The Chocolate Bag

The Chocolate Bag is an upright container made of pure, tempered Belgian semisweet chocolate and filled with fluffy white-chocolate mousse and a profusion of mixed berries. Shen created the concoction in 1984, when she had her Lincoln Park restaurant, Jackie's.

Shen says her inspiration was a Julia Child cooking show. "She had a huge bag filled with chocolate truffles, but didn't show how to make it," Shen recalls. "I wanted a smaller version, but I couldn't figure out how to get the size perfect. I stopped into a Garrett popcorn shop for caramel popcorn, and I saw their smallest bag and decided that was perfect. I brought 250 bags back to work, Elaine Gonzalez [author of `The Art of Chocolate'] showed me how to temper the chocolate, and that's how we made it.

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