Friends with Benefits

Being a friend of a person who owns a store dedicated to cocoa has its occasional benefits. One of them is that when it is time to clear out the “Best Due By” inventory (products that are just before or past the “Best Due By” date). I usually give family and friends all of these wonderful products. I always fell bad not donating the Best Due By inventory to a food bank. However, I feel visitors to a homeless shelter or food bank deserve the good stuff too. So, I donate overages or slow sellers to charity.

When products were donated last year to a children’s school that was collecting hot chocolate for the homeless, I received the cutest picture from the children as a thank you. The weather has been quite crazy lately and everyone, especially a homeless person could use some hot chocolate or cocoa.

For this past delivery, friends with benefits received two types of 100% Unsweetened Cacao. One was in bar form and the other in shavings. I personally prefer the shavings since it requires less work when preparing to bake or cook with it. Next on the list were two drinking chocolates and a hot chocolate from Belgium.

One of my friends used the last round of “Best Due Inventory” to create a dreamy chocolate cake. It was brought into the office today to share with the rest of the company and it was gone real quick. She used 100% cocoa to make the cake but she was disappointed when it didn’t come with a real deep, dark color. Now she wonders if certain restaurants, chefs etc use food coloring to make a chocolate cake that nearly black color you see on occasions. Personally, I could care less because that cake was @#$ good!