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My
goal as Azurelise Chocolate Company's chocolate truffle maker is to
create chocolate taste experiences chocolate lovers want to repeat,
once they have them, but cannot find other than with the chocolate
truffles I make.
Toward accomplishing this goal,
I
adopted two rules when I founded Azurelise in 2002: "Don't copy or
imitate" and "Make chocolate truffles other chocolate
truffle makers can't copy or imitate". I have continued
to follow those two rules in creating each new Azurelise chocolate
truffle flavor on my menu. They all are based on recipes I
composed without referring to other chocolate makers' recipes or
relying on their instruction. Following my two rules
provides me with half of an answer to the question "What makes
your chocolate truffles special?" The other half of the answer
can only be given after people put Azurelise chocolate truffles in
their mouths.
I
don't know how to describe my own, much less other people's, taste experiences
of Azurelise chocolate truffles. So, what follows is something else:
Answers to questions customers often ask me about the origin of the
name "Azurelise", why, when and how I got into the
chocolate truffle business, why I don't make pretty chocolates etc.
Reginald
O. Savage
Azurelise
Chocolate Truffle Maker
Raleigh,
NC
Origin
Of "Azurelise"
Hi!
My name is Azure Elise. I just wanted to tell you about my self
and how my dad and I make chocolate. First I'm 10 years old and I
live in Seattle, Washington. One of the first times my dad and I
made chocolate was when I was in 1st grade. We made caramel
chocolate. The next day I brought it to school and everyone loved
it! It's really fun to make chocolate with my dad!
"Azurelise",
as you probably have guessed, is derived from "Azure Elise".
Why
I Started Azurelise
In
July 2002 Azure relocated with her mother from Raleigh,
North Carolina to Seattle, Washington. At the time, I was a tenured
associate professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University and
needed more money to make regular visits to Seattle. Preparing
my lectures for the first day of fall 2002 classes, I nodded off and
dreamed I was explaining that need to Azure. Azure, who could not speak "in reality" at the
time, responded matter of factly, "Daddy, you're a philosopher, make chocolate."
I
taught my first day classes then went to visit my friend Sylvio Sisteste
who owned and operated Sylvia's Pizza Restaurant on Hillsborough Street across the
street from my office. Sylvio asked me how my classes had gone.
I informed him they went very well. Then I told him about the
dream.
Sylvio,
an Italian by birth who had immigrated to the States from Argentina,
responded "Reginaldo, your bambina is very smart. My uncle
started a chocolate company in Argentina knowing nothing about making
chocolate and made a big fortune. He is the richest person in my
family. You should listen to your daughter."
Sylvio's
advice made sense to me. For some time there had appeared to me to
be an unmet demand for high quality "old fashioned" gourmet chocolate
truffles. Sylvio's story about his uncle persuaded me the fact I
knew virtually nothing about making chocolate truffles was
unimportant.
How
And When I Started Azurelise
I
started by typing "how to make chocolate truffles" into my
internet browser. That led me to buying a chocolate tempering machine, custom
chocolate molds, driving to South Carolina to buy some very high quality
couverture chocolate and buying some other natural or organic ingredients
for a filling at my local Whole Foods Store.
I
taught myself how to temper chocolate, how to make chocolate truffle
casings and how to make a chocolate filling. After several months of
working on my filling recipe, I called Ms. Joyce Fowler manager of the
candy department of A Southern Season in Chapel Hill. I asked her if
she would taste test my chocolate truffles and give me her honest opinion
of them. She made an appointment for me to meet with her the
following week.
I
met with Joyce and handed her a bag of 10 dark chocolate truffles wrapped
in gold foil. She
unwrapped one of the truffles and ate it very slowly with her eyes closed.
When she opened her eyes she looked at me and said "These are very,
very nice. Not too sweet. Where's your price list?" I
presented Joyce with a price list a year and a half later in April, 2004
and began selling Azurelise chocolate truffles at A Southern Season
in May 2004.
Making
Chocolate Truffles
Many
people who read "About Azurelise" take it to be
a story about a man with a passion for making chocolate
who, driven by that passion, left a tenured professorship
to follow his dream. That take on what I wrote is
simply not true. I
think the fact that a dream played a role in my taking the
actions that I did and the ambiguity of the word
"dream" are the source of the mistake.
There are dreams as aspirations and there are dreams as
states of affairs and events that are imagined while
asleep. My "chocolate dream" was of the
latter type but some people want to construe it as one of
the former type. Being a chocolate maker is in no
way the realization of an aspiration for me. Aspiring
to be a chocolate maker would have been superfluous.
I recognized almost immediately after beginning to think
about making chocolate truffles that making them was
something I already knew how to do. That is why my
daughter directed me in the dream not to become a
chocolate maker, but simply to make chocolate. Even
though everything went wrong all the time when I first
started making chocolate truffles, I always had an
idea of how it was supposed to go right and I
have Mrs. Ethel Hartman to thank for inculcating those
ideas.
Mrs.
Hartman. with her husband Ray, owned and operated Ray's Fruit Baskets
on 16th and West Walnut 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.
Bourbon, Beer and Sea Salt
In
early March 2010, State authorities ordered me to quit selling my
two top selling chocolate truffles, the Azurelise Genius
truffle and the Azurelise Chocolate Julep because I used
Guinness Extra Stout to make the former and Woodford Reserve
bourbon to make the latter. It was not clear to me how
I could make up the lost revenue. I decided not to
think about it and to just keep making and selling the
Azurelise chocolate truffles that were not illegal. An article by Barry Saunders published in
the News and Observer about my situation justified
my decision. It generated an interest in Azurelise chocolate
truffles that helped push sales beyond pre-prohibition
levels. Even if it had not, maybe things would have worked
out anyway.
More than
a year and a half ago, Jay Sanders, one of the sales staff
in A Southern Season's candy department, pressed me to
make and sell sea salt caramel truffles, a very popular item
in the candy department. I resisted the pressure
because I believed sea salt caramels were trendy and
obvious. From time to time Jay would repeat his
suggestion and others in the store, including Tim Manale, a
store vice-president, joined him in the harassment. I
steadfastly rebuffed them.
In
mid-May 2010, Caroline Nichols, manager of the candy department
confronted me in her usual oblique way: "Reginald, why
in the hell aren't you making a sea salt caramel
truffle?" I responded "Because they're
uninteresting." Caroline had set me up.
"Well" she said smugly, "You're supposed to
be Mr. Flavor. Make some sea salt caramel truffles that are
interesting." Thus
cornered and challenged, I set out to design a sea salt
caramel truffle that I would feel comfortable adding to the
menu of Azurelise chocolate truffles already sold at A
Southern Season.
First, I
tasted a number of sea salts. When I found one I really
liked - a fleur de sel - I started to imagine various
caramel flavors I
thought needed to be completed or complemented by that sea salt in
particular. With the right flavor in mind, I composed a
recipe for it. The recipe
was a radical departure from the recipe I used to make the
caramel for my Chocolate Caramel Creams. But I knew
the Chocolate Caramel Cream caramel would not work with the
sea salt in an interesting way.
I made
the caramel and with the sea salt made my first batch of
dark chocolate Sea Salt Caramel chocolate truffles on July
1, 2010.
On July
2, 2010 I sold the first box of dark chocolate Sea Salt
Caramel chocolate truffles to Audrey Parnell and on July 13,
2010, I sold the first box of milk chocolate Sea Salt
Caramel chocolate truffles to Alice Ball.
Azurelise
Sea Salt Caramel chocolate truffles today are by far my best
selling chocolate truffles but the Genius and Chocolate
Julep, recently returned from exile with the blessing of
State authorities, are gaining.
The moral
of all of what I have just written is that It always pays to
have a business plan.
West
Coast Truffle
Five
years ago, Azure and I were making our first chocolate
truffle filling together. Take charge personality that she
is, Azure designated me her helper, handed me a pencil and
pad of paper and instructed me to write down the
ingredients for the filling we would make as she decided
what they would be.
Azure
started with cinnamon. "How much?" I
asked. She looked at me, a bit annoyed, " 'How much'
comes later." The initial ingredients were all spices
including, to my surprise, garlic. I could not help
but ask "Garlic?" Azure dismissed my
query: "Could you, like, write it down?" I
wrote it down.
Ingredients
decided upon, we put them together and made Azure's first
filling.
I
was surprised by Azure's choice of garlic because, by my
nose, garlic
smells bad even though it has an exceptionally beautiful flavor,
especially when combined with the right other ingredients.
However, the filling Azure made did not smell like garlic.
It also did not taste like garlic although when we got to
the "how much" in her recipe that turned out to
be, proportionately, a lot. Azure explained to me
that the filling did not smell or taste like garlic
because it wasn't supposed to taste or smell like
garlic.
Azure
thinks like I think when it comes to making
fillings. I always work backwards from a flavor to
its ingredients. What she meant when she said the filling
was not supposed to taste or smell like garlic is that the
flavor, as she imagined it, did not taste or smell like
garlic.
I
made my first garlic truffle filling tonight and took it downstairs to the
front desk of the Velvet Cloak Inn & Villas for Matt
Morris, the desk clerk and North Carolina State
University student, to taste. I had informed
him about an hour earlier that I was going to my shop to
make a garlic filling.
Matt
took the spoon I provided and used it to place a tiny bit
of the filling on the tip of his tongue.
"You
have got to taste more than that, Matt." I told him.
He
did, then said, "That's weird, I can't really smell
or taste the
garlic. But I know its garlic. It's definitely garlic."
"How
do you know it's garlic if you can't smell or taste it?" I
asked.
"Well,
it's just there. The garlic is there and I know
it's garlic."
"The
garlic 'being there' " I offered, "is what
makes it a garlic filling, not the smell or taste you're used to
identifying garlic by. I have given the garlic a new smell
and some new flavors that you'll notice better when you taste it
with chocolate. It's still garlic. You know it's garlic
because garlic has its own way of 'being there', a way
that you at some level are aware of, no matter how it
smells or tastes."
"Whatever."
he responded "It tastes good. "
Some
remarks Shalina Peera made about my Sea Salt Caramel
truffles and obsessions moved me to make my garlic
filling. She lives in Orange County California. So I
am going to call my garlic truffle "West Coast".
Sarah
Burns and the West
Coast Truffle
Sarah
Burns was a
candy department sales associate at A Southern Season and a student
in the Department of Public Health at the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill majoring in Nutrition in 2004 when I started
selling Azurelise chocolate truffles at A Southern Season. She
approached me one day when I was sampling in the department and
asked "Why did you stop using chili powder in your Classic
truffle?" I was taken aback that she knew I had made the
change because I don't use much chili powder in my Classic spice mix
and did not think it was noticeable. I asked her how she knew I had not used any chili
powder. She responded with the obvious answer: "I didn't
taste any."
Sarah
is what is known as a "super taster". She could take apart any filling I put together
ingredient by ingredient no matter how complicated, and no matter
the technique I used to make it. I challenged her often. She
always met the challenge, but I never gave up trying to stump her.
Sarah
secured a position with NIH in Washington, D.C. after she graduated
in 2007. I had not seen her since then when she returned to A
Southern Season with her mother to look for wedding stuff. She
hugged me, introduced me to her mother and announced she was engaged
to Dan, also a former candy department sales associate. I
congratulated her and we engaged in some catch up conversation.
Sarah
brought up our taste test challenges and bragged to her mother
about how she always prevailed. Then she said, "Got anything
new?" The game was on and I was sure I would win. "Yes I
do." I answered her and went to get one of my West Coast
truffles.
I
handed it to her and, like any really sophisticated chocolate eater,
she put the whole piece in her mouth all at once and started to chew.
Sarah never closed her eyes when she was "analyzing" one
of my truffles. Instead she would move her eyes around as if she
were looking for flavors.
When
she was done chewing and swallowing the chocolate I said to her,
"Admit it. You can't figure it out." After a few moments
she looked first at her mother then both of them looked at me
grinning impishly. "You're using garlic." She announced
dramatically. "And with grapefruit and
strawberry. That is so cool. But you should not be so obvious, Reginald.
Anyone could figure that truffle out."
Banana
Mango
If
asked how I come up my chocolate truffle flavors, I have to confess
I really don't "come up" with them at all. All of the
ideas of my chocolate truffle flavors have occurred to me spontaneously and only after customers suggested that I make
a certain kind of truffle. Once I have the idea of the flavor
in mind, I have to figure out its ingredients, their proportions and
how to cook them: I have to compose a recipe. However, without the idea
of the flavor, which drops into my head like an apple might fall on
it, I would have to resort to recipe books. Even the ideas of
my first flavors, the Classic and Caramel Cream, came to me out of nowhere
when I was reminiscing about Mrs. Hartman and how her kitchen
smelled.
Left
to my own ambitions, I still would have a menu of three
chocolate truffles: Dark Chocolate Classic, Dark Chocolate Classic
With Pecan and Dark Chocolate Chocolate Caramel Cream. I
made the first addition to my chocolate truffle offerings after David Belton approached me at A
Southern Season in November 2006 and complained about my not
offering any milk chocolate truffles. I responded to the
complaint by adding Milk Chocolate Classic, Milk Chocolate
Classic With Pecan and Milk Chocolate Chocolate Caramel
Cream truffles to the menu of chocolate truffles I sold at A
Southern Season. Devin Gaskell, then customer service manager at A Southern Season,
asked
me not long after I placated David Belton to make a bourbon
chocolate truffle, using Woodford Reserve Bourbon, and a Guinness Extra Stout chocolate
truffle. Devin steered a lot of customers to me and
claimed he could steer even more if I were to grant his
request. Capitalist that I am, I accepted Devin's
bribe. Devin gave the Guinness chocolate truffle its name,
"Genius", and Ann Klinefelter graced the bourbon
chocolate truffle with its name "Chocolate Julep" even
though a close friend of hers, Rene Lorenz , claimed for a long
time the name was his idea Rene did ask me to make a
banana rum chocolate truffle, and I did. A number of people
asked for Hazelnut, Raspberry, Apple Cinnamon and Orange
chocolate truffles and Gene Roberson requested I make a Scotch
truffle and Gene's wife Sandy requested a Vodka Espresso.
Jay Sanders was the original moving force behind the Sea Salt
Caramel chocolate truffle.
Every
chocolate truffle I have made at the behest of customers has
been a success except two. One of the failures was made
for Ann Kelles, a
banana mango chocolate truffle, and the other for Gene Roberson, a
goat cheese truffle.
I had
to have used at least 150 pounds of mangos and 100 pounds of
bananas trying to make Ann's brain child, that I dubbed
"Banana Mango Tango", work. I made adjustment
after adjustment. It remained a culinary disaster. I
called Ann to let her know the project was, for the time being,
a failure. I was not going to spend any more money on it
until I figured out what was going wrong.
After
Gene
Roberson discovered he was allergic to cow's milk, he asked me if I could make a chocolate truffle without
cow's milk. It was something I had been thinking about
doing because lots of people are allergic to cows milk. I
told him I would do it. Then Gene, being Gene, upped the demand.
He asked me if I could make a goat cheese truffle.
Gene
steers as much business to me as Devin used to, so I agreed to
make the goat cheese truffle, evidently without revealing the
doubts I harbored about the idea in my facial expression because
Gene smiled triumphantly when I did I later
mentioned to Martha Tardieu, a candy department associate, that
I was planning to make the goat cheese chocolate truffle.
Martha looked at me like I was crazy as she often does and
remarked "Reginald, are you serious?" I told her
I was and she shook her head. "I just can't imagine goat
cheese and chocolate going together," she said. "I
like goat cheese and I like chocolate. But the two together? No.
Definitely not."
True to
her names, Martha was right but too late because I had already
decided to make the goat cheese chocolate truffle. It was more a disaster, in its own
way, than the
Banana Mango Tango chocolate truffle. I gave Gene a box of
them and he looked more confused after eating one than
he probably has ever looked in his life. As a consolation,
he offered to pay for the ingredients. I refused the payment.
Then as an encouragement he said, handing the box back to me, "Reg, you have got to give
it another try. You can make it work"
Here
is how I made it work, I replaced all cow's milk products
in my Banana
Mango Tango filling recipe with goat's milk products. Then I made the goat cheese
filling recipe. I combined the two and let the concoction
sit
for two hours. Then I did some other stuff, and pretty
randomly. I made eighteen dark chocolate truffles with the
filling and took them to A Southern Season's candy
department.
I sampled out fourteen of the
chocolate truffles over the course of three hours. The
people who tried them almost all wanted to buy a box, boxes I did
not have in stock. Then I went to A Southern Season's
bakery department and gave Leslie Winslow one of the chocolate
truffles. Leslie is a food snob of high order with a
very orthodox palate. He said to me after eating the
chocolate truffle, "Reg, you're going to sell a lot of
these. They're exquisite. What are
they? I can't tell."
"I
have no idea," I answered. That, no doubt, is why I
have not been able to repeat the performance.
Pretty Chocolate Truffles
People
are all the time pressuring me to change my packaging (plain white
boxes) and to make my chocolate truffles more visually interesting, "appetizing" or appealing. The pressure has been
applied from the time I first sold gold foil wrapped chocolate
truffles in small brown craft bags. "Packaging sells",
"Presentation is everything" people have admonished me
over and over. But I cannot imagine myself tying ribbons on
boxes or painting innocent little pieces of chocolate. They deserve
better. Chocolate just was not meant to be decorated.
Decorated pieces of chocolate look to me as weird and silly as
poodles wearing tutus and sunglasses.
Azure
disagrees. Not only does she dress up her dog Teddy in tutus and
sunglasses, she put me on notice about three years ago to expect
major changes in the look of Azurelise chocolate truffles and their
packaging when she takes over.
After
visiting Oh, Chocolate!, a Seattle chocolate shop on Madison
Street a few blocks from her house Azure asked me rhetorically
"Did you see how pretty their candies and boxes are? The colors
and the ribbons and all the cute shapes?" "Yes I
did." I answered, "They were really
pretty."
"Well"
she continued, "When I am in charge, that's how my candies and
boxes are going to look. But prettier, more
colorful."
"More
colorful?" I asked
"Yes,
they could use more blue and orange." She answered.
"Azure,
I do not know how to make chocolates pretty or how to wrap boxes and
tie ribbons on them." I admitted plaintively.
"You
won't have to. My friends and I will do that. You'll cook the
chocolate." She explained.
Barefoot
in the kitchen, I thought
"Anyway"
she continued, "That's not why you don't make pretty candies
and boxes. You don't make pretty candies and boxes because
you're a boy and boys don't like to make things pretty. Girls like
to make things pretty."
So,
to those of you who have been pestering me about the presentation of
Azurelise chocolates: Be patient. A girl is on the way.
An
Assorted Box of Azurelise Chocolates is, Like, Life
I
was surprised the first time someone asked me whether I
included a map in assorted boxes of Azurelise chocolate
truffles.
"A
map of what?" Chicago?
"A
map of the chocolates." She answered.
I
did not want to repeat what she said as a question, so I
said nothing until it occurred to me what she meant.
"You
mean a map of the trays. Something that tells you where
the different flavors are in the tray."
"Yes,"
she responded, "A map of the chocolates."
"No. I don't put a map of any kind in the box. I just
put chocolates in the box, a tray, candy pad and a layer
board if the box is two layered."
"How
am I going to know what chocolate I'm getting when I want
to eat, for example, a raspberry and not something with
orange in it without a map?"
Why,
I wondered, would she want to eat raspberry and not
something with orange in it?
"I
don't like orange with chocolate." She continued.
I
admitted there might be a problem with my boxes not having a
map to guide people to what they wanted and away from what
they did not want.
Upper
hand in hand, she admonished me, "You need to fix
that."
She
was right, of course, but how could I fix her not liking
orange with chocolate?
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