On a Friday not too long ago, I found myself in my kitchen sorting through a case of tiny, dew-speckled raspberries, fresh from the well-tended brambles at Carding Brook Farm. My friend Erica, who comes to stay at her family’s summer camp on the island for a few weeks every year, was working with me, apron-clad, and chatting up a storm. As I sorted, Erica pressed the tiny berries through a juicer. Once the whole case was through the machine, we took the discarded pulp and put it through again. And again. And again. In total, we pressed the berries five times. The result was a thick, seedless, silky-smooth puree that I packed up in containers, labeled carefully, and set in my freezer for future use.
I’ve spent the whole summer collecting cases of fresh produce, gallons of maple syrup, and tubs of fresh cheeses from farms on the Blue Hill Peninsula–and a bit beyond–the raw materials and fragrant inspiration for a new collection of fresh truffles.
Steve and I dreamed up the Farm Market Collection on a particularly
dreary day last winter, as we sipped tea and fantasized about the long,
warm days of summer. We wanted to find a way to celebrate Maine’s
farmers, gardeners, and artisan food producers by somehow incorporating
them in our chocolates. Something that added to the fact that we use
all Maine-produced milk, cream, and butter. A celebration of the
farms–and their particular bounties–themselves.
In the spring, I started making phone calls, and putting out the
word that I was recipe testing for this new collection. May brought
maple syrup from Carding Brook Farm, and a dark chocolate covered maple
caramel dusted with apple-smoked Maine sea salt.
In June, Steve brought home dozens of stalks of thin, green-veined
rosy rhubarb also from Carding Brook Farm. I paired their lip-puckering
juice with sweet, caramel-y milk chocolate and spicy cloves to create a
confection that would wake the last and soundest sleepers from their
winter hibernation.
In late June, Chris and Nancy from Lazy C Farm sent over two cases
of their plump strawberries. Those got pressed and reduced, mixed with
just a few drops of very fine oak-aged balsamic vinegar, and
bittersweet chocolate. I call this one Bella Fiore.
In early July, we got a visit from Jen, an apprentice at Eliot
Coleman and Barbara Damrosh’s Four Season Farm. She came bearing
bouquet upon bouquet of heady "chocolate" mint, and ethereal lavender,
whose blossoms had not quite opened. The results are a crisp, dark
Maine Mint, and a perfume-y lavender truffle; both are just as
wonderful to smell as they are to eat.
August brought raspberries and blueberries. September, pumpkins and
apples. These, in turn, inspired a Wild Raspberry extra dark chocolate
truffle; a Scandinavian-inspired Blueberry, white pepper and cardamom
truffle; Pumpkin and caramel; Roasted apple and cumin-glazed pecans.
October promises tart cranberries from Pat and Mike’s Garden in
Ellsworth, which I plan to pair with sweet milk chocolate and a healthy
dose of Maine’s own Cold River Vodka, which I’ve infused with whole
vanilla beans and last fall’s cranberries.
Some of the new truffles will be available at the Black Dinah Cafe
this weekend (it’s the last weekend the cafe will be open, by the way,
before it turns into a full-time packaging room as we get geared up for
holiday production). Some will find their way in the next couple of
weeks into the cases at Fairwinds Florist in Blue Hill. And the entire
collection will premier at the Foliage Food and Wine Festival in Blue
Hill, at the Taste of the Peninsula tent on Sunday October 19th.
Kate Shaffer is a contributing writer to MF&L, Chocolatier, and resident of Isle au Haut.
