Chocolate: Preparing
and an interview that brightened my day
Originally published for paying subscribers December 23, 2023. Unlocked now!
The space greets you with warmth and rich scents so velvety you can almost taste them. Crisp pink and white patterns the walls and cozy chairs invite you to settle in and get comfortable.
A glass case of decadent desserts rests beside the counter, drawing visitors closer for a better look. Mousse as light as clouds and chocolate bars as shiny and geometric as diamonds sit next to European-inspired delights fit for weddings.
From the first time I visited Chocolatté in Buena Vista, Colorado, I knew I had to meet its owner.
Now Ewa, the owner of Chocolatté, sits in front of me bouncing her toddling daughter on her lap. They are at ease, as am I, in this shop designed for comfort, beauty, and functionality.
“We have three children, and we are originally from Poland. Back in Europe, I feel like society is more about children and supporting families, and that’s what we’d been missing here [in Buena Vista]. So we really wanted to create this space for parents so that they can find time to talk to each other, to friends. Or just to enjoy coffee, or read a book, or maybe work.”
She points to the indoor playground that sits between our seats and the wide mountain-view windows.
“It was important for us to build the playground where kids can play. And it works! We have a lot of returning customers who say, ‘It’s unbelievable, my child played for one and a half hours, and I can work! I can read a book!’ So that’s the idea behind our shop, and that was our goal and still our mission to provide that space for parents. Give them a little break. A relief.”
Because they’re situated right across the street from the elementary school, 3PM rolls around and everyone flocks over to Chocolatté to spend time there instead of on the grass in front of the school.
“For me it was really important to also introduce some healthy snacks. We have healthy desserts. We have banana chocolate, chia pudding, smoothies. Because we’re a place for kids, we don’t want to sell trash candies. That was important for us to have quality desserts.”
Her eyes lit up as she told me she’s already doing a fundraiser for the school. “No one is afraid to talk to each other here,” Ewa said. “You can be grabbing coffee and someone can say, ‘Hey, you want to help us out? Sure! My kids go there!’ We are part of the community. We’re just one family.
“Another important aspect of our business is we try to work with other businesses. I feel like BV is a very special community. Like that town dinner — Oh, my goodness!”
The BV Strong Dinner exemplifies so much of what I love about our town. The dinner started a few years ago to support a family that had been struck by tragedy. They closed off main street and lined it with tables. Everyone joined together, brought food, donated money, and supported the family.
I quickly realized that, as we sat chatting in her shop, Ewa and I were both writing our own love letters to food, flavor, and Buena Vista, Colorado.
“You won’t see it anywhere else,” Ewa said. “I feel like all businesses try to support each other and work together — you sell coffee? I have a coffee shop. Let’s work together! We try to find out products as locally as possible.”
Ewa and her husband visited several creameries in Colorado before deciding to source their ice creams from Josh and John’s in Colorado Springs. So many of the places they toured just “threw everything into a big machine and made a million flavors. Josh and John makes ice creams traditionally with eggs, and every single flavor has its own machine. They never mix. And we just loved the flavors and the texture. The way they make it so clean, so organized. We just love them. And they are kind of like family — its very neat in the business world, you know, everybody wants to win. But they are like, ‘Hey, we want to help you. Let us know what you need.’”
Ewa and I talked about how the business side of things is always the scariest. We like the creative part. Ewa said, “That’s why I go to my husband.” And we devolved into laughter. “I’ll just make the desserts,” she continued, “and talk to customers. He’s paying the bills and ordering.”
“A good partnership,” I said.
I asked Ewa how she decided to open this business. It all started with that mission of providing a comfortable and happy space for parents and their small children. And then it developed from there.
“We just started to build up the menu. I tried a few recipes, and my husband said, ‘We absolutely have to sell your chocolate!’ Chocolate in Europe is a big thing. It’s kind of a noble dessert. It’s very, very special, so I just started learning how to make it. Also chocolate is my favorite!”
I was blown away looking around at the gorgeous chocolates in front of me. She’d started in her home kitchen, making chocolate the traditional way, and that’s exactly how she does it in her shop.
“We don’t melt chocolate chips. That’s not the way we do it. We start with the cocoa butter.” She smiles, kisses her daughter on the top of her head and sets her down gently on the floor. “Let me show you!”
She pulled open a massive drawer filled with containers of what look like jagged white rocks. She picks one up and holds it out to me.
“Smell it.”
I hold the block up to my face and the same warm smell that greeted me at the door fills my nose.
“So this is organic cocoa butter,” she explains. She waves her hand casually. “You can just put it in the trash.”
“Oh, I don’t want to!” I hold it up to my nose as she laughs and moves over toward the stove behind the counter to show me the rest of the process.
“So that’s how we start. We temper it. Of course, for chocolate, the temperature is crucial. So you really need to pay attention. A too high temperature can ruin everything, and a too low temperature can ruin everything. I’ve noticed when I was learning that the same recipe, the same step, but different weather outside will change it. So you really, really need to pay attention to that.”
Her daughter is playing happily in the ball pit by the window. There’s no sense of worry here — it’s a safe space, a happy space.
“And we also use organic cocoa powder,” Ewa continues. “And then it depends on what kind of chocolate we’re making. If it’s dark chocolate, my favorite, we just add some sugar and that’s it. And then my favorite part, the last step, is decorating those chocolates with, Oh Everything!”
I asked her about inspiration for her flavors and decorations.
“I just feel it. I just feel it. The nuts were always my favorites in chocolate, so that was a must.” She said, as she’s making the chocolates, she just lets her imagination go. “You know inspiration is everywhere. It’s difficult to just see it with a piece of paper — maybe a little bit of this maybe of that — actually i just leave and see inspiration everywhere.”
At this point, I pulled out my tupperware I’d brought with me. “So this is the stage I’m in.” I open the container and show her the dark, glossy beans I roasted. “I’ve cracked them. I did the winnowing process. So you remove the shell and then you have the bean. And then once you have the powder and the butter…” I trail off. “How do you put it together?” We laugh together. “Like…how do you temper it. What does that process look like?”
She makes a double-boiler using a heavy bottomed bowl so that the temperature stays more moderate and controlled. Then, she adds the sugar with a fine mesh sieve to help keep the texture smooth. She said temperature is the most important part. She also adds the cocoa butter to the dry ingredients with patience, gentleness, and attention to detail.
“Chocolate is just amazing. It needs so much attention. As I said before, for me it’s like a noble dessert. It needs a lot of details to make it perfect.”
She showed me how she puts the chocolates into their forms to create the unique diamond shapes of her chocolate bars.
“Who wouldn’t want diamond chocolate?”
She demonstrated the sharp snap shine of well-made chocolate. She showed me how they make their lavender ice cream cones. We looked in the dessert case at that day’s offerings. She explained that mousse, her “simple” dessert, was so worth having because the richness of the chocolate really shines through. She was especially proud of the tiramisu, which she’d made with real marscapone and amaretto. “Most people use cream cheese as a short cut.” But not Ewa. Her tiramisu is as close as it gets to finding authentic Italian tiramisu here in Buena Vista.
We both have a passion for taking the long way. We laughed together as I told her about my Christmas excursion a couple years ago when I made 19th-century Christmas puddings, causing indoor rain in my house as the puddings boiled on the stove top for seven hours.
Talking to Ewa felt like meeting a kindred spirit. As we talked, her daughter chattered and toddled around the shop. The bright walls and coziness of the shop mirrors Ewa herself.
I asked her if she had a background in food before starting the business.
“Back in Poland, where I’m originally from, family is a huge thing. All families stay close together, so we have a lot of family gatherings. Pretty much once a month, we have a big one for thirty people. Once a week, we have a small one for fifteen people. A lot of them my mom hosted in her house, and I always helped. I was always in charge of desserts. I never thought I would do it professionally, but it was always inside of me. And I never wanted to help my mom with food. I always wanted to do the desserts! And for me making those desserts and chocolates is like a break from life. I can just focus on that and I can let my creativity go and express that way.”
I tell her that that’s how I got into food as well. Wine pairings and cooking and gatherings were integral to my own family. My mom was forever hosting when I was younger.
I tell her that, when I turned thirteen, my mom bought me a Kitchenaid stand mixer. “She was like, ‘I’m so happy for you to have this. You’re doing all the desserts now.’”
“There’s something so special about when people eat together.”
I’ve recounted the next step in my chocolate journey below. I took to heart everything I learned from Ewa. And, as you’ll see, I think I have a long road ahead of me. To make this noble dessert well, it requires more patience and more attention to detail than I gave it this time around.
I’ll keep trying, keep perfecting. But for now, I’ll be leaving the tempering to Ewa, and I’ll thoroughly enjoy getting to visit her whenever I’m craving chocolate.
Chocolate: Preparing (Round One)
My beans were already roasted and winnowed (revisit this edition of Food & Fodder to learn about that part of the process). My next step was grinding the beans, which I’ve read you can do in a coffee grinder.
My best guess as to what went wrong was that I was putting too many beans in the grinder at a time. I found that at the bottom of the grinder, the grounds were very fine but a little clumpy and sticking to the bottom, but at the top, they weren’t fine enough.
Little did I know that this would spell disaster.
I melted the cocoa butter down the way Ewa showed me, but I think the bowl that I used was not thick enough, resulting in too high of temperatures too quickly. I also used a whisk to blend together the cocoa butter with the powder, which was definitely not gentle enough to get smooth chocolate.
I used equal parts cocoa powder and cocoa butter. Then I used 1/8 of that amount of sugar to result in (according to a writer’s math) should result in roughly 80% dark chocolate. To my understanding, the calculation is as follows:
The percentage of darkness is the measurement of the piece of chocolate’s weight that comes from cocoa butter and powder (sometimes referred to as the cocoa mass). So the percentage is the cocoa mass divided by the total weight of the bar.
I will say — the flavor of the chocolate was great. But the texture was more like a Hershey’s Krackle bar than the velvety decadence I was going for.
I’ll be back to try my hand at this again. You can see my downfall for yourself in the video below.
I’m excited to say that my new book, “Eavesdrop: conversations across time,” will be available in print through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and more this Tuesday, January 30!
If you’re interested, please consider checking it out. If you’re interested in learning more, check it out on my website here. You can also hear about it on Monday’s episode of my favorite book podcast, Overdue!
Thanks, as always, for reading,
Juliana
PS —
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