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The Lost Kitchen... and us!

A month ago, my darling neighbor Desi van Til gifted a box of our chocolates to Erin French of the iconic Lost Kitchen.  Not long after, TLK approached us to see if we would be willing to have our Chocolats in their next online market, slated for today at 11 AM.  It took our team a nanosecond to decide, of course, because who doesn't want to be in the company of fabulous Maine women artisans of all stripes?  After a gorgeous ride to Freedom from Portland to deliver our beautiful boxes, Catherine and Fred had a grand time chatting with...

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Eggs! Bunnies! Repeat!

Pack up the heart molds, polish the eggs!  Thematically, the switch from Valentine production to Easter is swift.  This year, the early Easter date (April 4) makes speed even more necessary.  But not stressful, because each of us loves the creativity of making each batch of eggs vividly different from the last.  We love to imagine a festive Easter table adorned by our eggs, each unique. The French Bunnies are more exacting, and Darcy is the ultimate bunny maker with her precise, sheer yet fanciful painting.  Jacques (above) is done in brown tones with a little pink nose and white...

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Preparing for V day

Photo credit Sarah Levine The time span between the holidays and Valentine day is the shortest of all the major chocolate holidays, and as such imposes absolute production discipline on our team!   We use the past year's numbers to guide our output, but also add a hefty increase to deal with last season's shortages.  Among our most popular Valentine offerings are our Big Valentine Heart and our "Love you to the Moon and Stars" boxes, so we are hard at work to make more.  The other challenge is that Valentine season is our favorite time of year to introduce...

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A big win for the team!

Back in March, three weeks before the pandemic shutdown, a young woman entered the shop and asked if we were hiring.  As serendipity would have it, we were, but I told her we were looking for someone with professional pastry training.  No problem, said she, she was a CIA (not the spy agency) graduate in pastry, who had a stint in chocolate making under Chef Greweling (the high priest of the American chocolate industry).  Darcy and I conducted an interview and voila, Sarah Levine joined our team. We insist on pastry skills because of the light touch they develop, but...

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Our Skulls - by the Green Man Review!

The following entry is a reprint (with the kind permission of the editors of the Green Man review) of the most fun review of our Halloween Skulls.  Enjoy! Chocolats Passion Skulls Skulls. I love them. Not only because it’s October, but because I dig their shape. Their mystery. The whole philosophy of existence thing. Yorick? Yeah, I didn’t know him, but I sure did peek at his skull at time or two. But sometimes I just want something to sink my teeth into, and Portland, Maine’s Chocolats Passion has got me covered. Two treats in one – skulls and dark...

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Spreading the word...

 An eternity ago, back before the pandemic and the shutdown,  I was invited to speak at Mechanics' Hall, as part of their Makers' series.  I saw it as a great opportunity to provide a quick primer on the history of chocolate, how we create our artisan goodies,  and finally, to talk about the state of global chocolate today.  The latter is so important because few consumers know much about the environmental and societal issues around chocolate farming. So, I had a soapbox and made good use of it!   Should you be interested, here is a link to my presentation. And...

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