still, Switzerland does milk chocolate the best in my opinion. Sure you can get terrific handmade truffles and pralines in Paris or Bruges, and you could argue that Belgian dark chocolate is better (though I’m not sure that’s true anymore). But a plain, (relatively) inexpensive bar of milk chocolate? Swiss all the way.

Here are a few of the mostly milk chocolate bars that were sent out to the eager recipients (sorry for the iffy photos for some of them, I was in a hurry). At current exchange rates you can just about convert the francs (CHF) directly to US dollars (1 CHF = $1). Going from the least expensive on up:

M-Budget is the ‘no-label’ house brand of Migros, the leading supermarket chain in Switzerland. This full size 100g bar of chocolate is only 50 Rappen, or 50 cents! It’s not bad, quite sweet. I think the package design is quite nice too. (The cheapest not-on-sale bar of chocolate I’ve seen so far is 25 Rappen. That one is not so nice.)

Frey is another Migros house brand. This one has a Euro ‘08 (that’s soccer/football) design on it. Here’s the Frey lineup on the Migros online shop, LeShop.

This is a standard bar of milk chocolate from one of the big makers, Cailler (Nestlé), costing about 1.20 CHF. (They messed around with the packaging a couple of years ago, and had to woo the Swiss public back, but now they seem to be back on top.) A very sweet, vanilla-rich flavor.

This is a bio and free trade chocolate bar from Max Havelaar. Tastewise it’s average, but you can feel righteous eating it.

Swiss Army brand chocolate with guarana, in Survival portions (50 grams, half the size of a regular bar). Obviously aimed at the tourist trade, but nice design anyway!

Villars is a more upmarket brand, and they make terrific, creamy milk chocolate. My mother’s favorite! This is a half-size bar, but they make bigger bars too. The design is very Swiss-cliché, but we will forgive them for that.

Another Villars - milk chocolate with little bits of coffee in it! I love this one so much, it’s a good thing it’s a tad too expensive to buy every day.

Finally, this is not strictly a milk chocolate bar, but it is very creamy and very intense. It’s a house brand bar from Sprüngli, my favorite confectionery store. Made from Cru Sauvage varietal chocolate from Bolivia. The truffles are even more intense, but they go off very quickly (after a week the flavor is already rather faded), so these bars are more durable. Sprüngli online shop.

These chocolate bars are not edible. They’re actually an ad for Lindt chocolates, near the Central tram stop in Zürich.

I have often wondered what it would be like if those bars were real…

(Sidenote: For a while, I was contemplating putting up yet another blog dedicated just to Swiss chocolate. But, my waistline and my teeth told me that the necessary research would be too much for them. So I’ll just have to confine myself to the occasional chocolate outburst here.)

More chocolatey photos in my Chocolate! flickr set.
More chocolate related articles.

Japanese Valentine's Day chocolate giving customs in miniature

maki — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:08:16 +0100

As I wrote about last year, Valentine’s Day in Japan is fraught with social stress. Somehow, the chocolate manufacturers have managed to convince the whole society that a girl or woman can’t just give chocolates to the ones they love. (And it’s only the women who give chocolates in Japan on the 14th, not men, unlike other countries.) She must also give giri choco, or ‘obligation chocolates’, to people she ‘owes’; bosses, teachers, and fathers-in-law.

Now you can see this kind of social giving in miniature! Re-ment, the maker of amazingly detailed diecast miniatures which I’ve also written about before, has this set of two types of chocolates: Honmei or giri?! (Your real target, or obligation?!) The caption says this:

Chocolate assortment: The present for the boss is a chocolate assortment that we all chipped in for. The boss is quite a gourmet, so we couldn’t just get any old thing, but this makes the grade doesn’t it?

Handmade chocolate cake: A cake I’m proud of, that uses Belgian couverture lavishly. Tonight I’m inviting him (my boyfriend) to my room, for a Sweet Valentine’s Party.

I do agree that handmade is the ultimate luxury these days, because time is more precious than money! But…does this mean that if your Japanese girlfriend gives you a storebought box of chocolates, that she doesn’t really care for you? You decide.

The Honmei or giri?! set is part of the Zeitaku Sweets (luxurious or beautiful sweet things) collection. You can get it from J-List or eBay (where merchants often sell individual sets instead of a whole collection). But beware…Re-ment collecting is very addictive.

Uh..uh...beetle larvae shaped chocolates

maki — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:39:06 +0100

Chocolate. It’s such a lovely, malleable substance. It can be shaped into anything really. Anything.

But, one wonders what kind of twisted mind came up with this idea…chocolates shaped like kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle) larvae!

Avert your eyes if you are squeamish. You may not want to read this while you’re eating.

(If you’re getting here from the front page, pause and breathe in deeply before clicking that ‘continue reading’.

If you’re up to it, keep scrolling down.

(ready?)

They look somehow uh, worse, in multiples.

According to Yahoo! Japan News (Japanese), these were displayed at a ‘regional products fair’ at a department store in Akita, which is in northern Japan. They are made by a confectionery maker. They’ve been so popular at the fair that they’ve been selling out within an hour every day. Apparently they have been a big hit because they are so kimo kawaii (a combination of kimochiwarui, or ‘gross out!’ and kawaii). As a matter of fact, according to the maker’s website (Japanese of course), they have been so inundated with orders that people who order will receive the product after April.

The larvae bodies are made of milk chocolate with crunchy ‘flakes’, covered with white chocolate, with dried cuttlefish (sakiika, a popular beer snack) for the legs and orange peel for the mouth. Each one is 4.5 cm (almost 2 inches) long.

If these are too tame for you, they make them in an adult flavored version (with a rum-laced ganache). They also have some virulently colored potato grubs (imomushi), which are made of bean paste (an).

Yes I know, Japanese people are weird. Kimokawaii!

(If you are in Tokyo, it seems the maker is selling the little buggers at the Chocosweets Exhibition at Sunshine City in Toshima-ku.)

Swiss food shopping news: OEM Dolfin chocolate spotted at Coop

maki — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:31:23 +0100

(This post is mainly for my fellow Swiss-residents…though if you plan to come here soon, you may want to file it away.)

Both Coop and Migros, the two dominant supermarket chains here in Switzerland, have been trying to push pricey “gourmet” lines of food in the last couple of years. I’ve sampled them selectively - some things are worth the price, like the hearty, rough-surface spaghetti from the Migros Sélection line that I use for spaghetti Bolognese. So far, nothing from Coop’s Fine Food line has grabbed me, but I think that’s changed now…because I spotted a chocolate which I’m positive is an OEM version of one of my favorite exotic-flavor chocolate bars, Dolfin Masala chocolate.

It has the same plastic-and-paper bag-shaped packaging that is sealed with a sticker. It says it’s made in Belgium. Most of all, it tastes just the same! They had Earl Grey Tea and Mint flavors too, which I haven’t tried yet but sound quite Dolfin-like.

So if you are in Switzerland and haven’t been able to get to Globus easily to grab a Dolfin, try your local Coop! (Note that Coop doesn’t have their Fine Food line in all their stores. Try a major one. We got this at the Bahnhofbrücke store in Zürich.)

(Though part of me rather wonders why they went to a Belgian chocolatier for their ‘gourmet’ chocolate bars, with so many wonderful artisanal chocolatiers here in Switzerland…)

Swiss Chocolate junk mail

maki — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:53:31 +0200

Normally, all the junk mail we get goes straight to the trash. Not these things we got in our mailbox yesterday though.

These are two full-size bars of Cailler (Nestlé) milk chocolate. No messing about with tiny sample sizes here.

Last year, Nestlé messed up things royally by changing the packaging of their Cailler chocolate bars. The re-purposed packaging was bulky, made of plastic, and design wise didn’t do much for most people either, despite the fact that it was designed (with much fanfare) by a French architect who was a buddy of then-CEO Nelly Wenger.

In Switzerland, trash disposal is a big issue. For one thing, people have to pay for official trash bags (which are tiny by U.S. standards) to put their garbage out in, otherwise it’s not collected. Plus, even in the big cities like Zürich trash is only collected at the most twice per week - in most places it’s just once a week. Rules and regulations for disposing of different kinds of trash are quite complicated too. That means that everyone tries to squeeze and compact their trash down as much as possible, and also tries not to produce much. In light of that, putting a simple chocolate bar in a bulky clear plastic casing instead very compactable paper just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

The result of the repacking was a disaster. They lost a huge percentage of the domestic Swiss chocolate market to rivals like Lindt and Frey. Then, they had to backtrack on everything and re-re-design their packaging. Nelly Wenger has since retired, ostensibly for health reasons (she had cancer), but people still speculate that the packaging fiasco pushed her towards the exit door.

But anyway, I guess now they are trying to woo back the consumers. I’m all for free chocolate, so woo me away. The soft-sell worded letter accompanying the chocolate wanted to just let us know that the ‘recipe for this Cailler Milk Chocolate has not changed since 1904’. Good to know. And the new packaging is nicely understated, and more importantly, made of plain, scrunchable paper.

I have to say though the Cailler Milchschokolade is a bit too heavy on the vanilla for me. There are so many varieties of just plain milk chocolate bars in Switzerland that one is just spoiled for choice.

(I think we were only supposed to get one bar, but somehow ended up with two. Hooray for postal mistakes!)

Oh no! A chocolate shortage?

maki — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 03:56:46 +0100

My friends Alan and Mimi from Cornwall alerted me to this alarming article in the Independent. Could we be facing a chocolate shortage?

According to the article,

…chocoholics should brace themselves. Fears over a global chocolate shortage have sparked a run on the dark stuff on world cocoa markets that has pushed the price up of cacao beans (used to make cocoa) to their highest level for more than two years […]

The price of cocoa futures, which is how the beans are traded on world commodity markets, has climbed steadily since last November, reviving fears of the cocoa crisis of 2002 that forced major manufacturers such as Nestlé to hike the price of some of its chocolate bars.

The article even implies that the growing popularity of dark chocolate, which uses proportionately more cacao mass than milk chocolate, could be contributing to the chocolate shortage.

Of course, a price hike is probably not going to affect the buying habits of chocoholics anywhere, and it’s highly unlikely we will actually experience a real chocolate shortage. (Imagine the outrage! The riots! Shock, horror!) Would you hesitate to buy your favorite chocolate bar even if it went up in price? I wouldn’t.

I’ve grown to appreciate dark chocolate more and more these days, especially since a lot of small chocolatiers in Switzerland have been cranking out some very interesting chocolates with a vengeance. Swiss chocolatiers were a bit late on the dark chocolate bandwagon but they are compensating for that now.

But I I have to say that, while the dark thrill of high-cocoa content dark chocolate is great, I enjoy milk chocolate just as well. The best milk chocolate, and by that I mean the best Swiss milk chocolate, melts like a creamy, soft cloud in your mouth. The article quotes the head of the Chocolate Society (!) who says, “With dark chocolate you are tasting the cocoa, whereas with milk you are tasting the recipe.” I agree with that totally.

The ideal combination is a piece of intense, dark, spine-tingling chocolate, teamed with a creamy smooth milk chocolate, perhaps with a cup of coffee. Excuse me as I make a late-night chocolate run to the kitchen…

Shopping @ Just Hungry

maki — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:11:47 +0100

When you shop at the Just Hungry affiliate stores, you help to support the site while getting stuff you want at no extra cost to you! It’s a win-win situation!

I own, have used, or have eaten, every item that I review individually. When it comes to kitchen equipment, most of the things you see listed are items that I use all the time in my kitchen and can recommend wholeheartedly. Occasionally I will list an item that’s not exactly the same as the one I own, but is very similar. That doesn’t mean I guarantee against any defects and so on of course! But, I can say that I’ve been a satisfied customer of all the stores listed here. On the rare occasion that I’ve had a problem, I’ve always gotten good service.

J-List/JBox for Japanese goodies

JList.com - “Your Friend in Japan” is a great source for cute and weird Japanese snacks as well as bento supplies and such. They ship internationally, of course! They do sell some ‘adult’ oriented stuff too, though it’s easy to avoid that if you want to, and there is an age check in place.

Click here to browse J-List

Japancentre.com

As of April 2008, we are very happy to welcome Japan Centre in London as a premium sponsor of Just Hungry and Just Bento. Japan Centre has one of the best online grocery shopping websites out there - well organized with clear descriptions. I’ve been a satisfied customer for a long time, way before they became sponsors. If you are in the UK or Europe and are looking for Japanese ingredients, be sure to give them a try! Here’s their delivery area for food items. They deliver non-food items worldwide, including bento items from Daiso.

The Amazons

The Amazon.com aStore: Kitchen equipment, books, DVDs and more from the main U.S. Amazon store.
The Amazon.co.jp Instant Store (same as astore, different name). Here are my recommendations for food-oriented Japanese books, magazines and DVDs. They do ship internationally!
New! The Amazon.co.uk aStore, for UK and Europe based readers. On the books page I’ve stuck to listing great books that are published in the UK but not yet in the US or Canada. The kitchen wares page is for UK readers only.

YesAsia

YesAsia, based in Hong Kong, is a great source for people looking for a single book, DVD, CD and so on in several East Asian languages, including Japanese of course.

Confiseries Sprüngli, the best chocolates and macaroons in Switzerland

Confiserie Sprüngli is a Zürich institution. I’m a huge fan of their chocolates and other goodies, as as I’ve written about before. I prefer them over the better known (outside of Switzerland anyway) rival in town whose name starts with a T. And yes, they do ship worldwide!

Click here for Sprüngli Worldwide
If you live in Switzerland, click here.

Reference

Looking for Japanese food or kitchen supplies? Try the Worldwide Japanese grocery (and supply) store list!

Should you shop for your Japanese books and other media at Amazon, J-List, YesAsia or somewhere else? See my article about shopping for Japanese language media online.

Bittersweet Valentine memories, mostly sweet

maki — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 09:45:10 +0100

Happy Valentine’s Day! February the 14th may mean flowers, a romantic dinner, or promises you don’t intend to keep for other people, but to me it will always the Day Of Chocolate.

Valentine’s Day is a very odd and overly commercialized day in Japan, where the giving and receiving of chocolate doesn’t have that much to do with romance. Females are made to feel obligated to hand out chocolates to people they don’t care about, such as teachers and bosses, while males anxiously wait to see if they get ‘enough’ chocolates to satisfy their egos. There are whole lines of inexpensive chocolate products suitable for giving, called giri choco (obligation chocolate). Unlike in the Western world, it’s not a day for men to give something to their female love interests. (March 14th, called “White Day”, has been sort of artificially designated as the males-give-back-to-females day.)

Still, some people do retain some of the romantic intent of Valentine’s, especially younger women and girls. Telling a boy you like him is difficult in any society, but it’s really pretty hard in a society where being open with your feelings is not traditionally encouraged. The inability to tell that special boy/girl about ones feelings for him/her forms the crux of a lot of the plots of shoujo manga, manga for girls. Telling someone about your feelings is a huge deal, called kokuhaku, a word that also means to confess (as in confess to a crime). Valentine’s Day is supposed to be one day when a girl can safely kokuhaku her feelings, acccompanied by a beaitufully wrapped, non-obligation chocolate.

I braved a chocolate-sweetened kokuhaku twice. Once when I was 14, to the boy that both my best friend and I had a big crush on for a year; then later in senior high school, when I was 16. Neither kokuhaku lead to anything, sadly, but I still remember the nervous anticipation of choosing the chocolate, and the thrill and fear of giving it. (Both times the wrapped chocolate was placed in the boy’s shoebox ( getabako), the traditional postbox at any Japanese school.)

Both of those boys are now probably married with kids somewhere in Japan. I don’t even remember their names anymore…isn’t it weird how we forget?

For an exaggerated yet sometimes very realistic view of high school romance a la Japan, His and Her Circumstances, aka KareKano, is a very popular manga series that is available in English. There was also a short lived anime series, though the story of that ends rather abruptly around volume 6 or 7 of the original manga. And, if you’re out to impress your sweetie with something handmade and chocolate, check out the posts tagged chocolate here.

(* Bonus question: What movie did the line “flowers, chocolate, promises you don’t intend to keep” come from?)

Spiced chocolate cupcakes

maki — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:31:47 +0100

In the movie Chocolat, Juliette Binoche plays a somewhat mysterious woman who opens a chocolate shop in a small French village. She uses ancient Aztec spices in her chocolate confectioneries, which soon prove to have almost magical, often aphrodesiac, properties. While Chocolat is not in my top 5, or even 10, favorite food-theme movies (see here for that list), the idea of spiced chocolates has intrigued me ever since I saw it. One of my favorite chocolate bars is the Masala one made by Dolfin.

Making a spicy chocolate confection is a bit of a tricky affair though. You don’t want the spices to overwhelm the chocolate - it should just form a sort of interesting background, yet provide a bit of a surprising bite and a warm, ‘what is that?’ quality.

These cupcakes have a rich but not too sweet bisquit (cake) base, with the warmth of curry powder and the bite of coarsely ground pepper. They are moistened with a teaspoon per cupcake of mocca liqueur, which increases its intensity and pushes it into the realm of an adult indulgence. The chocolate ganache has a pinch of cayenne pepper in it. The marriage is quite successful (or so the Tasters emphatically agreed). I’m not sure if they work at aphrodesiacs, but if your sweetheart is a chocoholic, you never know… They make a terrific Valentine’s Day dessert or treat in any case.

Spiced chocolate cupcakes

Makes about 16 medium cupcakes

For the cake:

Spices and almonds:

40g / 1 1/2 oz. ground almonds (about 1/3 cup)
1/2 Tbs. coarsely ground black or mixed-color peppercorns
1 tsp. curry powder

Dry:

80g / about 3 oz superfine raw cane sugar (you can also whirl granulated sugar in a food processor until it’s finer)
120g / 4 1/4 oz. cake flour (about 2/3 cup)
2 Tbs. best quality cocoa powder
1/8 tsp. (a big pinch) baking powder

Moist:

200g / 7 oz. (two standard bars) dark chocolate with at least 70% cacao content
150g / 5 1/4 oz. (1 stick plus 1 1/2 Tbs.) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 eggs yolks from ‘large’ eggs
1 Tbs. instant coffee granules

Egg white:

4 egg whites from ‘large’ eggs
1 pinch salt

Booze:

about 1/2 cup mocca liqueur or rum

For the chocolate ganache:

200g / 7 oz (2 standard bars) dark chocolate with at least 70% cacao content
100g / 3 1/2 oz (1 stick less 1 Tbs.) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 pinch salt
1/8th tsp. cayenne pepper (add more at your discretion, but be careful)
1 Tbs. mocca liqueur or rum

Special equipment and supplies: a standing or handheld electric mixer, sifter, cupcake cups

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 300°F. Put the cupcake cups in muffin tins, or line up double or triple-layered cups on a baking sheet (of your cupcake cups don’t fit your muffin tins or you don’t have muffin tins).

Sift together the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder). If you end up with some sugar grains in the sifter, just dump them back in.

Put the ground almonds in a clean, dry small frying pan over medium-high heat. Toast, stirring constantly, until a light brown in color. Add the curry powder and the pepper and stir until the whole smells like toasty curry. Remove immediately from the pan and put into another container (or it will continue cooking and may burn).

Chop or bash the 2 chocolate bars into small pieces. Put the pieces into a microwave-safe bowl, and nuke at medium-low level for 3 minutes. Take out, stir and nuke for an additional 2 minutes. By this time the chocolate should be melted; if not, nuke for additional minute or so - don’t overdo it or your chocolate will turn grainy and icky. Stir well.

Add the butter in pieces to the warm chocolate and stir very well - it should be smooth and glossy. Add the coffee granules and the almond-spice mix. Keep warm.

In a clean, totally dry bowl, mix together the egg whites and pinch of salt. Whip until it forms soft peaks (an electric mixer is a very good thing to have for this task).

Add about 1/3rrd of the whipped egg white into the chocolate-butter mixture, to lighten it. Now, add the dry mixture by the tablespoon or two to the wet mixture, folding it in - don’t overmix or your cake will be a bit tough. Fold in the rest of the egg whites gently (if the batter is a bit streaky it’s fine).

Fill the cupcake cups about 2/3-rds full with the batter, using two spoons - it’s about 1 very heaped tablespoon per cup. (Use one spoon for scooping, and the other one for sliding the batter off the first spoon.)

Put in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. The cake should rise a bit, and still look a bit moist.

While the cupcakes are still warm, drizzle each with a teaspoonful of mocca liqueur or rum. Let cool to room temperature.

In the meantime, make the ganache. Melt the chocolate as described before, and beat in the room temperature butter into the warm chocolate. Add the salt, cayenne pepper and liqeur, and beat very well. Put it in the refrigerator to firm up a bit.

When the cupcakes are cool, spoon on the ganache. Put the cupcakes in the refrigerater until the ganache is firm.

Notes

To make ahead, make the cupcakes, and spoon on the ganache about 1/2 hour before serving. Be sure to serve at room temperature or warmer (not cold straight out of the fridge).

Alternatively, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of heavy cream and/or liqueur to the ganache to make turn it into chocolate sauce.Pour the warm sauce over warm cupcakes (taken out of their cups, and nuked for 1 minute in a tucked in plastic bag in the microwave), and serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

To make these kid-friendly, omit the liqueur.

Food Destinations #3: Confiserie Sprüngli, Zürich

maki — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 19:29:44 +0100

[Update:] Now you can buy Sprüngli chocolates online to be shipped worldwide! See the Shop page for details.

My entry for Food Destinations #3, hosted by Emily of Chocolate in Context, is, rather predictably maybe, the best known confectionery, pastry and chocolate store in Z&;uuml;rich, Confiserie Spr&;uuml;ngli. Even though it has multiple locations throughout the city, including 4 stores at Kloten airport for last-minute gifts to chocolate hungry friends in other countries, the quality is always very high and totally reliable. The blue-and-white Sprüngli packaging has a certain cachet in Zürich as well as much of the rest of Switzerland - it's a guarantee of something delicious within.

Since I've described Sprüringli briefly previously, this time I'll concentrate on the chocolates. Sprüngli specializes in pralines and truffes, hand-dipped chocolates with various fillings. The best known truffes may be the truffe du jour, hand-dipped milk or dark chocolate truffles made of fresh cream with no preservatives. For this reason they have clear signs everywhere telling you that you must eat these truffles the day you purchase them. Most people have no problems with that.

They do sell more sturdy chocolates that will last for a week or so (though it is recommended that you do not hoard them, since chocolate does deteriorate.) Their assorted chocolates come in all sizes, from small boxes called Lilliputs with tiny bite-sized truffles or pralines, to large, multi-tiered boxes. The Lilliputs are very handy as gifts-from-Switzerland since they are small and compact. They will also sell you their chocolates by the piece, and none of the unfailingly polite ladies behind the counter will even blink if you order just one.

A fairly new entry into their truffle lineup is the extraordinary Cru Sauvage, made from wild cacao beans harvested in Bolivia (or so the pamphlet says). Intensely chocolately and creamy, they are about as close to a chocolate orgasm as you can get. The Cru Sauvage is only available for a few months during the year, so if they aren't around, the next best would be the Grand Cru truffles.

Other offerings include kirsch-soaked cherried dipped in chocolate, which many people swear by, and premium chocolate bars made in-house. They also make some adorable molded chocolates, like milk-and-white chocolate cows or teddy bears. (My stepfather is addicted to the cows.) During the Christmas season, they sell a chocolate bar with cinnamon in it, which is quite addictive. They also carry chocolate bars from other companies such as Lindt, but I would avoid those since you can get the same from other places such as supermarkets. They have also started offering chocolate and wine pairings.

About the only thing you can't get at Confiserie Sprüngli are chocolate for cooking, or couveture - for that, I go to Schwarzenbach, which should be your second chocolate destination in Zürich.

Incidentally, Confiserie Sprüngli has no relation to the chocolate manufacturing giant Lindt & Sprüngli; as their web site explains they parted company more than 100 years ago. So the Lindt chocolate shops now invading shopping malls in the U.S. are operated by the latter. As far as I know, Confiserie Spr&uum;ngli, unlike their rivals Teuscher, hasn't opened any stores outside of Switzerland. They do however ship overseas - see the page for details.

Confiserie Sprüngli locations. (The web site erroneously says Sales Outlets, making them sound like discount/remainder places! They are all boutiques with a full lineup of products.) Paradeplatz is the main store, with a restaurant on the upper floor, but many other locations also have places to sit and eat too.