Flavors and Requests: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

People always ask us where we come up with new flavors. Mostly we read what other chocolatiers are doing and try to figure out how they did that! But sometimes we just say, "that sounds really good" and give it a try. Customers also come in the shop and request certain things. We take these under consideration as there are some things people request that we have already decided we will not ever make.

Flavors. The Good:
Our Flavor of the Month for June is the Pitcairn Apricot. It's an apricot jelly in dark chocolate. We spray a bit of cocoa butter on the outside of the chocolate to distinguish it from our Saint. We used the name from our dunked apricots that we used to do. It just took too much time to dunk every single apricot! We were thinking of another jell since our Saint is so popular and decided to try this one. Not a big hit so far but the month ain't over yet!

The Bad:
A flavor that hasn't worked out is the Raspberry Fluff. In fact, we'll sell through what we have and then not make it again. I was experimenting with another white chocolate piece and decided to use a jar of Raspberry Marshmallow Fluff for a filling, similar to our Dekalb Delights. But the raspberry flavor of the fluff seems too "artificial" and it doesn't seem to be popular. White chocolate is hard to pair with a filling as it already so sweet. Back to the drawing board.

The Ugly:
While I hesitate to call our new Toffee ugly, it is a bulk item and therefore does not fit into our standard box with tray. For a "bark" type item, it looks pretty classy. We've had a few people ask if we have toffee and Ellen began looking up a few recipes. She finally got around to making one and it turned out quite well. Toffee is a hard confection but not as hard as a brittle. It has a taste range from caramel to brown sugar. Our toffee is also coated in our 64% dark chocolate on both sides then sprinkled with crushed almonds. We just added it to the case this week and it is only sold by weight. But it really is something you have to try.

Customer Requests:
The Good:
We had a request for a dairy-free truffle. Our traditional truffle ganache is made with cream and so is not dairy free. Our dark chocolate, however, is dairy-free and so is the "creme" filling we make. One of our customers suggested using Soy Milk rather than cream in the ganache and that would make the dark truffles dairy-free. Ellen gave it a shot and the filling firmed up to our standard and the truffles came out nicely. So we now have Soy Dark Truffles added to our case. While some people cringe when we tell them that they are soy, the truffle tastes very good. It's a great option for those who can't have dairy or are Vegan.

The Bad:
Okay, here's our dirty little secret, but you didn't hear it from me. We don't make Sponge Candy and we never will. This is an absolute. Don't bother asking, don't try begging, don't tell us how easy it is to make, how you loved it so much as a child and it brings back such fond memories every time you have a piece...Don't bother. We do not make it.
We have debated about carrying it. We can get Sponge Candy from Asher's which is the company that makes our Sugar Free line and our Coconut Clusters (which is one of our more popular sellers). It seems to be a regional taste...most people who ask about it are from Western NY or were from there originally. It also is popular in the Midwest US, I'm told. Ellen and I had never heard of it until we opened this shop and then did some research.
Sponge candy is not soft, like a sponge. It is named sponge candy for the porous appearance it has; lot's of little holes. But it's hard and crunchy. It has a strong Molasses flavor. This candy can then be dunked into chocolate. We don't make it. We won't make it.
Here's the reasoning. We don't like it. While we make things that we don't like (I don't like the Sugar Shack but it's one of our most popular flavors), everyone in our family doesn't like this candy. It's also time consuming to dunk each individual piece into the chocolate. We hand-dip everything and dunking little pieces is not just labor-intensive but it can really mess up the tempered batch of chocolate leading to a lot of waste. The sponge candy is also tough to cut through once it's set. You need a saw to get through it. While you could just break it up like we do our bark, the more uniform the pieces the better they fit in a box. When you're buying a box of chocolates as a gift, you like the lid to close and the chocolates to fit into their slots.
Oh sure, we could sell it bulk like we do the toffee and the bark, but you've missed the point. We don't like it.
Our apologies to those that love sponge candy and have requested it of us. We will not make it. It's just one of those things.

The Ugly:
Another request that simply can't be fulfilled is the ever-popular chocolate covered strawberry. I know they look so good in magazines and in those recipe books with the fondue pots. They are so romantic and sensuous. They aren't really that hard to make. The hardest part is finding the proper size berries and having them ripe.
So why don't we make them? Why don't we have them?
Strawberries are perishable. It's like any fruit that you buy at the grocery store. If you don't consume it in a few days, it's garbage bound. We have discovered with strawberries that after dunking they last 24 hours before the juices start to run out of them and the tops begin to shrivel. And let's face it, nobody is gonna buy something that looks like it's rotting!
As a small shop with only a small number of people through the doors on a daily basis, it isn't feasible to make these delights. It's also not something that you can save for later. If you don't consume the strawberry when you buy it, you might not want to eat it at all because it's gone bad. Strawberries are a real mess when the begin to rot. They exude a puddle of reddish goo as they shrivel up into just a dry husk. Have I talked you out of this yet?
We don't have any magic fairy dust that allows us to preserve strawberries any longer than you do with your refrigerator. We don't have any method that keeps these things fresh. We have to dunk and eat the SAME DAY or they go to waste. Not to mention that when you buy a quart of strawberries not all of them are fit for dunking.
That's why we only do strawberries when Ellen feels like it. I don't think too many people want to pay the true expense and cost of a chocolate covered strawberry. They just become ugly.

We always love to hear people's requests and try our best to accommodate. We can't make everything, we know, and some things just aren't feasible for us, but we love still to hear the requests. It lets us know what people are craving and how we can serve our customers better in the future. We're still working on some requests, like candied/chocolate covered ginger, our Wine Truffles, and maple sugar candy. So stop by the shop and tell us what you're craving. What's the worst I can say?