“Choco-Fabulous” Tops The Cookie Field

Walking up to a large round table, Thomas Edwards took a tiny plastic cup into his hands, sniffed its contents, and lifted it to his mouth, dumping a chip-studded triangle of cookie into its yawning hole. He chewed. He licked his lips. His eyes grew slightly larger.

Yep, he proclaimed. This — the Choco-Fabulous Cookie from an area chef — was the clear winner of the afternoon.

Edwards was one of around 35 New Haveners who came out for the seventh annual Valentine Chocolate Festival, a benefit for the Montessori School on Edgewood. Organized and staffed by the school’s board members, the event was held Saturday afternoon at the St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel on Park Street.

Known for its child-centered focus, the Montessori model diverges from traditional public education in its approach, allowing young children to direct their own paths of study and spend large uninterrupted blocks of time on a single task, like a book, beaded number line, or language lesson. Eleven years old this year, the Montessori School on Edgewood is the first publicly supported model of its kind in New Haven.

“There’s an immediate effect for students who start young, in preschool,” said Kearney, who taught in New Haven for four years before becoming an auditor at BlumShapiro. ​“It [Montessori education] teaches them to be creative, innovative, self-reliant … things that they may be missing elsewhere.”

And, he added, the model can be particularly sweet for its students. Which tied right into the fundraiser, where sugar- and cocoa-crazed kids, parents and grandparents ran loops around the room trying samples from professional and amateur bakers alike, and casting their votes — clear, heart-shaped charms instead of ballots — for the strongest chocolates in the running.

That was enough for Edwards, who had come out with his grandmother Renita Manley, to be having a very good afternoon. Now a third grader at Troupe School, he said that Montessori education had given him a jump start in math, which he’ll use as he works toward his goal of becoming a New Haven police officer or lawyer. Now, he was finding its payoffs particularly sweet as well.

“I think it helped me be independent,” he said, doing a walk around the room until he had reached his favorite chocolate. He pointed to the contenders that had made the list: an ooey-gooey German chocolate cake with nuts and frosting, some dense chocolate ​“bombs” with soft filling and a hard, smooth shell, a chewy selection of fragrant, golden cookies packed with brown chunks.

“At a young age, he was doing things that other kids weren’t able to,” said Manley, sampling crackly hearts filled with dark chocolate and raspberry ganache. She eyed a moss-and-brownie concoction a few tables down. ​“I would recommend it to anyone. And I have.”

Across the room, others were digging into dark fudgy brownies, German chocolate cake, and a sweet potato and chocolate concoction that tasted overwhelmingly of pumpkin spice as volunteers chatted about Montessori education. Standing before a light brown double fudge, Ami Menta said she’d come to the event after talking to Chip In A Bottle owner and chef Darrell Nurse (the only chocolate contributor in attendance), and was feeling a little overwhelmed by the selection.

“It’s pretty great for a sleepy kind of day,” she said. Her friend Ian McAuley, who had decided to come at the mere mention of tasting chocolate, was slightly more enthusiastic. 

“I’ve gone to Switzerland to eat chocolate before,” he said, ​“So it was nice to have this down the street.” He eyed a tray of white-and-red heart shaped chocolates across the room, and then walked boldly toward them. 

The festival’s youngest attendees, some students at Edgewood Montessori and others there for the sugar, praised the festival. From Makaela and Melinda Martinez, whose mom Katrina has been teaching at the school since last April, a gooey fudge got a ringing endorsement. Meanwhile, Nurse — who suggested trying everything in the room, and remained mum on which chocolates were his until the very end of the afternoon — said that he’d been pleasantly surprised by the ​“reindeer moss brownies,” served with a bitter, edible orange moss that grows in Connecticut. 

{media_6}And for others, tradition triumphed. Manning one of the tasting tables, young volunteer Kayson Maciel-Andrews said that the chocolate chunk cookies — which were very different from the Choco-Fabulous cookies because of chip size, he noted — were one of the biggest hits in the room.

“Of course they were my favorite,” he said. ​“They had my two most favorite ingredients ever: Chocolate, and cookies.”