The CEO chocolate lecture/tasting

Today was the last Friday before spring break, and I had a lecture and tasting to conduct. You see, over the past month or so, I had been preparing with a lot of help from my grandpa, Zayda, for this big presentation I was invited to give. We had been working hard, making tasting sheets reminiscent of the sheets from the Chocolate UnConference, creating speaker notes for the lecture, and ordering a whole list of materials, including bars, tongs, nibs, oyster crackers, etc.

Eventually the day had come, and I went to the apartment where my grandparents live. In the community lounge on the fifth floor was the group of CEOs I would be presenting to. I made some final preparations, like arranging the bowls of chocolate shards from the three bars, putting the nibs in two different bowls, and collecting my nerves, and then we began.

I led off with a description of my journey through chocolate, starting with the donut and ending right there in the community lounge. Read the rest of my blog posts to find out about my journey through chocolate.

Anyway, after that, I started the detailed description of the process of

chocolate from the bean to the bar, referring to the papers that Dandelion Chocolate so generously gave us, which had a full description of the process I was now speaking about. There were some very technical parts in that description, like explaining the crystal structures of cocoa butter post-tempering, but we got through it all right.

Then we had the tasting. This was by far the hardest part, because there were so many aspects of the tasting of chocolate that I had yet to master, and yet, there I was, talking about chocolate and the methods of tasting and whatnot. The tasting also went well. After a brief chat on how it would work, I told them to just dive in and record their thoughts. They did just that, and then I had them compare note sheets, because, as I had mentioned in the "chat" beforehand, "there is no such thing as being a better taster than someone else. It all comes down to how high your tolerance for certain qualities of food is. For example, if you drink a lot of coffee then you will have a higher tolerance for bitterness".

Then I opened up the floor for questions, and there were a lot. One that stood out was, "What differentiates a bonbon from a truffle?" And my answer was long and also very technical, but the gist of is that a bonbon's filling is injected or filled from the outside, but a truffle is enrobed (covered by chocolate with a machine). There are many other answers, but that was mine.

They also gave me some very, very valuable advice on going through the complicated world of business.

Massive credit to Dandelion Chocolate and Nate at Dandelion Chocolate for supplying me with tons of materials, ideas, and confidence, and for supporting this event in any way they could.

This is one of the sheets that was used for the tasting. The first question threw some people off until I explained it. Basically, each country where chocolate is harvested has its own unique flavor profile, although that heavily depends on what type of cacao bean it is, the time of year when the cacao pod is harvested, additional sweeteners, etc. but each origin has a distinctive flavor. I asked about their opinion on acidity, bitterness, and sweetness. I also asked for them to share any advice they had, and also to follow me on my blog.