The season's biggest snowstorm, two days after V. Day, couldn't have come at a better time! Our team is a bit exhausted after successive weeks of creating Valentine formats, and selling them just as fast. This forced snow break will allow us to snooze and recharge, and get us back to a gentler production schedule to prepare for a very late Easter (April 20!). Huge props go to my co-owner Sarah for creating the perfect numbers of Love You to the Moon medium and large boxes. We sold out of the medium late on Valentine's Day, and had just...
When I started the business 10 years ago, the line up consisted of seven chocolates: Salted Caramel, Passion Fruit Vanilla, Hazelnut Citrus, Pistachio Raspberry, Dulce de Cafe, Ginger Caramel and Cherry Almond. That line up continued for quite some time as I got my footing and built a following little by little. And it was still pretty intact when we started at Brackett Street in 2018. It was Darcy's arrival on the scene, and then Sarah's, that caused our exponential growth in creativity. All of a sudden we had three functioning palates, three different tastes philosophies and visions. These early...
The entire team cherishes that four-month period between Mother's day and Labor day, because this is when we play! Each team member is tasked with creating new chocolates, and the ideas can be wild! Among the out-there notions this year are grapefruit/goat cheese (Kait), fennel (Catherine), lychee jasmin (Ruby), and carrot cake (Sarah). More classic tastes are also in the cards, with lemon poppy-seed, strawberry matcha, hazelnut calamansi and cassis vanilla. We are also thinking of expanding the range of vegan options in our regular collection, so Briana will put forth a coconut guava offering. And Victoria (a.k.a. our Caramel...
Creating a mural on the entire wall of 175 Spring Street was a dream of ours ever since we decided to move to our beautiful new space. Cacao plants are remarkable small trees that grow best in the shade of larger ones, like the banana trees shown left and right. They sport flowers and pods of all sizes, all at once, along their trunks and branches. They are mostly pollinated by a minuscule midge and sometimes bats. Those are shown in beautiful detail in the second mural, which reads like a botanical print: both murals were created by artist...
Mark January 17, 2024 as a defining date in the life of Chocolats Passion! On this date, Sarah and Catherine became co-owners of this enterprise we love so much. It was clear from the time Sarah joined Chocolats Passion in early 2020 that she brought skills and energy that complemented our small team perfectly. Her creative abilities, a central element of our brand, were on full display when she won a silver medal for her very first creation at the NW Chocolate Festival. This was just six months after joining us! Ever since, she has won medals for six more...
When I started Chocolats Passion 10 years ago, it was a true passion project, a little endeavor to nurture when I retired from my career as a landscape designer. I was also coming full circle because chocolate/nuts/caramel had always been my passion as a little kid growing up in France. I never stopped making things with chocolate, gifting my holiday production to family, friends and clients. Ever the autodidact, I taught myself tempering/molding/applying color to molds, until I recognized my limitations and enrolled at Ecole Chocolat over a two-year period, to get real training. I was now ready to turn...
