"...you'll have to have them all put out after the savoy truffle."

- The Beatles

One of my December experiments was to create a dessert that I like; ie: one which is not to sweet. For this dessert I called upon my impressive repertoire of dessert items that I do like, such as: aged Balsamic vinegar, peppercorns, blackberries, raspberries, 70% cacao Spanish Velour chocolate (still a little too sweet for me), and a Sicilian chocolate of an unlisted cacao content with red chili peppers and sugar granules, I also included whipped cream with a bit of a fortified grenache that goes well with chocolate. The end result was a bit of a smorgasbord that allowed be to try different flavor combination's but was actually kind of annoying to eat. I made a sauce of raspberries, blackberries, wine and sugar and experimented by adding cream to some - which ruins the intensity of the color. I just set pieces of the 70% chocolate in and around this sauce and topped them with my whipped cream mixture. The best way to do this, in retrospect would be to make a layered mousse with the chocolate the cream and the berry sauce and serve it in a wine glass with fresh sugared berries and mint to garnish. Meanwhile on a different area of the plate I crumbled some of the Sicilian chocolate and poured a bit of the Balsamic on top of it and garnished with freshly ground pink pepper - this combination stands alone as truly unique (Thomas Keller uses tellicherry pepper in several of his desserts - which is where I got the idea of combining chocolate and pepper). So the flavors were good, but the application of them needs work.