Sundae Sundays + A Chocolate-y Giveaway

What do you get when you combine Taza Chocolate, Batch Ice Cream, and one of the first nice days of spring? A Sunday of Sundaes! Yesterday these two local businesses partnered for a fun outdoor ice cream and chocolate tasting for the community, and it turned out to be a great idea.

Prior to the official start of the event, I was invited to attend a blogger tasting, so my husband and I arrived a little early to find parking and to wander the Taza Factory Store.

From every angle, Taza is a pretty special business, starting with their commitment to sustainability, fair and direct trade and compensation, their ongoing efforts to partner with other socially responsible businesses, and ending, of course, in high quality chocolate in a variety of forms and creative flavors. The factory store is pretty much a chocolate-lover’s heaven, and I couldn’t wait to use my Taza bucks to buy up some chocolate treats. . . for one of you!

After we browsed the store, we went outside where I met Megan, Elizabeth, Daisy, and Bianca for a fun info session and ice cream/chocolate tasting. There were introductions all around as we met the ladies from Batch Ice Cream and Taza. I couldn’t help but eye up the creamy ice cream sitting in front of us.

Batch uses local, organic, fair trade ingredients wherever possible, and their ice creams have a short list of pronounce-able ingredients. They partner with local food producers, starting with a dairy in Tiverton, RI for their milk and adding flavor from places like Dean’s Beans for their coffee ice cream, sea salt from Maine for their salted caramel, and ginger from a MA farm for their ginger ice cream, to name a few.

The tasting included Batch vanilla bean and coffee ice creams paired with Taza chocolate sauce and cacao nibs to make little sundaes. We started with the vanilla, which I ate with a generous drizzle of Taza chocolate sauce and then moved on to the coffee, which, because I adore coffee ice cream, I ate on its own.

The flavors in both the ice cream and chocolate are difficult to put into words. Both ice creams were incredibly creamy but not heavy with bold, real flavors of vanilla and roasted coffee The vanilla was a perfect canvas for the smooth, slightly bitter chocolate sauce, and the coffee, just as I imagined, was like a sweet latte. The folks from Taza and Batch kindly sent us home with gift bags which contain Batch’s salted caramel, which I will be using in a recipe later this week. Ice cream floats? Ice cream filed cupcakes? Who can tell? You will have to wait and see.

I couldn’t taste all of that chocolate without sharing though! So, one lucky blog reader will win the following: Taza chocolate covered cacao nibs, dark chocolate covered hazelnuts, and two bars of chocolate, Taza’s Cacao Puro and their Guajillo Chili, plus a few recipes. Sound good?

How to enter:

1) Leave a comment here telling me your favorite kind of chocolate.

2) If you have a blog or Twitter, tweet or link back to this post.

3) Be sure to check back to see if you won! I will announce a winner and another giveaway on Wednesday afternoon.