Melt and Fall In Love With Chocolate Fire

I've always been intrigued with Chocolate Fire after reading a number of good reviews about it and seeing it in some of my friends' Foursquare check-ins, so I decided to check it out and kill time before heading over to RCBC to visit my friends.

Chocolate Fire is currently located at PDCP Building Leviste Street cor. Rufino Street in Salcedo Village in Makati. It's right across KFC and Lyceum and walking distance from Makati Sports Club. The unit where Chocolate Fire is used to be a bank that's forever busy during payday. Now, it's a quiet cafe with a second floor painted a rich shade of chocolate brown dotted with red details, like it's Valentine's Day everyday.

Aside from the chairs, you've also got couches. I'm currently sitting on a chocolate brown couch sipping on mixed berry tea.

The second floor's got a homey atmosphere too where you could have meetings or lunch/dinner/afterdinner dates.

The couch is so comfy you could plop there with a magazine and just relax with a pot of tea or cup of coffee.

Here are the lavatories. Girls on the left, boys on the right. The paintings are done by makeup artist/model/painter Solenn Heussaff.

With ordering, there were a whole lot of choices to choose from - solid chocolates, pastries, ganache, fruits dipped in chocolate, and chocolate barks (they're like chocolate bars with stuff in it, sold per 100 grams) along with drinks. Since I was a newbie here, I thought I'd ask what the bestsellers were. The staff told me the bestsellers were the honeycomb chocolate barks and the solid chocolate. Depending on the size and shape, the prices differ so I settled for two chocolate half-eggs (solid chocolate), one in milk chocolate and one in dark chocolate.

They were served to me on a cute ceramic dish. A half-egg like this costs around Php15.00 a piece. There are also chocolate frogs (just like Harry Potter, except they don't move) for Php 75.00 a piece.

Normally, eating chocolate means biting and chewing but I thought of slow-eating this one, sort of melting it in the warmth of your mouth till it's almost liquid then letting it float right down the throat to savor the flavor and texture. So I took one bite off the milk chocolate, savored the flavor, let the chocolate melt. When the chocolate melted it was like... OMIGOOOD!!!!!! The flavor was mellow but sweet and the texture was milky. It's got this feel-good rush right after you swallow it, and now I know why chocolate makes you feel good after. I like that I chose a solid chocolate because I got to enjoy chocolate as it is.

My tea was mixed berry tea, which provided an excellent contrast to cleanse the palate as I went for the dark chocolate. The dark chocolate obviously is less sweet than the milk chocolate, but it had the same milky texture as it melted when I took it in and the same feel-good feeling after. If you want to know how the feel-good feeling is, you have to try it because it's quite hard to describe. After a few minutes, I thought I'd go for two rounds more so I got up from my seat and ordered two more.

The staff's fantastic too! Just in case you're alone and you decide to go on bathroom break and your tea or drink isn't finished yet, you could tell them and they'll watch your place for you so your place doesn't get taken.

Good chocolate doesn't come cheap so the cost of the chocolate is pricier than say, a supermarket-bought chocolate bar. The standards are very high and you're assured though that every cent you pay is worth the taste. I'd go back here if I want a quiet place to relax with a pot of peppermint tea and probably a chocolate square. I'll probably meet with a client here to discuss pegs and all if I want a relaxed atmosphere away from cafes with students reviewing for exams or business meetings.

Peanuts and Chocolates: Stuff to take home from Bohol

When going on a vacation, one of our main concerns, aside from where to eat of course, is what to take home. The safest thing to take home is food, provided it's airplane-approved and it's not such a hassle to bring home. For one thing, we all love to eat so we can't go wrong with food items. The souvenir foods we got from Bohol though, were sure hits and something we'd like to share to all of you.

Pasalubong finds are found in tourist shops or if you have the time and patience, the local supermarket. We got our souvenir items from a tourist shop during our tours. Aside from these, the Tagbilaran airport also has a little stand in the waiting area where you could shop for last-minute finds.

Wallets or keychains inspired from tarsiers or knicknacks or whatever reminds you of Bohol, they got it.

Of course I'm here to talk about food of course. One thing I noticed about the snack finds are the abundance of peanut products - peanut crisps, peanut fingers, star peanuts. These peanuts are a result of alternate cropping, which means after a period of planting just rice, the soil needs to rest. In that period though, it's time to plant peanuts, which requires less water than rice. And what to do with those peanuts? Make peanut products of course, like the Peanut Kisses, another specialty of Bohol:

This picture here was taken in the airport where we both needed a little munchie.

It's so cute shaped like a Chocolate Hill, except it's peanut. It tastes like peanut brittle too. I do suggest to have water in handy while munching this one.

The peanut kisses are already available in filipiniana shops here in Manila, but not the star peanuts, which are clusters of peanut meringue shaped like stars.

The taste is similar to peanut kisses, except this one's texture is smoother. If the thought of too-sweet meringue makes you gag, this one's not too sweet. As with all peanut products, I do recommend a tall glass of water to wash this down, if peanuts tend to make you all scratchy. Needless to say, those with gout or peanut allergy should stay away from this.

I do have a solution to you guys though... CHOCOLATE! You could take home a Hillcolate, which is a chocolate-hill shaped chocolate snack that can't get any cuter.

If snacking isn't your thing, then nothing beats good ol' tablea, which are blocks of cocoa powder that you melt in boiling water before lacing it with milk and sugar. Swear that and broas or homemade cinnamon sugar butter biscottis and I'm all set! I prefer my tablea the way my mom makes it: thick and mild with a 2 tablets:1 cup ratio. My first attempt at tablea making had me at the 1:1 ratio that I saw when I googled recipes on how to make tablea drinks but I found that I could taste it better with a 2:1 ratio, or maybe it's because the discs are so small. I like the tablea so much, I actually felt bad we only got little of this, since we were just going to try it out. thank God there's tablea in the supermarket or Kultura shops here.

Of course there are other mentionables like kalamay, dried mangoes, and broas. Inasmuch as we'd like to take the whole tourist shop with us, we had a baggage weight limit so we had to keep it at that. In buying souvenirs though, it really pays to buy from reputable shops and supermarkets with strict quality control.

I Heart Goya Chocolate Bars

My name is Bambi and I'm a sweet tooth. I need my chocolate fix because I'm having the case of the blues, so I pick this up in the grocery:

Why I like it:

1. It's dirt cheap, It's about Php 16.00 for a bar.
2. It's not too sweet.
3. The raisins' flavor mix well with the sweet chocolate, and they don't annoyingly stick to the upper palate.
4. It's locally available, and it's a local product. Hence, supporting too our livelihood. Yeaaah baybeeeehh!

It doesn't melt as fast as other chocolates but since it's thin, it's quite soft, so I keep tissue on hand. Plus, chocolate makes me happy.

Sweet and Soft Treat: Bizu Chocolate Souffle

With a dessert as good as this, it's okay to be sinful once in a while. Bizu's Chocolate Souffle was a melt-in-the mouth treat I instantly fell in love with, never mind if it came with ice cream, which the lactose intolerant in me should avoid:The souffle cake is actually on the right. The one on the left is dark chocolate syrup which you pour (drool) on the cake before eating it with vanilla ice cream (center). A souffle is actually a light and fluffy baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites. It's quite difficult to make since it entails careful monitoring of temperature so the cake doesn't sink and it maintains its fluffy consistency. They usually are baked in ramekins, which is the technical term for those grooved white porcelein containers.

The container may be quite small, around 2 inches or so in diameter but the richness and flavor makes it a suitable dessert to share for four hungry sweet-toothed girls. The hot chocolate sauce isn't too sweet for me to have a headache after and it blended quite well with the sweetness of the cake and ice cream.
I just love how the sides puff up when I pour the chocolate and the syrup just sinks in to the cake making it moist. Oooooh.... guilty pleasure indeed!