Hands-on Love

Chocolate is everywhere, and seldom more so than this year. Tim Burton is set to release his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp playing Willy Wonka, and this week is Valentine's Day, which means the stuff is especially rampant right now. But where I'm standing, chocolate really is everywhere—for example, at the moment, it's stuck between a revolving metal grate and a conveyor belt meant to catch it.

"Here," says Todd Kluger, as he uses his fingertip to nudge the inch-big square of mint ganache back onto the conveyor belt. "The ones in the middle get caught there a lot." A little lopsided, the confection tumbles back onto its path. It'll be a reject, one of a small handful today. Were I merely observing, I'd probably grab the unsellable truffle for myself. Instead, I'm learning how to make them.

This is not exactly new terrain for me. Before turning to writing full time, I spent several years working in kitchens, a couple of them at an ice creamery where my primary job was to make ice cream, cones, and cookies. It's been a few years since I've stepped into a confectioners' kitchen, and I'm here to write a story, not meet a food-production quota. But it's easy to remember what attracted me to this kind of work before, starting with Kluger, who's a convivial guy, and his boom box, which is currently tuned to KEXP. Next to it is a small stack of CDs. Mmmm—a job where I could listen to music all day long without disturbing my colleagues. Sigh.

Todd Kluger, the 36-year-old co-proprietor of the Chocolate Company, with his hard-won cocoa-bean grinder. (Pete Kuhns)

Kluger, who's 36, co-runs the Chocolate Company, an offshoot of Seattle's Essential Baking Company. Two years ago, Kluger and his partners, EBC founders Joseph Whinney and Jeff Fairhall, began selling chocolate confections that, like Essential's baked goods, emphasize fresh, organic ingredients. Now, the Chocolate Company plans to get even more ambitious. In a few months, around late summer or early fall, the three partners will begin to manufacture their own chocolate.

This is almost unheard of, and not just in Seattle. Though the Northwest has long had a history of confectioners—Brown & Haley of Mountain Bars and Almond Roca fame is based in Tacoma, while Fran's and Dilettante are both based here—only a handful of companies grind their own cocoa beans in the United States, and among them, the competition is ferocious. The major players, most prominently the privately held Mars and publicly traded Hershey, have garnered plenty of lore—anyone who thinks the idea of chocolate spies is something Roald Dahl made up for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's benefit need only skim Joël Glenn Brenner's 1999 book, The Emperors of Chocolate, which details the long-running feuds between Mars and Hershey, who between them produce most of the chocolate in this country.

Kluger and his associates aren't planning to overtake Mars or Hershey. Their methods preclude it. Right now, the Chocolate Company eschews the use of extra sugar (beyond what's already in the chocolate they currently purchase to make the sweets), corn syrup, or alcohol, all of which are used by larger chocolate manufacturers to ensure longer salability. As a result, the truffles that Kluger and I are making have a two-week shelf life. When the Chocolate Company moves into making its own chocolate, the sugar level will drop even further.

"I was turned on by the artisanal chocolate being made by Maison du Chocolat in France," Kluger says. "My eyes were opened, as were [those of] a lot of other people in the U.S.—they used fresh ingredients. Not everything had to be stabilized with sugars and alcohol. There's no reason to say anything bad about other companies. They're good at what they do; I like a lot of mainstream chocolate. But Jeff had been an enthusiast of organic ingredients with the bakery, and Joe had chocolate experience."

So did Kluger, a fourth-generation Seattleite and a former marketer for Starbucks. Kluger attended Washington State and Tokyo University, studying filmmaking, "which is how most careers start—in other directions," he says. As a Starbucks brand manager, he was "really [taught] to be an entrepreneur, that the sky's the limit." His "horrible sweet tooth" (he cites a particular fondness for Snickers, caramels, Mountain Bars, and Mexican chocolate) led him to dabbling in chocolate and to France, Japan, and Costa Rica to study it. After leaving Starbucks in 2001 and a brief Bay Area dot-com sojourn, Kluger moved back to town, joined Essential, and began helping shape their chocolates line.

Straining mint leaves from the cream sauce (Pete Kuhns)

Kluger and I are making mint ganache, a basic filling and one of around 30 he makes regularly. He's an enthusiastic and efficient trainer; the kitchen—part of the former Redhook Ale brewery at North 34th Street and Phinney Avenue North—is cavernous and tidy.

First we heat honey and cream together. I stir it until it comes to a boil; the mixture smells like Malt-O-Meal. We take it off the heat and add a giant fistful of washed mint leaves; these were picked yesterday, and most of the stem is still on them. "The stem has a lot of flavor, and that's what we want," says Kluger. We bring that to another boil, turn the heat off, cover the pot with plastic wrap, and let it sit, so that the mint can steep.