The chocolate boom

Our guide to the sweetest of the sweet shops

by

Back in the early 1980s, there were not many options for buying fine chocolate in the Madison area. There was Badger Candy Kitchen on the Capitol Square, which sold

handmade chocolates in a classic soda fountain setting, and Claude and Ellen Marendaz’s stand at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. James Jarnigo opened his James J. Chocolate Shop on Old University Avenue in 1988.

In the 1990s, more chocolate shops began to open — the Marendazes opened a store in Oregon in 1991; Maurie’s Fine Chocolates launched on Monroe Street in 1993 and a year later Candinas Chocolatier opened its doors in Verona. Ten years later, Gail Ambrosius Chocolatier set up shop on the near east side.

The chocolate landscape is dynamic right now. Maurie’s chocolates closed its doors for good right after Christmas last year, but two other chocolate shops recently moved to Monroe Street, both with seating for snacking and hot chocolate concoctions. Kilwin’s, a national chain specializing in fudge, has found State Street an attractive market, as has Red Elephant, a chocolate cafe based in Milwaukee. Meanwhile, James J. Chocolates has relocated to 680 Enterprise Drive in Lake Mills. Sjölinds is making fine “bean-to-bar” chocolate all the way out in Mount Horeb.

Over the years, trends have come and gone, says Cher Mandel Diamond, who closed Maurie’s because she was ready to retire. Sweeter old-fashioned chocolates like nut clusters and caramels, popular 25 years ago, gave way to the artisan chocolate movement, with chocolatiers infusing flavors — including savory ones — into the ganache (an emulsion of chocolate and cream), says Diamond. Now, she adds, traditional confections, including milk chocolate treats, are enjoying a bit of a renaissance. “You’re seeing classic flavors returning but in a much more sophisticated profile.”

In preparation for Valentine’s Day, we dropped in to talk to our local chocolate makers and chcolatiers. We wanted to learn more about the processes they use, flavors they’ve developed and philosophies about their work. As you will see, it is an art.

— Judith Davidoff

Just the basics

Flavor and freshness are the guiding principles for Markus Candinas of Candinas Chocolatier, who has been operating out of his Verona-based production facility since 1994; he opened a boutique-style storefront on the Capitol Square in 2007.

Candinas produces only 12 to 14 flavors and will drop a truffle from the repertoire if the ingredients fall short of his high expectations. “For us to change something, it’s usually more of an organic process where a certain ingredient is not available, or not available in the amount we need,” says Candinas. “Yeah, we could just get something else to put in its place, but I don’t like that.” He cites a jasmine-green tea truffle: “This jasmine, you’d put your nose in it, and it was just like honey; it was the most beautiful flavor, and all of a sudden we couldn’t get that anymore. So we had to do something else.” Although Candinas responds to suggestions from employees and customers, he emphasizes that choosing flavors is “not a democracy.”

Candinas’ tastes tend toward classic ingredients: caramel, champagne, almonds, hazelnuts, espresso. He’s not one to chase the latest trends. He never uses bacon, for example, and passes no judgement about milk chocolate being “lesser” than dark, even though he’s always made a majority of his truffles with dark chocolate. He gently mocks current trends in crazy flavors — “‘You put dung beetle in your chocolate, that’s amazing, never heard of that!’ That’s not what people really want,” says Candinas. “Even if we try something that’s a little outside of our window, we come back to the basics.”

The two newest flavors in the beautifully designed Candinas assortment are apple pie (in a milk chocolate shell) and a new type of orange truffle.

After more than two decades of making chocolate, Candinas is still animated by the feeling he had as a 6-year-old visiting grandparents and relatives in Switzerland: “I remember having all these delicious confections and saying, I want to be a confectioner.” Candinas later completed a three-year apprenticeship in Switzerland.

The abundance of fresh confections in Europe convinced Candinas that the Madison market still has room for more. “People ask are there too many chocolatiers in Madison? No. There’s not,” says Candinas. “There’s still room for a ton more. We all have room for improvement.”

— Catherine Capellaro

An everyday oasis

Leanne Cordisco believes in celebrating chocolate in all its glorious forms. That philosophy informs the menu at Chocolaterian Cafe.

Cordisco opened her location at 2004 Atwood Ave. in 2012 after first finding success with her candy company, Christine’s Gourmet Toffee. Wisconsin dairy takes a starring role in that popular confection, and it’s a key part of Chocolaterian’s other offerings, too. Sassy Cow cream is the secret to Cordisco’s heavenly drinking chocolate and fluffy chocolate mousse; luscious buttercream stars in her various chocolate tarts and cakes.

Chocolaterian does offer traditional bonbons and truffles, but the cafe “is more about using chocolate as an ingredient across cuisine,” Cordisco says. She’s currently experimenting with savory dishes, like a cocoa rub for braised meat. But sweets are undoubtedly the focus here. The popular Badger Bait — a house-made brownie finger topped with buttercream and coated in dark chocolate ganache — retails at $2.50 and is “symbolic” of Chocolaterian’s ethos, says Cordisco. “Chocolate doesn’t have to be a high-end expression of candy. Chocolate should be affordable and accessible to everyone.”

Cordisco sources her chocolate from companies that provide documentation of fair labor practices, including Callebaut, a high-quality Belgian manufacturer known for products with high cocoa butter content. Cordisco also favors Peruvian chocolate, which has a sweet and fruity flavor profile. Classic combinations like caramel with cashew, chocolate with orange and chocolate with raspberry dominate the menu. “Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or a 5-year-old kid, you’ll find something here you’ll like,” Cordisco says.

Already a Madison institution after only five years in business, Chocolaterian Cafe opened a second location at 6637 University Ave. in Middleton last year. Cordisco is currently in talks with developers to launch a third restaurant. She hasn’t landed on a location yet, but she’s leaning toward somewhere outside Madison. “I definitely want to see the concept expand,” she says.

— Allison Geyer

Style and substance

What started as a hobby has become an obsession — and a booming small business — for Syovata Edari. A former trial lawyer turned chocolatier, she launched her artisanal confectionary CocoVaa Chocolatier in 2016. She specializes in chocolates with bold, contemporary designs and intense flavor pairings.

It’s among the smallest such operation in Madison. Edari describes her combined retail and production space at 1 Sherman Terrace as a “nanofactory.” Behind the glass of a small display case, a few dozen brightly colored bonbons glisten like tiny, precious gemstones. Each has a distinctive shape and decoration. Inside there are surprising and intriguing combinations: coconut with lemongrass, Persian saffron, blueberry with lavender, savory black truffle. “My flavors are very pronounced,” Edari says, “and I don’t skimp on ingredients.”

Everything in her shop is handmade in small batches. She doesn’t freeze any of her product, preferring to sell at peak freshness. When you bite into one of her truffles, you can tell — the chocolate shell is delicately thin and crisp, the inside luscious and smooth. “The way to tell good chocolate is the snap of the shell,” Edari says.

Edari works with “the best chocolate in the world,” opting for high-end wholesale brands like Felchin to use as a base ingredient. She prefers single-origin, but she’s not opposed to experimenting with mixing chocolates of different origins. For her fillings, she makes her own fruit purees, infusions and caramels. “Everything is from scratch,” she says.

Edari’s daughter is allergic to dark chocolate, which is why CocoVaa has become known for its high-quality white chocolate (made from cocoa butter, sugar and milk solids), which stars in creations like cardamom-infused pear bonbons and salted caramels. Recipes are influenced by Edari’s training in France and Italy. “The French methods are so precise, while the Italian methods are more intuitive,” she says. “The combination gives me a well-rounded skill set.”

— Allison Geyer

The avant-garde

Ann Culligan doesn’t think Madison has reached saturation point for chocolate just yet.

Culligan, owner and president of Infusion Chocolates, 2503 Monroe St., compares the chocolate boom to the city’s restaurant scene.

“Everybody brings something new and unique to the table. I don’t see a lot of repetition. That makes it really exciting,” Culligan says. “Everybody has a different look and feel, despite the fact that at the end of the day, we’re all making chocolate.”

Infusion began almost 10 years ago as David Bacco Chocolats in Hilldale. Bacco moved to California in 2010, selling the business to Culligan. Last June, she moved the shop to Monroe Street.

Culligan says that one way Infusion stands out is with its willingness to experiment. “We have bold flavors, bold colors, we have unexpected ingredients,” she says.

An example of the shop’s experimental flare is “Fromage de Bleu,” which uses Hook’s blue cheese in place of butter in the truffle’s ganache. The kitchen also incorporates pear and fig balsamic vinegar and toasted nuts.

When possible, Infusion likes to incorporate bits of Wisconsin in its chocolates, says Alyssa Haskins, Infusion’s manager of retail and creative development. “We use Wisconsin butter,” she says. “And we have a couple flavors that are very Wisconsin.”

Case in point is the “The Old Fashioned,” which uses Korbel brandy in the ganache.

Not all of the shop’s chocolates are avant-garde. “We like to have some that are more cutting edge and some that are more traditional flavors,” Haskins says. “We have some inspired by classic French desserts, like vanilla crème brûlée, a flambé, a dark chocolate.”

One thing that Infusion doesn’t try to do is offer much else besides chocolate. There are no fancy coffee drinks, wine or cocktails available. Culligan says she wants to focus on the star. “I didn’t want a little glass case of chocolates in the corner.”

— Joe Tarr

From scratch

Will Marx is the kind of person who can get obsessed with things.

“Five or six years ago I started doing a lot of food production in my apartment,” he says. “I wanted to get off the processed food system and thought I could do better.”

Fast forward to today, and Marx is at the forefront of an emerging trend in high-end artisanal chocolate, so far from a Hershey bar it’s barely the same food. As the guy behind the exclusively bean-to-bar chocolate maker Wm. Chocolate, he sources beans and roasts, cracks, winnows and grinds them himself in Underground Food Collective’s commercial kitchens.

“I think of it like making wine, where you start from really simple ingredients and try to bring out what’s there. Almost as a personality thing — if it has a really fruity lean to it, you could make it into a nuttier flavor, but why would you do that?”

If you aren’t into dark chocolate, Marx’s bars might make you reconsider. The single-origin beans are carefully roasted to reduce the bitterness that marks many dark chocolates. And yes, he has some recommendations for beginners.

“I do a Ghana that I can eat all day, super big and chocolatey. There are some other bars that are more striking, in that they’ve got these fruity layers or distinct nutty flavors. But I’m probably not going to sit down and destroy a whole bar of that, you know?”

His sea salt bar is another more approachable chocolate. It’s more of a classic chocolate, and the sea salt gives it a little salted caramel effect.

Or maybe you want something a little strange?

“One of the weirdest ones I have is an India origin,” says Marx. “It has this peanut-butter-and-jelly thing going on, because it’s got a grape jelly taste and then this nutty backbone of flavor.”

Wm. Chocolate can be found at specialty food shops in Madison or online at wmchocolate.com.

— Sean Kennedy

European tradition

The Chocolate Caper, 105 S. Main St., Oregon, is the oldest dedicated chocolate business in Dane County. Founders Claude and Ellen Marendaz began making and selling chocolates at the Dane County Farmers’ Market in 1983; the couple opened a store in Oregon in 1991. Claude Marendaz was Swiss, so Swiss-style confections, especially praliné, became the Caper’s stock in trade.

Praliné is still the shop’s specialty, even though the Marendazes retired in 2014, selling The Chocolate Caper to Elizabeth Donoghue and her husband, Daniel.

Elizabeth, the chocolatier, notes that their praliné is not the brown sugar and pecan candy called “pralines” sold in Louisiana: “We don’t make them, I feel like that would be extra confusing.”

European praliné starts with nuts (often hazelnuts) finely ground to a powder and mixed with chocolate, cream and butter. The praliné at The Chocolate Caper comes in four flavors: almond, hazelnut, toffee-almond, and peanut butter, blended with a choice of chocolate types — milk, dark or white. Elizabeth says that to her knowledge, The Chocolate Caper is the only maker of praliné in North America: “We Google it all the time.”

The shop also continues to sell the beloved chocolate-dipped glacéed apricots originated by Ellen Marendaz.

The Donoghues have expanded the shop’s sweet lines. Hand-dipped-chocolate toffee squares, sea salt caramels and candied orange peels are new, along with a line of pâte de fruits dipped in chocolate. Flavors range from raspberry and blackberry to wine and beer — IPA or stout. The shop also expanded its truffle flavors from 10 to more than 60, although Elizabeth offers the caveat that they don’t do extremely exotic flavors. Still, there are less typical offerings like chai, Earl Grey and lavender. And in November, the Donoghues opened a second location at 107 N. Bristol St. in Sun Prairie.

For Valentine’s Day, Elizabeth says their most popular box is the customizable Sweetheart, which includes one of each flavor of praline (or all the same, if you prefer), three truffles, and a red heart — a white chocolate truffle dyed red, with apple-flavored Calvados brandy filling is “the one people really go after at Valentine’s Day,” says Elizabeth. “With its cost around $10, you can feel good giving the Sweetheart box to someone like a teacher, or to your honey if you don’t want to over-indulge.”

— Linda Falkenstein

Atwood anchor

Gail Ambrosius doesn’t pay much attention to fads. The veteran chocolatier and popularizer of very dark chocolates mainly sticks with classics like truffles, caramels and chocolate bark. “Traditional flavors will always be popular. But people love to see a few exotic items, too,” Ambrosius says. “With the seasonal flavors, that’s where we can get a little bit funky and creative. Right now, we’re doing a sour cherry and passion fruit.”

Then there’s Ambrosius’ tea-inspired collection, which infuses truffles with blueberry, Earl Grey, rose and jasmine flavors. She also makes chocolate-dipped candied ginger and chocolate tree frogs filled with vanilla ganache.

For Valentine’s Day, Ambrosius offers a 30-piece sampler of her best sellers in a heart-shaped box and a more modest 12-piece “Love is Sweet” box.

Lately, one of her favorite items is a boozy chocolate cordial. She says it’s a riff on the chocolate-covered cherries “you might get at Walgreens for your mom.” But this “is the real deal, made with Door County cherries. We pick the cherries in June, throw them in brandy until after New Year’s Day. Then we make this secret syrup,” Ambrosius says. “When you bite into them, it’s this totally liquid, delicious boozy cherry.”

Recently, Ambrosius has started buying Arriba cacao directly from growers in Ecuador.

“This is totally direct trade. We are working just with the farmers, paying them twice as much,” Ambrosius says. “It’s all processed in Ecuador, too.”

A new “straight-up dark Ecuadorian” chocolate is available at the Ambrosius shop at 2083 Atwood Ave. The store moved across the street to this larger retail space and kitchen last May; now, Ambrosius lives in one of the units above the shop. Business on Atwood “has certainly grown. There’s so much synergy now,” says Ambrosius, who has been doing business on the east side thoroughfare since 2006. “People are telling me that I’m an anchor now. Which is great to hear.”

Ambrosius welcomes the new chocolate-makers that have popped up in Madison.

“The whole competition thing, I don’t believe it. There are no huge, deep-dark secrets like in Willy Wonka,” Ambrosius says. “So why not be friends?”

— Dylan Brogan

Breaking the mold

Clasen’s European Bakery in Middleton is, indeed, more bakery than chocolate shop. “Chocolate is just a small part of what we do,” says head pastry chef Judy Fredrick. Primarily, she says, “we cover other things we make in chocolate” — from cookies to petit fours to cheesecake bites, and “assorted other fun little things.” They also make shaped chocolates (hearts for Valentine’s, even turkeys for Thanksgiving) in milk, dark and white.

For Valentine’s Day, their piece de resistance is a twist on the classic gift box for one’s sweetheart — Clasen’s molds an edible heart-shaped box, itself made of either milk or dark chocolate, with a design embossed on its chocolate lid. And yes, it’s filled with assorted chocolates.

“I started doing them 20 years ago,” says Fredrick nonchalantly. “I just ordered a bunch of molds and decided to switch things up. They’ve been very good for us through Valentine’s Day.”

Fredrick has been the head pastry chef at Clasen’s for nearly 31 years. When she started there, business was 95 percent milk chocolate; now, it’s about 50-50 between dark and milk: “There are those who will not give up their milk chocolate, no matter how much healthier you tell them dark chocolate is,” says Fredrick.

Clasen’s makes some filled chocolates like truffles, but Fredrick says they don’t have all the equipment to do so on a large scale. They do make a lot of various chocolate barks: “ We make it in a big sheet pan and cut it to shape — hazelnut, almond, coconut, macadamia, peanut butter — some in milk, some in dark.”

But at Clasen’s, another holiday trumps Valentine’s. Think molded bunnies and eggs, even chocolate-coated coconut nests. Says Fredrick: “We do more chocolate at Easter than we do at any other time.”

— Linda Falkenstein

A blend of both worlds

Megan Hile has experience making chocolate from scratch, but she is not a “chocolate maker.”

“I’m a chocolatier,” says Hile. “I prefer making small confections and being more of a chef. I like to create nibbles of deliciousness.”

Hile has been hand-making chocolates since 2010 and has run a chocolate CSA for more than five years. In May she opened Madison Chocolate Company off of Monroe Street at 729 Glenway St.

It’s a bright, colorful space right across from the Arboretum, perfect for a date or a relaxing get-together with a friend. There is coffee from Madison roaster Kin-Kin and rich hot chocolate drinks.

“Cacao and coffee grow together,” she says, noting their respective beans are both picked, dried and roasted. “There’s a symbiotic relationship; they complement each other.”

Hile wanted to have a cafe in addition to a retail space so that people could slow down, savor a variety of treats and learn about chocolate. Her confections are made from single-origin chocolate, organic dairy and local ingredients. Everything is gluten-free, including the baked goods, which are also made on premises. But the selection is selective.

“We will never have giant muffins here,” she says with a laugh. “I want everything we do to be an experience.”

Hile creates her truffles out of hand-slabbed ganache, using a guitar slicer to cut the chocolates. Ghost pepper caramels, which contain liquid caramel and finish with a spicy bite, are a customer favorite.

A wall in the store is dedicated to what Hile calls the “chocolate library,” which contains bars from bean-to-bar chocolate makers from around the country, many of whom she knows personally.

Hile says she aims to both challenge people’s palates and offer products that are comfortable. Some fall in-between, like a bar from Castronovo Chocolate, a Florida-based chocolatier, made with 60 percent dark milk chocolate from Colombia. “It’s a blend of both worlds,” says Hile.

Hile is gearing up for her first Valentine’s Day as a shop owner, with special chocolates flavored with blueberry basil, vanilla, rose, and passion fruit caramel — all “aphrodisiacs,” she says. Hile will also have fresh-dipped strawberries.

Her friend and fellow chocolatier Gail Ambrosius warned her that most customers don’t order ahead and to expect a same-day rush. Hile is going one step further, planning to also have cards and flowers on hand: “We have it all set up for the last-minute person.”

— Judith Davidoff