Kate Romano is a really great photographer in the Bay Area. She focuses on telling stories in food and fashion photography. It's been a delight working with her at her studio on Alameda and learning about food styling along the way. While we have a product that is beautiful and tasty, we couldn't communicate online that without Kate's skills.
Flavor Brainstorm: Make It Rain
Sometimes early morning R&D ingredient questing gets funny looks at the checkout stand.
We draw on our experiences and taste memories from all over the world. Our chocolatier, Melissa Santos, has lived in the Pacific Northwest, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, and northern California. These places come through in flavors like St. George Terroir Gin and Thai tea, but she also draws on a wealth of experiences that are not bound by geographical origin. Themes arise like Nuts & Seeds, Cocktail Hour, and Summer Sessions, but we like to let the flavors develop without being beholden to anything and allow box sets coalesce over time.
We also like talking to people about flavors they love and memories that are tied to them. We don't drink a lot of mojitos, but found that people that eat our chocolates like them and associate the refreshing beverage with summer time. They spoke, we listened, and Mojito founds its way into our Summer Sessions set.
Keep your eyes and ears peeled for flavor profiles here on the blog.
So Shiny, Narcissus Might Fall In
Turkish tea and cookies bonbons, with Turkish tea milk chocolate ganache and a shortbread cookie inside.
People often ask us how we get our chocolates so shiny.
Step one: Cut a hole in the box. Step two: We’re just joking with you. Really, step one is polishing the polycarbonate (hard plastic) molds with microfiber polishing cloths. This is the first thing you do to get chocolate super shiny. Next, we melt and keep colored cocoa butter at the right working temperature and paint the molds. Lost of folks use airbrushes, and we’re not poo-pooing that technique, but we prefer to work without them. We fingerpaint, use brushes, and blow cocoa butter off of spatulas or around in the molds using a handheld air pump. Sometimes we use a little luster dust, with or without alcohol, to make designs. Then we temper chocolate and line the molds with it, creating a thin chocolate shell.