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

Ah, legendary chocolates. I had high expectations for these delights … I love the chocolate they produce, but never had any of their chocolate confections, so on our trip to NYC we had to step by and check out their store, which is a little hard to find, but once you made it, it looks really nice, dark and welcoming …. “home-y” I would say, the bar is a nice touch too!

The staff was very nice and friendly - they didn’t have any problems with me taking pictures of the place and were informing us about their selections.

We should have taken notes on what is what …. we did not get any identification sheet or sth. similar and I couldn’t find anything online either, many were self-explanatory though, let’s get started:

The dark chocolate in the background was the Creme Brulee (?) one. It had a suttle caramel flavor to it (could have been more burned) and tasted very rich, buttery and a little sweet. Vanilla bean visible in there too and the dark chocolate on the outside was delicious. The milk chocolate enrobed chocolate was marzipan, orange flavored with a caramel layer inside. The marzipan was pretty dry and flavored with orange liquor (grand marnier?), the caramel layer was more caramel-ly than in the creme brulee one, too bad the marzipan was so dry though … That one was our favorite - by far - of this selection. Very intense Armagnac flavor with dried plums - what a combination! We will attempt to make a chocolate confection with these very ingredients later this year - I will get dried plums this week and put ‘em in some Armagnac jars …. The one big difference of ours will be, that we will not use a mold like Cluizel, but rather hand-cut this confection as well. It will be challenging to get this intense flavor in the ganache, because I can not make it too liquid. I am sure we’ll manage to perfect it though Who wants to be the taste-tester? A light lemon ganach, just flavored with lemon zest, reminded us on a lemon-pepper we made once. The ganache was slightly whipped maybe? A gentle chocolate, nice for the summer, although some people might like it more refreshing … A cork of a wine bottle - no wait, you can actually eat it I think it was supposed to be “Bordeaux” in there - we were kind of disappointed though. The ganache seemed dry and maybe a little old, the mold was quite irregularly filled and flavor wasn’t distinct. Pistachio marzipan is a little dry and the pstachio flvor is not very strong - but you can definetly tell what it is. Coffee Gianduja comes to mind - that’s pretty much all there is to say. Very strong and bold coffee flavor - very similar to our “Espresso, instead of hazelnut paste (like ours) it probably has Hazelnut Gianduja in it. Yummy (yeah, I like coffee) Too bad I don’t know the name of it anymore, but this was delicious as well! Milk chocolate on the outside (some hazelnut crunchies mixed in), then a layer of marzipan and a very soft ganache center with Rum. Fantastic combination of textures and flavors, classic but oh so good. On the image you see the last bite, it probably was 2-3 inches long. The ganache on the inside must have been chilled and then rolled into the marzipan - we actually did a “Bouche” like this at TasteDC in one of our workshops in Georgetown …. A good product for the colder month as well, I personally like it, because there is so much labor involved and it makes it so much more valueable and appreciated.

I love Cluizel’s chocolate and chocolate confections. Traditional and well balanced. I think it is hard to maintain such a high level of quality on the other side of the big pond though, without being there yourself. We have yet to see the store in Paris, which is owned by his daughter, but my parents were there and said it looked absolutely fabulous. Next time I am in Paris I’ll have to check it out ….