We are so lucky at 189 Brackett Street. We love our customers, and our customers love us. At no time was this more obvious than during the Valentine season. First, we were serenaded! Four very well dressed gentlemen came in to buy Valentine boxes, waiting for each other after their respective purchases. When all were done, they lined up and treated us to the most beautiful Valentine a capella performance. So lovely it gave us all goose bumps! Next , one of our youngest customers, Wolfe, gave Catherine a hand-drawn Valentine, see above. Wolfe and his parents Jacob and Lauren...
I am writing this entry while on our short January break, which started on New Year's Eve and ends this Wednesday. Looking back, the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year were a blur. Darcy painted molds, Patricia made mendiants, we all made ganaches and filled thousands upon thousands of chocolates before making up boxes that would be instantly snapped up. We had to limit larger box purchases in order to have enough for all to the end of the holidays. Our kind customers graciously obliged us and shifted to smaller formats. So this was a splendid holiday season for...
Our little team started to plan for the holiday season in October. Now that we had year-to-year numbers, we naively thought we would be able to gauge demand. Or perhaps not, as we found with our Little Turkeys. Simply put, we didn't sell twice as many, but FIVE times their number from last year! Their production reminded me of Easter when we were making daily hatches of eggs to keep up with demand. So we did with the little guys, and we still came up short. Do give us credit for trying, though, and we will certainly apply the lesson to...
Our customers were already in love with our Baby Dragons and the Scary Pumpkins, but nothing could prepare them for the skulls we unveiled this year. Skulls with BRAINS mind you... The gory prospect of eating the gooey contents (salted caramel and crunchy little rice puffs) made them a runaway, instant bestseller. We kept making them, along with more Dragons and Pumpkins, to satisfy the seemingly endless appetite of the neighborhood. So much fun!
And a very first Happy Birthday to Chocolats Passion at 189 Brackett Street! The year exceeded our wildest expectations. It started when we found out, very soon after opening, that the West End just longed for a chocolate shop. 189 Brackett is on the walking route of so many in the neighborhood, who stop at Rosemont or Fresh Approach for dinner provisions and then come in to get a little box for dessert that night. And it seems that we have become a choice destination for hostess presents and gifts for "people who have everything". The chocolate high holidays were...
Our Mendiant mixed box, left to right: Nougat in dark chocolate; Australian ginger, Marcona almonds in milk chocolate; Strawberry pâte de fruits/Meyer lemon in Dulcey white; and Organic grapefruit with nuts in dark chocolate. The August heat is a great match for French Mendiants that focus on citrus and fruits, the essence of summer ingredients. We have just created two where chocolate binds more than dominates. The first is made with Dulcey, a superb caramelized white chocolate by the French Valrhona, one of the best chocolate companies in the world. It holds a little slab of pâte de fruits made...
