The Journey from Cacao Tree to Cocoa Bean to Chocolate Bar

The Journey from Cacao Tree to Cocoa Bean to Chocolate Bar

Settle in for a deep, nerdy dive into exploring the journey chocolate travels to arrive to your hands! It is a LONG journey and I hope that knowing all the steps along the way makes this bit of indulgence something to appreciate even more than you already do!

It truly is a long journey, so before I delve right in, here is a road map of the steps (and approximate time for each step) along the way for you to see where we are headed:

1. Planting and growing cacao tree seeds and saplings (5-7 years)

2. Harvesting cacao pods (varies, but occurs over the course of a year)

3. Fermenting cocoa beans (3-8 days)

4. Drying beans (5-10 days)

5. Packing and Transporting beans (2-3 weeks)

6. Sorting beans (1-2 hours, depending on how big a batch)

7. Roasting beans (20-45 minutes)

8. Cracking beans and Winnowing shells (15-60 minutes)

9. Grinding and refining cocoa nibs (18-24 hours)

10. Resting and aging chocolate (1 day to several weeks)

11. Tempering and molding chocolate bars (1 hour to several hours, depending on scale)

12. Enjoying chocolate bars (almost instantaneously)

Let’s go!

Seed-to-Tree-to-Beans

Planting and Growing

Before your chocolate bar became chocolate—a minimum of anywhere between five and seven years before—a seed from a cacao pod was planted.

But it wasn’t just planted anywhere.

Cacao grows in a narrow band around the equator, roughly 10 degrees latitude above and below, and this region is colloquially known as the Cocoa Belt. The main parts of the world that produce cocoa are West Africa (especially Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana), Indonesia, Latin America (countries such as Ecuador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Honduras, and Colombia), Madagascar, Tanzania, Vietnam, and India. Hawaii and Puerto Rico are the only places among the United States that are capable of cocoa production.

Cacao tree seedlings grow alongside other vegetation; perhaps some banana trees or other tropical fruits and flora which can provide some shade cover for the cacao tree and crop diversity for the farmer.

A cacao tree can live up to more than a hundred years old but be fruitful for almost half of that time, with some variations to take into account.

Harvesting

After those initial five-ish years passed, the tree begins to produce fruit and cacao pods are finally harvested.

Cacao pods are really quite pretty with their wide range of colors, from greens to yellows, oranges, reds, and even deep purples. Typically, they are about the shape of an American football, that is to say they are oblong with tapering at the ends. They can range in size from about 6 to 12 inches in length.

Cacao or Cocoa? I take my cue from those who follow the delineation at the point of harvest, prior to harvest is cacao and post-harvest is cocoa as the transformation begins here.

Split cocoa pod with fresh cocoa beans and pulp

Relatively speaking, cacao trees are not especially tall, about 15 to 25 feet or so, and their pods grow all slapdash on the trunk and the branches making some of the harvest possible simply by using a machete. For the pods higher up on the trees, a hooked blade on a pole is skillfully used with delicate precision.

Great care must be taken during harvesting so that the flowers that have been pollinated and will turn into pods for next year's harvest are not injured or damaged.

Not all pods ripen at the same time and the farmer must know when the pod is fully ripened before harvesting. It takes a lot of knowledge and skill to recognize which pods are ready, how to reach them for harvesting, and not to harm the tree thereby decreasing next year’s yield.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already exhausted!

Fermentation

Cocoa pods are split open to reveal the seeds and pulp inside. Cutting into one feels akin to cutting open a winter squash as the pods have a thick rind. The pulp has a sweet, tropical flavor to it; being a Hoosier from a temperate climate, tropical fruit doesn’t abound here but my best comparison to the flavor is something close to a mix between kiwifruit and pineapple! I personally enjoyed the flavor!

But how do cocoa seeds turn brown and lose its tropical fruit profile?

Via fermentation.

The beans are placed into large fermentation boxes and remain, stirred occasionally, for anywhere from three to eight days.

During this period, the sugary pulp that engulfs the beans serves as fuel for ambient microbes and sparks the fermentation process.

The beans, from the fermentation process and the pressure of all the weight of beans stacked into the boxes, can reach temperatures upwards of 120° F. That heat is what also halts the germination process of the beans.

Beans or Seeds? Cocoa beans are actually the seeds of the cacao tree but when Europeans first experienced cacao, they erroneously called the seeds “beans” and the mistake took root as the word to call them.

Without this fermentation step, the beans would never develop that familiar chocolatey flavor we recognize. It is an entirely transformative process.

Many experts argue that this step is, in fact, the most crucial of all and is where many craft chocolate makers send agronomists on site to work with farmers to improve their fermentation of their beans.

Drying, Packing, Transporting

Once fermentation is complete, the beans are then spread out to dry.

Ideally, the cocoa beans will be sun-dried, but tunnels for machine drying and wood-fired drying are also common in some cocoa growing regions.

After all, much of the Cocoa Belt is contains rain forests!

Beans take a few days to dry to reach the desired moisture levels so that they are safe to transport with minimal risk of harmful microorganisms growing.

Dried beans are packed in large sacks (40-70 kilograms) and transported to the chocolate makers.

Baby’s first sack of beans! A 50kg sack of cocoa beans from Tumaco, Colombia.

(In some cases, this step is actually more complex than I provide here, as beans are often sold in cooperatives so they are gathered in a central area and sorted, blended, and packed here to prepare for transport. And, especially in the case of bulk beans, there are commodities traders and importers/exporters that are involved in the shipping and purchasing of beans before they reach the manufacturing plants.)

More often than not, the chocolate makers are not in the same country as the one in which the beans were grown, but there are growing numbers of chocolate makers that are in-country and thereby keeping more of the revenue within their borders. Whenever possible, support chocolate that is made in-country where the cacao is grown and help decolonize cacao!

Bean-to-Bar

FINALLY!!

Now the beans have arrived in the waiting hands of a chocolate maker!

Hopefully, you can see how many steps there are along this journey already, even before that chocolate maker gets to glorious work!

Sorting and Roasting

Second only to fermentation, the roasting of cocoa beans is a crucial stage of flavor development.

But, before a chocolate maker embarks on this step, the beans must be sorted and separated from undesirable items that came along for the ride; sometimes bits of burlap, stones, sticks, or other sundry items will stowaway, and there are also defective beans that need to be discarded.

Once all the good beans are remaining for the roast, the chocolate maker decides the roast profile preferred for the batch of beans. Roasting can be done using a number of different methods, from a skillet on an open flame, to an oven, to a heat gun, to a refurbished and retrofitted coffee drum roaster.

But why roast at all? (Please, let's not get into the current “raw" chocolate trend today, but perhaps another day…)

Good roasting accomplishes three goals:

• kills residual bacteria from the fermentation process,

• further reduces the moisture content of the cocoa beans (the drying step only brings the moisture content to around 8%),

• and, most importantly, develops flavor

A roast profile consists of time and temperature; high heat for a quick time or “low and slow” will result in very different flavors in the beans. Adjusting those variables will also result in different outcomes, and so will the humidity in the room, the size and residual moisture of the beans, the type of bean and its origin, and the will of the universe.

Approaches to roasting is a matter of preference and a bit of artistic expression albeit in a science-y sort of way.

One can think of the approach to roasting cocoa beans as similar to that of roasting coffee beans, but there is a considerable bit of difference between coffee and cocoa beans, one being cocoa beans consist of roughly 45% cocoa butter (fat) and coffee bean lipid content is much lower, somewhere between 10-17%. Cocoa beans, with their higher fat content, are more susceptible to burning and have to be roasted at relatively lower temperatures.

Craft chocolate makers take great care (and pride) in dialing in on an excellent roast that highlights unique properties of specific beans. Mass-produced chocolate companies care less about this and will often over-roast beans as a way to get a more unified, consistent flavor and adjust the overall product flavor when mixing the cocoa beans with other ingredients.

Quite a contrast!

Cracking and Winnowing

After the roasted beans have cooled off, the papery shells must be removed before the grinding stage.

This can be done manually (and is incredibly painstaking!) but there are specialized machines that can have the beans pass through in order for them to be cracked, then separating the shell from the bean, and blowing the shell away while reserving the cocoa nibs for further processing.

A winnower machine consists of a hopper that holds cooled roasted cocoa beans that feed into a cracking machine (in this case, a juicer) and the cracked nibs and shells fall into tubing that diverts nib from shell via a vacuum, collecting usable nibs. Photo cred: Rylan Capper of Ball State Daily News

The shell is waste, but can be used for garden compost.

Ideally, the cracked nibs have been reserved without too many being included in the shell and vice versa. FDA standards dictate that the percentage of shell in the resulting chocolate cannot exceed 1.75% by weight but nibs getting mixed with husks is just wasted nibs.

I hate wasting nibs…

Grinding and Refining

Melangers (derived from the French word mélange meaning “to mix”) are frequently used to make chocolate as we know it by grinding and refining cocoa nibs and later adding sugar (and any additions such as powdered milk, melted cocoa butter, and dried flavorings such as cinnamon).

The melangers vary in size, with some able to sit on a countertop and others filling entire rooms.

The grinding process is a lengthy one, lasting approximately a full day, give or take a couple of hours.

The primary goal of grinding is to break down the beans into a liquified state where particles are around 10-20 microns (smaller than the width of a hair) so that the feel of the chocolate is perceived as smooth liquid and not grainy. Although, there are purposefully grainy chocolates that are in the style of handmade Mexican chocolates which are quite delicious!

At the point when the nibs have broken down, the substance is referred to as “chocolate liquor” although there is no alcohol present. Adding sugar and cocoa butter at this stage is the beginnings of transforming into chocolate.

Smaller-scale chocolate makers almost exclusively use some sort of melanger while larger chocolate producers (including large scale craft chocolate producers) will use a ball mill instead. Melangers have a maximum capacity whereas ball mills can be continuously fed with virtually no capacity limits.

There is a lot of time saved in using a ball mill, so I’m told, but I am also learning that they are a bear to clean and you have to be making a lot of chocolate to make the process worthwhile. A ball mill is essentially a tower that is filled with ball bearings that work to beat up and grind cocoa nibs as they are poured in from the top and process downward through gravity. They are outfitted with a water jacket to help regulate the internal temperature and also have a pump at the bottom to help recirculate chocolate liquor back through the top of the ball mill.

Although, melangers refine the chocolate simultaneously as grinding and allow for smaller-scale chocolate makers to sort of skip on the separate step of conching.

Conching

Conching is a process that is not always performed as a distinct step; as mentioned before, melangers can do some of the refining while grinding the nibs.

The name comes from the early machines that were used in the process; the shape of the machines resembled conche shells and the name took hold.

However, when performed as a stand-alone step in the process, conching involves polishing the chocolate, reducing or ultimately eliminating any lingering off-flavors to round out the finished chocolate.

Roasting develops flavors but doesn’t completely get rid of some of the vinegary notes that stick with the unrefined nibs. If a chocolate maker under-roasts and underrefines, you might get the sensation of taking a shot of vinegar that had just a hint of chocolate mixed in. Not altogether the most unpleasant thing for some people, but it is not the desired outcome for chocolate makers.

Conching helps provide chocolate that rounded, enjoyable mouthfeel and flavor that feels somehow more finished and complete.

Tempering and Molding

The home stretch of chocolate making is tempering and, if making bars, molding.

Tempering chocolate is perhaps the most intimidating process in handling chocolate. Ask anyone who works with chocolate about any story they might have involving tempering and you’ll likely get something akin to a therapy session!

The most comforting thing is that no matter how much you might mess up tempering by hand, you can always start over without wasting chocolate!

Tempering chocolate by hand on a granite slab. Photo cred: Cheri Madewell

So, what actually is tempering?

It is the process of raising the temperature of chocolate to melt it all to an exact temperature, then cooling it rapidly and warming it again slightly.

Why go through the heating, then cooling, then heating all over again?

Chocolate, on a molecular level, consists of crystals, six possible varieties in fact. But not all of the crystals are the same or equally desirable. Tempering allows for all of the crystals to melt, then reform into the ideal version and align favorably so that when the tempered chocolate is molded and cooled, the chocolate will have a desirable shine and snap.

Chocolate that isn’t tempered will not be desirable in appearance and will be difficult to work with to make confections. It will not have a shine to it and will begin to develop fat bloom, which is that mottled whiteish coloration on the surface of chocolate. The cocoa butter has simply risen to the surface and cooled in such a way that it is separate from the rest of the crystalline structure of the chocolate. It isn’t spoiled but it just isn’t pretty anymore

Tempering is necessary when molding chocolate bars as well.

Molding chocolate bars can also be done by hand, like tempering, but to create bars at a larger scale, machines can temper chocolate and hold it in temper until ready to use while other machines can dispense tempered chocolate into prepared molds.

Enjoying Chocolate Bars

After bars are molded, packaging them for purchase (by hand or machine, again) is the final step on the journey of delivering chocolate to the hungry consumer!

In a future post, I’ll discuss more about how to read a chocolate label in order to be able to understand what can be learned from the details printed on (or left off) the label.

Too few labels, however, tell the consumer the story of how their chocolate bar came to be. But now you have a better sense of the fullness of the journey, from seed-to-tree-to-bean-to-bar!

Tasting chocolate also has some steps in and of itself; Queer Chocolatier offers a Guided Chocolate Tasting Event that walks you through these steps intentionally so that you can appreciate the journey that chocolate bar traveled to get to you. When tasting chocolate purposefully, with the goal of picking up as much nuance and detail as possible, you can taste the effects of how chocolate was roasted and even more about the region in which the cacao was grown.

Enjoying chocolate bars can allow for a delicious reflection on how much transformation and labor and craft the chocolate underwent and, to me, that is a beautiful gift that I now get to enjoy receiving as well as giving as a chocolate maker!

Emotions Sometimes Get The Best Of Me

Emotions Sometimes Get The Best Of Me

I'm feeling lots of stress these days now that the shop no longer physically exists, in addition to the continual long-term stress of the pandemic.

And it shows by way of forgetfulness, shoulder tension, erratic appetite, sadness, and scattered attention.

I'm sorry to those around me who have to put up with me on however much of a regular basis you do.

In some ways, I feel lost. And once that feeling gets a foothold in my thought patterns, I go very quickly into a tail spin. More often than not, I wake the next morning with a pretty clear head. But when those next mornings are filled with the same thoughts and emotions as the day before, I know I’m in for a long haul.

I'm learning that I have to treat these feelings as if I had a sprained ankle; I have to rest, take the weight off of it, and let myself heal.

Instead of ice, a good cry helps.

And, of course, chocolate works its healing magic.

Even though I may be feeling in the weeds and overwhelmed with planning a relocation and reopening, I promise that I am in love with what Queer Chocolatier does! I am in love with chocolate and with my community! I absolutely cannot wait to have a chocolate house for people to return to in order to be indulged and affirmed simultaneously! We deserve a space to feel safe and cared for, especially in a society that can feel cruel for the sake of cruelty.

Every day that you cringe because of anything some homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist, sexist garbage person says, know this: Queer Chocolatier hears you, and sees you, and loves you, and welcomes you.

I will hold space for you, virtually until physically. It is my job.

And it is a constant reminder to myself that I love what I do, even though emotions sometimes get the best of me and I really don't always know what I'm doing.

Storytelling

Storytelling

Queer Chocolatier's story has had lots of twists and turns since the beginning. I’d love to learn what your QC Story is!

Podcasts are often something I listen to while I’m rolling truffles at the shop (the rest of the time, I’m reliving the 90s). My favorite podcasts are the ones that are engaged in storytelling, and especially those that are told by the storytellers themselves. I’m a big fan of podcasts such as The Moth Radio Hour and Snap Judgment.

More frequently than not, I hear a piece of wisdom from a story that helps me resolve or wrestle with an issue I’m facing at the moment.

Stories matter so much to me.

I’m pretty okay at telling my story, but usually at a basic level. Being near a college campus, I’m asked to do interviews on occasion and I feel like I have a certain script that unfolds pretty readily in those interviews. The story isn’t inauthentic, but it is just the quick-and-easy story that people digest simply.

I love that I own Queer Chocolatier! I love my story! I especially love getting to dive deeper into my story because my story can connect to so many other stories deserving of being told.

The danger in getting deeper into my story is that I'm incredibly likely to burst into tears!

Stories are powerful and I don’t really quite know how to harness the power of mine yet.

Recently, I was the subject of an oral history of Muncie's LGBTQ+ community and it was a meaningful experience to tell my story in-depth and to talk out where I think I and my business fit in the world. It felt like I was closer to harnessing my story, but I still have a ways to go.

But I find it tough being asked the question: “What does your business mean to the community?”

Because that’s your story!

I’m asked that question a lot and I don't have the words to answer it.

I’d love to have your own words sharing your story about what Queer Chocolatier means to you! Some of the podcasts I listen to share little voice clips submitted by listeners and I've borrowed that strategy to collect your messages! You can leave your message here using this SpeakPipe site!

If you’re willing to share your story, it’ll help me better understand how to make QC more sustainable. I want to know what matters to you.

I want to listen to your QC Story!

(while sobbing into my squishy stretchy baby boi, Dorian)!

He tolerates my happy tears (and my sad tears, too)

Storytelling is a gift. And when people ask me how they can help out with Queer Chocolatier, this helps more than you know. Because my story gets tangled up in the day-to-day sometimes and I can lose track of what I’m aiming to do with my business.

I’m looking to glean wisdom from your stories!

Thank you for sharing and being a part of my story!

Long March Ahead

Long March Ahead

A quiet morning in the Queer Chocolatier Chocolate House in the Village in Muncie, Indiana.

Queer Chocolatier has been around since 2017. It is March of 2021 now and I’m a couple of weeks shy of both hitting a year of being closed to the public due to the pandemic and moving out of the Village altogether. There has not been a stretch of consistency with running my business, but that might just be the reality of being a queer businesswoman owning and operating a tiny business.

Moving into the Village

Cheri and I posing in front of our new place the day after signing the lease in December 2017.

I’ve mentioned more than once how Cheri has been my bedrock of forming my business. She is the one who encouraged me to find a space in the Village so that I could have my own kitchen and be near Ball State University to serve the campus community as well as the wider city.

Sometimes it is better to jump in not knowing what to expect.

Sometimes having expectations can make us hesitate to jump.

I’m glad I jumped.

Me posing with some of the furniture I built for the Chocolate House.

I learned countless things while building out the shop of my dreams!

I learned a great deal about construction and have a deep urge to build more things with my own hands.

I learned that bureaucracy can be challenging but manageable. Misogyny, however, cannot be manageable.

I learned everything takes so much longer than planned; it took almost a year to open for business.

I learned how to lay flooring.

I learned how to ask for help. I’m still learning this.

I learned to take pride in what I create.

I learned what I would do differently.

I learned that what I did—holding space—matters.

The inimitable Muncie Map Co. crafted this cocoa map of Venezuela for the Chocolate House as a beautiful piece of artwork and educational tool to explain more to customers about where my chocolate came from in the early days.

Collaboration and community

I got to meet and work with tons of people, businesses, and organizations over the years of being in the Chocolate House!

Muncie Map Co. has long been a trusted business partner of mine and their work never fails to take my breath away.

Flying Rhino not only provides some of the most delicious coffee I’ve chugged but sold me some of my initial pieces of equipment to build my shop.

Sis Got Tea is a new friend that I look up to and enjoy talking with as we both continue our entrepreneurial journeys, all while sipping tea and swapping cat photos.

I have the most extraordinary businesses as neighbors in the Village and love waving to them through my window and also visiting their cats or shooting the breeze with the humans. From reusing packing paper from Art Mart so that we don’t waste materials, to a socially distanced front yard hang outs with Travis and Sarah of VGR, to patio conversations with Martin and Kyle at the Cup, to window tappings at Gus of Travel Dimensions, to chatting about snacks with Sylvia at the Lash Boutique, to scarfing down delicious nachos and laughing with the folks at Chavas, to eating way too much cajun garlic bread at Yats and slurping bubble teas at Hoku Poke, I have been very comfortable weaving myself into the fabric of this little space in the City.

I and other Village businesses collaborated with the Riverside-Normal City neighborhood and made a smashing success of an inaugural $2 Tour of the Village during Welcome Week of 2019.

I’ve been honored to participate in a number of fundraising events for organizations such as United Way of Delaware, Randolph and Henry Counties; Boys & Girls Clubs of Muncie; Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky; and the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana (this opportunity gave me another opportunity: I was on WTHR-13 with my S'mores Truffles!). Organizations on along the coasts, such as GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders) and The Pride Study at Stanford University, have purchased our truffles as a way to reward and acknowledge individuals in their communities.

We were even visited by Gloria Steinem and Amy Richards during Steinem's book tour!

Gloria Steinem visited Queer Chocolatier and Ball State University in December of 2019 during her book tour.

Her visit was coordinated by Betsy Kiel and the Women & Gender Studies program at Ball State University. To be able to discuss the importance of queer sober spaces and our name tags with pronouns with someone as well-reknown as Steinem in my shop was a gift I never knew I wanted or deserved.

Community, near and far or neighbors and icons, is everything.

Muncie organized a large Black Lives Matter March in June of 2020 shortly after the police murder of George Floyd. Photo credit: Benjamin Strack

Pandemic and Endemic

Shortly after the peak of Gloria Steinem's visit, the pandemic hit us hard and we fell toward the valley. We pivoted, we adjusted, but capitalism won out over humanity and public health, and the safest course of action I believed was to close to the public. I remain closed. Because a pandemic remains.

A GoFundMe was launched by a loving customer and uplifted Queer Chocolatier (and me in a deeply personal way) to allow us to survive in the early months of the pandemic as a reminder of the love a community can show.

We wanted to show it back.

Racism in our country is endemic. It is woven into the fabric of our nation and until we face it in ourselves and in our society, racism will continue to thrive.

When Muncie came together on a hot summer day to march from campus to City Hall to show that Black Lives Matter, we gathered donations of water and handed them out to marchers as they passed by our shop.

We wanted to care for those who were caring for others.

Queer folk know (or should know by now) that liberation for us is tied to the liberation of BIPOC individuals. Queerness isn’t the sole domain of white people; white queer people are already indebted to queer and gender-diverse POC.

We have work to do.

Queer Chocolatier is committed to the work.

Craft Chocolate Maker and Chocolatier

Community is what guides and energizes me as a businessqueer, but I also have a craft that I am devoted to learning and honing.

Without chocolate, Queer Chocolatier doesn’t exist.

Me working chocolate on granite. Tempering by hand is as much science as it is art, but it is tasty even when you mess up! Photo credit: my wife, Cheri Madewell.

I’ve made truffles since 2004, so I’m not far from twenty years in dabbling in this confection (which, this realization made my heart catch just a bit). I started with grocery store chocolate, mostly Ghirardelli.

Then, as I grew in my truffling, and as I went to school for Sociology specializing in the Sociology of Food and Agriculture, I started asking myself more questions about chocolate, where it comes from, how it’s made and under what conditions.

When I launched Queer Chocolatier, I made my first big decision in this exploration by selecting Chocolates El Rey as my source of chocolate. For the first three years of my business, I used El Rey not just for making truffles (and drinking chocolate and pain au chocolat) but also to share this educational journey I was on with others through Guided Chocolate Tasting Events.

Starting in the craft chocolate wilderness meant using a lot of DIY tools and learning from what others did before me. My first sack of cocoa beans shown here is from Tumaco, Colombia and was sourced from Uncommon Cacao.

But in the last ten months or so, I’ve been buying cocoa beans to start making my own chocolate.

Every time I go through the chocolate-making process, I learn something new. But because I’m still primarily a chocolatier, I am not getting much opportunity to savor the knowledge as I am immediately transforming the fresh chocolate into truffles for orders!

But I am learning!

And I’m growing.

I’ve found that my biggest insecurity with owning this business has nothing to do with my being queer or being in a small city having to compete with mass chocolate or being a business owner in general or anything like that whatsoever.

It is that I’m insecure in where I fit in the craft chocolate industry.

I’m so small and so far away from many other chocolate makers, and I struggle to think what it would be like if other chocolate makers thought I was a joke and should just hang it up.

But that hasn’t been the case.

People have been generous and caring. I’ve asked questions to a few chocolate makers and they have gladly shared their experiences. I’ve been invited to speak via FB live with Lauren Heineck who has a podcast within our industry. More recently, I’ve joined CISJ, Chocolate Industry for Social Justice and I hope this is yet another way to plug into the community.

I have a long March ahead in every conceivable sense.

What’s next? Figuring it out

Starting at farmers & makers markets, then going “away to college” has been such an adventure. I’m looking forward to a homecoming. Photo credit: Anna Mitchel.

Starting with what I do know, I'm leaving this space by the end of this month.

I’ll fulfill orders until March 22nd and no longer accept orders.

I’ll have to wind down my operations and begin moving items and equipment into storage.

Today's the last day I pay rent here.

I have orders to ship and deliver today.

But beyond these things I know, I only have educated guesses and trust falls for the universe to catch me in its waiting arms.

I do have a space identified that Queer Chocolatier very likely will move into. I am filled with excitement but I am holding off on announcing the news until all things are settled. I got burned by this with an earlier place I viewed and fell in love with but isn’t accessible and that is a baseline requirement for any space in which I’ll ever do business.

But the space I want to move into will take some work and capital.

One of these has me thoroughly excited as I'm planning building projects again and eager to apply all of the “What I would do different” lessons I've learned!

I am nervous about the capital as I've apparently and unwittingly decided my business is to pay people to renovate their properties. However, the building owner seems like a very nice fellow and he and I have many mutual friends, so this feels like it can be a healthier process and relationship than the space I’m leaving.

Gonna do a capital trust fall!

Might not be the wisest business decision to make, but I've heard lots of wise people along every step of the way question many decisions I've made.

If I’d heeded their words all along, Queer Chocolatier simply wouldn’t exist.

I’m going to listen to my gut.

There are a few butterflies fluttering, but they’re excited!

And I'm training myself to believe more in myself, my abilities, my commitments, my passion, my talents, my experiences, my knowledge, my vision, my place in this community and in this world in this moment.

My friend Renae once told me to not worry about proving people wrong. It’s about proving myself right.

I’m ready.

Take up space and drink chocolate. It’s what I do. Photo credit: Brooklyn Arizmendi.

QC Recipes: Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy

QC Recipes: Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy

One of my very favorite things I used to make at the Chocolate House (before the pandemic…) was our Saturday brunch plate of biscuits and chocolate gravy!

What on earth is chocolate gravy, you ask? I’m glad you did.

My late grandma is from Tennessee and she used to make it for Saturday breakfast, as told to me by my aunt. I'd never had it before, but when we were building out the Chocolate House, I thought I would make a test batch at home and see if it was something to include in our offerings.

It immediately won over my wife, who serves as the true arbiter of taste in our household. Cheri can be picky but it is always in a way that serves as a line of what is high-quality and what’s not.

We both got excited about offering brunch to the queer community! Muncie, meet biscuits and chocolate gravy; biscuits and chocolate gravy, meet Muncie!

The very first plate of B&CG I ever made!

If You Like Biscuits and Any Gravy, You’ll Love Biscuits and Chocolate Gravy

Some folks who have never heard of chocolate gravy are universally skeptical at first. My wife included. The concern is whether the chocolate gravy is too sweet.

It isn’t. Trust.

It is situated somewhere between sweet and savory.

Serving it atop warm, tender biscuits helps anchor the gravy from drifting too far into the sweet category as well.

Here’s a bonus: I’ve created a way to make the whole plate vegan!

Part of our mission at Queer Chocolatier is to stand in solidarity with people of all sorts of diets, including vegans, and have the majority of our offerings suitable for their diet.

I’ll offer both versions, with dairy and without, in the recipe below!

The gravy itself is not hard to make but it can be easily ruined, so I tend to recommend not starting your gravy until at least you’ve put your biscuits in to bake or when they are out of the oven altogether. Also, the recipe for the gravy is what I use, but I include some of my preferred optional flavorings as well; feel free to experiment with flavors you enjoy! Gravy is more about expressing your own preferences, some like thinner gravy while others like it thick and never leaving the biscuit surface. Make it your way!

And, in case you wondered, yes these biscuits can be made in a toaster oven!

Ingredients:

For Biscuits (Yield: 6 biscuits)

• 2 cups All-purpose Flour

• ¾ teaspoon Salt

• 1¼ tablespoons Baking powder

• 1 stick, 8 tablespoons, very cold and cubed Butter (vegan version: butter alternative, such as Earth Balance or Country Crock's plant-based offerings, preferably the avocado over the olive oil)

• ½ cup Milk (vegan version: unsweetened soy milk), may need to add more, so keep handy.

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 425° F.

2. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl and whisk to incorporate.

3. Cut butter into dry mixture. Use your hands to work butter into the mix as quickly as possible so as to not get the butter too warm, but get your final mix looking kind of sand and the butter pieces no bigger than pea-sized.

4. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the milk into the well. Stir to incorporate, but only just. Do not overwork mixture, as biscuits will get tough and not rise well.

5. Turn out biscuits dough onto counter and shape into a disk that is an even 1” thick throughout. Use a 2” biscuit cutter to cut out biscuits and place them onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Re-shape scraps and cut more biscuits. I always made myself an “ugly” biscuit I shape by hand with the final remaining scraps that I couldn’t use to cut with biscuit cutter!

6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until tops are golden brown.

7. Remove from oven, serve warm with gravy.

Ingredients:

For Chocolate Gravy (Yield: 2 cups)

• 1 cup Sugar

• ¼ cup Cocoa powder

• 3 tablespoons All-purpose flour

• Pinch of Salt

• 2 cups Milk (vegan version: unsweetened soy milk)

• 4 tablespoons, cubed, Butter (vegan version: butter alternative, such as Earth Balance or Country Crock's plant-based offerings, preferably the avocado over the olive oil)

• Optional: serve with a pinch of ground cinnamon and ground chipotle, maybe add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract to be real fancy!

Steps:

1. Combine dry ingredients in a medium pot, whisking until fully incorporated.

2. Place pot on stove top on medium-low to medium heat and slowly stream milk into mixture, whisking to remove lumps.

3. Cook, stirring frequently and paying special attention to the bottom and sides of pot where gravy can thicken (and burn!) until gravy is warm and thickened to desired consistency, realizing gravy will continue to thicken as it cools.

4. Add cubed butter at the end of cooking and stir to combine until all butter is melted and gravy has a shiny, glossy appearance.

5. Serve over fresh biscuits or just eat with a spoon from the pot, I ain’t about to judge.

6. Gravy can be stored in a jar in the refrigerator for about a week. When reheating, use a microwave (30 seconds at a time, stirring in between) or return gravy to a pot but add a bit of milk to thin out while bringing gravy to desired temperature.

Instagram photos from customers who have unapologetically indulged in Queer Chocolatier Biscuits & Chocolate Gravy

Photo credit: Benjamin Strack (IG @photogben)

Photo credit: Ryan Remington (IG @ryanisadope)

Photo credit: Amy Shaw (IG @alphanumeric.71697

Photo credit: Patrick O'Neal (IG @patrick_mcdarling_oneal)

QC Recipes: Cold Brew Cocoa

QC Recipes: Cold Brew Cocoa

As things are shifting here at Queer Chocolatier, I’ve decided that it might also make for a great opportunity to begin sharing some recipes with readers!

I will hope to have a recipe posted about once a week or so, depending on how the season is going at the shop and whether Dorian will let me sit down to write…

You understand my plight

My first recipe is incredibly easy and really quite surprisingly pleasant as I literally just tried it for the first time for myself this morning!

Hey, when something is that good, why keep it to myself when I could share it with my family???

COLD brew Cocoa

If you’ve ever had or heard of cold brew coffee, then you gotta try cold brew cocoa!

Some people tend to discuss cold brew coffee as a preferred way to drink coffee without the stomach-wrenching acidity or bitterness that can accompany a typical hot brewed coffee. It has a smoother taste and you don’t have to worry about your coffee getting cold when it already starts out that way!

Cold brew cocoa may require more convincing since the vast majority of the time we consume cocoa is hot or, when not hot, in a frappuccino of some concoction.

But trust your Queer Chocolatier!

I gotchu! Cold brew cocoa is delicious!

Cold brew cocoa: Dark, smooth, but flavorful in a delightfully unexpected way!

To make yourself a serving at home, you likely have all the things you need already.

Ingredients and Materials:

• Glass (8-12 oz will do nicely) to brew plus a glass to filter into and drink from

• Spoon

• Cold water (preferably filtered or bottled)

• Cocoa powder (any will do, but pick your favorite, and keep an eye out for when QC makes housemade cocoa powder!)

• Coffee filter (ideally a pour-over coffee set-up of some sort)

That’s it. You may be thinking “But wait! Cocoa powder isn’t sweetened! It is really bitter! I REMEMBER AS A CHILD MY GRANDMOTHER TRICKING ME INTO A BITE OF COCOA POWDER AND I CARRY THOSE SCARS ON MY HEART TO THIS VERY DAY!!”

Ahem, you might be thinking that, but just give this a try first and if you do find that you need to sweeten it up, you can do so just before serving.

Steps:

• Take your glass and pour your cold water in, leaving a bit of headroom for when you stir.

• Scoop 1-2 spoonfuls of cocoa powder into your cold water and stir. Be aware that not all of the cocoa powder will dissolve, that’s okay! Just give it a diligent stirring and stop when it is mostly incorporated.

• Place your glass in the refrigerator overnight.

• In the next morning, set up a a coffee filter in either a single serving pour over set-up or fit a coffee filter over a clean glass by rolling the edges of the filter over the top of your glass and secure with your non-pouring hand.

• Take your cold brew cocoa out of the fridge and, without stirring again, pour carefully into your coffee filter. The cocoa solids will be strained away and the water will pour through easily. Discard filter after water is fully filtered.

• Drink immediately or return to fridge to drink later (but maybe no longer than a day, just go ahead and drink it, you already went through all that trouble). Add any creamer or flavorings similar to how you might fix yourself a cold brew coffee, but be sure to taste it first because you might just like to drink this beverage stra… well… unadulterated.

You can also make ice cubes of cold-brew cocoa and serve a batch of cold brew cocoa over these ice cubes! Or mix & match between cold brew cocoa cubes with cold brew coffee, or vice versa!!

THE POSSIBREWERTIES ARE ENDLESS!!!!

Give this fun beverage a try and let me know your thoughts in a comment below!

Hi, yes, I'm still here (and queer)!

Happy Summer, y’all!

I’m definitely still here (and queer) and we are working hard at the Chocolate House this summer to ramp up for the school year to start and to welcome cooler weather so that we can start shipping chocolates again!

We were also really lucky to eat these donuts from Holy Donut in Portland, ME!

We had a blast at Indy Pride, and we had bittersweet emotions over watching our Class of 2019 graduates fly off into their futures. Summer has brought us many things to process as a new business and we are taking advantage of the season. Cheri and I were able to have a summer getaway over the July 4 holiday to visit family in Maine and Ohio while fully entrusting the Chocolate House to our team and never felt so lucky to realize the talent shown and trust earned by the team.

We will be sharing lots of cool things coming up (such as our progress on bean-to-bar chocolatemaking!) and the place to catch our updates will be our newsletter to be re-launched in August as well as our newly-organized blog!

Be sure to visit us this summer to beat the heat, taste our new products, and grab some QC swag (printed locally in Muncie by Tribune Showprint!) Also, in August, we will have Guided Chocolate Tasting Events for your enjoyment!

Next month marks our two year anniversary as a business! Yes, we’re still here. And the only place to go from here is up! Probably much like the temperature…

"Have you ever had Grandma's chocolate?"

An example of looking in the rear view mirror to see what is on the road ahead

Even though I didn’t grow up cooking or having someone directly teaching me how to cook, much of my early influences related to food comes from my grandparents.

Especially my grandma.

My aunt Linda and I have a shared sweet tooth and there’s been a few times since my grandma has passed away when Linda asked me whether I’d ever had Grandma’s chocolate. I wasn’t sure what she’d meant the first time because I’d had lots of chocolate growing up and, yeah sure, some of it was Grandma’s.

I love telling this one story in particular.

But first, let me lay out the scene:

The kitchen in the house I grew up in was of decent size and laid out like a big square. There was no island, so the kitchen was quite open and on one wall, there was the door to the garage on the opposite side of the entrance to the kitchen from the family room. There was the stove to the right of the garage door, and turning the corner, the kitchen sink was under the small window facing the back yard. The last wall of the kitchen was to the left when you walked into the kitchen from the family room and it held the double-door pantry at one end and the refrigerator at the other end by the garage door, and in between the fridge and pantry was a small patch of counter space that had a single-door cabinet above and a pull-out drawer and single-door cabinet below the counter.

This is as close as you’ll get to seeing me at four-years-old. This is about a year early. You get the picture.

Before I do any further storytelling, do me a quick favor: Picture me at four-years-old. Have you got that image in mind? A four-year-old Morgan? Good. Keep that image in your head a bit. If you don’t have it, just picture 39-year-old Morgan only a bit shorter and not yet with glasses and bangs. That should suffice.

Back to the actual story.

One day, I was pulling open all the kitchen drawers (as you do), and I found the silverware, the ubiquitous junk drawer, the drawer the held rolls of aluminum foil and cling wrap. It wasn’t long before I found the holy grail. The golden treasure. Or rather, instead of gold, a familiar yellow and red bag that contained the true treasure. A bag of Nestle chocolate chips previously opened and now held closed by a clothespin.

That’s just bad security.

Really? A clothespin? In a drawer I could reach?

It’d just be rude not to take some chocolate chips!

I was a smart kid, though, and knew that I just had to take a few at a time and no one would be the wiser. I even knew that I could hold the bag shut with one hand while I release the clothespin with the other and quietly open the bag rather than let the clothespin wrinkling the bag and give away my position.

At some point, though, I ended up going to the well too many times because I could even tell that there was a pretty significant decrease in the amount of chips left in the bag. I overheard my grandma saying to my mom once that she thought I must be sneaking in the drawer and stealing some chips. I was hiding in the pantry at the time of that short conversation, so I still can’t tell if it was a trap or not as I’m not sure if they knew I was hiding there.

I got nabbed once.

It was the worst.

But, see, I was diligent and patrolled to make sure the perimeter was clear. I should have never been caught.

I crept up to the drawer that I had renamed in my mind as the chocolate drawer even though I guess there were other things in it who knows these things.

I slid the drawer open silently.

I did my trick to open the clothespin without noise.

I filled my tiny little hand with a whole bunch of chocolate chips and suddenly my grandma appeared around the corner from the family room.

I froze.

I could hear her working up to holler at me but I’d made a quick calculation that if I was already in trouble for stealing the chips, I may as well eat them.

I shoved them in my mouth in one go and turned to make my escape out the garage door but my mom had just appeared there from work and I was trapped with a mouth stuffed with chocolate and no excuses to articulate.

My grandma just hollered and went on about how those were her chocolate chips for making cookies. My mouth fell open in disbelief. I’d never seen a damn chocolate chip cookie come out of that kitchen.

I’D HAVE KNOWN!

An inherited sweet tooth with deep Southern roots

Despite getting caught and being lied to because seriously there were never any cookies, I love that there is a chocolate-loving-gene we all share. And it goes further back.

Linda clarified what she’d meant when she’d asked if I’d ever had Grandma’s chocolate. My grandma would make for her kids something she’d call “chocolate” for breakfast. Linda said she’d make it every Saturday morning and began to describe it for me.

After she told me what it was, I asked if she’d had a recipe for it. Linda said no.

I decided to hack the recipe and made a version of Grandma’s chocolate for me and Cheri to try. Neither of us knew quite what to expect and Cheri was particularly skeptical. But it was delicious and new, even though it was an old creation.

My grandma and grandpa are from Tennessee and since I don’t know anything of my dad’s side of the family, I have a tendency to simply describe my family as Southern (even though I could be a whole lot of some other origin on the unknown side of my family). Apparently, “chocolate” or “chocolate gravy” was a mainstay in the Tennessee mountains, spreading throughout Appalachia, into the Ozarks, and the rest of the South.

Grandma’s chocolate is now going to be served at the Chocolate House in Muncie, Indiana for brunch.

On Saturday mornings.

Just like she used to do.

What is chocolate gravy?

So, just what is chocolate gravy? It can be made in a couple of different ways but it comes down to the process that is followed by making any gravy: mixing dry ingredients with a liquid fat and thickening to the desired consistency. For the recipe I have developed, I use sugar, flour, cocoa powder, salt, cinnamon, and chipotle, and I mix this combination with milk and butter, vanilla extract, and more chocolate to finish. Yes, it is sweet, but it is not like chocolate syrup. It has a richness and body that leaves you satisfied without feeling empty/full from just having sweets.

The biscuits I use are not sweetened and I have now honed in on a dairy-free biscuit that has won over omnivores in blind tasting. They make for a great canvas to pour all the chocolate gravy you can stand and, when paired with bottomless cups of Flying Rhino Coffee, the brunch hits a perfect balance.

The idea of making something my grandma made brings me a wave of joy and pride I can’t always articulate. But it also opens a doorway to be creative and continue to evolve with different interpretations of chocolate gravy; for example, I am excited about developing a white chocolate gravy and pairing it with the dark chocolate gravy to make for a “tuxedo” plate! The white chocolate replaces the butter in a traditional gravy and I use buttermilk to add a bit of tang to the sweet gravy. I feel like Grandma would approve of this version, too.

Come join us for brunch!

If any and all of this sounds good to you, come see us for brunch! We will be offering brunch on Saturdays from 9a-2p. Our Chocolate House is growing more and more each day. We can’t wait for you and someone you unapologetically love to be a part of that growth and have Grandma’s chocolate, too!