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Sweet rewards in DIY chocolate
February 10, 2010, Wednesday
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CHOCOLATE is a welcome gift for both Spring Festival and Valentine's Day occasions, and business is booming in confectionary stores. But novelty chocolate in different shapes and sizes or chocolate you make at home has a greater impact, Xu Wenwen reports. Chocolate in its many forms has an indispensable role in Valentine's Day because a gift of the confection is a familiar courtship ritual. Buying chocolate is a safe strategy but a unique, self-crafted DIY chocolate gift is a more heart-felt way to express love and romance.
This year's overlapping Lunar New Year Day and Valentine's Day has overwhelmed many flower and chocolate dealers, but a small DIY chocolate workshop in Hangzhou is still attracting its fair share of customers.
The Diosa Chocolate Club on Wen'er Road sells varying sizes and shapes of chocolate. Some are innovative, confected like high heel shoes, a group of faces with different expressions, and even a complete mahjong set.
They are not all in the conventional chocolate colors of brown or white. Some are green chocolates with tea flavor fillings, others are strawberry pink, taro purple and lemon yellow, making them prettier and tastier.
Customers can buy these items or do it themselves; the price is same, 80 yuan (US$11.70) per 100 grams.
Once purchased, the items are placed in delicate gift boxes. To satisfy customer demands, the shop offers a variety of boxes, the most expensive costing about 2 yuan, with two golden heart roses affixed to the cover.
The chocolatier opened in 2004 and was one of the earliest DIY chocolate stores in Hangzhou. It's small, occupying only a dozen square meters, but attracts thousands of clients and queues are common in holidays.
Shop keeper Ouyang Qijin is a refined 25-year-old man who took over the store last year from the old boss, his elder sister who was pregnant.
"The majority of our shoppers are female, so the business improved after I took over the shop," jokes Ouyang.
He loves to develop new styles of chocolates. A work he proud of is a 25-centimeter-high chocolate house, with roof, grounds, chimney and windows made from black chocolate and walls and snow on the roof made from white chocolate. It reminds people of the candy house in fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel."
Though artistic inspiration and skills are helpful in making chocolate confections, they are not only the domain of professionals. Keen amateurs can also make elaborate opuses with patience and staff guidance and 10 minutes' work is enough, not including cooling time, says Ouyang.
The method required to produce a chocolate shape is to cast melting chocolate into a mould and wait until it cools down and is formed.
To add color, one should use a brush or toothpick to paste color (and chocolate) onto the inside surface of the mould, and then cast the chocolate.
After it is molded, customers can also draw pictures or write words on it with toothpicks and, as liquid chocolate is sticky, they can also make different sizes and shapes to create personal styles, for example a cute panda head.
"Customers are always innovative," Ouyang recalls. "A man once put a ring into a chocolate to propose to his girlfriend."
More children and middle-aged customers have helped the shop's owners realize they can expand their business because chocolate is no longer limited to young lovers. Therefore, they keep purchasing new templates to cater to different age groups.
Chocolates depicting the three gods of "happiness, wealth and longevity" are innovative birthday gifts for elderly people; golden ingots (ancient Chinese currency) are for businessman, and cartoon images like Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf (two main characters of a prevailing Chinese animated television series "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf) are for children.
"It's my honor to help people convey their love, respect, friendship and forgiveness," says Ouyang.
How to DIY chocolate:
Step 1: cutting
Cut chocolate into pieces (normal ones bought from supermarkets are okay). White, black or milk chocolate is all okay, or you can mix them together. The amount is up to you. Put them all in a bowl.
Step 2: melting
Pour water at 60 degrees Celsius into a big bowl, add chocolate to melt. Stir until it becomes a paste. Alternatively, mix chocolate into a bowl (half bowl is enough), microwave it for 10 seconds. Take it out and stir, heat and stir repeatedly to make a syrup.
Tip: don't heat a bowl of chocolate in an oven because it will burn.
Step 3: cooling and casting
Stir the melted chocolate until its temperature drops to 30 degrees Celsius. You can also put it into a refrigerator; the cooling process helps make it smoother. Distribute cool chocolate into the mould. Moulds can be bought from supermarkets or on the Internet. Use a knife to smooth the surface.
Step 4: chilling and packaging
Put the mould into refrigerator at about 5 degrees Celsius, remove after 20 minutes. Tip the mould onto oilpaper. Wrap the chocolates, fasten cute ribbons around the box.
Diosa Chocolate Club
Address: 119 Wen'er Rd
Tel: (0571) 8186-6520
This year's overlapping Lunar New Year Day and Valentine's Day has overwhelmed many flower and chocolate dealers, but a small DIY chocolate workshop in Hangzhou is still attracting its fair share of customers.
The Diosa Chocolate Club on Wen'er Road sells varying sizes and shapes of chocolate. Some are innovative, confected like high heel shoes, a group of faces with different expressions, and even a complete mahjong set.
They are not all in the conventional chocolate colors of brown or white. Some are green chocolates with tea flavor fillings, others are strawberry pink, taro purple and lemon yellow, making them prettier and tastier.
Customers can buy these items or do it themselves; the price is same, 80 yuan (US$11.70) per 100 grams.
Once purchased, the items are placed in delicate gift boxes. To satisfy customer demands, the shop offers a variety of boxes, the most expensive costing about 2 yuan, with two golden heart roses affixed to the cover.
The chocolatier opened in 2004 and was one of the earliest DIY chocolate stores in Hangzhou. It's small, occupying only a dozen square meters, but attracts thousands of clients and queues are common in holidays.
Shop keeper Ouyang Qijin is a refined 25-year-old man who took over the store last year from the old boss, his elder sister who was pregnant.
"The majority of our shoppers are female, so the business improved after I took over the shop," jokes Ouyang.
He loves to develop new styles of chocolates. A work he proud of is a 25-centimeter-high chocolate house, with roof, grounds, chimney and windows made from black chocolate and walls and snow on the roof made from white chocolate. It reminds people of the candy house in fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel."
Though artistic inspiration and skills are helpful in making chocolate confections, they are not only the domain of professionals. Keen amateurs can also make elaborate opuses with patience and staff guidance and 10 minutes' work is enough, not including cooling time, says Ouyang.
The method required to produce a chocolate shape is to cast melting chocolate into a mould and wait until it cools down and is formed.
To add color, one should use a brush or toothpick to paste color (and chocolate) onto the inside surface of the mould, and then cast the chocolate.
After it is molded, customers can also draw pictures or write words on it with toothpicks and, as liquid chocolate is sticky, they can also make different sizes and shapes to create personal styles, for example a cute panda head.
"Customers are always innovative," Ouyang recalls. "A man once put a ring into a chocolate to propose to his girlfriend."
More children and middle-aged customers have helped the shop's owners realize they can expand their business because chocolate is no longer limited to young lovers. Therefore, they keep purchasing new templates to cater to different age groups.
Chocolates depicting the three gods of "happiness, wealth and longevity" are innovative birthday gifts for elderly people; golden ingots (ancient Chinese currency) are for businessman, and cartoon images like Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf (two main characters of a prevailing Chinese animated television series "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf) are for children.
"It's my honor to help people convey their love, respect, friendship and forgiveness," says Ouyang.
How to DIY chocolate:
Step 1: cutting
Cut chocolate into pieces (normal ones bought from supermarkets are okay). White, black or milk chocolate is all okay, or you can mix them together. The amount is up to you. Put them all in a bowl.
Step 2: melting
Pour water at 60 degrees Celsius into a big bowl, add chocolate to melt. Stir until it becomes a paste. Alternatively, mix chocolate into a bowl (half bowl is enough), microwave it for 10 seconds. Take it out and stir, heat and stir repeatedly to make a syrup.
Tip: don't heat a bowl of chocolate in an oven because it will burn.
Step 3: cooling and casting
Stir the melted chocolate until its temperature drops to 30 degrees Celsius. You can also put it into a refrigerator; the cooling process helps make it smoother. Distribute cool chocolate into the mould. Moulds can be bought from supermarkets or on the Internet. Use a knife to smooth the surface.
Step 4: chilling and packaging
Put the mould into refrigerator at about 5 degrees Celsius, remove after 20 minutes. Tip the mould onto oilpaper. Wrap the chocolates, fasten cute ribbons around the box.
Diosa Chocolate Club
Address: 119 Wen'er Rd
Tel: (0571) 8186-6520
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