Chocolaterie Wanders offers you the world's finest handmade gourmet chocolates.

Is it really the end of summer already? We are enjoying hot days here in the Washington DC area, luckily humidity is not too high and there aren’t many clouds in the sky.

The Holiday season is slowly coming up - our customers have certainly gotten into the mood already - we were surprised by many orders from you all last week and had to work some late hours already. To get into the exciting spirit we introduced our Tupelo Honey Sunflower confections in our newsletter:

Valrhona’s 64% Manjari, known for its bright and slightly tart red fruit flavors, is the base for this silky rich dark chocolate ganache subtly flavored with the rare and distinctive floral and spicy qualities of tupelo honey.  Finished in dark chocolate, each confection is topped with a handcrafted marzipan sunflower artistically decorated with dark chocolate and roasted cacao nibs.

We had fun tasting all kinds of different honeys for this ganache and finally settled on Tupelo honey. If you have never heard of Tupelo Honey, this is what Wikipedia says:

“Tupelos are valued honey plants in southeastern and Gulf Coast of the United States, producing a very light, mild-tasting honey. In northern Florida, beekeepers keep beehives along the river swamps on platforms or floats during tupelo bloom to produce certified tupelo honey, which commands a high price on the market because of its flavor”

During our tastings, it actually had a very distinct flavor and was able to stand up well against the intense flavor of Valrhona Manjari. In the end it went really well together.

Atop the honey ganache we placed a cut and hand-formed marzipan flower. The marzipan is colored with saffron - although a very strong spice the flavor is not detectable - and filled with a drop of dark chocolate and cocoa nibs.

The confection is very labor intensive and this is the reason for it being a limited edition. We may however create a confection with just the honey ganache … let’s see what you think!

We would like to invite you to a complimentary wine and chocolate tasting at Massimo’s Il Vino in Fairfax.

There is a lot going on this weekend, as Fairfax Corners is having their 2008 Block Party Event.

We will be holding the tasting from 2 - 5 PM ….. Come by and enjoy some good wine and even better chocolate

Okay, I admit this might be a misleading post title

We were preparing for the Holiday season and that included taking pictures and photos for the press. Since our Caramelized Almond Christmas Trees were such a hit last year, we will try and keep up with demand this year - but we all know what is going to happen right? We will send out a reminder closer to the Holidays (like in early November) to pre-order the trees.

Although it is pretty warm outside, we were pretty busy the last few weeks. We make smaller batches and still make fresh chocolate confections every week. We spend more time in the office planing the upcoming season and coming up with the Fall line-up of confections ….. there is going to be some fun surprises for all of you!

We are also going to improve the website functionality and enhance the content. I have been improving behind the scene ’stuff’ (like the php code and css) and Melanie is going to refresh content on a few pages with more detail. Did you realize that when you click on that little Christmas tree above, you get a larger picture? If you have suggestions or critique - just shoot us an email or a comment!

That’s all for now - tomorrow we will be recipe testing and experiment with a few new flavors we have in mind …. I will keep you posted - I promise

During the Mother’s Day craziness I almost forgot to mention that we will be condcuting tastings in Alexandria and in Gainesville. You will find us between 1-4pm on those two locations, offering you all we have to taste. Additionally there will be a wine tasting going on at Cork & Fork (I will have to be there then).

If you haven’t had any luck with finding Mother’s Day gifts, then this is a good idea too - either come by the Sugar Cube and pick up some high-end confectionary or visit us at Cork and Fork and pick up your favorite chocolate and a good bottle of wine.

Either way, we wish you & your mom a great Mother’s Day!

We have made up our minds and these are the exciting specials for this year’s Mother’s Day:

• Cointreau chocolate confection prepared with freshly grated orange zest and Cointreau liqueur
• Tea Tower featuring 28 confections and a tin of our new chocolate tea
• Mother’ Day Gift Basket with lots of chocolate confections, dried fruits, tea and more …

We are very excited about our new tea blend. It presents a soothing and slightly sweet blend of organic and fair trade certified black tea, rooibos, vanilla, chocolate bits, and coconut. The nose is slightly tropical and nutty with a rich coating of butterscotch on the palate.

Also very exciting is the limited edition Cointreau chocolate. This is a great candidate for our year-round assortment, but - as always - we let you decide whether to keep it year-round or not.

You will find more detailed information about our Mother’s Day specials in our upcoming newsletter (sign up here) and in our online shop.

Thanks for reading - and Happy Mother’s Day!

As we try to play catch-up with the time after Easter, we are also thinking about Mother’s Day Specials for you. Of course we are running behind and I don’t have any images yet, but by the end of the week we should be all set. We did try some other ideas earlier this week and here is a photo of some marzipan roses we did:

These were beautiful to look at, but since they are so intricate and detailed, they take very long to make. We are still debating whether to offer the roses or not - stay tuned for our next newsletter to find out!

We are making more marzipan products almost weekly - the reason you don’t find them in our online shop is, that they are made to order and sometimes it takes a few days to fit them in the production schedule. If you need some special marzipan products, just let us know - meanwhile we are working on a system to offer more marzipan articles in the online shop as well.

That’s it for today. I will be writing again, as soon as I have more pictures and we finalized our Mother’s Day Specials - one hint: It’s going to be tea-licious

We hope y’all had a very nice Easter weekend. Melanie and I actually worked on Sunday, but only until 5pm. We then went to take a walk in the park and enjoyed the chilly, but nice and fresh air and the blue sky. Afterwards we had ‘Boeuf Stroganoff’ - except that I made it with pork instead of beef (just had pork) and I made it just like my dad still makes it, with lots of red wine and cornichons in the sauce.

Well, where does the chocolate fit in?!

Today we delivered the goodies for ‘A spoonful of sin‘ - a dessert of the month club coming out of Manassas, Virginia. All members will get a package containing some of our chocolate confections, marzipan fruits and Wine Pate de Fruits. We are eager to hear what everyone thinks!

This Thursday we will be having a tasting event at Artfully Chocolate in Del Ray - it’s free and there is usually sparkling wine as well, so come on by if you have nothing else planned yet! The folks at Artfully do ask to RSVP (although walk-ins are always welcome) - we will make sure to have enough chocolate for everyone

Yes, we are wearing green today

No, we are not coloring our chocolate green (or with any other color for that matter!) However, we are enrobing quite a few chocolates today in preparation for this week. Easter is on the way and we spent all weekend making Easter Eggs and Bunnies - all of them are already sold though! I guess we will be making more tomorrow …

Our Rocher Eggs are made with the same delicious caramelized almond/dark chocolate mix than our Christmas Trees around Christmas - if you enjoyed those, you might want to consider to get your egg (or you have to wait until Christmas - and it’s a looong wait )

Some impressions from last weekend:

What is he telling his friends?!

Eggs everywhere! It is a nice sight though and it’s great to see the smile on people’s faces when they get their own ….

Oh, and here is a little story:

So, we met a fellow German, who came by to check out our production and discuss an order. He realized that we make and work with marzipan and saw the bunnies and asked if he could have one. Sure! - I said and handed it to him …. The next moment, the bunnies head was gone ….. then the paws and finally (not a minute had past) there was nothing left.

Now, don’t be surprised - this is actually how it is supposed to be. Not only is the marzipan bunny nice to look at - but it tastes even better!

So, if you are planning on getting a Rocher Egg with Easter Bunny, then please, don’t feel bad at all  and EAT the Bunny!

To all of you the best! And don’t forget to wear green today!

… but it’s not here yet!

Nonetheless, we are starting to enjoy our creativity with marzipan …. here is what we came up with:

We will be making more marzipan fruits and other products, as it is a delicious treat for the eye and your taste buds. While we are perfecting our designs, we welcome your feedback - let us know, if you like marzipan - and we mean freshly made almond paste - not the dry sugary stuff in the supermarket

Stay tuned for our next email newsletter - we will be showcasing our new Spring flavors and some specials for Easter this year.

We survived another Valentine’s Day. Has it really been that crazy? Yes it has

But after a long day, we enjoyed our own Valentine’s Dinner with friends at the City Square Cafe in Manassas and it was time to relax and recap all the events the prior days.

One of our personal highlights was to have the opportunity to serve the needs of the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia:

We also made some custome confections for the City Square Cafe’s Valentine’s Day dessert, which is pictured here:

They are dark and white chocolate hearts, about an inch in diameter and they were used to decorate the strawberry-filled crepe - YUMM!

This week we will make more ganaches (since we are almost completely sold out) and prepare to make our new Spring flavors (recipes are finished and the new flavors will be announced soon) as well as prepare the first Easter specials. Our marzipan bunnies will make a comeback, but we’ll also have some new surprises for you ….

That’s it for today, don’t forget to eat some more chocolate!