Chocolate Pizza Company has taken the traditional “Pizza & Wings” concept and turned it on its culinary head by creating the sweetest pairing imaginable – Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings. Made in America and handcrafted, Chocolate Pizza is a blend of rich milk or dark chocolate blended with homemade English toffee, topped with nuts or candies and served in a custom pizza box. Peanut Butter Wings are crisp, rippled potato chips covered in creamy peanut butter and drenched in our delicious chocolate. Together, this “Pizza & Wings Combo” is a one-of-a-kind gourmet chocolate gift for any occasion or holiday and has been the most popular offering at Chocolate Pizza Company for decades. But why? What is it about Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings that has so captivated thousands of people around the globe. We’ve received orders from 6 continents but one thing they all have in common is they love to send Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings for holidays and special occasions.
While the idea of a gourmet chocolate version of “Pizza & Wings” is unique to Chocolate Pizza Company, the roots of those two concepts stretch back quite far.
The first recorded use of the term “pizza” was in the central Italian region of, Gaeta, in 997 AD. Based on an ancient flatbread it was topped with simple herbs and cheese and considered a food for commoners. Pizza would arrive to the shores of America in the late 19th century with Italian immigrants. The first printed reference to pizza appeared in an article from the Boston Journal in 1904. There are now over 60,000 pizzerias in the United States with Americans eating the equivalent of 175 acres of pizza a day or 350 slices per second. The title of most expensive pizza in the world belongs to a gastric gem called, Louis XIII, in Salerno, Italy, which will set you back $12,000 and has a crust that takes 3 days to make.
The good news is that you won’t have to pay that much for our gourmet chocolate pizza but you still get that incredibly satisfying taste. Nearly all of our Chocolate Pizzas contain English toffee in the base (or “crust”) – it’s really our signature feature. But this isn’t just any off-the-shelf toffee. No, no, this is a very special recipe from right here in the owner’s hometown of Marcellus, New York and it dates all the way back to 1919. In fact, the house where this recipe started still exists in the village. Old timers still tell stories about when they were children and would run up into the foyer of the big old house on North Street where there was usually a bowl set out with broken pieces of toffee for the kids to enjoy.
It is a butter-based English toffee which gives it a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth taste and the fact that our owner makes it small batches several times a week means it is always exceptionally fresh and flavorful. Toffee is not easy to make and even a bit tricky to work with. Temperatures must be controlled precisely and the bubbling sugar mixture must be handled very carefully. Once it is ready, it’s poured out on aluminum trays where it cools to the touch and can then be stretched thin to cool further. Later, it is into a food processor where the golden-colored confection is ground fine. When our chocolatiers are ready to make Chocolate Pizza, they will scoop the ground toffee into a machine that holds tempered chocolate and blends it together until it’s smooth and ready to ladle into genuine pizza pans. Toppings are added and then a trip down the cooling tunnel where it emerges ready to sealed in cellophane and placed in a custom pizza box.
“Wings” or “chicken wings” as we commonly know them today were started in Buffalo, New York in 1964 at the Anchor Bar owned by Teressa and Frank Bellissimo. The “wing” portion of the chicken was considered worthless at the time and often discarded or dropped in a pot to make chicken stock. According to the Smithsonian, the generally accepted narrative was that the wings were delivered to the bar one day by mistake and so rather than use them in their spaghetti sauce they created a bar appetizer by splitting them into “drumsticks” and “flats” and coating in a homemade hot sauce of cayenne and butter. The bar snack became an instant hit and customers immediately began ordering pizza with a side of wings – the “Pizza & Wings Combo” was born.
As America’s Chocolate Pizza, it was naturally incumbent on Chocolate Pizza Company to create an accompaniment worthy of our signature confection. Chocolate Pizza Company’s trademarked, Peanut Butter Wings, were the perfect answer. Crisp, rippled potato chips are covered in creamy peanut butter and then enrobed in a curtain of rich milk or dark chocolate for a taste masterpiece. Peanut butter is applied to every single “wing” by hand and placed on a conveyor for a trip through a curtain of tempered chocolate and then into the cooling tunnel. They are sealed in cellophane and dropped in 8 oz or 16 oz containers. It is a very labor- intensive process but one that ensures each “wing” is loaded with flavor and ready to “wow” your taste buds.
A writer for Fancy Food & Culinary Products blog (9-23-16) put it this way when they first tasted our Peanut Butter Wings, “It’s a fantastically rich experience that make your eyes pop out a little when you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. Half way through one chip and I melted; all the stresses of the day faded and it was just me and my wings for a blissful 2 minutes. Then I sinned: I got up to have another. So that’s 4 minutes. OK, and then another. Count ‘em, 6 minutes of true bliss …”
The blogger also understood that Peanut Butter Wings are one of the most unique gifts you can give. They put it this way; “The Peanut Butter Wings come in an 8-ounce box that’s more narrow on the bottom yet stands up on its own. It’s bright red colors and picture of the familiar potato chip wrapped in peanut butter and chocolate screams “I’m a fun gift for anyone, any occasion!” It’s definitely a memorable gift, too, because it’s so unique; I haven’t seen anything like them. And I keep going back to that potato chip – it’s genius; it’s a different take on something that everyone knows and everyone loves.”
Chocolate Pizza Company earned federally registered trademarks for both Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings, which recognize the company’s distinctive reputation for these special gourmet, chocolates. National media outlets have also featured Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings including Food Network’s hit show, Unwrapped, NBC’s Today Show, ABC News and international programs like Food Factory which filmed an episode this past summer that featured our Chocolate Pizza and Peanut Butter Wings.
Whatever the occasion, business or personal, whether you need one “Combo” or thousands, this is a gourmet chocolate gift that hits all the right notes.
