Joanie G.
Yelp
I had been wanting to learn how to make chocolates for a while. So I gifted myself a chocolate making class here, for my birthday. It's a nice, quaint looking lil chocolate shop, until you get inside. Yes the area w displays of amazing chocolates with tables and decor is quaint, but it's a huge 2 story building w a chocolate factory upstairs, in several rooms. One entire, huge room, is a cooler with several large refrigerators/freezers, where their three varieties of chocolate, candy molds, edible paints, cookie sheets, trays, etc. are all located. Downstairs consists of several large areas/rooms as well. You have all things chocolate to choose from! You'll find an assortment of individual chocolate options in their display cases, fancy cakes, options for drinking chocolate, ice cream, coffee, beer, or wine, you can peruse their gift shop area, view their wine collection, in a separate room or sit outside on their patio. Additionally, they offer art from their art gallery, Live Jazz nights and tea parties! This place is amazing!
We met two of Pam's, owner/chocolatier's Sons, John and Armand, that help out and work with her as well. They are both very friendly, courteous and Armand is a great teacher, very patient, generous and laid back.
Armand came downstairs to get us and took us up to their chocolate factory. We got to choose some molds to design and get ready for chocolate, to make personalized candy. Once we taken to a workroom, we painted our designs in the molds. Next, we got to go into the walk-in cooler, to fill them with white, dark and/or milk chocolate. It was fun to fill them up with the chocolate and then scraping the excess chocolate off of the mold, it was very satisfying. We put the molds in a blast cooler, so the chocolate would set. Once they were cooled down enough and the chocolate had hardened, we got to unload the molds. A lot of banging and tapping to release the candy, lol. There's nothing like fresh, homemade chocolates, they were so good!
Once we were done making candy, Armand let us go through the trays and trays of chocolates to choose what we wanted to try and take some home! The giant peanut butter cups are amazing! They hand make a variety of flavors of truffles, that were pretty awesome too! We tried so many various flavors of jeweled chocolates, that look too pretty to eat. They were amazing as well. Then of course we had the general option of various nut and praline chocolates also. We filled 3 boxes of chocolates to take home! Armand boxed them up in nice boxes w ribbon and even bagged them up, like a gift and filled w decorative tissue paper. All very classy!
It will be nice to go and spend a Jazz night or have a tea party, at some point. You can't go wrong w any choice here. Everything is classy, organized, very clean and all very tasty