 here at the main chair of my Mechanics Association, otherwise known as Mechanics Hall. And we are just delighted to see all of you here tonight. What a great turnout. Of course, the chocolate. How can you not be turned out of the chocolate? So how many people here are here for the first time in Mechanics Hall? Yes. I hope you fell in love with it the same way I fell in love with it. And if you do, we have all kinds of membership options for you. You can come and use the library. It's a wonderful, wonderful place. Tonight, we are just delighted to be able to have an expert on chocolate, which is, I don't know about you, but one of my favorite subjects. It's Catherine. Where's someone? Yes, I'm sure they're right. I fell in love with her chocolate a little over a year ago when I met my first chocolate dragon. You haven't met a chocolate dragon. It's a great treat. I think you're going to get a little taste of that sort of thing tonight, later on. She is an absolutely full-fledged, properly trained, properly deep-twung, and prized, winning chocolatier. And if you haven't tasted some of it yet, you're in for a treat. She first started in a whole bunch of other careers, but then she couldn't stand it anymore, obviously. And she went to a chocolate-making school and became a professional chocolatier. So she opened her first shop in Massachusetts, right? Actually, it was online, just online, yes. The first shop is here. And then, like Heaven's score, yes, she moved. And opened a shop here, a shop where you can walk in the door and look at all of it and smell of the chocolates. So that, well, she moved to Maine in 2017, opened her own store in Brackett Street. She's added people to her staff since then. And I think they're here. Yeah? Maybe she's dinnering. Yeah, so I will. And she has already, in this time, collected several awards for her chocolate products. So it is with great pleasure that I can use. Thank you very much. Well, thank you so much for being here. Everybody can hear me, even in the back, OK? Well, it's a great pleasure to be here today to talk about my favorite thing in the universe, which is chocolate. I thought I would do the talk in basically three parts. I want to talk very briefly about the history of chocolate because it is a fascinating history. There is a lot that has happened. And chocolate has really been on the mind and on the taste buds of people for many thousands of years. Then I'd like to talk about how we make our chocolates, how Chocolapation creates its creations and the process we use. And then I'd like to close by talking about the bigger world of chocolate because there's a huge amount of things that are happening in the chocolate world that are going to have an impact on all of us, whether we are makers of chocolates or consumers of chocolate. So let's get going. I'd like to first introduce actually a couple of my team members. Patricia Menett, could you stand up, Patricia? Patricia gave you little trays of goodies and I'd love for you to restrain yourselves and have those as we go because they are really supposed to be enjoyed. They're mostly ingredients with one final chocolate at the end. For you to better understand the process, I think it's important to taste. And the newest member of our team was here, Sarah Levine. If you... Sarah is a graduate of the CIA, not in Langley, the one in New York, the pastry school and is joining us actually next week. Missing is Darcy Brennan-Poor, who is my longest working associate, who is actually in St. Lucia this week, where she's going to be touring a chocolate plantation. So we are going to miss Darcy, but you will see her during our presentation. So let's get going. Let me see if I can turn this so I can see the screen. Is there a way of making the screen a little clearer? To me it seems a little fuzzy. Does it seem fuzzy to you or is it okay? It's okay. So let's talk about when it all began. When did humans connect to chocolate? It began with rats. It began with rats and you can see their damage right here. You see those holes in the cocoa pots over 3,000 years ago. It happened during the Olmec civilization, which was the first great civilization of the Central America. The Olmec created these amazing statues, which you see on the right. They had a great deal of influence and their time was long actually. They basically were around for about 800 years, way ahead of the Maya and the Aztecs, about whom we will speak later. The rats were gorging on these cocoa pots and the Olmec realized that it was actually edible. So what they did is they made it into a drink. The drink was incredibly bitter because sugar did not exist in that part of the world, but they added spices to it to make it more palatable and that chocolate drink became a sacred element in the life of Central America. The key areas after the Olmec, of course, was the Maya Empire, which followed the Olmec by several hundred years. And then the Aztec civilization. Both civilizations put enormous value on chocolate. Actually, cocoa beans and the drink were far more valuable than gold. And it was exemplified because it was used a great deal as ceremonial, during ceremonial exchanges. For example, this represents a marriage ceremony where the bride and groom each exchange five cocoa beans, as they say, their vows. So that really gives you a good sense of how important it was to them. In Aztec civilization, actually, cocoa beans were used as currency, as money. And you could even buy a slave with enough cocoa beans and you can see here the bar of value of, you needed a few, just a few in order to buy an avocado, far more to buy a toga to get the services of the porter and so forth. So all of those things were enormously important to those civilizations. And continued, these are the use of cocoa beans and cocoa as a drink basically continued. It was only a drink for centuries. We then come to Columbus, discovering, quote, unquote, the new world. He totally accidentally discovered cocoa beans on his fourth and last voyage, just about three, four years before his death. He went to what is currently known as Honduras, right here, the trip that is shown in red, right here. On this coast, he actually came across a cargo of a merchant, of an Aztec merchant, and robbed him in true conquistador fashion. He stole the cargo and added it to his loot, which he took back to Spain. Well, the king of Spain was far more interested in the gold that was in the hold of the ship than the cocoa beans, and nothing happened with cocoa in Europe for another 80 years. However, so this is Columbus, it's exchanges. However, about 85 years later, a fryer popularized or used new cocoa beans came in from the new world, and a fryer popularized a drink. At that time, sugar had been, was cultivated and was used to actually sweeten the drink, which made the whole difference to Europeans. So you are seeing here this, a scene the very first cocoa makers in Valencia, Spain. Spain held on to the secret of Cacao for the most of the 1500s. But in 1603, the king of France, Rida 13th, received the cocoa beans as a wedding present. And at that point, the French court discovered cocoa, and the world was never the same. And actually the kings of France were among the biggest fans of chocolate. The Rida 15th in particular would actually make himself a part of hot chocolate in his private quarters, and he taught his mistresses how to do the same. In order to have cocoa, it was supposed to have aphrodisiac properties and longevity properties, a lot of things were attributed to cocoa in those days. So here you can see that the class of the people who enjoyed cocoa in those days were the super, super rich people of noble birth who were in the courts of France, then Italy and other European countries. It was not something that the Hohepoloid, the average person on the street even knew about. It was a very expensive commodity and was really enjoyed only by the upper classes. Well, how did it become more popular? Boston actually was a place where cocoa became more popular in the late 1600s and 1700s. What happened is that cocoa started to percolate down in terms of social classes and very nice bars for cocoa were opened in a variety of European capitals. And it became much more popular in Boston, a place like that was opened and people started to really enjoy cocoa and it started to become cheaper. But it's not really till we hit the industrial, the very beginning of the industrial revolution that we started to see a huge sea change in the adoption of cocoa by the common folks. And one of the fathers of this is actually an assessor of my husband, was Casperis van Houten, created this contraption here. This is a cacao press. What it did is it separated in a mechanical way cocoa butter from the cocoa mass. So what was left was cocoa powder. And he was the inventor of cocoa powder and cocoa powder went on to completely revolutionize cocoa production. 20 years later, two Englishmen, Joseph Fry and John Cadbury, you've heard the name Cadbury, I'm sure, started to work with cocoa and they created the chocolate bar. Up to that point, remember that cocoa was only enjoyed as a drink. So they basically created the chocolate bar by taking van Houten's cocoa powder, mixing it with cocoa mass and sugar and pressing it into a mold. And they realized that there was absolutely a huge market and both companies started to compete ferociously in the English market to sell their product while in the U.S. Milton Hershey came on the scene around the same time and started his conquest of making cocoa a popular product with the masses in America. What was very fascinating about actually John Cadbury, he was a Quaker. And as a Quaker, he had very strong beliefs on how to treat his employees. And he was actually in a time where the Industrial Revolution in England was not a pretty picture. A lot of people were dying of black lung, of white lung, with cotton, black lung, with obviously coal and but Cadbury had a different vision. He decided that he would set up in open land, near Birmingham, a new city called Bournville. And Bournville became a modern utopian vision of what could happen with good employers. And he set up this factory and what is very interesting, you can see people enjoying a Sunday stroll, people, this is images at the time. What is fascinating is when you look at the current map of Bournville and I'm going to blow it up, the employee quarters were all here. This is a Cadbury factory right here. This is today. This is a map I picked up from Google Maps just a few days ago, as I was preparing for this. And but you can see in this remarkable how the employee housing was created. And it's really wonderful. You can see the little houses on each side and the gardens. Cadbury believed that his employees to be fruitful would need to have a little plot of land that could cultivate with their own vegetables. And so he did the same thing. And I will also add that the Hershey, Pennsylvania picture is not as pretty. It's not as well preserved. I think it's gone through a few generations of buildings being demolished, unlike Bournville, but Milton Hershey did the same actually in a very parallel way in America where he set up a model village in Hershey, very close to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to house his workers. And this was also a utopian vision of what a benevolent employer could do for his employees. So we have this, the chocolate world to thank in fact for being great examples of what one can do if one is willing. So this is basically what I'd like to talk about. So this is Milton Hershey's factory, the first factory. I don't know how many of you have been to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yes, I never have myself. But I don't know if the factory still looks like this. But it was truly a very important component of how chocolate was to grow. And both Frye, Cadbury, and Hershey enjoyed many decades of success. The world today is a little different. So I want us to kind of shift into how chocolate is made today. And I'm going to give you a little primer on how chocolate is made in general before we talk about what we do. So you have context. So we obviously have industrial production. What we do at Chocolat Passion and at 550 square feet, there's zero resemblance to this. Just so you know, this is what the huge chocolate factories look like. Look at this melting tank here. You could swim in it. These are all the products being done. Look at the huge amount of equipment here. And I wanted you to get acquainted with some of the biggest names in cocoa. These are the six biggest in the world. Mars is number one. Ferrero is number two. Mandela is a name you wouldn't know, but you would know their brands. And they've actually acquired Frye's and they've acquired Cadbury. So they also have Nabisco. They have Cotto, which originally was a Belgian brand. And so for Toblerone, which was, I think, Italian. So they are absolutely humongous. These companies represent a huge market about which we will talk at the end. This is not what we do, OK? What we do is artisanal production. But there are two types of artisanal production. There is what is called bean-to-bar. And then there is what we do, which is to be chocolatiers. And the two products are very different. I want you to understand that so as a consumer, you know exactly what you are getting and how we work. So this is a really wonderful little graphic that shows how bean-to-bar comes about. Bean-to-bar was not even a concept 25 years ago. It's about 23 years ago that a company called Scharfen Burger, have you heard of it, came on the scene. And they were a bean-to-bar maker. And they created a revolution in the chocolate world. Because all of a sudden, they were creating what is called single-origin chocolates. That means they took chocolates from one single location and made them basically in two bars through this process. Let me take you through it quickly. OK, these are the cocoa pods, obviously, typically being harvested in the fall. You take the inside out. You are going to dry them. All of this is happening on the cocoa plantation. And then you are going to ship off the finished cocoa beans just ready to the bean-to-bar maker. And those people typically have very close contacts with the people who grow their cocoa. They know those people. They select them specifically because they want a certain flavor profile. Because chocolate tastes very different depending which part of the world you are in. And even within a single region, you can have some fantastic chocolate and some horrible chocolate. So the notion is that once that bean-to-bar maker gets those beans, they are first going to roast them. Every step of this is going to have an impact on the final taste. So you have a lot of very tiny bean-to-bar makers who make truly horrible chocolate. And then you have some who make truly absolutely fantastic chocolate. So every step really, you can mess up pretty much at every step. So here you are basically roasting the chocolate. Then you winnow it. It simply means that you are separating the, you are taking the bean and you are separating the little husk that is on the chocolate itself, the little pieces of chocolate. And you are going to take those. You are basically separating them out. And then you are going to put it through a refining process where you can get it so when you put it on your tongue, you are not going to feel any grittiness because the little coconut nibs, which is what goes in there, just little hard pieces. So they have to be worked for hours, actually for days, typically in order to get the right taste. You may have tasted some chocolate, like for example, Taza in Boston, I don't know if you've ever had that chocolate, is very much made in a Mexican fashion where they take the cocoa and it is not refined that long. So it tastes very gritty. It tastes very elemental in a way. That is a choice they have made. This is how they position their chocolate. But most of us are used to a chocolate that melts on the tongue without any grittiness. And so most of those being to bar makers are basically doing that. And then what they do here, so it goes to a stone grinder and then they add the other elements they want. You need to add sugar because believe me, 100% cocoa might be healthy for you, but you won't eat enough to make any difference to your health, I promise you. Because it is pretty horrible. It is really, I have sometimes people coming into the shop and saying, oh, I love 90% chocolate. I say, well, good for you. But I don't really believe, I think it is to be, it's an indulgence. It's meant to be enjoyed. And so I'd like to have some sugar in my chocolate. Thank you. So you may, they may add those things like vanilla to the chocolate and any other additions you can make bean to bar. That could be a coffee chocolate bar. So you would add some coffee to that. So all of those additions are done and then they pour them in molds, in bar molds, and then the bar is done. So that's how bean to bar makers basically are doing it. This is not what we do. So if we look, but in Maine, Bixby in Rockland is an excellent bean to bar maker. They make delicious chocolate. They make other things as well, but they are probably one of the bigger bean to bar makers in our Maine. And these are two examples of their single origin chocolates with this beautiful label. So what we do is different. We are a chocolatier, a confectioner. And which means that our confections have two components. They have a chocolate shell and they have an inside. And that inside is called ganache. Ganache is a French word and it's simply a emulsification of cream, butter, chocolate. You could do a little bit of vanilla. We have a chocolate that's just made with that, a single origin from Madagascar, very pure chocolate. And a lot of people love that very pure chocolate and stop there. But we don't stop there because, you know, having just one type of chocolate in a chocolate shop is not very appealing. So what we do is we make ganache. And when ganache is made, so this ganache can be done with the addition of fruit puree. It can be done, you could steep, for example, if you want to make a coffee ganache, you would simply put the ground coffee beans in your cream and then bring it to a simmer, let it steep for about 10 minutes, then put it through a chinois, a sieve to get rid of the coffee grounds because those are no fun. And then that will make you a coffee ganache. And you can make many ganaches. The ganache up here is one of ours. It's a passion fruit vanilla ganache. It's a chocolate that has two components. The light one orange, that's a passion fruit. The other one is a vanilla. The passion fruit is made with a white chocolate. I didn't bring you any white chocolate to taste because it's pretty boring. But in a minute you'll be able to start actually tasting the chocolates, the little circles of chocolates, the little pallets, the tiny little tray. But we use white chocolate to basically to make fruit ganaches because it has no taste. Therefore the taste of the fruit comes through. The other way of doing a ganache, this one is more, it's not liquid, but it's soft. The other way to make it is to use less cream and more chocolate, which makes it stiffer. And you basically have it crystallized in this tray. So it's at a certain height, typically let's say less than half an inch. And then you are going to use that and cut it in little squares and then robe it. So this is the way. Ganache is the center for all those chocolates, but it's sweet, totally different confections. Truffles and robe chocolate, that's from this big slab of ganache. And what we do mold it. And those are some of our chocolates. And I want to give you examples around here. Dean Sweet is a perfect example of a truffle artisan. He basically makes his ganache centers, rolls them, and then he dips every single one of those in chocolate. And the chocolate shell protects the ganache. So it has a good shelf life, typically anywhere from three to five weeks. So that's one way of doing it. The second one is Black Diner, who makes, actually both Dean Sweet and Black Diner also make molded chocolates, but I'm really talking about the way they primarily make chocolate. So in Black Diner's case, they use this thing, it's called the guitar. This guitar basically has strings, just like the musical instrument does. But these strings are like this and they allow you to cut the slab of ganache into little squares or rectangles. And then you can put them through a little curtain of chocolate on this little wheel that goes like this. And then outcome, beautiful shiny chocolate on which you can put, like here, they did a walnut, or you could do, take a fork and do a little design on it, or you could do a decal called a transfer sheet. And that is a very classic way of doing chocolates. Actually, in Europe, many chocolates are still made that way. And you will see that very commonly. So that's not what we do. Actually, what we do, and this is a little shop right here in better weather, and these are molds. What we do is we are molding artisans. And those molds, as you can see, all have different colors. They are basically, we use cocoa butter colors so you can identify your chocolate so you know what you are eating. And they represent a whole bunch of different flavors we were putting, working on last fall. But it really represents how, you know, the first step as to what we do. So what is key, though, is how do we go from this? These are the molds we use. They are polycarbonate, they are super hard. They last for years, if you treat them properly, to that. And this is a display case and with a finished chocolate. And this is really what I'd like to talk about next and show you that first, of course, as a way of background, we need a shell too. Just like Dean Sweet or Black Diner created a shell in various ways, we need a shell. And I want to explain a little bit about tempering chocolate because that really is what separates the girls from the women, I guess. And really the difference, if you cannot, you can learn how to temper. And when you're in chocolate school, you learn how to temper this way. You have a slab of granite or marble. You dump some chocolate that you've preheated, a tool, let's say 110 degrees, you dump it, you take a spatula and a knife, basically, and you work, you work it. And the tempering happens as the temperature of the chocolate drops and the coolness of the slab is basically cooling it and at the same time you are agitating it. What you are doing is when you melted the chocolates, the chocolate, you took all the crystals out because crystals go out of whack. Remember when you have a chocolate bar melt in your car and you take it inside, you don't want to waste it, you let it cool down and then you take a piece and it looks truly putrid. It looks streaky and gray. You know what, the chocolate is out of temper. That's what's happened, that beautiful glossy bar has become gray because it's out of temper. So we need to make sure with everything we create that the chocolate is in temper. But you cannot do an artisanal production by simply using a slab all day long. You would go crazy and you'd produce, you know, three dozen chocolates a day. So that wouldn't work. So what we do is we have machines. So we have three machines actually, but two are shown here. This machine is called 207. You can ask me later why the name is 207. And then this machine is Bertha. And this is Bertha, actually in action. So what we do with those machines is when we need chocolate the night before we turn it on and we turn it to 115 or so. And what happens with the night is all the chocolate melts and all the crystals are destroyed. And it basically sits there in the morning. Patricia comes in. She immediately lowers the temperature of the machine and she adds several scoops of tempered chocolate in the colored form. And actually it's a good time for you to start noshing. You can pick up your things. So don't eat the cute little hot chocolate that's at the end. There are two chocolates for you to taste. One of them is a milk 41% from guitar. And the other one is a 74% organic. So just let those melt in your mouth. But the idea basically is that we temper the chocolate and what we do, so we lower the temperature to a working temperature. Chocolate has to be between 87 and 88 for milk and 89, 90 for dark in order to be in a working range. This is where we can work with it all day. And so what we do is you cannot really see it very well but you see there's a little machine here that's lit. This little machine is a little treasure chest of cocoa seed, cocoa butter seed. So it's full of cocoa butter, which is kept at the perfect temperature. And that cocoa butter represents a pure form of the crystals we need to see that chocolate with. And we can see that chocolate at a rate of 1% or even less. So these machines hold 45 pounds of chocolate. We usually typically have about 15 kilos or 20 kilos. We typically have about 12 to 15 kilos. So we will add about 120 to 150 grams of that marvelous soft cocoa butter that's in that little machine. We stir it and voila, we have tempered chocolate. And the wheel here is going to agitate the chocolate all day long. We don't need to have a human moving this thing around like crazy all day trying to keep it at the right temperature. And the machine itself does that. So this is the central part of our production. We use those machines, they're like tanks. They're very solid. We use them constantly. This one is dedicated to milk, which is in your little tray. That's exactly the milk we have in it. And this one actually has a 72% dark, which is not organic. You have a 74% organic is what I gave you. We use, if you were to come into our shop right now, we just recently got the delivery and we have boxes of chocolate everywhere. So all of our chocolate comes from Guitar, which is a company that has a little bit over $100 million in sales. They are not a huge guy, but they are pretty big in the chocolate world. And they are in California and they make fantastic chocolate. And we use anywhere from five to eight of their different chocolates, depending what their needs are. But we get, so the organic chocolate you are tasting is right here. And this is our regular 72% and this is a white chocolate we use for aganashes. So we'll talk more about Guitar a little bit later. So now you understand that we are using these couverture chocolate. Coupverture in French means cover. These are very high quality chocolates. We're not talking about baking chocolate. You couldn't use baking chocolate to enrobe any ganache at all. It just wouldn't work. It doesn't have the right viscosity, which means the right suppleness to basically go into the mold properly and to, particularly when you use molds that have a lot of details like the dragons you were talking about earlier. Those things have a lot of details. With a bad chocolate, you would have a lot of little air pockets. It would not go into all the details. You need a chocolate that has a right viscosity to basically work. And so that's why we love the Guitar chocolate so much. So let's talk about how we do it. So this is a missing teeth member who is getting sunburned in St. Lucia, Darcy. Darcy is a primary artist. She is the one who does all the color on that chocolates. She is immensely talented. She's a pastry chef by training. And we've been working together for two years. And what we are starting to work on right now is Jacques, the bunny. So Jacques, just so you know, is just a shell. It's a chocolate shell. And he has salted caramel in him, a soft caramel, rice puffs, and then he gets close. And we are going to show you the whole process through this little movie. So Darcy, I'm going to narrate what she is doing. You see, this is a mold Jacques comes in. You see all those big magnets? These molds are very expensive. They're about cost about $150 a piece. And they are there because he has a 3D piece of chocolate, not a 2D. So what Darcy is doing, obviously, is to paint his little ears first. You see this part right here. And then his little tail, because he has to have a fluffy little tail. You know, cuteness counts. And now she is going to paint his eyes. So Jacques happens to have big blue eyes. We have Marius, who is a different bunny, with, who is from Provence, and he has much darker eyes. So he has his old nose here. And oh, I'm sorry, the sound is not off. Oh, actually, I thought there were so much. This is what our machine sounds like. And she is applying a very thin layer of cocoa butter color to his coat. And now Darcy is right in front of Bertha and filling the body of little Jacques Bunnies with chocolate. So the idea here is to form a shell because we need that protective outside. She's tapping it in real life. She's tapping it about 10 times harder because you need to make sure that little horizontal ear gets chocolate in it. And then after a couple of minutes, she's emptying it because we now have a shell that has been formed. And we are going to let it dry. And now we are filling it, so the caramel, caramel, rest up, so the caramel, and then we close it. And then he's closed. And now finished. We pry apart the magnets, which is no mean feat, and here are the little Bunnies, okay? So that's how we do those old guys. Oh, they are about four inches tall. So they are a lot of fun. But so this was a process, and I'll show you another slide before you have your little heart that shows the steps again, just so everybody is clear on them. But what is really important though, we are makers of confections, and it's really very, I think it's really important, maybe it's my French background, but and I think it's actually general of all confection makers is we really want to deliver the very best taste possible. And so it means that some things that could be available to you that are already made I simply don't want to touch because it's not going to deliver on the experience the right way. So what you have, by the way, in your little tray is you have a little piece of mayo lemon which you are welcome to taste anytime. So this mayo lemon, I'm going to show you how we can eat. And so what we do is we basically have no shortcuts. In a lot of the things we do and the two areas I want to illustrate that with is the candying of citrus and also stone grinding tree nuts. The reality is that you can buy ready made candied citrus but I promise you it's not going to taste as good. It also is likely to have a lot of chemicals, preservatives that I simply don't want to have. In our chocolate. And also the other thing is is that we really want to only work with organic citrus. Because the problem with eating the peel of anything if it's been treated is that you're eating the chemicals. I don't think that's a desirable experience. So we basically say no to that. And we get our citrus from this wonderful farm near San Diego. There's a woman, Linda, who grows all different kinds of organic citrus. And we've used many of her citruses like Yuzu. We used Yuzu a lot last year. Buddha's hand, isn't that the strangest looking thing? It actually looks more like an octopus to me. It's a fantastic taste. We use it in our vegan mondios because it's a very exotic taste. It almost has a taste of violets. And then the one we use the most is Maya Lemons. And the person who does actually the Queen of Candying is Patricia. Who is here. And here Patricia is standing with grapefruit that is just being blanched. And I didn't put actually any grapefruit in your little dish. I was initially going to do it and I took it out because it's too bitter on its own. Which takes me to other things. The fact is it may be too bitter on its own but it's perfect inside a chocolate because it balances out other elements. But let's see how we citrus, candy citrus. So these are Maya Lemons. We get them about 20 to 30 pounds at a time from Linda. They are absolutely beautiful. Maya Lemons have a very sweet juice. And the first thing Patricia does is that she saves the juice. She juices everything, puts the juice in containers. We freeze them because we use that juice throughout the year in our production. And it's really precious and it's absolutely delicious. And then she cuts the lemon into strips that you can see here. They're in a bowl. And the first thing you have to do, this is not rocket science, believe me. You can't sit, candy anything at home. This is a French, very slow way but it only requires a little bit of work and very short spurts. So the idea here is that Patricia will then fill the container of the pot with water, cold water and bring it to a simmer. And then she'll rinse that. She'll do that three to four times with Maya Lemons. She might do it six or seven times with grapefruit because grapefruit has a very thick rind. The idea is to get the white part, which is a pith, the inside part of the peel to lose some of its bitterness. So that's really very important. So once the fruits are blanched, it's very simple. You simply take, you weigh your lemons, all your lemon peels, you put them back in the pot and you add the exact same quality of organic sugar. So it's basically 50-50. You dump the sugar in there, you add water till you get right above the lemon and then you bring it to a simmer and you simmer it for 30 minutes. Then you put a lid on it and you leave it alone for two days. Two days later you pull it out, put 10% of the original sugar weight into the pot, bring it back to a simmer, stop it, put a lid on it, do the same thing. How many times did we do the grapefruit lately, Patricia? Yeah. So the grapefruit took a month. And every time we tasted it, I said, my God, it's still so bitter because it was incredibly thick rind, but my lemons are not bitter. I hope you didn't find that. And so what we do is we do this and as time goes, the entire peel becomes yellow on both sides, the same color both sides. And then what Patricia does is she puts it on some paper towels, puts it in the dehydrator for a couple of hours in order to basically dry it out. At home you can put it in the fridge for a couple of days that will also dry it out. Don't put a cover on it, just leave it alone. And then you can basically enjoy it. You can freeze it and then enjoy it for a year. So it's really very easy to do, but it's really worthwhile. And we treat all our citrus that way because I love citrus. And so we have to have citrus in lots of different chocolates. The other things that we do is we grind our hazelnuts. And actually you have in your little tray a couple of hazelnuts and some pistachios. So the hazelnuts come from Freddy Guy's hazelnuts in Monmouth, Oregon. They have delicious hazelnuts. These are slightly roasted. We get them from them that way. They are not in the shell, by the way. Hazelnuts like this do not grow in Maine. Maine is too cold. The hazelnut that we use in production has to be grown in a more temperate climate. And then we get up pistachios from Fitment Farms in California, in Roosevelt, California. Both of these are family farms and they have just beautiful, beautiful tree nuts. And what we do with those tree nuts is that we basically grind them. We make a paste out of them. Again, we could take the shortcut of buying pastes. The problem with that is that first of all it's never going to be as fresh. But the bigger problem is that we don't control how much sugar there is in there. And we like for some of our products like a hazelnut spread to have much less sugar when we make a gen douille, which is milk chocolate and hazelnut paste, we have much more sugar. So that's really important. So let me see if I can get this to work. Yes! So these are the hazelnuts, basically going in. Then we add, I did that. This is the sugar we use for the gen douille. And this sugar is organic. It then goes into the bobu coup. But you could never get that result in a food processor. It just doesn't do it fine enough. This is a little stone grinder. It's actually not so little. It holds about three kilos, about six and a half, seven pounds. We add to it, we keep on adding to it. And the basic idea is to get it this beautiful, glossy, isn't that beautiful, hazelnut. This is the way the hazelnut paste looks at the end. And the idea, again, is if you were to put it on your tongue, it's not going to have grit. You can still see in it little pieces of skin. Some of your hazelnuts had skin on them. But the idea, basically, is to create this beautiful paste. And so that's how we do that. The other little piece of thing you are welcome to eat is a little piece of pâte de frie that Patricia made just a couple of days ago. So this one is made with Cape Elizabeth strawberries, which we collect in the summer. And then we make this pâte de frie. It's going into one of the mondiales that Patricia makes. And that's really delicious. Very intense strawberry taste, isn't it? And that's because there's nothing like Cape Elizabeth strawberries. You could never get that taste if you were to use a commercial strawberry. And so we collect those strawberries in the summer, process them the very same day through the food processor with lemon. Then we put them in containers, freeze them. And I think I have at least 35 to 40 pounds of them. By the time I'm done, I go to Maxwell several times to do that, otherwise my back would never forgive me. And then put them in the freezer. And then we use them throughout the year. And it's really, we made a strawberry chocolate for Valentine's Day that was made with that strawberry. So those are some of the things that we do. So now you have a little chocolate in your tray. Before you eat it, don't gobble it up because it has three components. I want you to know. So this is a little recap of Jack the Bunny in case you missed the process. These are, this is an old mold actually. I took these pictures years and years ago. I don't use this big hot mold anymore. But it's useful because the little chocolate you have is exactly the same chocolate as in this huge heart. So the color goes in first, then you cast. You can see the shell. So the chocolate you have is actually a milk chocolate. And it has a pâte de frie, which you just tasted, except the pâte de frie we use in this chocolate is raspberry. And I get that from California, from Perfect Pure Aids of Napa Valley. And so we have the pâte de frie to which we add the little pieces of Maya lemon. You have a little piece of Maya lemon. That's why I had you taste all those old components. And then we add the pistachio ganache. And you see there's a little edge here, so you can close this. And then this is a finished chocolate. So feel free to enjoy your little chocolate. And you may want to just nibble it slowly so you can pick up all the different components or wolf it down, whatever your style might be. So now, as you eat your chocolate, so I want us to talk about the bigger world of chocolate because I think this is a place where as a chocolatier, I want to contribute to everyone's chocolate education so you understand better where this marvelous product comes from and at what cost and what is going on in this big world and how we basically can do things better and how you as a consumer can help and I as a chocolatier can also help. So first of all, it's important to understand that chocolate doesn't grow everywhere, obviously. It grows between the tropic of cancer and the tropic of Capricorn, roughly 23 degrees on each side of the equator. So this is really the cocoa belt, even though in Central America here, there is some chocolate production. All that chocolate production is in orange and gold. And you can see this is the chocolate belt. There are obviously some parts of the world where there is no hope of growing chocolate like the Sahara Desert because chocolate is a small tree. Chocolate is a tiny tree, like a big shrub, maybe 10 to 12 foot tall maximum, and it likes to grow in a rainforest. And as we know, rainforests are fast disappearing. Chocolate trees in order to thrive need moisture, shade. And so that is really very fast changing in many parts of the world because of deforestation. And so the areas where you can actually grow effectively chocolate are rather limited. What is really very important to know is that 70% of the world chocolate production comes from Africa. Okay, so I'm going to throw some statistics. I didn't want this to be too slidish with too many words, but I do want you to have these numbers. Right now, chocolate worldwide, chocolate production is 130 billion. And it's going to become 160 billion in four years. And it was only 85 billion five years ago. So it is growing incredibly fast and it is a disappearing resource. What is really important to know also is who consumes chocolate. And what is happening is actually that consumption of chocolate you'll be interested to know is much higher in Europe than it is in the US. 50% of world consumption happens in Europe. The average European eats more chocolate than Americans. The average Swiss person eats 22 pounds of chocolate a year. Okay, so Americans are lower on the totem pole there. But 20% of the world production is consumed in the US. The biggest growing segment is in Asia because all of a sudden countries like China have discovered chocolate and it's becoming very popular. And of course it's putting a strain on the resources but it's also growing the market enormously. And so when you look at Africa as a primary, so Africa and Central America grow them and also countries like Venezuela in Central America but also a little bit in South America. Brazil is a very big producer of chocolate as well. Then you have countries like Indonesia that are producing some chocolate but the lion's share is in Africa. And not just Africa, there are two countries in Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, the Ivorian coast and Ghana which represent half of the world production. So they are humongous in the chocolate world. And as a result, they actually have not used it up to now but now they are starting to really use their power as truly the epicenter of world chocolate production. So it's really important to know that this is going on. What is going on though is on the Ivorian coast, more than 50% of the country was covered by forests in 1960. And 15 years ago, it had shrunk basically by eightfold. And I don't even know what the newest statistic is because I couldn't find it. But you would have to assume it's shrinking. So again, a resource which is really straining to meet demand and the reality is also that most chocolate is grown by very tiny family units. In Africa, your average family farm has anywhere from six to eight family members growing on less than 10 acres. And 80% of the work at Cocoa comes from those little family farms. And of course, individually, they feel they have no power. So that's very important. And the thing that is happening in Africa, which by the way is not happening in Central America, there is no child labor to speak of in Central America. But in Africa, there are over two million children who are working in a cocoa plantations. And this is not pretty work. It's very dangerous work. And the children are particularly utilized as always a spike in child labor when you need to establish new cocoa farms. Because then they represent the cheapest form of labor. And it's at that point that they are used in order to do that work. It's very punishing work, very dangerous work. Those kids obviously should be in school. So what is happening? What is happening on the supply side, you know, with the makers of chocolate? Well, the reality is, is that a lot of the big chocolate makers talk a really good game but don't follow through. And it's very important to understand the reality in the field is that the average farmer in Africa makes about $2,700 a year fair trade, which is a very powerful organization made up of individual chocolate company members who abide by its rules has realized that actually these farmers make less than half what they should be making. And so something has to happen. Well, something is actually happening in a huge way. And it's just started to happen about a year ago. Back in June, the whole world of chocolate went topsy-turvy when the governments of Ghana and the Ivory Coast announced that they would no longer tolerate farmers being paid less than a floor. And that's what they call it. They call it the living income differential, LID. They said, from now on, if you want to buy a chocolate, you have to pay farmers a floor price of $1,820 a ton. That translates, by the way, to about 80 cents a pound. Okay, just so you have that figure in mind. And so those governments decided that and immediately fair trade said yes, members are going to do that. They are going to do exactly that. And actually the first year this is happening is in October this year when the harvest of the cocoa is happening and the fair trade members are actually going to do that. They are going to pay the differential. So all of a sudden the hope is that the income of those farmers is going to go up enormously. But not everybody plays fair. And so what's really important, and this is where we all come into play, is to understand that we have varying degrees of obligation. Well, me as a chocolatier, I cannot consciously use murky sourcing of cocoa that could have involved child labor. That's not possible. That makes no sense at all. And I think that's the same way all of the other chocolate makers you would speak to would tell you the same thing. We make a luxury product, if it costs a little bit more, for me to produce it for you to buy it, well, so what? That's a reality. The concept chocolate is going to keep on going up anyway, so we might as well get used to it. And recognize that it's just a wonderful thing to be enjoyed sparingly. But as a chocolatier, I want my supplier to abide by all those things that are listed here. I want them to work with the farmers because little farmers on their own have very little power, but they also may not have sufficient knowledge to know how to get better outcomes, better yields, better growing practices. And also to make sure that the kids are in school and they are not working on a cocoa farm because the family cannot afford to do otherwise. So all of those things basically have to happen. And the most important is to have total transparency in the supply chain, which means that every pound of chocolate that comes to me as a chocolatier I know is clean. It's not been done unethically. And as a consumer, you need to be aware, obviously, and you need to know where to look to figure out, okay, is that chocolate maker when you buy your Halloween candy? You know, is that chocolate maker a good guy or not? Not to put it in so stark a term, but so the thing is that actually there is a way, and I'm going to show this to you blown up. This is something that actually created a huge ruckus. Green America created a scorecard. And they've actually been doing this for a few years. And this is the latest one. And you can see that it goes from green and blue, which is all great. And then yellow is a C, B plus A, and on all different measures, not just whether they belong to the rainforest alliance. That means nothing if you are not transparent about where you source your stuff. Because how do we know? Are you sourcing 10% of it? You know, and the rest is not sourced ethically. So they did a lot of research. And this is what happened. So I'm very pleased to tell you that it is right here. They are the only one of the big chocolate companies to get, they didn't get an A, they got a B plus, which for such a big company is a great, pretty big deal. And I'm very proud of it. They do a lot actually, but it's really important to see that it's verified by a third party. The companies that are all listed here are pretty tiny. It's easier obviously if you are really small to do very well. But if you are looking here, that's a different story. So this is where we have the big guys, remember from that slide earlier, where we have Mars, Nestle. Okay, now I do not want, I would like you to know. Next time you're contemplating buying chocolate from Godiva, that they got a nice F, okay? So, and then, nonetheless, which is a huge one that owns now Cadbury and all those other brands, just look at their brands and say, okay, I'm not going to buy any of these chocolates because those guys don't deserve your business. They need to do better. And it's going to be very interesting this fall when they are going to be forced in a way to put up and pay the living income differential to all those farmers, okay? So they are, if you look at Green America once you are home, you will be able to see a chart that was done for consumers that identifies, for example, that chocolate from Trader Joe's is no good. Whole Foods is better, not great, but then Kroger's is much better, but I don't think we have any Kroger's here, do we? So, but it is really worth looking at and for you to just be aware as consumers and to say you do have a role to play. We all collectively have a role to play in this. So lecture is over. So this is a cocoa plantation. I wanted you to see these beautiful trees growing and you can see how small they are. These are little cocoa trees and this basically marks the end of my talk. So feel free to ask me questions. Yes? It's about 130 billions in retail. Yes, it says, well, retail, wholesale says all of chocolate sales. Yes. Yes, exactly. All the revenues basically that I recorded. Do you know where people spend some time? Where, where? Havens. I have no, oh, havens? I don't know, but you can ask them where they get the chocolate from. Well, they get it from Lent. Oh, from Lent? Lent. Oh, I don't know. Well, one was chocolate. Oh, I don't know. I don't really know. No, they only did this for about a dozen companies, to 15 companies that require so much research. So I hope over time, they'll do more companies. Yes? I've talked about the Starbursts, I think, Elizabeth. Yes? Yes. She talked about going out there several times because you're back at play. Do you actually, who picks all the Starbursts? I don't see. Who picks all the Starbursts out of cable Elizabeth. You said you keep going, you're back at barbie. Who picks all the Starbursts out of cable Elizabeth that you put in your, Yeah. Who picks it? I picked them. Yes, I was wondering. Yeah, yeah, I picked them. Yeah, I really enjoy it. Good news. Yeah, we take some time off in the summer. Our little shop closes because, you know, July is a little hot for chocolate. And so I really enjoy going to Maxwell's and I picked the Starbursts and I brought some chocolates to the owners of Maxwell last summer and the lady showed me some of the nicest areas. Where to pick. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about how you source your other ingredients like strawberries here but you mentioned your fruit and nuts and how you found the producers that met your standards? Yeah, it's really happened over time. I used to get my mario lemons from a different farm, Fairview Orchards. They are also organic but over time I basically locked into Rancho del Sol which is a place where I source all my citrus. The fruit purées I buy are actually frozen purées because they really deliver the most standardized product and I have found that in order to really deliver on the best experience, I need something that is consistently excellent. One time I tried to use some frozen mangoes, actually from Whole Foods which were organic and it just didn't go very well. It just depends. So you really, I need to pay a lot of attention to that. I only use organic cream, organic butter, organic honey. I get my honey locally obviously. I get my blueberries in West Falmouth. They are organic and so forth. Does that answer your question? Have you visited the farm in California? No, no, I have not. No, I don't have enough leisure time, I'm afraid. No, but that farm has been in existence for many years and they're actually very well known. There are a lot of chefs use them and this woman actually is in her 70s. She is fairly recently widowed and she has a worker who crosses a border from Mexico every day to pick the fruits and so she can ship them out. So to pick the orders. Thank you for your presentation. I'm actually a regular with Brooklyn Hall and I just came back from spending some time later and I was fortunate to travel to other country and in Brooklyn Hall to see how much the rainforest has been devastated by palm oil producers. So, you know, it's not only how, where you source but also what else you buy. Exactly. Like if you're buying palm oil, you're destroying the rainforest. If you're buying tequila. Yeah, I don't use palm oil in Tesla. I don't know what my rent for is in the south. So a lot of times for auctions, the team on a hash are destroying the products that we love and the places that we love. So it's incredible to see how a little bit of something makes a huge difference. You do palm oil, you are mostly buying something that has been established for years and years and years. That's why if you go because you think you're helping palm oil, you're killing your... Oh yeah. You're killing your chocolate sources in a way. Yeah, we don't use any palm oil, just so we are clear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what I'm saying is what you're saying is like you have to be mindful of our actions. Exactly, oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Other questions? Yes? Yes, the list of the products I bought the day. Uh-huh. Some of them you might be able to, you can look, definitely, I know, theos you can buy. Some of them may be available at Whole Foods, for example. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of them are bean to bar makers, actually. So, and where for them sourcing is all essential. Yes? I'm a pastry expert myself. Yeah. I'm sure that children say, you didn't see Calibur, Paracons, so I don't see any of those brands on the list. I'm wondering maybe they're just not on the list, but they're not there anymore. Maybe they're not big enough. Calibur? Oh, Calibur, Calibur from Belgium. They may not be big enough to show up as a top six in the world. Yeah. Okay, so that's, I'm just wondering if they practice good things just because Oh, I know Calibur does, actually. So that's what I'm wondering is, okay, that's good. Yeah, Calbo and Cacao Berry are both very responsible. And maybe Berry happens to be a good deal to my mother's at home with the guitar. Yeah. So that's very nice. You can buy guitar if you are baking with it at Whole Foods, for instance. Yes? Other questions? Yes? I could also, what's the problem with the guitar? Well, it is, but they have basically taken a lot of the cocoa mass out, so it doesn't have the same taste, but it is chocolate, absolutely. Yes, it is, yes. It's absolutely from the bean. There is a, you, a lot of the white chocolate has cocoa butter that is added back to it in order to make it the way it is along with milk products. You know, as is in milk chocolate. Yes? Can you speak a little bit about how you came to be involved with chocolate? Oh, well, it started a long, long time ago. You really want to know about that. Could you use the mic so I can look at you? Yes. I started making confections when I was about 10 years old. I was really lucky to have a mother with four kids. I was the oldest. And she taught us all, had to cook. And for the holidays, she would always make various goodies to give to friends and family. And I decided that I was not that interested in the ones she was making, I was interested in chocolate. So my earliest food making memory is making a caramel that I put on hazelnuts to be sent to my brother, who was at camp. I was about 10 years old. And he didn't break his teeth on it, but no. So I've always loved doing it. When I moved to the States in my early 20s, I started every year to make truffles for the holidays. And I would make them and give them to friends. And it basically grew and grew. And I just decided at some point to learn how to make molded confections. Also, and rope them, dip them, everything that you've seen basically have done. But I eventually decided to use molds because to me, it's the most flexible form of being a chocolatier to the extent that you can put things that are not solid enough to be enrobed, something that is soft, a soft gel, for example, like a pat de frie. You can put that in a shell and it will be protected. It doesn't have to stand on its own. You see the difference. And so it gave me more creative opportunity. No, I just, I like to learn on my own. No, I'm pretty much self-taught. And then I've done some training with some really great chocolatiers, particularly in Montreal at Cacao Berry, has a very good chocolate academy and they have some amazing chefs coming in and who do masterclasses. And so I've done some of those. Why can't I tell everybody about your hot chocolate? Oh, yes, we make hot chocolate, real French hot chocolate, sinfully rich because it's made basically with half of what goes in a cup is milk. One third of what goes in the cup is actual chocolate. It's actually the same organic chocolate you tasted earlier, the little callots. And the difference between the chocolate and the milk is cream with a little bit of organic sugar. So it's all organic and we sell it in really tiny cups. We have kids cups which about 80% of our customers get because that's about all you should have. It's pretty rich. And if you can't finish it, you can put it in the fridge and it becomes like a mousse. I think we should thank you very much. You're welcome.