A Day in the Life of a Chocolatier with Ben

Today was the day when we had Ben come and join my staff and I through our program A Day in the Life of a Chocolatier. This is a great program where you get to come in and spend the day seeing how a chocolate shop really runs at the counter and in the back. It's an opportunity to work with the chocolatier creating wonderful sweets and treats. Today we had Ben in the shop. He's a recent graduate of South Whidbey High School and this day was a gift!

What a great gift! Ben showed up at the shop promptly at 10 am. My first question..... Where have you been? I've been working since 6 am. He laughed and said he wasn't even thinking about getting up at then. It's understandable but I really did start my day at 6!


The first thing we did was a make simple dark chocolate ganache and set in the refrigerator. Normally, I would let the ganache set out overnight to stiffen. But since we are just working with a five to six hour period, in the refer it went.

Next we moved onto the copper kettle and made some amazing caramel. Caramels are one of my customers very favorite treats in the shop. I shop caramels and chocolate covered salted caramels all over the country so it's important to have a fresh batch of caramel ready to be enrobed and kissed with salt.


And then for a little break we made home made waffle cones. It's not really part of the confectionery line but it is part of the sweet life here and it's important to have those made fresh when friends come in looking for some gelato in a home made waffle cone. They are yummy and we just can't do without them!


After that, Julia took over with Ben and worked on our signature Seafoam product. She's does the best job when it comes to Seafoam/Honeycomb so I let her do the honors. It's a tricky recipe but Ben did pour it into the pans to set.

I think there was a little break in here somewhere as my picture shows Ben and Julia out at one of the cafe tables having a little conversation, a little quesadilla from the Island Coffee House, and a few laughs.

But then there was more to do! So we started sterilizing the jars and preparing our delicious home made chocolate sauce. It's made with organic cocoa powder and it's boiled twice to bring out the flavor of the cocoa. It's rich and thick and amazingly wonderful on gelato and on a spoon (so I'm told ). We were using different jars this time so we didn't top it off like it should have been but that too is part of the life of a chocolatier.... making mistakes and doing it better then next time. All that finished, it was time to move back to the seafoam and break it up and cover it in chocolate. The seafoam has to be covered in chocolate the same day. If it's not, it becomes a sticky mess from all the humidity in the air here. Ben both used Clifford, our big red enrobing machine for the dark chocolate, and then dipped by hand for the milk chocolate. It all looked super yummy when he was finished.

And lastly, out came the ganache from the refrigerator and Ben scooped out little balls, rolled them, and covered them in all different sorts of taste sensations! I think he was pretty  much done by then. I  know I was! As a matter of fact, this chocolatier slipped out into the cafe about 3 o'clock and left Ben in the capable hands of Erik, the master enrober!

All in all it was a great day. We loved having Ben in the shop and hope he had a great day too! It's just one more day down in the life of a chocolatier.