Sugar Savvy

Charles (Chuck) Siegel is probably the sweetest man in the chocolate business.  He seems happiest when he can share his love of the product of the cacao pod with others, encouraging them to literally get their hands dirty with the confection.

Siegel is the creator and owner of Charles Chocolates, an Emeryville CA, manufacturer of quality, “super-premium” chocolate and other confections made with natural and organic ingredients.  He is on a mission to spread his love and knowledge of chocolate to his customers, home cooks and anyone else who’s interested all about using, enjoying and creating with chocolate, kind of like a chocolate Johnny Appleseed or a Willy Wonka without the attitude.

For several Saturday afternoons earlier this summer, Chuck taught a series of five, five-hour classes on chocolate candy making at Charles Chocolates’ facility. I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in one class.  The next round of these classes begins on August 24th.

Participants were ushered into the production kitchen filled with stainless steel tables, shelves and shelves of ingredients, chocolate tempering machines, production line equipment and more. Once dressed in chocolate colored Charles Chocolates t-shirts (to protect our clothes) and black hair nets (to protect the chocolates), we were ready to begin.

Siegel began as a chocolate amateur ,teaching himself how to make truffles.  That later blossomed into a confection business that introduced such treats as giant, nut-covered caramel dipped apples and gourmet s’mores.  After a brief stint in the dot.com world, Siegel returned to candy making, launching Charles Chocolates in 2004. He quickly outgrew his first two production facilities and moved into his 8,700 square-foot present site in 2007.

Echoing his own early experience, truffle making is what Siegel started us on that day, making a ganache using a tasty 65 percent bittersweet chocolate and Straus heavy whipping cream, refrigerating it until cold, cutting it in pieces, rolling it in melted bittersweet chocolate with our hands and then coating it in cocoa. Then, of course, to be popped into our mouths.  The truffles were smooth and wonderful and rich. 

Along with the recipe for this truffle and variations, Siegel gave us hands-on experience working with chocolate and lots of his tips and tricks. Among the advice he dispensed, along with the recipe (which you can see here along with a photo), he shared:  

• Do not use ultra pasteurized cream in your ganache, it will get bitter fast when boiled.
• The type of chocolate you use affects your recipe – chocolate is available from all over the world; try it and match up the flavor to your recipe. (The company uses different chocolates for different confections, primarily El Rey, Valrhona, E. Guittard and Cocoberry.  Cocoberry is from France and Siegel prefers it for its white chocolate.)
• Decorate different types of truffles differently so you will know what you are biting into
• When making flavored truffles, remember “always want to make it all about the truffle.”  Be sure not to choose ingredients that would overwhelm the chocolate or would be overwhelmed by the chocolate.

Nothing escaped his kindly notice.  His goal was to make sure we could make Charles Chocolates as good at home as he could in his facility.  He moved among us, gently telling us how to best stir the pot and how to whisk to blend ingredients or use the immersion blender to make sure we got it right.  My notes are filled with details, such as how much headspace to leave on filled chocolates, when and how to add flavors, temperatures, boiling and melting techniques and more.  It seemed at times he was anxious to share everything he knew about working with chocolate with us.  He was warm, funny and, well, sweet, at one point sharing a story about his children’s disappointment when the chocolate tempering machine he had been using at home was brought back to the commercial kitchen.  

In addition to Siegel’s untempered bittersweet chocolate truffles, we made several kinds of hot chocolate, including a caramel flavored one, an impromptu frozen chocolate granita he was experimenting with to sell on site and an apricot jam ganache in chocolate shells, using chocolate that was tempered for us in shell molds, chilling that and then piping in the molds and then back the molds with more chocolate and setting them in the fridge to set.

Can’t make it to the next series of classes?  I bet Chuck will be offering them again.  That’s just the way he is.  Or you can experience Charles Chocolates in a variety of other ways: 

• You can buy Charles Chocolates at more than 1,000 retail outlets in the U.S. and they are available online.
• You can visit Charles Chocolates in Emeryville near San Francisco and take a factory tour and see the Chocolate Bar, a viewing room of the whole production process.  There is also a store (open daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.) that offers some only on-site offerings such as chocolate beverages and possibly, one day, the chocolate granita Siegel was perfecting during our class.
• You can try Charles Chocolates recipes at home, several of them are posted on the company’s website.
• You can sign up for the company’s free newsletter with recipes, new product announcements and subscriber-only specials.

For other articles on Sugar Savvy about Charles Chocolates products, click here and here.