A large part of chocolate making is deciding where and how to source your cacao. Recently, we’ve partnered with Sarah Krupp to source beans from Colombia. The beans come from a village that uprooted their coca plants to grow cacao. The villagers removed the coca crops themselves, hoping to end continued violence that affected their community. Greg’s working closely with Sarah to bring in beans from this village, but there are recent obstacles. Two of the village’s most influential leaders have been threatened by a FARC commander and have been forced to leave the community.

Many of the regions that grow cacao have substantial economic and political turmoil. Sarah wrote this piece on the current political state of Colombia and its effect on the village growing our beans. We thought you would be interested in hearing more about where some of our cacao comes from.

We held our last Chocolate 101 class on May 31 in our production space in the Dogpatch. At the time, Cam led our production with Caitlin and Cynthia by his side. I can’t tell you how much has changed in nine months! We’re settled into our beautiful cafe and factory at 740 Valencia Street, and we’re ready to invite guests in to learn about our process.

May 2012

Our first Chocolate 101 class will be next Thursday, February 28th, from 7-9 PM in our factory on Valencia Street. Tickets are available here. The class is exactly what it claims — a detailed foundation of chocolate knowledge. We’ll talk about chocolate-making generally and our process specifically. We’ll cover the different types of chocolate, their ingredients, and a tour of our process. It’s a fun night, full of information and nearly too much chocolate.

February 2013

We know that chocolate and Valentine’s Day go very well together, so we created a box of our favorite treats for you to give to your loved ones this holiday.

Our boxes include some of our favorite items from our new factory and cafe on Valencia Street. We included each of our own single-origin bars, from Ambanja, Madagascar; Elvesia, Dominican Republic; and Rio Caribe, Venezuela. In addition, our box also features treats from two local chocolatiers who use our Rio Caribe chocolate to make delicious confections for our retail space. We have chocolate covered nibs and caramelized almonds from Feve and chocolate covered shortbread cookies from Kika’s Treats. Shawn at Feve and Cristina at Kika’s Treats were two of our favorite neighbors in the Dogpatch. We’re very happy to collaborate with them now that we’ve moved to the Mission. And, they make our box of Valentine’s Day goodies that much more delicious!

This box is available for pick-up only. You can preorder a gift box in our online store until Wednesday evening. If you do place an order, please come pick up your box at 740 Valencia Street on February 14th, from 11 AM – 6 PM.

And! If you’d like to tuck a special note inside your box, Pam from Shotwell Paper Mill will be outside our factory and cafe from 12 PM – 5 PM on Thursday letterpress printing custom valentines on paper made from our cacao sacks! Her notes begin, “I love it when,” and you can finish the sentence with a message to your loved ones. All together, it should be a very special day here at Dandelion.

I’m very excited to share a video that Hannah Radcliff put together for us earlier this fall. Hannah lives in St. Louis, but stopped at Four Barrel on a recent trip to San Francisco and discovered our chocolate. She wrote to us asking if she could make a video about our “rich and delicious” chocolate on her next trip, and of course we said “yes!”

She recently posted the video as part of a travelogue by FEAST magazine. Her video turned out beautifully. It does a fantastic job of introducing each step of our process and each member of our production team. Thank you, Hannah!

We all came back from the holidays refreshed, and it’s a good thing. We’ve been busy over the past few weeks. We celebrated our space with friends, family, neighbors, and a group of amazing chocolate makers. Cam’s worked hard to whip our machines into shape and increase our production. Todd, Brian, Phil, and our cafe team opened our cafe! There have been many milestones and plenty of reasons to celebrate. Thank you to everyone who helped and supported us over the past few weeks.

Now, we’re ready for the next holiday. And, it’s a chocolatey one! Because of the production team’s hard work and a few process improvements, we were able to open our online store last week. We hoped to get it up and running in time to help you send your Valentine a delicious chocolate treat. And, we’re happy to announce that we did. If you’d like your order to arrive by February 14th, please order by this Saturday, February 9th.

Also, we’ll be out at the Mission Community Market this Thursday, celebrating Valentine’s a little early ourselves. We’d love to be there every week, but we need to increase our production before we have the bars to sell. But, we’ll be there this Thursday, February 7th, from 4 PM – 8 PM, on Bartlett Street and 22nd Street. Come say hello!

Our production space in the Dogpatch was right above Almanac Beer. I’m so glad we discovered this in time to partner up this winter. They recently brewed a Biere de Chocolat using our cocoa nibs and it’s delicious! It’s available now as a draft, with bottles coming in the new year. I was lucky enough to taste a sample earlier this week and I’m hooked.

Almanac worked with our Ambanja, Madagascar and Rio Caribe, Venezuela nibs to produce this seasonal beer. They took great care to get to know the flavor of our beans and to showcase them in the final product. I can taste the fruity, chocolatey, and rich flavor notes I know and love in our bars. The team at Almanac wrote up an awesome description of the layered flavors:

“Working with the unique flavors of Dandelion’s single-source beans, we created this decadent beer by layering in smoked and dark-roasted malts with citrusy Ivanhoe hops from Clearlake, CA. Finally, we added a blend of hand-roasted cocoa beans sourced from Madagascar and Río Caribe, Venezuela. The Madagascar beans add bright berry-cocoa flavors, while the Río Caribe adds dark chocolate and bourbon notes. A touch of vanilla rounds out the supporting flavors to create an eminently drinkable beer that is a chocolate lover’s beer through and through.”

I’m ready for another taste. For now, you can learn more about Biere de Chocolat here. Enjoy!

I hope you’re all thinking about turkey and pumpkin pie as this week winds down. But, when the festivities end, we have another reason to celebrate! We’ll be next door with our neighbors at Mission Cheese on the night of November 26th, pairing chocolate, cheese, and wine from Sutton Cellars. You’ll each be able to play and discover your favorite combinations, while we share some of our own picks. It promises to be a delicious night and we hope you’ll join us!

Here’s the event information: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/296794. The Night Cheese tasting will take place on Monday, November 26th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM at Mission Cheese, 736 Valencia Street.

I hope you’ve seen the updates and know that our space on Valencia is looking beautiful! We still have so much work to do, but we met at our new space this morning and I couldn’t be more excited.

There are lots of preparations to be done before we open and I know there will be plenty of late nights. But, one of the things we need most is a pastry chef. We need someone to whip our pastry kitchen into shape. We’ve gathered ideas for our cafe offerings over the past few months and even had a decadent chocolate breakfast as a trial run. But, we need an experienced pastry chef to lead the way. I’ve listed the full job description below. If you’re interested, we’d like to see your resume and a short draft of a proposed menu. The menu need only be your first thoughts.

We’ll hire for other positions in a few weeks, but we need to focus our efforts on a pastry chef at the moment. When we have other positions available, I’ll put them up on our blog as well!

Please contact jobs@dandelionchocolate.com.

Responsibilities

• Designing recipes and plating for an inventive, chocolate-focused menu to include pastries, a suite of hot chocolates, and specialty desserts
• Costing, sourcing, and ordering the ingredients necessary to execute the menu
• Vetting the menu with the public and making alterations in preparation for opening
• Running the daily operation of our pastry kitchen, including managing any future support staff
• Soliciting feedback about menu on a regular basis, then refining and innovating offerings
• Contributing feedback to our chocolate makers to help them to produce an outstanding product for baked goods and confections

Requirements

• Passion for working with chocolate
• Must have 3 years of experience leading a pastry kitchen
• Demonstrates inventive uses of ingredients and a strong aesthetic sense
• Ready to lead a kitchen with a positive, enthusiastic attitude

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to give Cynthia a ride to and from the Mission Community Market. I stayed for a minute and quickly realized that she has a whole set of regulars who know her by name. She does a fantastic job at the market, meeting the people who will be our neighbors when we move to Valencia. Apparently the staff of MCM thinks so too. We were the “vendor of the week” yesterday, and the folks of MCM posted a really sweet note about Cynthia. They also published her recipe for strawberry nib salad. Personally, I’m excited to know that Cynthia bartered our chocolate for roasted almonds and promises to make her chocolate-covered almonds for snacks at the factory!