Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Jurassic Chocolat

Valentine's day in Japan is when women give chocolates to men; they reciprocate a month later on White Day. It's the season for fancy and unique sweets, in other words, and while a lot of luxury valentine's chocolate is actually bought by women for themselves, there is a lot of gift chocolate made specifically to appeal to men.

A couple of years ago Ritsuko got me these wonderful Chocolate Tools, and last year I received this set from the same Kobe chocolate maker. I didn't think there'd be any way for her ever to top that, but oh, was I wrong.

Jurassic Chocolat

Jurassic Chocolat - cool, a dinosaur perhaps?


Hmm, Tools?

Uh? A manual and a set of tools? Not just a dinosaur methinks.


Tools Of The Trade

Ahhh! A hammer to break the hard chocolate crust; a spoon to dig up soft stuff and a brush to carefully remove small bits. Let's go digging for bones!


Break The Surface

Carefully break the hard crust. It takes a fair few whacks to make it crack. The hammer is surprisingly heavy and solid.


Gravel

We're through. The crust of dark chocolate is pretty thick and quite hard, but the layer beneath seems to be much softer and crumblier.


Chunky Chocolate

make a good-sized opening, and spoon away bits of crust so we get a nice surface to work on.


Remove That Gravel

Carefully remove the chocolate gravel with the brush - we don't know how deep it is and we don't want to harm anything below it.


Something There!

Ah, there's something there! A bit of bone-white chocolate is poking through.


Careful, Careful...

Carefully brush away the gravel; we don't want to break anything.


A Fossil

It's a fossil - a tasty white-chocolate fossil embedded in a slab of dark chocolate.


Chocolate Fossil

Jurassic Chocolat.


This is incredibly geeky, and amazingly wonderful. Ritsuko knows me only too well, I think. I spent a glorious sunday planning the shoot, setting up lighting and camera (I realize now I should have raked a side-light across the slab on the last image), then slowly digging up and uncovering the chocolate fossil, taking pictures all the while. It's not just a bit of candy, it's a whole day of geeky entertainment.

It's good chocolate too. We've eaten all the crust already, and we'll use the gravel for hot cocoa. We haven't started on the fossil itself yet so I can't say how the white chocolate tastes, but it should be as good as the rest. Thank you, Ritsuko, for a wonderful gift!

15 comments:

  1. You're a very lucky man! Really well done chocolate entertainment sets - I've never come across anything like that.
    Brewing on something great for white day?

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  2. Is there anywhere on the web that someone in the US could purchase this awesomeness?

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  3. This is wonderful and gorgeous. And I must echo Anonymous: Where can I buy this?

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  4. http://en.item.rakuten.com/bishokucircle/et-sk2010vd1/

    This looks promising!

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  5. This is the place: http://www.maquis.co.jp/

    They have an online store, but I have no idea if they send outside the country. Most online shops here only deal within Japan; exporting is risky, and money transfers are really expensive.

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  6. I just wanted to say how AMAZING that fossil dig (all in chocolate!) is. That was FANTASTIC.

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  7. Wow, that's amazing. It almost makes me sad I don't like chocolate.

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  8. Wow..this is one word..amazing!

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  9. Oh, please someone in the US import this before Christmas -- it would be perfect for my budding-paleontologist nephew!

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  10. It's amazing, I love this chocolat box !

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  11. I reproduced your photos and gave you credit for them in my chocolate blog. I hope you don´t mind.
    http://blogdelchocolate.blogspot.com/
    Thanks so much from Spain.

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  12. Can be purchased and shipped out of the country here. http://www.flutterscape.com/product/no/16396/jurassic-chocolat

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  13. Saw this chocolate set in Tokyu Hands last week when we were back in Japan visiting and had to resist buying it -- well, it didn't take that much effort, honestly, since I got some of the Galaxie "Astro Chocolate" instead. :)

    Mostly it reminded me to come back and read this post again -- it's still brilliant. :)

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  14. Hi Douglas,

    Yes, this is still the best thing I ever got. My only worry is that my wife feel pressure to top this in coming years. She can't :)

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