Fright Night

Thank you to the hundreds of families that stopped by the shop on Oct. 25 as part of Fright Night in Potsdam. The line was out the door and down the street solid from 5:30 until 7:50, when we got a break. It was great to see some familiar faces, as well as so many who said "I've never been in here before and I will definitely be back."

Angela dressed as a pirate assisted the youth to caste line over the Jolly Roger flag to fish for a treat. Some got Jelly Belly Jelly Beans, others a chocolate fish. Angela even had some of her gold hooked. If a youth received the black spot card, they got to chose a special combo treat from Pirate Angela's Treasure Chest.

We have one new limited edition flavor in the case...milk coconut truffle. Kind of an oops, but also some people had been looking for them as well. We will be trying out the pumpkin truffle recipe this weekend as well. Pumpkin pie puree with white chocolate in a white chocolate shell.

Also recently we participated in the St. Lawrence County Chamber's Business-to-Business and Consumer Expo. Not a lot of traffic, but some good corporate connections. We're donating a basked to the Chamber's silent auction this week, and will start putting the push on people to think about their holiday orders. We don't want anyone to be disappointed.

Well the break is over...hope everyone has a fabulous Halloween.

Summer Flew By

I can't believe we are in October already and I haven't written a thing since July 4. Well we are definitely gearing up for Halloween. Chocolate skulls, skull and pumpkin pops, black and orange cats, gooey ghouls, carmel filled chocolate apples, crispy eyes (rice crispy treats covered in white chocolate and painted like an eye), Laura's Treats (rice crispy treats on a stick, dunked in milk chocolate and large enough for two people).

And I have to rave about the raspberry dark truffles, the new peanut butter cups, and coming very soon, Raquette Raspberry cremes.

Fright Night in Potsdam is October 25. Many of the merchants offer special activities for the children, trick or treating, and maybe a sale or two for mom and dad. We are doing Pirate Fishing. Toss the line over the Pirate Flag and see what you hook. AARRRgggg maybe some pirate gold!!!

We will also be doing the Business Expo in the Massena, NY mall and showing off our holiday packaging and taking orders for the holidays. Help us meet all your gift giving, but letting us know early.

More soon. Thanks for checking back with us.

Happy Fourth of July

We hope everyone is having a great July 4. We closed the shop for the day, however, I had to catch up on filings. The summer season has been busier than expected. So we are very pleased to see that people still want to eat their St. Lawrence Chocolates in the summer as well as ice cream.

Potsdam Summer Festival is next weekend, July 12-15. We are looking forward to a busy week, and I've even taken a couple days off to help in the shop. We have a special of a free 2 pack pretzel with $5 purchase. We will also have Jelly Belly samples, and some in store sales on Popcorn Suite popcorn.

And don't forget the Warmer S'more Pops and our new River Bars.

Well back to the kitchen. More later.

Summer is here, unofficially

Well, the colleges have seen off all the students for the summer, and with the last graduation on May 21, the 22nd was one of the slowest days in the shop. We know that the summer is generally a slow season for the chocolate industry, but we had to laugh.

So we are now gearing up for the tourists, the campers and the welcome home parties. Not to mention the high school graduations, weddings and summer get-togethers. The new Warmer S'more pops are just amazing. The great taste of the cook out favorite without all the mess. We are going to advertise them big for the Potsdam Summer Festival, July 12-14.

We are looking forward to some fall weddings, as well as supplying the colleges with chocolate, and not to mention a the 1844 House. We celebrated our 14th Wedding Anniversary with dinner there. Wow...we found it absolutely amazing. Brian and Jenny Walker have been open for about a year, and do an absolutely fablous job. Who would have thought that I would like pan seared tuna, or fiddle head ferns. They contacted us about doing some special chocolates for the end of meal offering. We are looking forward to creating something special to complement such a special meal.

Our other new creation for the summer is the addition of our 7th new truffle flavor....The Purple Cow. It is a grape flavored truffle in white chocolate with a purple swirl on top. At first I wasn't sure if it was grape enough...a few taste testers said it was really good. So we keep it as a truffle rather than turning it into a cream flavor. Why a "purple cow"? Two reasons: 1. a purple cow is a drink dad made for me as kid...grape soda with a scoop of vanilla ice cream...a grape float. 2. I used to recite the little poem over and over...
"I've never seen a purple cow
And I never hope to see one;
But I would rather see one that to be one."
And one summer day, my mother found a swizzle stick for my extensive collection with a purple cow head on the top.
And just recently a friend gave me a birthday card...she found a graphic from an old Nesbitt soda ad for with recipe for a "purple cow". She loves cows, and was looking for Nesbitt soda items for me....Just amazing.

So if you are in Potsdam, stop in and check out the new flavors: KaramelRoos (caramel in milk or dark); purple cows, Hop'kickin'ton bark (it does have a kick of cayenne and black pepper); Winthrop White (made by Tom during my 40th surprise birthday party that he completely missed), Waddington Wasbi pea clusters, and the Warmer S'more pops.

ChocoHoliday

I've never really noticed this before...but chocolate cycles with the holidays. And it seems any old holiday will do. I mean, I never would have predicted that Office Assistants Day would be a crazy week in the shop for gift baskets and chocolates. Every boss in Potsdam wanted a box of chocolates for their office! I'm not complaining, mind you, but I just never foresaw that.

But businesses can't survive on holiday sales alone. You can't just do good business at Christmas and expect to be open in July. So all these little holidays are important to a healthy chocolate business. I mean, think of all the little holidays there are. Not just Office Assistants Day...what about Talk Like a Pirate Day, or Boss's Day, or Speak Pig Latin Day, or Opening Day, or Closing Day, or Run Around the Park Naked Day...okay, so I made some of those up...

My point is that every day should be a chocoholiday. Every day, some one is born: That's a birthday! Doesn't every day deserve to be celebrated...and celebrations demand chocolate! Why should people only treat themselves on Federal Holidays?

Don't Give Up Chocolate

As youngsters, our father would suggest that in observance of Lent, we give up chocolate. And most often we would. We also knew that at Easter, we would get a nice reward of a great Easter egg hunt in the back yard, plus lots of chocolate bunnies and eggs.

Now that we are owners of a chocolate shop, which our father enjoys right along with us, he proudly announced in his Church that while the season of Lent was coming, he suggested that no one give up chocolate. He suggested giving up bread or potatoes. Way to go Dad!!!

We have some great plans for Easter... Another childhood memory was of a chocolate filled egg that was sold at an Easter bazaar in Potsdam. The older woman who sold the eggs could personalize them by writing your name in frosting on the top. The egg when cut into was filled with a rich, dense, creamy filling. A slice in a sitting was enough.

St. Lawrence Chocolates is adopting the tradition. We will have milk chocolate eggs, filled with a milk chocolate truffle; white filled with a raspberry flavor; milk with peanut butter; and dark with coconut. Although we will not be able to personalize, we will had some decroative icing flowers to the eggs. (Get your orders in now)

We of course will have traditional chocolate bunnies, foil wrapped eggs (half eggs), and some chocolate pops.

So until Easter, have a great St. Patrick's Day (hopefully you didn't give up beer). Maybe next year we will have perfected the stout truffle.

Be My Valentine

With things calmed down after Christmas, it was nice to actually be able to keep the display case full and have some backstock for making boxes. But now the push of Valentine's Day is approaching and I'm back to my old cycle of making those standard 12 flavors in quantity. But it now seems much less hectic, since I have some stock piled already. This time I can afford to do three molds of a flavor...before I was only doing a couple since I was trying to get all 12 flavors done in a day! Now, I can concentrate my efforts on only a few flavors per day.

We've got some great little things for Valentine's Day in the shop. I'm making chocolate pops, heart shaped. They are pretty popular. One is a plain heart on a 6 inch stick that is foil wrapped. Another is on a 4 inch stick but is a little heavier and has small hearts indented into the chocolate. I then try to paint these little hearts with the pink quartz cocoa butter we have. They look very classic. Pink seems to be the best color to paint as the white is too dull and the red is too dark (on white chocolate it looked like I accidentally cut my finger open...). Ellen also got a few molds with double hearts that I haven't yet tried but will get to this week probably as I'm already bored with the simple foil wrapped heart pops even though I have another million to do! :)

We're also making simple solid chocolates in heart shapes. They are similiar to our jingle bells that we made at Christmas (for the lucky few who actually saw them before they flew out the door!) They are a solid peice of chocolate, foil wrapped in red, pink, silver, and gold foils. We bag them up in a Valentine's Day bag and sell them. I have made them in milk, dark, white, and have made a few peanut butter filled ones. These solids will also make up the 4 center peices in our heart boxes.

The heart boxes are a 16 peice square box. The lid is red with a cut out heart in the center with plastic see-through. We have our standard 12 flavors around the outside and in the 4 center spots we have either the solids mentioned above or we place 4 truffles for extra charge. They are really nice looking boxes and I'm sure they'll sell like hot cakes.

At the chocolate show, Ellen and I purchased some heart shaped boxes...a little thicker and heavier than simple cardboard, they are sturdy and hold a pound of chocolate. It's hard to describe what they look like but they are definately a step up from that Russell Stover heart shaped box you see in every department store. We don't have a lot of them but they will also retail for a higher price due to the box.

Naturally, we also have smaller boxes. One is heart shaped, red-felted, and says "Happy Valentine's Day" in gold lettering on it. And then, we have a small pink box with hearts all over it for just a few peices of chocolate. These pink boxes will house our Valentine's Mix, two raspberry jells, two coconuts, and two Burg Berries.

And of course, what would Valentine's Day be without sprinkled oreos and chocolate covered pretzels! We've got them with the red, pink, and white heart sprinkles to make them festive for any kind of gift basket. We are making gift baskets for whatever budget, too. Cut-off date for special orders is Feb 5th!

Have a happy Valentine's Day!

The New Year

We knew things would slow down...way down. With only a few customers a day, it has allowed us time to really restock. Angela has been going great guns to get new product out as well as the favorites. We know have Power Rods (yellow and red sprinkles) and Aluminum Rods (silver cocoa butter ends) in the store. Snowy Roads Bark (cookies and cream) and our newly named Chocolate covered Oreo Cookies....the Ori-OHs.

Our good friend Jon Ori, who lives in Massena, is quite the chocolate lover. His wife, and marketing specialist, bought some of our chocolate covered cookies for her husband for Christmas. He loved them.... as she told me the story, it clicked. We should call them the Oris, she suggested adding the OH to the end as the play on words....voi la. They come in milk and dark covered.

We also offered chocolate for the newspapers promo for the first baby born in the new year. The ad rep needs to pick up the chocolate. Pretzels with pink and blue bears, Ori-OHs, and a 12 piece assorted.

We are headed to Atlantic City on Januyar 6-8. It is the Philiadelphia Candy Show (yes, we know it is a different state. They moved it for more excitment. We have had a great time in the past, learn a lot in the workshops, and Tom has fun at the Casinos. (Have to reward him somehow for doing all the driving.) Angela is making the trip with us, as Marylee will watch the shop and the Nezzy.

So with Valentine's Day only 21 days away...have you been thinking about a sweet gift for the sweetie. We have some cool 15 piece square boxes with a cut-out heart on the front, as well as some small, pink boxes for a little taste. We will also be looking for some cool stuff at the show. We also hope to have a new line of nuts in the shop. A local woman in Colton operates her own business, Nut Shop International. They are very yummy; a nice addition to our shop.