New Places to get your LUCA fix

The chocolate kitchen has been a frenzy of activity lately, but I had to stop to tell you about three new places to find LUCA treats. Our first and farthest location is the soon to be open Little Luxuries of Mackinac Island, located quite obviously on Michigan's idyllic Mackinac Island.



A little closer to home is chocolate paper in Roanoke, Virginia. There, you'll be able to buy individual LUCA confections, thanks to owner Matt Burkett's amazing selection of chocolates in three big temperature controlled cases.


Last but certainly not least is a new gift-art-wine shop in Farmville, Mylestone Gallery. They're not quite open, but they'll be open and sampling chocolate through Sunday at their downtown Farmville store in celebration of the Dogwood Festival.

Also, if you happen to be in downtown Asheboro tomorrow, I'll be participating in Art on Sunset - selling chocolates of course, but also showing off my dad's amazing metal work (pictures to be posted on their own special spot on the website).

The Easter flavors will be coming down on Sunday with new Mother's Day flavors taking their place.

Chocolate Bacon in the High Point Enterprise

Last Tuesday, Jimmy Tomlin of the High Point Enterprise paid me a visit. We talked about the joys of making candy for a living, and the strangeness of dipping cured meats in chocolate. I have to say, though, if I'm going to keep doing interviews, I'm going to have to either request that the photographer work before or after the interview concludes, or work on my multitasking. It's not easy to model chocolate covered bacon, holding a piece hovering in midair while also trying answer questions about your business and not sound like an idiot. I just hope I didn't sound too ditzy.

I've pasted it below, you can also visit the website, which includes a photo, but you'll have to register. It's a lovely article, but I do have a couple of footnotes. The print version states that you can purchase choco-bacon at the Randolph Arts Guild and all the Weaver Street Market locations. It's not available at Weaver Street, but it is available in limited quantities at the Arts Guild and of course, always online. And also, I did once dream of becoming a pastry chef. Now I am one. I'm just also a chocolatier...

Chocolate ... & Bacon?

By Jimmy Tomlin
Jan 09, 2009

Leslie Cooper admits that chocolate-covered bacon is one of the most popular items she makes in her Randolph County kitchen.
RANDOLPH COUNTY - Sometimes the fun in eating chocolate is discovering which tasty filling has been buried underneath the chocolate coating.

Is it caramel?

Is it a cherry?

How about coconut?

Almond?

For Randolph County chocolatier Leslie Cooper, hickory-smoked bacon - cooked to a crisp, just the way we like it here in the South - is the filling that's been, well, bringing home the bacon for the past several months.

"It's been really popular," the 26-year-old Franklinville woman says. "(Chocolate-covered bacon) is the majority of what I made this Christmas."

Cooper, whose creativity in the kitchen once led her to make jalapeno cordials for a wedding, apparently has never met a filling she didn't like - or wasn't at least willing to try. So last March, when a blogger told readers of his desire to try some chocolate-covered bacon - fulfilling his lifelong dream of merging two of his favorite foods - Cooper was happy to oblige.

"I've never made it," she told him, "but I'd be glad to do it for you."

Cooper, who owns Luca Chocolate, retreated to her laboratory - er, um, her kitchen - and began to experiment, and before long she had a batch of chocolate-covered bacon ready for shipping. She also threw in a few bacon caramels, as well as another creation she'd been working on - bourbon and black pepper truffles.

"He loved it and wrote about it on his blog - he even did a little video that he put on YouTube - and people just started calling from all over, saying "I have to have that bacon,'" Cooper recalls. "One guy ordered two pounds for his father for Father's Day, sight unseen. He'd never even tasted it - he just said, "Send it now.'"

The orders came from all over the country - California, Arizona, Washington, New York, Connecticut - "anywhere and everywhere," Cooper says - and suddenly Luca Chocolate was a bit of an Internet sensation.

"What I'm learning is that there's this whole cult of bacon people out there who just love anything bacon - they've just gotta have it," she says, sounding a bit perplexed. "I mean, I like bacon - I like a BLT - but I guess it's not quite as much my thing as it is other people's."

Needless to say, chocolate-covered bacon has a uniquely distinctive taste.

"It's salty, it's sweet, it's smoky and a little meaty, but not too much," Cooper explains. "I think the contrast makes the flavors taste better. It's kind of like sweet and sour - the sourness is intensified by the sweet, and the sweetness is intensified by the sour. It's kind of like that with the chocolate and the bacon."

The cooking process is fairly straightforward. Cooper cooks the bacon in the oven for 30 to 45 minutes - until it's really crispy - then allows it to cool. Once the bacon has cooled, she dips the 3- to 4-inch strips in a bowl of tempered chocolate and lays them out to allow the chocolate to firm up. She sprinkles sea salt on top of the chocolate for one final zing of extra flavor.

Customers can buy a "bacon box," which includes the chocolate-covered bacon (with their choice of milk chocolate or dark chocolate) and bacon caramels, as well as bourbon and black pepper truffles.

Cooper once dreamed of becoming a pastry chef - she attended the French Culinary Institute in New York City - before launching Luca Chocolate a couple of years ago (Luca is the name of her horse). The business started slowly, "but it's grown steadily in these two years," she says. "It's exponentially better than it was at this time last year."

And for that - in part, at least - she can thank her lucky bacon.

"I never intended to make chocolate-covered bacon," Cooper says, "but it's easily one of the most popular things I make."



© 2009 by The High Point Enterprise. All rights reserved.

On nuts and allergies..

"May contain traces of nuts", "processed in a facility that processes wheat"...chances are, you've seen this warning on at least one or two packages of processed food. If you look on the back of my boxes, you'll see a similar warning. But a recent report on Marketplace made me consider the implications of my labeling.

I actually don't constantly work with nuts. There are a handful of recipes that contain them, and I don't make them every week. But I've never had a potentially hazardous food allergy. We've all heard some six o'clock news story about a child whose life hangs in the balance because of a chance encounter with the remnant of a peanut. So how much nut is too much nut? (or dairy, or wheat, or soy?)

The purpose of the story was to illustrate the wide variations in these allergy warnings, and to report that the FDA is considering regulating such warnings in order to provide consumer confidence and greater uniformity in the wording. Personally, I'd welcome such regulation, because it's all such a gray zone to me. If I chop some walnuts for a ganache, is the cutting board free of walnut traces after a good wash? Two washes? What if I wash my hands and dry them on a towel. Is there nut oil on the towel?

You can see where this is going. The last thing I want is to make someone sick by unintentionally feeding them nuts or dairy or soy or wheat. Having one's throat swell up is not the way to best savor a sea salt caramel or a bourbon truffle. So, until the FDA gives me a better cheat sheet - you should know that when I warn you that my chocolates have been produced in a facility that also handles nuts, soy, wheat and dairy, that's exactly what I mean. And if you ever have any questions about a specific product, don't hesitate to call. As always, if you have special needs or allergies, make sure you call or email, and I'll do my best to accomodate you.

There's a code on every box sold in retail that tells me exactly when I made the product and when it should be consumed for best flavor. It's eight digits - the first four are the date it was made, the last four are the date it expires. I should qualify that by saying, it doesn't really "expire", it just won't taste as good. Of course, if it's several months past, you probably don't want to eat it anyway!

With that, I'll tell you that I'll be posting new flavors next week, and changing the website offerings. Stay tuned.

After Dinner Chocolates

Great meals have a way of satisfying you and leaving you wanting more all at the same time. The savory dishes tend to win out over the sweet, and by the time dessert rolls around, you may crave something sweet but there simply isn't that much room in your stomach. Sure, lots of restaurants keep a bowl of peppermints by the cash register for just such an occasion, but what if you don't like peppermints? What if you want to keep that epicurean vibe going with just a small bite of something sweet, rich, and satisfying? (Can you see where I'm going here?)

If you're eating at M'Coul's Pub in downtown Greensboro, you've now got a perfect option. LUCA Chocolate is now on the menu as an after dinner, after dessert, or with-your-drink option. Currently, they're selling two flavors, the Sea Salt Caramel and the Dark Chocolate Truffle, but the menu will change with the seasons. A great display case is in the works, but for now, just ask your server for LUCA!

Updates, New Retail Location

First of all, apologies for the lapse in news. It's not that nothing's going on, it's that so much has been going on that I haven't had time to collect my thoughts. So, on to the updates!

Over the next few days, I'll get you up to date on all the good and frustrating things that have been going on in the chocolate kitchen.

The first big update is a new retail location! Etc. Boutique is a new high-end shop offering beautiful and hard-to-find clothes, jewelry, and decor. It's run by Julia Griffin, and I'm thrilled to be a part her new venture. She's located at 1003 Sunset Avenue in Asheboro, NC.


View Larger Map

Ok, it's official, I'm famous.

Maybe not quite yet, but it's coming right along. I'm the subject of a newsletter article. I have to say, she did a fantastic job, I'm so pleased. In addition to the promise of fame, buying LØVE Chocolate is good for the community this Christmas. Weaver Street Market has made my chocolate a part of their Hope for the Holidays promotion. Every box of chocolate you buy from the Weaver Street Market contributes to a fund that benefits several worthwhile local groups. I am thrilled that my chocolate can help people doing important social work. I'm thrilled that my chocolate helps people in the regular, delicious, satisfaction way, but this is even better.

Potpourri

It's been a busy week, preceded by a wonderfully relaxing week. I spent last Tuesday through Friday in the cool and beautifully rainy mountains. It was a nice little break before the holiday rush begins (hopefully it will be one heck of a rush!). This week I've been Michelangelo's untalented cousin - priming, spackling and painting my ceiling a lovely shade of light aquamarine called Spaqua. The muscles in my neck and shoulders are threatening a walkout, so I'm lucky that I've finished with the overhead work for now. I'll post some photos tomorrow.

In other updates - I'll be handing out samples at the Weaver Street Market next weekend (Friday the 9th and Saturday the 10th). I'll be at the Southern Village location from 4:30-7pm on Friday, and at the Carrboro location from 11am - 2pm on Saturday. I haven't decided on the flavors yet - one will be Sea Salt Caramel, but the other one will be decided in the next couple of days, and I'll post it. I'm probably going to do the Sea Salt on both days, and a different flavor for Friday and Saturday.

New Retail Location

I am thrilled to announce that LØVE Chocolate is now available at the Weaver Street Market Co-op! You can find it at both the Carrboro location and the Southern Village location . Expect to see me do a demo there sometime soon. Now I must rest a little, before starting some new flavors! More to come...

Random Bits of Excitement

There are lots of exciting things happening at LØVE Chocolate. I'll be updating you in detail over the next few days, but I wanted to share them all at once, too.

1. There is a new retail location for buying my chocolate. In about a month, you'll be able to stop by the Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC and pick up a box or ten. I'll even be there one day, meeting people and pushing product.

2. Construction is moving right along. This week, we put in the water line and the line to the septic tank, installed all the windows, and re-gravelled the drive. Pictures and stories to come.

3. New Fall Flavors are coming! By the end of the week, the seasonal chocolates will change. So if you've got a hankering for one more box of coconut creams, key lime creams, or banana creams, you'd better order before the 14th.

I'll post and update more tomorrow.