Chocolate springs eternal at new Lenox cafe

by Kate AbbottPrint Story | Email Story
Joshua Needham displays chocolate-covered pralines shaped into the Star of David. (Photo By Kate Abbott)
LENOX — Lemon marshmallows, pistachio marzipan, cognac and praline are among the myriad chocolate-covered combinations offered by Chocolate Springs Café. Chocolatier Joshua Needham invents them as he goes along and dips them in chocolate he blends himself. Needham, a Berkshire native and chef at more than one local institution, opened his combination chocolate shop and coffee bar at the Lenox House and Country Shops on Sept. 12. He said last week that he had been dreaming of it for 10 years and knew what he after spending six months in Paris and enjoying the shop of Michel Chaudun, the famous chocolatier. Needham named the Chocolate Springs Cafe after Lebanon Springs, N.Y., where he grew up. The name has other associations too, he said. “The fluidity of water and chocolate match, and there’s the way chocolate can spring into different forms, from straight courvertures to truffles to mondiant (chocolate mixed with nuts and dried fruit), to mousse cakes, to cookies, to sculptures,” he said. Needham has a chocolate tower on display, a prototype design for a new World Trade Center that he made during a demonstration this summer at Chesterwood, with sculptor Andrew DeVries. The cafe also features some of DeVries’ work. “It combines European pastry, Asian aesthetics and music,” Needham said. His path to the cafe has been a life-long story, he said. He started working at Shuji’s Japanese Restaurant in New Lebanon, when he was15. Now that he has his own place, he said, Shuji Uchigama, the owner of the restaurant, gave him plates and mugs for the cafe. Needham worked at Shuji’s through high school. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, where he specialized in pastries. He always liked chocolate, he said, and in the pastry program learned to work with it. He had so much fun with chocolate, he said he decided to specialize in it. He worked as chef at Weatleigh and pastry chef at Cranwell resort and spent three years at La Maison du Chocolat in New York City before he came back to the area to set up his own shop. He said he chose the Lenox House Shops because they are centrally located and because David Case has plans to renovate and enliven the area. Since he opened the café, he has seen a steady increase in business, he said, including many repeat customers for his mousse cakes, birthday cakes, holiday dessert trays with cookies and pastries, coffees and hot drinks made with Italian espresso. Needham makes all his own chocolate. He not only dips his own candies but also mixes his chocolate from the pure essence of processed cocoa beans. The product of cocoa and 100 percent cocoa butter, with no hydrogenated oils, is called a couverture, he explained. He blends the chocolate himself from valrhona couvertures, which come from Venuzuela, Trinidad, Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Different kinds of cocoa beans with different flavors mix well with certain different beans and roasts of coffee. Needham uses three couvertures: Criollo, with a fruity flavor; Forestero, more robust and earthy; and Trinitario, a hybrid blending the two. His chocolates are low in sugar and high in cocoa. He is developing new chocolates all the time, he said. The cafe hosts chocolate tastings and other events, and Needham plans to announce two new chocolate bars over the course of the winter: the Berkshire Bar and the Ski Bar. He is still developing both bars, considering combinations of maple marshmallow, coffee ganache, praline, hazelnuts, white chocolate and dark chocolate. Each bar will be about an inch wide and 3 to 4 inches long. Needham keeps the café open Tuesday though Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. For most of the year, it will be closed Mondays, but through the holiday season, until New Year’s, it will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., he said. Friday and Saturday evenings and many Saturday and Sunday afternoons, he has live music. Local artists perform regularly. Eric Underwood and Eladia will perform Friday, Dec. 5, from 7 to 10 p.m. Since the cafe sits so close to Kennedy Park, Needham, is also considering putting up a ski rack, he said. Hikers and cross country skiers can leave the trail for a cup of dark, rich hot chocolate which, according to a Cornell Study published at news.cornell.com, has twice as many antioxidants as red wine and three times as many as green tea, he said. After all, chocolate means “food of the gods,” he said.
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Lanesborough Fifth-Graders Win Snowplow Name Contest

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — One of the snowplows for Highway District 1 has a new name: "The Blizzard Boss."
 
The name comes from teacher Gina Wagner's fifth-grade class at Lanesborough Elementary School. 
 
The state Department of Transportation announced the winners of the fourth annual "Name A Snowplow" contest on Monday. 
 
The department received entries from public elementary and middle school classrooms across the commonwealth to name the 12 MassDOT snowplows that will be in service during the 2025/2026 winter season. 
 
The purpose of the contest is to celebrate the snow and ice season and to recognize the hard work and dedication shown by public works employees and contractors during winter operations. 
 
"Thank you to all of the students who participated. Your creativity allows us to highlight to all, the importance of the work performed by our workforce," said  interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng.  
 
"Our workforce takes pride as they clear snow and ice, keeping our roads safe during adverse weather events for all that need to travel. ?To our contest winners and participants, know that you have added some fun to the serious take of operating plows. ?I'm proud of the skill and dedication from our crews and thank the public of the shared responsibility to slow down, give plows space and put safety first every time there is a winter weather event."
 
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