CACAO LORENZO C H O C O L A T I E R 1818 Pot Spring Road, Timonium, Maryland 21093 (Corner of Pot Spring & Ridgely Roads) Phone (410) 453-9334 Fax (410) 453-9380
Baltimore-area chocolatiers create sweetness to savor
Local entrepreneurs turn to old-fashioned, handcrafted techniques to create luxurious confections
By Jill Rosen, The Baltimore Sun 9:24 a.m. EST, December 20, 2011
People who want chocolate a cut above the stuff found near grocery store checkout lines have plenty of big-name national brands to choose from.
But connoisseurs know the only way to get truly fine chocolate is to find a local chocolatier.
In the Baltimore area, there are a number of chocolatiers making confections the old-fashioned way — by hand.
. . . . There's Cacao Lorenzo, run by a man who prides himself on upholding meticulous Europeanchocolate-making techniques. . . .
You won't find these chocolates in the two for $5 rack at the discount store. But you'll also be getting something handmade by people who consider their work an art — a delicate, perishable object of art that's meant to be savored, not saved.
House favorite: Basque squares, port-wine soaked figs with milk chocolate butter ganache enrobed in chocolate.
For someone in such a smooth and sweet profession, Larry McGlinchey's composure melts faster than a truffle in July when confronted with misconceptions about his beloved medium.
He scoffs at dark-chocolate snobs, the sort who won't deign to consume chocolate with a cocoa content below a certain percentage.
He simmers when folks wave off white chocolate — when he's all but certain they've tried only the American kind, the stuff he says tastes like "sweet wax."
The term "chocoholic"? He despises it.
It's hard being one of the last of the old-school European-style chocolatiers. McGlinchey painstakingly produces small-craft chocolate in a mass-produced world, carrying on time-honored traditions even as folks fall for the latest foodie trends and dietary news flashes.
"Europeans do this really weird thing with chocolate," he likes to say. "They eat it. Americans treat a chocolatier like a gift shop. They buy it to give away."
McGlinchey, who's 59, has been making artisan chocolate from a shop in Timonium for nearly seven years. He diverged into the profession several years before that, leaving a longtime career in medical equipment sales.
He'll walk to work and spend the entire day crafting one type of bonbon. Recently, he devoted most of a Thursday to his white chocolate chardons, little rough-edged snowballs filled with poire William white truffle cream. Each chardon requires time, attention and six separate steps — making the ganache, filling each shell, leveling the filling, capping it off, dipping it in more chocolate and, finally, hand-rolling it to achieve the signature spiked coating. A whole day of work, all to disappear on someone's tongue in a matter of seconds.
In the front of his Timonium shop, McGlinchey displays his "galerie" mixed box, like something in a museum. The box tilts back on an easel for customers to admire. His biggest seller, the galerie is filled with about eight types of enrobed chocolates. There's the lavender flower with dark chocolate surrounding a lavender-infused ganache, the Basque square with port wine-soaked figs in a milk chocolate butter ganache and, McGlinchey's creation, the "India," with cinnamon, anise, fennel, ginger and clove.
While some chocolatiers angle to get their work into area gourmet stores, McGlinchey refuses, saying his perishable confections should ideally be eaten in a week, not languishing on a grocery shelf.
"You can't make fine chocolate en masse; you just can't do it," he says. "We're the last of a dying breed."
The chocolate center of the universe
The chocolate center of the universe is . . . Timonium? Who knew? . . . I love the fact that Larry McGlinchey decided that a career in medical sales and marketing wouldn't be as much fun as making fine French chocolates -- and then did something about it. His shop, Cacao Lorenzo, has traditional European chocolates made with some unusual flavors like lavendar and fig, and they are wonderful, but true chocoholics will swoon over his solid chocolate bars (dark, milk, and white).
Posted by Elizabeth Large on August 20, 2007. The Baltimore Sun - Dining at Large
