Chocolate Ambition

Chocolate truffles and candies are interesting.  The quality of chocolate and the ingredients used vary by maker, and the chocolates themselves vary in quality from the waste of an idea to a truly decadent indulgence.  Besides the ingredients used in chocolates, size plays an integral role in the chocolate experience.  If the chocolate is too small the flavors, textures and qualities of the product become short lived.  On the other hand, if the chocolate or derivative there of is too large, your palate goes into overload.  The pleasure of chocolates from truffles to candies is encompassed by the variety of ingredients and the combinations of flavors.  The balancing act of creating truffles becomes ever more difficult as individual chocolates become varietal in nature and have specific and distinctive flavor profiles.  Each unique chocolate then becomes not only a vehicle for flavor but a complex flavor unto itself.  Now these distinctive chocolates can be paired, accented and juxtaposed with the global palate of ingredients and techniques that has become available.  What I find particularly interesting is what particular ingredients are combined with chocolate as well as the amount of the ingredient used to create a flavor profile.  The alchemy of combining flavors is what allows each individual chocolate to succeed or fail.  The same combinations can turn out to be sublime or deadly depending upon the skill of the individual chocolatier.