A few Fridays ago, Kristy Leissle, a.k.a. Dr. Chocolate, stopped by to interview us for a book she’s writing about great chocolate. She’d been working at a writers’ retreat near Palo Alto and decided to come down to the city for a day to find a little inspiration. We had a blast talking to her. We gave the full tour, showing her the process we use to make a test batch from start to finish. She got us talking excitedly about making chocolate and working together. I’m pretty sure Cam gave her plenty of highly-quotable comments to use in her book. In the meantime, she put up a fantastic blog post about us.

She took a picture of one of my favorite parts of the chocolate making process. We test the microns of each batch before we take it out of the melanger. This ensures that the chocolate has a perfect, silky texture, not gritty or too fine. I love this test because it requires eating a spoonful of molten chocolate. There are parts of the process that Todd, Cam, and I will each try to avoid, but this isn’t one of them. Kristy also snuck a spoonful of the Madagascar batch in the melanger that day, and went back for a second before she left. It’s that good.

We’re excited to see Kristy again soon at the Northwest Chocolate Festival in Seattle, on October 22nd and 23rd. We’ll put more information about the festival up soon. For now, it’s up on our locations page.