Writing "About Azurelise", I realized the extent to which certain childhood experiences prepared me to make and sell chocolate truffles for a living.  

The experiences involved Mrs. Ethel Hartman.  Mrs. Hartman. with her husband Ray, owned and operated Ray's Fruit Baskets on 16th and West Walnut Street in Milwaukee. The Hartmans, German immigrants, lived in the flat above their shop and rented the house behind it to my family. Mrs. Hartman made chocolate truffles for Ray's and would share them with me whenever - it seemed - she saw me. 

Sometimes Mrs. Hartman would ask me "Reginald, whose chocolate truffles are your favorite chocolate truffles above all others?"  She never asked me what the "best" chocolate truffles were, only what my favorite chocolate truffles were. I would tell her the truth: "Yours are, Mrs. Hartman."  My proof for this was that, from time to time, Mrs. Hartman would offer me other chocolate truffles. In some way or another, they always disappointed me and I would never finish eating them. By doing this Mrs. Hartman instilled in my uncorrupted palate a very clear idea of what chocolate truffles ought to taste like for me. That's all I really needed to know about making Azurelise chocolate truffles. 

When I decided to start a chocolate truffle company in 2002, my very vivid memories of Mrs. Hartman and The Golden Rule guided me to a simple core resolution: "I will not put a chocolate truffle on the market unless I can honestly say it is my favorite above all others."  I was confident that if I were serious enough I could make a chocolate truffle that not only was my favorite but also the favorite of enough other people to make my chocolate truffle business a success.

Reginald O. Savage

Making Chocolate Truffles: Part 2

"Say your lover has a chocolate fetish? Then get thee to Azurelise...These are not your typical prettified confections with icing squiggles and candied flowers on top, mind you. They're truffles for the purist, unadorned squares of chocolate that let their flavor do the talking."  

Mr. Greg Cox, senior food editor and critic for Raleigh, North Carolina's News & Observer newspaper wrote the remarks I quote above in his food column on February 7, 2007.  Mr. Cox is North Carolina's most widely read and influential food critic. It is especially important, therefore, that I respond to his statement that Azurelise chocolate truffles are "truffles  for the purist". 

I concur with Mr. Cox's statement that my chocolate truffles are "unadorned" and, by most accounts, they let their "flavor do the talking". I also acknowledge that these are two traits chocolate truffle purists value highly.  However, these admissions do not entail, as some of Mr. Cox's readers might take them to entail, that I make Azurelise chocolate truffles for the purist because I am a chocolate truffle elitist. There is another explanation and this is it.

As a child I developed a certain distrust of pretty chocolate truffles with exotic names. I expected them to taste weird because they almost always did. Plain looking chocolate truffles with plain names, like those Mrs. Hartman made, usually tasted at least OK.

Naturally, I wondered why there should be such a regular correspondence between how chocolate truffles look and are named and how they taste. I eventually framed this two part hypothesis: (A) People who prettify chocolate truffles do not know how to make them taste good, and (B) People who make good tasting chocolate truffles do not know how to prettify them. Later life experiences confirmed my precocious hypothesis. Therefore, when I decided to start making chocolate truffles I took it as a good sign that I had no skill whatsoever decorating things. I knew that any chocolate truffles I made would turn out at best plain looking and that this meant they probably would taste at least OK, so long as I was careful how I named them. 

I was right. Here is how one Azurelise chocolate truffle aficionado recently described what happens for her when she eats an Azurelise chocolate truffle:

"The crisp chocolate shell melts slowly and lusciously; the creamy smooth filling presents a medley of intense flavors that deepen and heighten the lingering impression the shell makes; the shell and filling flavors blend to yield a perfectly harmonized, remarkably long lasting and deeply satisfying chocolate taste experience."

That testimony should make it clear that Azurelise chocolate truffles are for the lovers Mr. Cox mentions in the first line of his review, even if purists also are enamored of their plain looks. And, as I have said, their plain looks are due to my having no skill whatsoever at making "prettified" chocolate truffles, not to my being an elitist. 

Reginald O. Savage