Brad:

I don't want to get into an argument with you about the way you choose to run your business. You're free to do whatever you want - it's your business. And I completely respect your growth/cashflow argument.

What I do want to mention is that the person who was interested in buying a bar of chocolate from the UK is NOT a "dufus" as you referred to him. This is a person who had heard about your chocolate and was interested in trying it so inquired if there was a way to get any. The fact that his inquiry did not fit your business model does not make him stupid and there is absolutely no need to denigrate him - nor anyone - by using such dismissive language.

I know you have very strong opinions on many things, including sampling, PR, and more. I would love to be able to drive business your way ... lots of people do visit Calgary, some of them have to like chocolate, and some of them may read TheChocolateLife, subscribe to one of my Twitter feeds, find me on Facebook ... or learn about your business from me in one way or another.

I can only conclude that you don't care whether I taste it or not, what I think. You have more than enough market in the Calgary area to keep you busy. Good for you. However, take a look at it from my perspective for a second ... there is a community here that I have nurtured for three years. You have been an active (and mostly welcomed) member of the community for more than eighteen months, and I have received comments from members supporting you in response to my post. I don't charge you a penny for being a member and I have to assume that you get some value and satisfaction from being a member here.

Isn't that worth a bar (or three) of chocolate? Without requiring me to spend a couple of thousand bucks?

:: Clay

Interesting reply Clay.

You spend a lot of time wondering why I don't ship or deliver. The answer is VERY simple. I DON'T NEED TO. There's a million people in this city, another 600,000 in the immediate surrounding area.The business is growing exponentially with the customer base I have direct access to. It makes absolutely NO business sense whatsoever, to incur the cost of researching packaging options, researching shipping options, applying for the shipping accounts, purchasing packaging and labeling, and then setting up infrastructure in our shop to handle shipping, just to send a chocolate bar to the UK (and YES, some dufus wanted me to ship ONE chocolate bar to him in the UK! WTF????).

Why Derrick and Mark chose to fly to Calgary, and chose to spend an evening with me only they can answer. The fact is they DID. You seem to be buddy buddy with everyone in the chocolate industry. Why don't you call them up and ask them yourself, instead of hypothesizing their motives publicly via the rational that they flew here to buy a chocolate bar.

Your reply is a great example of why small businesses STAY small. They spread themselves too thin trying to cashflow unneccessary growth. Only when a business has completely tapped their existing market, or if they have excess resources to explore others, should they burden themselves with consumers outside of their immediate market reach.

As an FYI, in the next couple of days I WILL be offering delivery service, but only to the Calgary area. It's a convenience our existing customers have been asking for, and I've developed a relationship with a local courier company that will allow our software to interact with theirs, without any human intervention.

Hope this answers your question.

Cheers.

Brad

Brad's approach to marketing his product has always been interesting to me ... he requires people to physically go to his shop in Calgary to get product: he does not ship anything to anyone (including me, as I have mentioned). This makes it incredibly difficult for those of us in the chocolate community who care about such things to get our hands on his products to taste them for ourselves and form our own opinions - and communicate those opinions to the rest of the world.

Intrigued by the opinions of two BC reps who visited, I had to ask myself, even if what Brad makes is some of the best chocolate in the world ... is it worth the cost? Not the price - the cost. I can walk into a local store in NYC and buy a 2oz bar of the 2002 Valrhona Chuao for $35. That's about $250/lb. A lot, I know, but $35 is something I can easily afford for special occasions.

The least expensive r/t flights I can find from NYC to Calgary cost US$552 with a route time totaling over 20 hours. I can get a non-stop for over $832 that takes about half the time. When I factor in the time it takes to get to the airport, overnighting (at least) in Calgary, incidental expenses (airport transfers, accommodations, meals), one of Brad's bars of chocolate costs me, what? At least $800 but only if I don't factor into the equation the value of my time (after all, I am a chocolate professional, and I do need to factor the value of my time into this whole process as I am not likely to choose Calgary as a vacation destination). That brings the cost (time and expenses) of a bar of Brad's chocolate to be between $1500 and $2500.

I don't know about you, but even if it is the best chocolate in the world, it's not worth the cost (the price of a bar is only $12) - to me - to go find out if it's as good as some people say it is.

'Tis a pity. I'm always up for reviewing a new b2b company, especially one that received such high accolades. I'm on a quest to taste, review, and compare every Chuao and Porcelana bar made, but I guess this will have to wait indefinitely. Oh well...

Lowe

ChocoFiles

Lowe:

The ONLY way to get chocolate (bars or confections) from Brad is to visit him in Calgary. I've asked him on numerous occasions in the past and he has categorically refused on this point.

:: Clay

Brad,

Are your Choklat Chuao and Porcelana bars available anywhere in the U.S.? If not, do you ship to the U.S.? I'm interested in these bars, so I'd like to know how I can get them.

Feel free to PM me too. I can give you my email address if you need to send me any shipping information.

Thanks,

Lowe

ChocoFiles

P.S.- If I can make a friendly suggestion-- on your TCL page you should put the name of your company and a link to how to learn more. It's not readily apparent, at least that I could see, so it took me a little bit of detective work to track down the information.

Hi Everyone.

For the past couple of years I have beenmaking various contributions to this forum. Some have had me take some heat. Some of the responses to my posts have been downright insulting to me. Others have asked some very pointed questions - questions such as "Who are you to be saying what you do?"

It's a valid question, seeing as I don't present people outside of Calgary with the opportunityto buy my chocolate and confections, and this is a global forum.

Having said that, I feel it's appropriate to, this once, blow my own horn, and provide some legitimacy to what it is that I do here in Calgary.

Here'sa true story:

On January 20th, I happened to be in my shop doing some last minute running around before going to the mountains for the weekend.

A couple of relatively unassuming gentlemen entered the shop and began talking to Charmaine, my head chocolatierat length. As I walked past, Charmaine handed me one of their cards. To my suprise, they were from Chocolate Giant Barry Callebaut. Not only that, but they were none other than Derrick Tu Tan Pho, Barry Callebaut's Technical Director, and Mark Pennington, Western Canada's Sales Manager!

They said they'd heard great things about my little shop, and had flown to Calgary tosee what I was I doing!

Holy Cow!

We talked at length, and I invited them to an event I was hosting this evening. They graciously accepted and spent the evening with 10 patrons, listening to me blabber on about chocolate, and what we do in our shop, and what makes our chocolate so much better than mainstream mass produced chocolate.

By the end of the evening, they were blown away with Choklat. Derrick paid me one of the biggest compliments I've had yet in my career as a chocolatier. He said that my chocolate is every bit as good as the finest chocolate in the world - chocolate made by artists like Cluizel, Amedei, and Valhrona!

He also provided some great tips with regard to our confections, and how to increase shelf life without compromising quality.

In a follow up email, Mark was quoted as typing:

"Sensational chocolate class tonight. I also really enjoyed your products.
In fact a Remarkable effort and some of the best bean to bars chocolate I've seen."

So, for those of you out there on the "chocolate net", who question who I am, or what I do, or the quality of that which I make,the fact that one of the most respected chocolatiers in the world makes a trip to little 'ol Calgary to visit ME, and then pays such high praise to my creations, I hope this nullifies any doubts you may have with regard to my skill with cocoa beans.

Cheers everyone, and Happy Chocolate Making.

I was going to suggest a cardboard cone, which can be found at many different craft places, but that looks real cool Stu.

If you choose to use the cone method, you can wrap your truffles in colorful foil (I'm a redneck and like shiny things), and then use "sticky dots" to fix them to the cone.

Another idea is to check out the website at www.sunflowersugarartusa.com They have edible glitter that we use in our shop for "blinged out" lollipops. You could roll your truffles in glitter too for your tree.

...but I DO like the one in the photo that was just posted. Probably the nicest I've seen yet.

Cheers,

Brad

Hi

Here is an example of the old "cone ball and toothpick" - this is from House of Chocolate in New Zealand.

Hi! I am looking to make chocolate truffle trees/towers for weddings and other events. Does anyone know if there are tools to do this, or just simple a foam cone and toothpicks? I am looking for something sturdier and specific to this purpose.

I (as well as others) focused on your question about Lecithin...but you also asked about cocoa liquor. I was wondering if you knew what 'cocoa liquor' was?

Cocoa liquor is simply ground cocoa mass, generally at the stage prior to pressing to separate the cocoa powder and the cocoa butter. Sometimes this is called unsweetened chocolate, although unsweetened chocolate might also refer to the same stuff after it has been further refined to reduce particle size.

In any case, if you want a decent shelf life in a sauce, you are going to need to control water activity. Since you likely want to keep the water content high in order to get the right texture for a sauce, you need ingredients that will 'bind' this water yet keep things fluid...and these 'humectants' are commonly the compounds that you say you don't want to use.

I'd suggest looking more closely at the whole range of humectants, learn and understand their properties, and then look for acceptable humectants that share these properties. You already know that honey is very similar to inverted sugar; honey is arguably a better humectant than inverted sucrose, more like the dreaded high fructose corn syrup So perhaps a naturally sourced honey is acceptable where a chemically similar HFCS or inverted sugar is not.

Sorbitol is found in many fruits; perhaps a fruit concentrate is acceptable.

Finally, plain ordinary sugar will lower water activity.

Good luck!

Jon

Interesting thought. Since it apparently occurs in every living cell you would imagine cacao pods should contain some for example.

Personally the extraction of lecithin by hexane is enough to put me off.

I know that most lecithin is manufactured from soy, but that it is found all over the place. I recall seeing a reference to palm lecithin.

What I am wondering: does anyone make _cocoa_ lecithin. You could have your lubrication and keep it pure cocoa mass

-Jon

Actually, in reference to lecithin being an emuslifier in chocolate, you are incorrect, and if Wikipedia says so, it's incorrect too.

Chocolate is essentially tiny pieces of cocoa solids (beans or powder), sugar, and vanilla bean all suspended in a fat (cocoa butter). The fat behaves in a very specific way - crystalizing in various forms at various temperatures. When it crystalizes, it suspends the solid particles in amongst the crystals.

An emulsifier is essentially a compound which "glues" two opposing compounds with similar properties, such as is the case with Mayonnaise, where oil and water are emulsified to form that condiment.

Cocoa solids, and cocoa butter do not have similar properties. One is always solid, and the other one is a crystalized liquid.

In the manufacturing of chocolate, lecithin is used as a lubricant, to make the chocolate more fluid. This is the case in most milk chocolates, where a significant portion of the fluid fat (cocoa butter) is reduced due to the increase of solid suspended fat in the powdered cream used. In some cases, manufacturers will use powdered skim milk and anhydrous milk fat instead of powdered cream. Either way, the reduction in crystalizing fat warrants lecithin.

In the case of high percentage dark chocolate, lecithin is also used to increase fluidity. Cocoa butter is considered the most expensive ingredient in processing chocolate, so any time a large manufacturer can mitigate it's use, they will. Lecithin allows them to use less cocoa butter in high percentage chocolate, so that the chocolate will flow through their molding machines.

In the case of our 80% bars, I would LOVE to use 80% cocoa beans, but it's so thick it's like tar. When coming up with the recipe I faced a crossroad. Do I use lecithin, or do I add cocoa butter. I chose the latter, reduced my cocoa bean content by 10% (to 70%) and increased my cocoa butter content by 10% - just enough so that we could mold it.

Either way, lecithin, when used in chocolate increases it's fluidity by gluing itself to all of the minute solid particles, and creating a slippery surface that the fat can't grab on to.

It's just unfortunate that our regulatory bodies allow it to be referred to as an emuslifier rather than a lubricant, on packaging. I guess "lubricant" doesn't sound as good.

Cheers.

Brad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecithin

"In confectionery it reduces viscosity, replaces more expensive ingredients, controls sugar crystallization and the flow properties of chocolate, helps in the homogeneous mixing of ingredients, improves shelf life for some products, and can be used as a coating. In emulsions and fat spreads it stabilizes emulsions, reduces spattering during frying, improves texture of spreads and flavour release."

"For example, lecithin is the emulsifier that keeps cocoa and cocoa butter in a candy bar from separating."

From what I have read elsewhere it helps the flow properties of chocolate through and in manufacturing machinery. For dark chocolate without lecithin the there is a marked viscosity increase at 90 deg C. For milk chocolate without lecithin this viscosity increase occurs at 60 degrees C.

Apparently the claims regarding bloom are more controversial and whilst it definitely has an effect on tempering and seeding correctly tempered chocolate without lecithin will not bloom under normal conditions.

In my experience anything using fresh cream in largish quantities will have a quite short shelf life unless frozen.

Hello everybody,

I plan to produce some chocolate sauces with the most natural ingredients like the robins chocolate sauces.(organic and fair trade)

I refuse to use any sorbitol, glucose or inverted sugar (I replace it by honey in general in my ganaches...)

Anyone would have a good recipe with decent shelf life and which keeps taste and texture even refrigerated ? to have such a result is it compulsory to use cocoa liquor or lecithin ?

Here I put the typical ingredients from Robins original sauce :

Ingredients Cane sugar*, fresh cream, dark chocolate* (cane sugar*, cocoa liquor*, cocoa butter*, lecithin, vanilla*), butter, cocoa liquor*, vanilla*, lecithin*, salt.

* Certified Organic Ingredients.
Fair Trade Certified Ingredients.

Thanks a lot in advance

Benouse

I'm going to get these books from the library but while I have you guys here, can you give me any tips on retaining the circular shape to truffles after they've been dipped and chilled? As I've mentioned before, after my truffles were dipped and chilled, the bottom of them ended up having a flat surface.

crme frache is a hoity toity term for high fat sour cream, so unless you want sour cream truffles, I wouldn't use it. Whipping cream is heavy cream (BEFORE being turned into crme frache). There's also 18% MF cream, and (sometimes depending on where you are) a cream called "half and half".

My recommendation is to use whipping cream before it goes sour.

Cheers.

Wow! I'll definitely have to take a look at the Chocolate & Confections book. As far as cream goes, do you usually just use whipping cream if it calls for "heavy cream" as Brad mentioned or should I use crme frache which I did find recently in the grocery store?

Thanks

Peter Greweling's book is EXCELLENT!

I own a copy, have read it several times now, and every time I learn something new and get different ideas. Money well spent.

The first book I bought was Making Artisan Chocolates by Andrew Shotts. I recommend it for beginners, it has an adequate amount of information with a broad range of recipe types.

As you gain more experience, or if you just want an overload of information I recommend Chocolates & Confections by Peter Greweliing.

As far as your melting chocolate, without going into the practice of tempering, your problem most likely is your chocolate was too hot to dip, it should be about 89, which brings me to investment #1 a good thermometer is absolutely necessary, infared is what I think is best.

Thanks for the heavy cream explanation. I'll check the percentages. I took the batch of about 35 or so Oreo Truffles I made to class with me last night as well as to work. I was very surprised! Every person was genuinely ecstatic with them. There were plenty of "they're awesome!" remarks, "unbelievable", "whoa!", "dangerously addicting", "i'm in love" and a few other remarks including "you missed your calling". One went into a chocolate coma and the other was bouncing around the walls. They all seemed to enjoy them more than me but perhaps that's because they don't know how much cream cheese it called for. Now many of them want the recipe.

Do you have any suggestions of which chocolate cookbooks to find?

Heavy cream IS whipping cream. Usually anything with more than 30% Milk Fat is considered heavy cream, and your whipping cream is probably around 35%

There are some very fundamental chocolate confection making concepts you appear to be missing. I would recommend that you purchase a couple of in depth chocolate cook books which cover some of the "theoretical" components of working with Chocolate.

As an FYI, chocolate is arguably the most difficult confection to work with today, and can be the cause of significant frustration for you if you don't understand how it behaves as an ingredient in your confections. Once you understand it's behaviour, the outcome of your confection creations become almost predictable and you no longer really need recipes. You're able to create your own!

Cheers. Hope this helps.

Brad

That's another question I have. I've checked in all of the grocery stores in my area of town and there is no "heavy" cream. All there is is whipping cream. I asked at the bakery and same result. Can I just use whipping cream instead of heavy cream or add a couple tbsp to the whipping cream to make it heavy?

Thanks for the quick reply! I'd love to dip in chocolate but I see I'm not good at that since it didn't coat everywhere and after they cooled, there was that rough bottom to the "balls".

I just tried to make truffles for the first time and decided on a recipe for Oreo Truffles from: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Easy-OREO-Truffles/Detail.aspx

Literally, the only thing I can taste is cream cheese and nothing else! Also, after I dipped them and placed them on a the wax-paper covered baking sheet, they were flat on the bottom instead of a round shape. This is what I did:

Crush 9 of the cookies to fine crumbs via rolling pin & ziplock & then blender such as magic bullet ; reserve for later use. Crush remaining 36 cookies to fine crumbs; place in medium bowl. Add cream cheese; mix until well blended.

Chill this cookie/cream cheese mixture in fridge/freezer for 10 - 30min.

Shape into small sized balls (they get bigger when dipped). You can use a teaspoon to measure first ball.

Chill the balls in fridge/freezer for 10min 1hr.

Dip the balls into melted chocolate. Fish them out with 2 spoons.

- Place the ball on the spoon and use the 2nd spoon the pour the chocolate. Then pass the ball to the other spoon. This will keep the ball from falling apart.

Roll the freshly dipped balls in mixture. (crushed oreo cookies, cocoa powder)

Chill the truffles on waxed-paper covered baking sheet for another 20 30min then leave in fridge until ready to eat.

After I dipped them in melted chocolate (maybe chocolate too hot?) some of them broke apart and melted when they came in contact with the chocolate.

Yuck. Where'd I go wrong? Maybe I should have tried a more classic truffle for my first time.

1) Savour the Salon du Chocolat in Paris

2) Visit a cocoa plantation

3) Expose the psychopathic nature of the Multinational Chocolate Corporations.

Okay, I am neither Jack Nicholson for Morgan Freeman and I don't have a note from a doctor saying my time on earth is coming to an end anytime soon.

I have done a lot in the last 17 years that I've been involved with the wonderful world of chocolate - traveled to about a dozen countries (not nearly enough), met a lot of people (but not all of them), ate A LOT of chocolate (some bad, but most good). And every time I turn around, there's some new place or person to visit and some new chocolate to try.

I definitely want to visit Bali, never been there, and I have always loved the chocolate made from the beans that come from Java, Surabaya, and elsewhere in the region. I have some good friends there and know a top pastry chef at a top hotel so I know I can eat and sleep well in addition to roughing it in the countryside.

But what about you? What's on your Chocolate Bucket (not Charlie Bucket) List?

Tomric carries a badger hair brush - sells in the $100 range. But I've found that the Japanese Varnish brush from Lee Valley works equally well for a whole lot less money.

http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?c=&p=20040&cat=1,190,43034