Cool jobs: I make chocolate

It's fine--I guess--to dislike certain elements of that rich, infinitely complex confection known as chocolate. The darker varieties are too bitter, perhaps even acrid, for many palettes, and purists find that sweeter varieties like milk and white chocolate beg for depth. Some eschew the whole spectrum in favor of hard candy's sugary assault or vanilla's mild wash. 

But only truly hardened souls can turn their backs on the creative types who combine dashes of whimsy, finesse and old-fashioned elbow grease to craft truffles, bearclaws, sea foam, dipped fruits, bars and whatever else out of this dark, pliable medium. Amid the latest diet fads and surgeon generals' warnings, there's still room in our hearts for the local chocolatier. 

I'm living proof. I fancy a piece of bitter dark chocolate just as much as the next guy, maybe more, but I'll take savory over sweet every time. And yet there's something about the smell of chocolate--in ice cream, candy bars, fancy truffles--that transports me through the mists and deposits me at the counter of my hometown candy shop. So I jumped at the chance to pick the brains of three Michigan chocolate makers. None of these men and women supply my beloved Scoops, but all three make memories for kids (and, let's be honest, plenty of grown-ups too) in Houghton, Traverse City and East Tawas, Michigan, on a daily basis.

From Construction to...Confections?

Allen Tubbs isn't your typical chocolatier. After graduating from Tawas Area High School, the East Tawas native struck out to see the world. After stints in the Twin Cities and lower Michigan (Berkley, near Royal Oak), though, life in the big city began to grate. He didn't mind his work as a project manager in the construction business, but something was missing from that as well.

"It was a great way to travel, but it wasn't like we were building massive skyscrapers," he says. "There was lots of paperwork, which I didn't really want to do my whole life."

His out came one night in the form of an innocuous dinner conversation with his wife and parents, who had stuck behind in Tawas. Word had it that the owners of the Village Chocolatier, the local confection shop, were looking to sell after more than a decade, and the younger couple had always dreamed of owning their own business. Over the course of a few subsequent conversations, "Hey, we might be able to do this," turned into "Screw it, we're moving up north."

Six months later, after securing a loan and "dealing with other headaches," Tubbs and his wife purchased Village Chocolatier from Norman and Marian Charters, who agreed to stay on for a year after the May 15, 2013 opening date to train and support the novice chocolate makers. 

"They've been great," says Tubbs. "We've kept a lot of their [products and systems] in place for the moment, although we're beginning to introduce our own ideas and do some rebranding."

Tubbs is particularly fond of Village Chocolatier's hand-dipped raspberries, apples and other fruits. They're probably the store's most popular item, he says, "which is good because they're also the least technically complex to produce." The shop's sea foam, a crunchy-then-gooey, honeycomb-like confection that tastes like a toasted marshmallow, is also popular (and relatively easy to make).

Not that making chocolate is that hard. "Once you get the basics down," says Tubbs, "it's super easy--you just have to maintain a constant temperature and the chocolate does the rest."

And that part no longer requires constant monitoring with a candy thermometer or painstaking tweaking of a gas flame. About six months ago, the couple visited a confectioners' convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where master chocolatiers held wisdom-drenched seminars and vendors hawked chocolate- and candy-making equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars. 

"I felt like I was beginning my education all over again," says Tubbs. He now uses a machine to keep a batch of chocolate ganache, the liquid substrate that's at the heart of the chocolate making process, at the ideal temperature--between 85 and 90 degrees, although white and milk chocolate may require different readings--for dipping or shaping. Go much above or below this range and the material becomes difficult to work with--"There's nothing worse than the smell of burning chocolate," he says. 

But even though he has a lot of mechanical help, Tubbs is serious about controlling the quality and consistency of his finished product. He has 12 employees at the store, but only himself and two or three trusted helpers are allowed to work with the ganache. "There's definitely a touch to the process," he says, that demands attention to detail.

He also sees himself as the beneficiary of the public's growing appetite for locally produced, artisanal consumables. "10 or 15 years ago, people didn't seem to care as much where their food and crafts came from," he says. Now, he muses, everyone's interested in meeting the producers and seeing how things are made. That's great news for a small-town candy shop.

With the one-year anniversary of Village Chocolatier's new ownership in the rearview, the Tubbs family is looking ahead to a new set of challenges. They're launching a spiffy new website, complete with online ordering, any day now--which is exciting, but also daunting. For the moment, Tubbs is limiting online order sizes "because if we got an order for 100 hand-dipped apples, we'd be screwed," he says. But, he adds, "it would be a good problem to have," and he'd love to hire more help to handle that side of things. Online sales will also help Village Chocolatier get through the cold season, which is pretty dismal for sales outside of the holiday season, Valentine's Day and Easter.

The Tubbses are settling nicely into their roles as the Tawas area's resident chocolatiers, but not every Michigan confectioner works out of a shop.

"More Like Play"

Andrea Aho, of Chassell (about 15 miles south of Houghton, in the U.P.), sure doesn't.

Aho has been in the chocolate-making business since the late 1990s, and she's done most of her work from the comfy confines of her rural home or the modern expanse of a borrowed kitchen. The River Rouge native had learned the basics of fudge-making (and developed a love for all things chocolatey) as a child, but put her passion on hold to pursue less whimsical things--you know, college, family, career, that kind of stuff. But she could never quite shake her passion. After some dabbling in her home kitchen, she finally threw caution to the wind and purchased a tempering machine (which keeps chocolate ganache workable) and other equipment in 1997. 

Always a proponent of proper technique, Aho honed her truffle-making skills with her parents as enthusiastic taste-testers. "[My dad] was always ready and willing to taste-test what I'd made...he'd pop a whole truffle into his mouth at once," she says. "His happiness was real, and quite contagious."

Aho and her family moved up north in 2002, and she quickly found a home in the U.P.'s chummy culinary scene. An overnight chocolate-making arrangement with the owner of Victoria's Kitchen, a popular Houghton shop, helped establish her as a rising local star. And with top-notch equipment at her disposal, she was able to crank out up to 800 truffles, bark, brittles, and other candies in just a few nights of work. She eventually incorporated as Lake Superior Chocolate Company and marketed her wares at local craft shows and business establishments, including the AmericInn in Calumet and Econo Foods in Houghton. These days, she's a major supplier of the Yummy Bar, a popular Houghton confectionary run by Dana Bianco.

Last year, Aho's chocolate dreams, already robust enough to support her financially, got even bigger when she put the finishing touches on her at-home chocolate-making palace. (Okay, maybe not a palace--but a pretty darn sweet kitchen, complete with a "Lord of the Rings-style door" made by the Modern Woodsmith in Wetmore.) All of Lake Superior Chocolate Company's production, including the substantial portion earmarked for the Yummy Bar, is now concentrated there, as is a retail side business and a growing lineup of chocolate-making classes. 

The new space is freeing, to say the least. "I've always been a bit of a night owl," says Aho, and the at-home production area allows her to work whenever creativity strikes. She solicits kitchen help from her teenage daughter and taste-testing from her other two kids, all of whom share her passion. A big fan of the chemistry behind chocolate making, Aho isn't shy about using the process as a science lesson, either, as each type and brand of chocolate melts, settles and works in slightly different ways. It's also critical to keep the kitchen's air temperature and humidity just right--temps in the upper 60s, and not too humid--to ensure that dipping chocolate dries within five minutes and holds the sprinkles, coconut shavings and "whatever else you want to put on there" properly.

What does Aho like best about making chocolate? Aside from a job "that's more like play than work for me," she extolls the flexible schedule. "It's usually during my late night doodling around in the kitchen that some of my more uncanny ideas are born," she says. 

There's also the virtually unlimited creativity and support from the tight-knit Keweenaw community. She loves getting feedback from customers, both those who buy direct and those who find her treats at places like the Yummy Bar and AmericInn. She cites constructive criticism as the impetus for her new-and-improved--and now wildly popular--habanero truffles, early batches of which were criticized as not being spicy enough.

So Aho is blessed to have a full-time gig that's more like a hobby than a job. But are there any Michigan chocolatiers for whom chocolate making is basically a paid hobby? As it turns out, yes.

Truffles with a Purpose

Traverse City-based Hilda Charles and Sheryl Layton have been in the chocolate-making business for about as long as Andrea Aho, but they're a bit harder to track down. Layton, an executive chef by training, still works as a full-time operations manager for Sodexho, a job that requires extensive travel and a 10-day-on, 5-day-off schedule. When she's off, she gets right to work on Charles Layton Chocolates' next batch of truffles in the basement kitchen of Traverse City's Unity Church. 

Charles, who worked for IBM for many years, handles the marketing, sales, and administrative work out of the couple's northwest Michigan home. Unlike her former job, her work affords her unlimited flexibility. "I work when I want," she says, echoing Aho's enthusiasm. And while she's always looking for new buyers, "I don't want us to grow 'big-big,'" she says. "That would feel too  much like real work."

And though their hobby-job pays the bills, Layton and Charles also aren't concerned with hewing to a strict business plan or meeting aggressive sales targets. Many of their best clients are local charities and support organizations, such as the American Cancer Society and organizations that work with the homeless. When these outfits put on fundraisers or community events, Charles Layton is usually there in some capacity--whether they're donating samples or selling their truffles to participants. 

Charles communicates closely with commercial clients, too, whether they're locals who order a handful of truffles for a special occasion or caterers who require heavier loads. Like Aho and Tubbs, they see peak demand during holiday periods, but they're mostly able to handle the workload on their own. When they do need extra help with production, they "hire" temporary laborers--mostly friends, family and community members willing to work for truffles.

"We've never had trouble getting help," says Charles, probably understating things. After all, who wouldn't work for free truffles?

If all this talk about Charles Layton's truffles seems repetitive, it's because Charles Layton is all about truffles. Sure, they expand on the theme with white and milk chocolates, not to mention Charles Layton's best-selling dark chocolate cherry truffle (which uses tart cherry concentrate from Michigan's great northwest), but you won't find any barks or brittles in their kitchen. 

And that's okay. "[Layton] only makes chocolate truffles," says Charles, "and she does it well." It's a straightforward, three-step process: First, make the ganache by adding a little cream--a softening agent--to raw chocolate; second, round the truffle balls out of the ganache by hand; third, machine-coating each ball with tempered chocolate, which Layton heats to 108 degrees,  then cools to 86 degrees before bringing it up to the style-appropriate reading for final working. 

It's a well-oiled operation--one neither woman would trade for the world. "We just love that we've found this community," says Charles.

Brian Martucci writes about business, finance, food, drink and anything else that catches his fancy. When he's not working out of his office on Marquette's East Side, you can find him stretching his legs on the trails or sampling local flavors at Blackrocks and the Ore Dock. You can find him on Twitter @Brian_Martucci