De Bonte Koe Chocoladekunst

Because of the Open Monumentendag at Schiedam, there were concerts going on all over town.  There were organ concerts in at least three of the churches and there were vocal performances in at least two different studios.  Apparently cobblestone streets and brick and stone buildings make really terrific accoustic chambers because, as I was walking along this one street, I could hear a very nice operetta going on.  Inside a studio there were a couple singing something classical sounding (I didn't recognize but that just means it was The Ride of the Valkyries or something equally ubiquitous).  They were all dressed up and all of the people inside, who looked like they were at some kind of dinner reception, where all dressed up in evening wear.  And then there was a whole bunch of tourists and sightseers, in jeans and t-shirts, grouped around the door, listening.  It was a lot of fun.  That room was right next to "De Bonte Koe Chocoladekunst" store: "The Colorful Cow Chocolate Art" store.  So the whole time I was looking at the displays here, I could hear the singing going on next door.

These suns are vacation themed.  The dark chocolate one says "prettige vakantie" which means "nice/pleasant vacation."  I don't remember what the bigger one says.

The little houses are Jenever-flavored bonbons shaped like the old Jenever building (where the Jenevermuseum is located).  You can buy sets of these in special boxes with different flavors from the different kind of Jenever.




I saw a few people buying them so I think that it must be a pretty popular product.











They also had white chocolate sculpture/buildings.  These look very Dutch.  Also notice the little modeled tulips in front of the houses?  I don't know how you would go about eating these.  It is kind of like the gingerbread house dilemma.  You would probably hate to wreck it until it got too gross to eat.








I think that these shoes are pretty spiffy.  They are solid chocolate.  I think a shoe chocolate mold would be a lot of fun to play with.








These giant clams stuffed with bonbons were pretty but what I especially liked was the box of rusty tools (although why somebody thought rusty tools sounded appetizing is another whole question).  They are molded out of chocolate and then dusted with cocoa powder to get the rust effect.  It was very effective, too.  I did a double take.






One thing I wasn't really sure about was the memorial chocolate plaque.  While I guess that there are chemical reasons why eating chocolate would be good during the grieving process, I am not sure that this would be the first thing that I would think of doing.  Especially with the primitive portraiture.  What is especially odd, though, is that, not only did someone want to order this, but the store thought that this was the kind of thing that people would want to buy and that displaying this would be a good way to garner business.



De Bonte Koe is actually a store, not a museum, but they had a nice display room set up that you could walk through, besides the actual store and a little cafe, and there were a lot of people just wandering through and looking at stuff.  Apparently it is a fairly big draw for the city (or at least they get a lot of business from tourists) because they had advertisements in the tourist information material.