Gave a few sample around today in training and they went down really well, yay! Today’s new and improved chili and cardamon truffle managed to render one of the instructors speechless for a good 5 seconds… now that is a fearsome weapon. Next time you’re getting mugged I would reccomend that you whip out one of my chocolates and offer it to your attacker, then run away whilst they’re completely incapable of thinking of anything but chocolate.
When I was in Japan I suddenly found I was eating a lot less, partly of course it was down to spending all my money on clothes and random crap, but also after a while I just kind of felt that I didn’t need any more. Since coming back I eat much much more, but don’t feel any more full or satisfied and I think a lot of that’s down to having food prepared for me. If the food’s just there and you haven’t had to go through making it and deciding how much stuff you should put in I think you just end up eating more than if you see what you make. I have to admit, I have been getting a little bit annoyed at how much food my mum makes, but somehow when I sit down at the table and there are all these amazing dishes around I HAVE to finish everything, it’s like some sort of biological drive ordering me to stock up for the winter. Obviously its’ not my mum’s fault since she see’s me eat a pile of rice that could feed most of South America and naturally assumes that that’s how much I eat and providing me with less would be bad, but all the same I feel like I’m locked into a vicious cycle.

Today mum made lunch and dinner so I ate a lot, like really… a lot, but I only realised how much I ate after I sat down and thought about it that it added up to about 4000 kcals or so. I just had to go online to see if anyone else noticed this or did the same thing and turns out there’ve been lots and lots  google turned up with this site and a synopsis/review on another. If you want to read more about it then go and have a read through, it’s all really interesting stuff, but they say it better than I do, so I think I’ll leave it there.

Why I bring this up here (being a chocolatier who tells people that they’re eating too much surely can’t be a good thing) is because it got me thinking about presentation and in particular what names I’m going to give everything. Obviously I’ve thought a lot about exactly what the shop is going to look like and how everything is going to be laid out and what sort of feeling people are going to get when they come into the shop, I like to go to nice shops with well thought out decor and cute presentation, but I hadn’t ever thought about it in terms of….

“Names matter a lot. “Traditional Cajun Red Beans With Rice” is far more popular than “Red Beans with Rice.” You might well order “Home-Style Chicken Parmesan,” even if you would turn up your nose at mere “Chicken Parmesan.” People aren’t terribly enthusiastic about “Zucchini Cookies,” but they will happily eat “Grandma’s Zucchini Cookies.” Not only are people more likely to ask for, and to eat, appealingly named dishes; they will also rate those dishes as tastier.”

Having said all of that, now that I’ve read it I’m going to try and forget it. Clearly the charm of “Grandma’s Zucchini Cookies” is that Gran made them and if you choose to market your non-Gran-made cookies all you’re doing is leaching off the memories people have about their family’s cooking. I think I might build myself up into a tower of righteous indignation about marketing and completely go the other way with my naming just because I feel it would be right. Let the reputation of the shop and the list of ingredients say everything.

Chili and cardamon truffles will remain “chili and cardamon truffles” and not be “Passion: Madagascan dark couverture blended with the finest raw Guernsey cream and spiced with Goan cardamon and chili” I’ll stick to everything the way I meant it to be originally and not try to choose names because I think it will make people more likely to find them tasty. Of course that’s not to say that I’ll be deliberately choosing unappealing names or anything like that, it’s just that I feel like blatant flaunting of the amazingness of the product in its name is a little bit like making sure that you have a famous designer name emblazoned down the back of your suit. Sticking a good sounding name or prominent brand all over your stuff and letting that doing the talking for you seems to be cheating.

I seem to remember in one of those M&S foodporn ads them mentioning “only the finest Forastero beans from Ghana”… sounds pretty good until you find that forastero are generally not the best beans and Ghana is not generally the considered the best country for cocoa. If you’re as pretentious as me then it whiffs of ass.