The Chocolate Brand Julia Child Claimed Was The Best In The US

One of the first women to host a TV cooking show, renowned chef and author Julia Child wasn't afraid to put her stamp of approval on the things she loved. She had a favorite fast food chain, spoke highly of many other food and drink spots in the United States, and always had Goldfish crackers as an appetizer at Thanksgiving. Also, chocolate maker Scharffen Berger says that the chef called its product "the best American chocolate she'd ever tasted."

Child gave her opinion to the founders, Dr. Robert Steinberg and John Scharffenberger, during an annual Food & Wine Classic event held in Aspen, Colorado, in the late 1990s. And she wasn't the only one to love Scharffen Berger during that debut. French chef and author Jacques Pepin said he was reminded of his childhood when he tasted the intensely flavorful chocolate bars, which are made from eight varieties of cacao beans before being hand-wrapped.

Scharffen Berger is one of several chocolate brands approved by chefs for their high-quality ingredients. The company is known for its farm-to-bar process, which involves traveling the world and sampling more than 150 cacao types every year to make its signature blend. The beans are chosen for their distinct flavor profiles, which feature earthy, fruity, spicy, floral, woody, and, of course, chocolatey notes. Then, all of the chocolate — from bars and cocoa powder to baking chunks and portions — is made in small batches in Ashland, Oregon.

As the first American-made artisan chocolate, Scharffen Berger was founded in 1996 in San Francisco, California, with the goal of making the richest chocolate with the most flavor by gently processing the best cacao in small batches. At the time, Robert Steinberg was a family doctor living with lymphoma since 1989 and started following his passion for making chocolate in 1994. John Scharffenberger was a winemaker with an entrepreneurial spirit and a savvy palate, so the duo's skills complemented each other.

Along with making the first "bean-to-bar" chocolate in the United States, Scharffen Berger was the first manufacturer to use percentages on its labels, showing how much cacao was in each product, which is now the standard across chocolate bars. The company was at the head of the modern movement in craft chocolate production, balancing the complexities of cacao beans with natural ingredients rather than masking them with additives, all while maintaining consistent quality.

In 2005, Scharffen Berger was bought by the Hershey Company to expand its artisan chocolate line, but the brand became privately owned again in 2020. It's led by skilled experts who know the ins and outs of the business and who are committed to crafting flavorful, high-quality chocolate.

If you want to understand why Julia Child liked Scharffen Berger so much, you'll be happy to know that the company makes a variety of products to fulfill the chocolate requirements of any recipe. None of the products are particularly bitter — not even the 100% Unsweetened Dark Chocolate Cocoa Powder — and Scharffen Berger purposely makes chocolate chunks for baking because they pool better than chocolate chips do in brownies and cookies so that each bite contains more chocolate.

You can easily incorporate the Scharffen Berger cocoa powder into a two-layer chocolate cake recipe or into decadent chocolate truffles. Also, you can use your preferred chocolate chunks, which are available in 43% to 70% cacao options, in your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe or in two-ingredient fudge cookies. You can even melt down chunks to make a two-ingredient, no-cook chocolate pudding.

Aside from baking, Scharffen Berger chocolate pleases the palate as it is, and also when paired with cheese and wine. The company's Chocolate Provisions, for instance, are perfect for upgrading your next cheese charcuterie board, and they come in milk chocolate, dark chocolate with sea salt, and extra dark chocolate varieties. When it comes to wine, Julia Child enjoyed both the Chalone Vineyard's chardonnay and Scharffen Berger's 41% Extra Rich Milk Chocolate — possibly together. Think of how much fun you'll have exploring how the varied levels of cacao pair with different cheeses and wines.