On Sunday afternoon, Taza chocolate and batch ice cream hosted a sundae party outside of the Taza Chocolate Factory in Somerville, Mass. The party ran from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and a small group of bloggers, myself included, were invited to head over at 1:30 p.m. to learn a little more about Taza and batch before sampling batch ice creams and Taza chocolates.
Since we live just around the corner from Taza and had no plans last Sunday, I was immediately in and easily talked Jeff into the event too. I'm not usually one to turn down chocolate or ice cream, especially Taza and batch, both of which I have tasted in the past.
Daisy met up with Jeff and me, and we all headed down the street to the Taza Chocolate Factory, where we found Meghan and her husband. Soon after, Elizabeth and her boyfriend and Bianca arrived.
We gathered around the batch stand first and learned all about the ice cream and the owners. Batch ice cream is made with fresh, local ingredients. The vanilla uses real vanilla beans, not vanilla extract, and the coffee is made with real coffee beans from local company Dean's Beans.
We each tried a small scoop of vanilla ice cream.
And then we headed to the Taza stand where we learned a bit about Taza and topped our ice creams with our choice of chocolate sauce, roasted cacao nibs, and/or chocolate-covered cacao nibs.
I went for chocolate sauce and chocolate-covered cacao nibs and couldn't be happier with my choice.
And then we went back to batch to get samples of the coffee ice cream and back to Taza to top our coffee ice cream with more chocolate.
I definitely preferred the coffee ice cream because I'm not a huge fan of vanilla in general (a little too plain for me), but both ice creams were very good. Jeff loved the vanilla because that's more his thing. (My favorite batch flavor is the cinnamon with chocolate bits!)
After finishing our ice cream, we wandered inside to check out the Taza Chocolate Factory Store.
You can actually sign up to take a tour of the chocolate factory and learn what all these machines do.
I bought some chocolate-covered nibs -- after trying them outside, I knew they would be my new favorite snack. And then I also bought a bar of Taza 80% dark chocolate so I could recreate the chocolate sauce at home.
When we left, we were each handed a goodie bag with two flavors of batch ice cream (salted caramel and coffee), a tin of chocolate-covered cacao nibs, a bar of Taza 80% dark chocolate, and a Batch t-shirt. I am looking forward to making an indulgent sundae with these goodies and will share it with you soon!
In the meantime, I highly recommend trying both batch ice cream and Taza chocolate. Both are local companies with a focus on community and sustainability. You can find a list of locations that carry batch on the batch website. And you can find the Taza Chocolate Factory Store at 561 Windsor Street in Somerville, Mass. Taza also sells chocolate at local farmers markets.
Have you tried batch or Taza?