California Gourmet pareve chocolate chips pack a punch

California Gourmet pareve chocolate chips pack a punch

Pittsburghers who enjoy kosher baking can breathe a collective sigh of relief: There’s a new pareve chocolate chip in town.

The spring of 2012 was a tough one for those who appreciate a good, chocolaty homemade dessert after a meat meal. Food retailer Trader Joe’s brutal announcement that May — that its popular pareve chocolate chips would thereafter be certified kosher/dairy — sent local bakers into a frenzy.

People were buying up the chocolate morsels by the case from the South Hills and East Liberty Trader Joe’s locations and freezing them for an anticipated string of proverbial rainy days.

Chana Shusterman of Squirrel Hill ordered four cases of the chocolate chips from the South Hills store that season and shared them with about 10 friends.

At the time, she was optimistic that consumer pressure on Trader Joe’s would convince the retailer to make whatever changes were necessary for its venerated brand of chocolate chips to qualify again for the kosher/pareve certification.

But when that didn’t happen, Shusterman took matters into her own hands.

Finding no reasonably priced, high-quality vegan and pareve chocolate chips in the local market, the Yeshiva Girls High School teacher and software business owner set out on a mission to fix the problem.

“During that first year, I really thought there would be availability somewhere,” Shusterman said. “But when there wasn’t, I did some investigating. I looked into who were the top chocolate manufacturers, and I was able to taste a few brands.”

She was looking for a dairy-free, allergen-free chocolate, with no fillers and a high percentage of cocoa.

Once she found the right chocolate, she got to work researching bagging and printing companies and kosher certification entities.

The result: California Gourmet-brand vegan, gluten-free chocolate chips, with a 45 percent cocoa content, certified kosher/pareve by the OK and now available at Murray Avenue Kosher. A 10-ounce bag goes for $2.89.

The California Gourmet chocolate chips also are available at two-dozen additional stores in six states, including Baltimore’s Seven Mile Market and Pomegranate in Brooklyn and can be ordered online at californiagourmet.net.

“The taste is excellent,” Shusterman said. “They are very smooth and good for melting.”

Lila Weiss, owner of Murray Avenue Kosher, is happy to be carrying the new product, she said.

“You know how some chocolate chips taste waxy?” Weiss said.  “These are chocolaty.”

The product, which has been on her shelves for about four weeks, is “moving nicely,” Weiss said, adding that the other brands of chocolate chips she carries are “a little more expensive.”

While the Shop Rite brand of pareve chocolate chips is available at Seven Mile Market in Baltimore — and is somewhat less expensive than Shusterman’s product — California Gourmet seems to be attracting buyers who have been missing the Trader Joe’s brand, said Moshe Boehm, the general manager of the store.

“Trader Joe’s had a following,” Boehm said. “There are many, many other chocolate chips out there. But for those people who liked the Trader Joe’s chocolate chips, this is a big deal. I’ve heard from a few people that this replaces Trader Joe’s. These are definitely serving a need. They are definitely something that people are interested in.”

For Rivky Bukiet of Baltimore, known, she said, for her homemade chocolate chip cookies, California Gourmet chocolate chips have been just what she had been looking for since the Trader Joe’s product went dairy.

“I couldn’t find a substitute, something of good quality and pareve,” she said.

When she got her first taste of California Gourmet chocolate chips at her sister’s house in New York, “she couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Thrilled to discover they were being sold in Baltimore, she is now using them in all her baking, from pumpkin muffins to peanut butter balls to her famous chocolate chips cookies.

“I’m really excited to share this with all my friends,” she said. “I know when people taste this, they’ll want more.”

(Toby Tabachnick can be reached at tobyt@thejewishchronicle.net.)

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