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When we were out picking in the raspberry fields last week, our shout-outs to one another included what to make with all of the berries. From the youngest to the eldest among us, there were some darn good ideas: meringues with raspberries and whipped cream, raspberry cobbler, raspberry pie, raspberry swirl breakfast rolls, raspberry jam, raspberry sauce, raspberry champagne cocktail, raspberry pancakes.
But the best of them came from one of the children, remembering that our target on our daily walks downtown to Howseโs fudge shop was actually not the fudge, but the chocolate covered raspberries. Even the kids know there are few things that belong together better than chocolate and raspberry.
Howseโs charges a pretty penny for their chocolate raspberriesโeach candy has three razzles enrobed in dark chocolate, then topped with another perfect razzle. Theyโre so addictive that youโll shell out the $3 a pop without too much of a thought. So when across the rows of raspberries I heard a little voice shout โchocolate coveredโ in the litany of ideas, I screamed halleluiah and almost started singing my rendition of the Ave Maria, usually reserved for weddings and funerals only. Give that child a prize! God knows what the people in the rows next to us thought of all our crazy. Probably though they just wanted to listen intently to the raspberry-recipe-talk so they could go home and do the same. I think I saw one lady taking covert notes.
Candy-making, chocolates in particular, is in our roots in my family. I will be telling a good tale of why that is when we get into our posts on chocolate (trust me, theyโre a-cominโ). I will say now, though, that my grandfather, Richard Abowd, was a confectioner. A confectioner! He owned a confectionary and it said so on his shop window. I have an amazing photo of him in front of his shop that I will show you one day in the not-too-distant-future, I promise. Is the shop still going? Hardly. Thereโs some sordid business about a neโer do well brother who my grandfather was forced to give the thriving candy store to, and who promptly ran it into the ground.
Grandpa Abowd (just as my mom doesnโt go by Sitto, her father didnโt go by Jiddo. Go figure.) kept on making candy, dipping chocolates for his children all the time, and in turn my mom has been dipping chocolates for us forever. My grandfather never forgot or forgave the situation of the candy shop with his brother, among other offenses of a similar ilk. Itโs tough stuff, the family dramas, but itโs the stuff great stories are made of. Stories I was born to write. Stories that requireโฆreaders. So please stay tuned.
Pulling out big hunks of chocolate (which we always have on hand), chopping them up and tempering them (you can do this, donโt worry) then spooning the chocolate smoothness over our berries, Howseโs styleโit all was a natural here on Main Street last week when the berries came home from the U-Pick farm. The children got right into it, and once Grammy demonstrated proper chocolate enrobing technique using her teaspoon, they went at it and made rustic, artful, beautiful candy (and didnโt even eat it all up as they worked).
What dazzle in a chocolate! Really, I canโt help but brag it up because itโs so good that I want you to try it and share in the razzle-love. We took the chocolates to a barbeque, where the children-galore gobbled them up in the blink of an eye. We joked that we could have brought mini-Hershey bars for the same effect, but no, I donโt think so. The kids understand as well as we do that there is a hierarchy of goodness in what we eat, and that a raspberry u pick in the fields of northern Michigan, then cover in chocolate at the hand of your grandmother while learning that her father did this too, makes for a flavor that weโll never forget.
