La Cocina

I took a cooking class at La Cocina this week.  If you have never heard of the La Cocina organization, I recommend you take a look-- http://www.lacocinasf.org/.  La Cocina is a kitchen incubator that was designed to reduce the obstacles that often stand in the way of small kitchen/food businesses from taking off.  They provide kitchen facilities, business advice and marking services to low-income food business owners.  Several of the businesses that they have helped to start have taken off and are now successful stand-alone restaurants, food trucks, bakeries, etc.


The instruction during our class at La Cocina was wonderful.  We made lots of chocolate treats to hand out for Valentine's day.  The talented female owners of La Luna Cupcakes, Kika's Treats and NeoCocoa were all there to do demonstrations of their favorite recipes for Valentines day.  We made chocolate truffles, Brigadeiros (Brazilian truffle) and chocolate cake pops decorated with cute Valentines sprinkles. 
 

La Cocina did a great job with the organization of the class and prepared a delicious dinner for us afterwards.  I thought I would share a recipe that I enjoyed the most in class, the Brigadeiros (sort of a delicious milky caramel covered in whatever you like). Cristina Besher (nickname "Kika"), the owner of Kika's treats, demonstrated this recipe for us.

Websites for Kika's treats, NeoCocoa and La Luna cupcakes:
http://kikastreats.com/
http://www.neococoa.com/
http://www.lalunacupcakes.com/