The Chocospherian – April 2020

The Chocospherian
Incredible Chocolate News	April 1st, 2020

Written By: Joanne Kryszek, Chocosphere Co-Founder and Chocolate Goddess, and the Chocosphere Team

Chocosphere is Here for You!
Incr‘Edible’ Chocolate Deals…	Customer Service
Recipe Corner	Newsletter
What's New?	Topics
Upcoming Holidays

Notes from Joanne – We're a Clean, (not at all) Mean, Chocolate Machine!

Some good news these days is, as of this writing, Chocosphere is still going strong and able to help with your chocolate needs. Here’s what we are doing to keep our customers and workers safe; of course we are distancing and hand washing profusely. We are also limiting access to our facility. We've established a process for no-contact outside pick up by our local area customers who we usually welcome into our lobby (more about this below). Though we do need to open our building for shipping and receiving, we've established social distancing procedures to avoid direct contact. The goal is to maintain a healthy environment for our team and our chocolate, and to continue being able to help with your chocolate needs for a long time to come.

Inside the building we are cleaning and wiping down more than usual, spraying door knobs and outer packaging of shipments (pallet wrappings or outer shipping boxes) regularly to keep everything healthy. It might seem like a bit much, but we want to take extra steps for safety.

If you are coming to our warehouse to pick up, here is our temporary procedure while the pandemic is ongoing. After you have been contacted to advise that your order is ready for pick up, drive to our office and call us when you arrive. We will place your order in front of our building in a covered space, after which you can safely get out of your car and get the goodies. It seems sort of clandestine but we do it with all of the careful planning that our highly precious cargo deserves. We look forward to a time when we can once again welcome our local pickup customers into our lobby and deliver the chocolate in person.

Incr‘Edible’ Chocolate Deals

Now is the time to get some wonderful chocolate on the way to you before the warm weather hits and to help you with cabin fever that comes with the times. In our opinion chocolate is excellent therapy and a great mood enhancer.

For a limited time we're resuming last month's promotional discount of 10% off orders over $50.00 in merchandise. This applies to most products sold by Chocosphere including chocolate clubs and gift baskets, but excludes gift certificates as well as shipping and warm weather packaging. You must apply the code CABINFEVER in the "Gift Certificates / Coupon Codes" field right below the shopping cart display to get the promotional discount.

Coupon Code Example

This offer begins at 12:01 AM Pacific Time on April 2nd^th. To qualify, orders must be placed online with an Order ID issued by our web site no later than 11:59 PM Pacific Time on April 16^th, 2020. This offer is not valid for orders placed outside the date range noted above.

To make this "chocolate therapy" even better, we will be including a special treat of something incredible in every order.

Upcoming Holidays

Easter and Passover are almost here, and eggs are a part of both holidays. We think chocolate eggs are a great idea for the holidays too! You can find some wonderful chocolate eggs on the Valrhona, Suzanne's and Domori pages of our web site. We also have a page dedicated to Easter products where you can find combinations, Easter baskets, etcetera to keep you hoppin'! (Please note that our chocolate eggs are not certified kosher for Passover, so you might want to enjoy them just before or just after the holiday).

What's New

Before we get to new products, a shipment just arrived from Pralus in France. If your favorite Pralus chocolate has been out of stock for a while, have a look now and you'll likely be able to get it again.

We have a special page on our site where you can find products newly arrived at Chocosphere within the last couple of months. Here’s the link:

https://www.chocosphere.com/default/new-products.html

We just received selection of single-origin bean-to-bar chocolate from Crow & Moss. These are small batch bars made by Mike Davies in Petoskey, Michigan and they are absolutely wonderful!

Guittard is now introducing their line of single origin dark chocolate wafers as part of their "Collection Etienne" fine chocolate offering. We have their Grenada origin 70% in stock as of this writing, and we should be receiving Madagascar 64%, Ecuador 72% and Peru 66% around Monday April 6th. These single origin chocolate wafers, offered in 25 lb factory boxes or 1 Kg repacks, are great for your chocolate recipes, or you can put some in a dish and enjoy them out of hand.

In the large-bloc chocolate category, we now have Callebaut's 811NV 5Kg bloc, replacing the 835NV bloc which Callebaut discontinued.

Recipe Corner

Alpaco Chocolate Pudding (an original recipe by l'Ecole Valrhona)

Category: Cremes and Mousses

Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 min
Total Time: 20 min

INGREDIENTS
Chocolate Cream:
100 grams sugar
20 grams corn starch
20 grams Valrhona Cocoa Powder
20 oz whole milk
5 oz whipping cream
106 grams Valrhona Alpaco 66% Dark Chocolate
Orange Blossom Whipped Cream:
8 oz whipping cream
25 grams confectioner's sugar
20 grams orange blossom (or lemon zest or vanilla)

INSTRUCTIONS
Chocolate Cream:

Mix the sugar, corn starch and Cocoa Powder.
Boil the milk with the cream and pour a small amount onto the sugar mixture. Use a whisk to mix vigorously. Boil for 1 minute.
Pour one-third of the mixture onto the chopped Alpaco 66% chocolate and beat.
Once you have poured all the mixture onto the chocolate, mix, then place in the refrigerator.
Once it has cooled, pour the cream into small pots (approx. 25g per pot).

Orange Blossom Whipped Cream:

Mix all the ingredients together.
Use an electric whisk to stiffen the mixture into firm, airy peaks.
Pour into a pastry piping bag or use a spoon to garnish the little pots of cream.

Customer Service

Of course we are happy to help over the phone, but we do appreciate it when you place your order on line. It helps us give the most prompt and accurate service. And when you need help, we are here for you. There is generally someone answering the phones between 8:30am and 4:30pm Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, with the exception of commonly observed holidays.

There are five of us answering phones at Chocosphere, where we speak fluent Chocospherian. We try hard to answer all calls personally during normal business hours, but occasionally one slips over to voice mail. If you call and end up in voice mail, please leave a message. We will do our very best to call back promptly. If by chance you don't hear back from us in a reasonable time, please call again during our normal business hours.

We each have varying levels of experience. It is our goal to happily serve you the very best chocolate!!

Finally, and very importantly, our web site lists our service commitments as to when we ship an order based on when the order is placed. However, we certainly understand there are circumstances where you may want us to process an order faster, when you need your chocolate “now”! If you need your order shipped faster than our listed service commitment, please place your order online letting us know of your need in the “Comments” section, and then call us 503-692-3323 x 0 for Customer Service) to let us know. We can't guarantee early shipping, but we always try hard to provide chocolate happiness to our valued customers.

If you want us to send a copy as an email every time there is a new issue or to tell you about special offers, please create an account at chocosphere.com and check the newsletter box.

Topics:

If you have a topic you would like us to cover in the newsletter, please drop us a line: customer-service@chocosphere.com and we will be happy to include it in a future edition.

Fax 503-692-1494