Forum Activity for @Brad Churchill

My refiners are like MacIntyre's - a horizontal drum with blades that rotate and scrape the inside of the drum.

For the most part, all of the nibs are ground, however there is a 4 inch guillotine spout at the bottom where nibs get trapped during refining. When my staff open thespout to drain the chocolate, the nibs that got trapped in there when they were first poured into the machine are washed out. This can be mitigated by my staff stopping the machine and pouring out a small amount of chocolate into a bucket and dumping it back in to the top. However sometimes they don't have the time. In one recent case, a small stone even made it through, so you can see how important it can be to strain it.

With the cocoa-town grinders, nibs and sugar stick to the insides of the wheels, the support structure for the wheels, and so forth, and never get ground. Then when the machine is emptied and scraped out, they get cleaned out and into the chocolate.

Hope that helps.

I have a champion juicer. I had it before I started making chocolate, and used it all the time. I think it cost me something like $350 CDN. When I first started "pre-grinding" my nibs, the burs were sharp. Within just a few uses, the burs were dull and more or less useless for anything.

I started heating the nibs, cocoa butter, and even the bowl and wheelsof my santha knock-off, and never looked back. Regardless of whether I preground stuff or not, it was still taking the same amount of time to drive off the volatiles. I wish I would have known sooner. It would have saved me yet one more damaged piece of kitchen equipment thanks to those rock hard cocoa nibs!

Most of the artisans I communicate regularly with on another forum have also stopped using the juicer (including the forum owner himself), as there is no real benefit found from it - just cost.

Now having said that, if you are simply looking at particle reduction, well.... I guess it could save time. However in my opinion that takes a backseat to flavour development, and to be candid, happens anyway when developing a good flavour.

Cheers.

Brad

Mike;

Grinding your nibs prior to putting them into the cocoatown mill, will not eliminate the need to strain your chocolate. It is an imperfect device. I use conche/refiners specifically designed for making chocolate, and we ALWAYS find nibs when we drain it out. The only time you wouldn't need to strain your chocolate would be if you are using a roll refinerfor your sugar and cocoa beans prior to putting them into your machine.

A good commercial sieve way cheaper and a heck of a lot less messy than another machine.

For very small scale, there is no benefit/need to pre-milling your nibs and sugar.

With regard to the high fructose corn syrup issue, just switch to honey as a sweetener. I believe you can get unscented honey, and it has roughly the same glucose/fructose ratio as HFCS, and the best part is it's all natural.

I could be wrong, but from what I've read, HFSC and Honey are both synthesized using enzymes. Bees synthesize invertase naturally while making honey to convert some of the glucose to fructose, and "big" industry uses other enzymes such as Glucose isomerase, which produced through fermentation with microorganisms. A variety of bacteria cultures are used to create Glucose isomerase.

Regardless, fructose is a sweetener that exists naturally. The fact that you use a little more fructose in your chocolates to preserve the shelf life isn't a big deal. Ask your client if they are going to stop eating fruit and honey too....

I'm all for making ingredients when possible, but I have tried to make almond paste, and I can never get it as smooth as the stuff made with industrial equipment.

Maybe someone out there has an answer to this challenge?

Failing that, there are lots of other things to make which don't use almond paste. I've resigned myself to that.

Hey Fin;

There is only one species, and it's calledTheobroma Cocoa. There are "varieties" though, and those varieties are primarily "Criollo" and "Forastero". There has been a lot of talk about a "Trinitario" variety, but I think these days claims of it existing are somewhat nebulous at best.

Typically Forastero pods are smooth and shaped like a footbal with rounded ends, while Criollohas a rough exterior, sometimes distinct ridges in the shell, and a fairly pronounced pointy tip. Color is a bit all over the board, but Criollo is often a very pale green(but can also be yellow), while Forastero is usually yellow or red when ripe.

Like I said though.... Color is less of an indicator than the shape and texture of the pods.

Hope that helps.

Brad

Can you post a photo of what you are describing?

Awesome tidbit!

Thanks Sebastian!

Shannon;

I feel for you. The harsh reality is that what you "know" to exist in other places can't be proven.

What CAN be proven however is that your inspector is incompetent, given that she's questioning the items you mentioned. What can ALSO be proven is that you are genuinely concerned as a small business owner, that her incompetence could affect your livelihood. These are both issues that can and SHOULD be addressed with her direct supervisor. After all, she wouldn't hesitate to write YOU up for a minor violation, now would she? It's ok to demonstrate to her that shit flows both ways, and she's just as accountable for her actions as you are yours.

Will this create an enemy with her? Probably. Someone wise once told me to keep my friends close, and my enemies closer. Do EVERYTHING right, and put controls in place to make sure your staff ALWAYS do everything right.In the long run is it bad that you have the "Health Nazi" looking over your shoulder? Probably not. After all, killing customers is uncool. It makes her job easy, and your case beyond reproach when complaining to her management. It's perfectly ok to squak if you are following the rules to a T.

Cheers.

Brad

Oh... another tidbit for you: If you use chlorine bleach spray as a sanitizer, you will most likely be written up if you use the kind for home use. Our limit for chlorine is 200ppm, (about one cap of regular bleach per spray bottle), whereas the home disinfectant sprays (such as Fantastic) practically eat the test strip once it's sprayed on. My Inglewood shop was written up for using TOO MUCH sanitizer! HAHA! Sorry Mr. Inspector. We were a little too anal! Jerk!

Here in Canada, the CFIA requires the bacon to be double cured before useable in chocolate. I knowof a couple of shops that have had to pull their "bacon bars" off the shelves as a result.

Clay and Sebastian are both spot on with their individual points. I JUST dealt with that same issue with my regional health inspector when I opened my third location. He was young and unaware. I found it very annoying that he has the power to refuse food permits, revoke permits, and essentially close a business down, and the ignorance to do it without justification. I voiced that concern of his incompetencein a fashion one could well imagine, having read some of my posts on this forum in the past.

If your health inspector causes you flack, ask for his supervisor's name, so you can discuss with them how it is that one of his inspectors can visit a business having no understanding of pathogen contamination of food in the establishments they are inspecting.

I got the permit without further issue and opened that day.

Cheers.

Clay;

My recipe doesn't call for extra water, nor does it call for cream.

I can only assume here you're talking about a situation where Rosanne uses a different recipe...

Brad.

Yes. It's fine.

Let me know how it works out for you.

Cheers.

Try this:

1kg milk chocolate broken into small pieces

500ml of raspberry puree'

125g granulated sugar

190g unsalted butter (optional)

Bring the raspberries and sugarto a boil on your stove, and simmer for 5-10 minutes.

Put into a food processor to break down all of the fibres in the fruit.

Strain through a very fine siev to get the seads out.

while hot, mix into the chocolate and stir until smooth.

Let set in the fridge.

If you find the ganache too thick to work with at room temperature, you can add the butter, and that will soften it up considerably, and give it a velvety texture.

This is essentially one of my company's truffle fillings (almost), with the exception that we whip it like whipping cream to incorporate air into it and make it very fluffy before we make it into truffles. It's one of my shop's most popular centers.

Cheers

Brad

Cooking anything evenly is about heat and airflow. You need both. A good example of what I'm talking about is putting two sheet pans in a regular oven - one on the top rack and one on the bottom. The product on the bottom rack will be burnt LONG before the product on the top rack is cooked, because the bottom rack blocks the air flow created by the heating element, thereby trapping the heat underneath it. This is slightly mitigated by staggering the trays (one on one side of the oven and and one on the other), instead of having them directly above of each other.

For your home oven, roast one tray at a time, and if possible use a perforated tray. Fill the tray so that the beans aren't stacked on top of each other, but at least you can't see much tray under your beans. If you have no perforated trays, you will need to stir the beans on the sheet pan every 5-10 minutes.

What I would suggest is to cut the bottom out of a sheet pan and fasten a metal screen in its place. This will let more airflow through and give you a much better roast regardless of whether or not you have a convection oven. Sheet pans are cheap, and so is screen.

In my shop we use perforated sheet pans. (you can buy them in North America at restaurant equipment supply places through special order). This along with a convection oven with the fan on low, works fabulously and we don't have to touch them once they go in the oven.

Hope that helps.

Brad

Keep the beans dry and they will store almost indefinitely.

With regard to the quality and the roast.... My grandmother always used to say thatyou "can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear."

She was right.

Roasting is an exercise of experience.Go with your nose to start. The beans will start smelling like brownies, then get quite acidic, and then go back to richdeepbrownies. It's at the third stage you are done. Do a low temperature roast to start (300f), and play around with times between 30 min and 60 min depending on the acidity of the bean. Smell them every 5 minutes to gain experience in what to expect.

Hope that helps.

To back up Gap, you don't need a roaster. Cooking anything is about heat and airflow - plain and simple. Cocoa beans will roast just fine in your oven. I did it for 3 years before I started Choklat. Now I roast in a commercial convection oven and my beans cook perfectly.

You also don't need the juicer. It makes more of a mess than anything else. I only used the juicer the first month I made chocolate.

There. I've just saved you $540. Go buy more beans and have fun! After all, someone told me once (actually a couple of times). "It's just chocolate."

Cheers.

Brad

To understand tempering chocolate, you need to keep in mind that with the exception of your melting temperature, the cocoa butter is crystalizing ALL the time. At it's ideal working temperature, if you don't agitate it, the chocolate will go solid on you. Also, room temperature plays a big part in the crystalization - especially if you aren't agitating your chocolate properly.

Agitation is THE most important part of working with chocolate. ALL tempering machines will be agitating the chocolate at all times, in order to keep in a working state and prevent it from solidifying. If you are tempering chocolate by hand, you need to be stirring it 100% of the time you are working with it, or you will always get bloom.

One other thing: When you reheat your chocolate on your double boiler (after melting and cooling it) to it's working temperature, remove it from the double boiler approximately 5 degrees LOWER than your target temperature. The reason for this is because your pot will still be hot, and will continue to drag the temperature up (and out of temper) for a few minutes after it is removed from the heat. If you remove it too soon, you can always bring it up a degree or two with a blow dryer on the low setting blown directly on the chocolate while you are stirring it.

Cheers.

Brad.

The point that I'm getting at is that as it applies to your original question, who cares if it's "fair trade, organic cold pressed"??? These qualities whether true or not are irrelevant. It's just cocoa powder, yet you seemed to feel it important to qualify it for some reason.

If cocoa powder is "fair trade" does that make the particle size different? Nope.

If the cocoa powder is "organic", does that make the particle size different? Nope.

If it's "cold pressed" (even IF you can prove that claim which I don't believe you can), does that make the particle size different? Nope again.

Particlesize is directly related to the milling of the press cake after the valuable cocoa butter is extracted.

I fully understand the English Language, and fully understand that the adjectives you added to the noun were irrelevant to begin with, and mislead people into believing it is something which it isn't, when what most cocoa powder really is, is a by-product of extracting cocoa butter from beans that nobody wants to make into chocolate.

You can call me names all you want, because that's all you have. You can provide NO valuable or substantiable information which refutes what I claim.

But then again, what do I know, I wasn't on the debate team in school. I was busy being a dumb jock.

Brad

You're right about my reference to cocoa butter. However, everything else I say is accurate, unless you would like to prove otherwise.

The nice thing about anonline forum is that it enables exchange - certainly an exchange that allows you to dismiss my observations.

Go ahead and please do.

Cheers

Brad

Tom. I'm not upset. I'm just pointing out things that I see.

Having said that, I would LOVE to have IceBlocks explain the relevance of "raw" and "cold pressed" when it applies to either cocoa butter OR cocoa powder, when the process of pasteurization nullifies that by bringing the temperature of the product in excess of 165 degrees F for several minutes - far above what people find acceptable for "raw" food.

After all, we're ALL about sharing here. Right?

99% of the time I can't disagree with what you've written here Tom.

In this particular case, IceBlocks comes across as someone technically astute. After all, how many chocolatiers do you know of who talk about sending their cocoa powder to a lab for analysis?

HERE'S A BETTER ONE: Iceblocks says they have to conform to HACCP as required by the Australian Government. HACCP is an acronym which stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point and is a very comprehensive program that companies use to identify critical points of potential microbial contamination in their manufactured food. Given that the Australian Government has determined that raw cocoa powder is contaminated and needs sterilization (or so Iceblocks says), it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put 2 and 2 together and conclude that raw cocoa butter comes from raw cocoa beans, and if raw cocoa solids are contaminated, the raw cocoa butter would DEFINITELY be considered contaminated too and thus a critical control point in the manufacturing process, which would definitely mandate further research into the supplier's claims, and also require a step to sterilize it, which would ALSO mean the fact that it's cold pressed would be irrelevant, because it would be heated at some point!

In the manufacturing world, it is common knowledge that fats such as cocoa butter act as fabulous preservatives and suspension mediums for pathogens such as eColi and Salmonella - allowing the bacterium to live much longer than if they were just on the surface of a food item.

For further educational purposes (after all, we're here to learn right?), here are the seven key points to an effective HACCP program: Note that STEP ONE mandates that Iceblocks should have done his homework LONG before he wrote about raw processed cocoa butter.

HACCP step 1 requires manufacturers to conduct a hazard analysis; they must identify food hazards and implement a written HACCP plan for food hazards that are reasonably likely to occur during processing. [46] Step 2 requires manufacturers to identify within the HACCP plan the critical control points (CCPs)the points in the manufacturing process where the identified food hazards can be minimizedand the measures that will be taken to control the hazards. [47] The third step requires manufacturers to identify and establish critical limits, the outer boundaries in which physical, biological, or chemical parameters must remain in order to control the food hazards. [48]

HACCP steps 4, 6 and 7establishing monitoring, record-keeping and verification proceduresensure the proper day-to-day functioning of the manufacturing process. Manufacturers must maintain records documenting the ongoing application of the HACCP; this requires written proof that the processor is monitoring the critical control points and critical limits, i.e., the actual recording of times, temperatures, and other measurements required by the HACCP plan. [49] Furthermore, the food processors must verify that the HACCP plan is being implemented properly. Trained individuals must review the companys HACCP records and consumer complaints, check the calibration of process monitoring instruments, and, when necessary, conduct periodic end-product or in-process testing. [50] Because scientific knowledge is always expanding, the food processor must also validate its HACCP plan annually; if the food processor had earlier concluded that no hazards were present and no HACCP plan was needed, it must reassess its earlier hazard analysis whenever there are any changes that could reasonably affect whether a food hazard now exists. [51]

The final HACCP step (step 5) requires manufacturers to establish corrective actions. Manufacturers must include within their HACCP plans corrective actions for situations in which a deviation from a critical limit occurse.g., when sterilization machinery does not maintain the proper temperature. [52] These plans should ensure that any injurious product is withheld from the stream of commerce and that the cause of the deviation is corrected. [53] Should a deviation occur for which there is no plan, the manufacturer must quarantine the potentially injurious product; determine whether the food product meets the safety criteria for distribution; and take appropriate action to ensure that any injurious product does not reach consumers and that the cause of the deviation is corrected. [54] Anytime the manufacturer takes corrective actions, the actions must be documented. [55] Importantly, when a deviation occurs for which there is no plan, the manufacturer must reassess the HACCP plan, and make any necessary modifications to the plan; this requirement ensures that when unexpected deviations occur, the manufacturer will reassess and rework the safety and quality controls it has built into the system. [56]

For further reading on the HACCP infrastructure, please feel free to visit the following web page: http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8965572/Axelrod06.html?s...

There is no way around this. Either Iceblocks is lying about HACCP, OR Iceblocks is lying about his cocoa butter being cold pressed. It is logically impossible to know about one, and not care/not know about the other. Iceblocks is not simply "misinformed."

I stand by what I said before. Shame on Iceblocks.

I guess there is one other possibility: Iceblocks doesn't have a clue about either HACCP, OR cold pressing of cocoa butter, in which case double shame on him.

Brad

I wasn't overbearing or condescending.

I simply caught a liar in a lie. After all Clay, it wasn't like the words just "slipped" off of IceBlocks' keyboard! He consciously typed them, and even made sure they were spelled right. In fact they were even used in correct context, which can only lead a person to believe that IceBlocks KNOWS what the words mean, and the impact they have.

SOMEBODY needs to step up and call to task those who purposely misrepresent themselves and/or their products. If nobody did this, what value would forums like this have?

"language used..."??? I didn't know "shame on you" was swearing.

If you want to chastize someone in your "house of business" chastize the guy who misleads people, and not the guy who points out obvious marketing BS designed to mislead others.

I just got home from a great weekend in the mountains to read this trash!

IceBlocks, you throw around buzzwords like you know what you're talking about (...ourfair trade, organic cold pressed... blah blah) , and then when pressed by someone who REALLY DOES know what he's talking about you confess PUBLICLY nonethelessthat you don't even know if it is "cold pressed".

It's people like you that I got into this industry in the first place - people who use words because they sound good, and without concern of the ramifications that they have when a consumer reads them and then goes into a LEGIT business and says "I'm raw vegan and I want to purchase chocolate made with cold pressed cocoa butter." Then my staff have to undo the damage YOU have caused.

Personally I'm dumbfounded that you haven't even thoroughly researched your ingredients in the first place, and given what you've written here, it's highly doubtful that you even have a clue if it's fair trade or organic!

Shame on you.

Brad.

Julie;

You should put a request in to Clay, the owner of this site, to post a document on tempering chocolate, and make it available right on the home page.

You aren't even close with your temperatures.

Brad

If you are going to facilitate transactions between people, rather than stock the product yourself such as what John Nanci does, there should be some type of membership fee charged for this section.

I could easily write the software for this at a reasonable price.

Cheers

Brad

"due to inflation and the penny being discontinued, my two cents has now been rounded up to a nickel."

Thanks for the advice on Kickstarter.

With regard to tempering, it's not tricky if the thermocouple is accurate.

Cheers.

It will be able to run with as little as 2lbs, but should hold around 10 just fine - about the same as a pavoni

It's going to have a baffle inside similar to the others I've mentioned, except that the baffle will be offset from center a bit more so that there is more room in the working area of the bowl.

Well everybody, my cup runneth over with frustration at the table top tempering machines on the market today.

I am tired of replacing motor after motor, and control board after control board on the tempering machines that are currently on the market today.

Pavoni Mini-Temper = FAIL (service, every control board, every motor, and control board logic)

ACMC = FAIL (all motors and all plastic parts, and the chocolate volume is too small)

Rev 2 = FAIL (control board logic and fan and heater, and the chocolate volume is WAY too small)

...and WTF is with lightbulbs as heating elements??? Don't these companies know that incandescent lightbulbs are a thing of the past?

Note that the failure is not on just one machine. I own SIX of each!!!

I pulled the trigger and started the design of my own table top tempering machine. It will have the following features:

• industrial strength Motor OUTSIDE of the heating/cooling chamber
• Control board OUTSIDE of the heating/cooling chamber
• Seperate motor control (ACMC has this, but not Rev 2 or Pavoni)
• 5 programmable and automatedtempering cycles
• all stainless steel construction
• LCD style touch screen controlpanel (no more buttons to wear out).
• No light bulbs as heat supply (heating element and fan combination)

These machines will be designed to withstand the amost abusive staff, will be designed torun 24/7, and will be made from parts that can be ordered off the shelf from pretty much any motor supply place or hardware supplier.

The cool thing will be how the programs work. There will be 3 set points (similar to the Pavoni). However unlike with the Pavoniyou can do what you want with them. For example, The tempering cycle may be set like 43c to 27c to 31.5c. As the day progresses and the chocolate begins to thicken, you switch to program 2 which increase the temperature 1 degree. The 3set points would then be 32.5 to 32.5 to 32.5. Maybe your chocolate continues to thicken. You could program the machine to do 33.5 to 33.5 to 33.5, to make the chocolate more fluid.

OR...

Maybe you work with5 different types of chocolate, and each has a specific tempering cycle. You could program the machine to operate 5 different cycles automatically depending on which chocolate you are using that day.

In our shop, we will reserve program 5 as our heating and holding program. At the end of the day, our staff will set the machine to program 5 (43c to 43c to 43c), turn the motor off and go home. The machine will take the chocolate to that, and hold it until the next day when my staff arrive, set the machine to program 1 and start the bowl turning again. At that time it runs through it's cycle, and in an hour it's automatically back in temper, and ready to use.

I will offer a 3 year unconditionalwarranty on the failure of all parts due to manufacturer defect (not user defect), and the machines will hopefully be priced around the $1500 dollar mark.

No more cheap plastic parts, and failing motors.

Who's interested?

Cheers

Brad

Clay, the problem with a syphon like you suggested is that the hose is corrugated, and will trap the hot chocolate and make it hard to clean.

There are MANY inexpensive hot chocolate dispensers on the market, just this one on ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BABBYNITA-Hot-Chocolate-Machine-/350262367584?pt=BI_Hot_Beverage_Brewers&hash=item518d439560

Failing that, a simple stainless steel measuring cup works just fine. My shops use about 32 litres of our drinking chocolate every week, and that's all we use to pour into our steamer cups. There really is no need to make things complicated.

Cheers.

Brad

Hi Everybody.

A few weeks ago, I released my new website and asked for feedback on the content from the members here at TheChocolateLife. I had taken a chance and "put myself out there" and to put things quite bluntly, I got roasted by the members on here.

Thank you by the way, for your candid opinions. I will definitely be making some technical changes to the layout to make it more device friendly.

The philosophy behind my approach to the contentwas that I felt peopleare tired of being lied to and manipulated by clever marketing. I know I am.

I have had some time to weigh the results of my brazen honesty and they are staggering.

• Sales have DOUBLED.
• Website traffic has DOUBLED.
• People are continually approaching my staff and raving about the refreshing honesty of the content.
• People are making a point of visiting my stores BECAUSE of my brazen honesty.
• People are sharing links to my site around their office and reading ALL of the content, laughing with their colleagues at some of the things I write, THEN in groups, coming to visit one of my stores.

One person who provided feedback called myjourney in the chocolate industry "Petulant". For greater clarity, petulance is defined as being overly annoyed or angered at seemingly minor and insignificant things.

I guess given the resounding positive feedback I've had from both new and existing customers, honesty in a business's advertising isn't considered insignificant or minor. It's actually applauded.

Again, I thank you all for your feedback. It has again confirmed to me that doing the opposite of what everybody else in the industry finds acceptable, works and works very well, provided of courseone producesthe quality to stand behind it - and that's something I know I do.

For those of you thinking of getting into the business. Don't be afraid to take risks. While they don't all pay off asthis recent one has for me, just because everybody else does things a certain way, doesn't mean it's the right way, or the only way.

By the way, here's a teaser to my next journey. I was approached by a director and producer back in November. Whether or not it pans out, I'm not sure, but it's kind of funny nonetheless:

The Chocolate Hunter: Taster 2013

Cheers

Brad.

I agree. The Savage Firemixer works great. We have one, and just dump the ingredients in, turn on the cooking cycle and forget about it until the alarm goes off. Free's up LOTS of time in our shop.

Kerry;

I can provide you a recipe for an amazing cream caramel that is soft at room temp, but can be cooked longer and made more firm. My recipe doesn't need lecithin.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You need to adjust for altitude. Water boils 1.25 degrees C less for every thousand feet of altitude you climb from sea level, and this makes a HUGE difference in cooking caramel.

4L Whipping Cream (35% MF)

3.6kg unsalted butter

3.6kg granulated sugar

4L Rogers Golden Corn Syrup (helps prevent crystalization)

80ml Good vanilla extract.

• Heat the butter, sugar, corn syrup and of the cream until all is dissolved.
• Cover and boil for 3-5 minutes.
• Uncover and boil until 224 Degrees Fahrenheit.
• Add the rest of the whipping cream and the vanilla.
• Cook to EXACTLY 244 Degrees Fahrenheit for truffle centers (our altitude is 3500 feet).
• Pour into a large NON MELTABLE container and date it.
• Remelt and use as needed.

If you are just using chocolate in the molds and not egg products, then there is no need to. Some health inspectors need to be educated with regard to the risk of chocolate as a confection (almost zero). Your inspector probably just doesn't know.

I just went through a thorough inspection of a new store with a health inspector who wasn't familiar with chocolate.He looked at the solid chocolate in my tempering machines (the bloom kind of looks like crystally mould), and asked how often we wash them. I told him "We don't." He was very surprised. I then had to explain to him about water and chocolate, and the moisture content in chocolate not being conducive to pathogen growth. After that, he was fine.

If you still have trouble, go over your inspector's head and get the straight goods from his/her supervisor.

Having said that, maybe your shop is so messythat they just said "this guy's a pig and needs to clean EVERYTHING." (not that I'm saying you're messy. I just don't know.)

Cheers.

Brad

Hope that helps.

Hi Dave.

Before you do anything with your chocolate, the first thing I would suggest is thoroughly research and understand the concept of tempering chocolate. There is a wealth of information on this site. Maybe Clay (the site owner) can point you in the right direction.

Cheers and happy chocolatiering!

Brad

Felipe;

Thank you for the input. I'll definitely take a look at those tools. I did code the site by hand, and it's clear now that my chocolate making skills far surpass my graphic arts/web design skills! Haha!

Cheers

Brad

Wow. Thank you very much for taking the time to write what you did.

Cheers.

Brad

Chris;

Thanks for taking the time to check things out andweigh in.

Cheers

Brad

I don't need to go through the hassle of packaging, couriers, shipping costs, melted chocolateand other BS. In the Calgary area alone there are almost 1.5 million people - more than ample market for severalChoklat stores. ( currently have 3) Only when I've tapped into every area of the city, and every Calgarian knows about my business, and I'm sitting there asking myself how I can get more product on the streets, will I even begin to consider shipping.

That's right. We have a large contingent of regular customers who make use of our online ordering system to place orders for custom truffles, and then come into our shop and pick them up.

Further to that, our ordering screen looks like a tabbed Windows dialogue box. Most of our orders come from corporate admin assistants who are familiar with the Windows Operating system, and find the tab "look" very easy to use. Yes, it looks "ugly" as one person commented. However it's meant to be functional, and who am I to tell Microsoft that they don't know how to design a user interface to be functional? I'll make it look just like the 90% of computers out there, so that 90% of my customers can easily place their orders.

It's important to remember that Choklat doesn't operate like every other chocolatier. Each of our confections are made specifically to order, and not made in advancethen set out on display. For those who don't wish to wait 10 minutes or so for their truffles to be made, they can order from the convenience of their computer, and thenhave the order waiting for them when they stop in.

Our online ordering system has been a very popular convenience for many people - especially around holiday times when we often have large line ups. They go online when it's convenient, and book their order for the date they way, and then skip the line on the date they've chosen, pick up their product and are on their way.

From a planning perspective, it's fabulous for our staff, because they can see what's coming down the pipe, and prepare all of tomorrow's online orders before the end of business today. Sometimes there are as many as 40-50 orders pre-booked for a specific day such as Valentines day.

With 3 locations now, the ordering screen is going to change and allow the customer the ability to choose where they would like to pick up their order. Once placed, the order will be queued up for that specific location on the day chosen by the customer.

Philippa;

Thanks for the contribution. I'm a bit confused about your comment with re: the "buy now" button. We Do take orders over the 'net, in fact several every day. We just don't deliver, or ship outside of Calgary. If you click the "I Promise" button, it launches a window which allows you to customize your truffle order.

Maybe you missed that? Maybe others did too??

There are things my shop offers which aren't currently on the menu and are available only at certain times of the year. There are also items that I personally make and offer to people. Those items are also not on the public menu. We're actually closer to 1175 options.