Chocolatier Quotes

“I know all their favorites. It's a knack, a professional secret, like a fortune teller reading palms. My mother would have laughed at this waste of my skills, but I have no desire to probe farther into their lives than this. I do not want their secrets or their innermost thoughts. Nor do I want their fears or gratitude. A tame alchemist, she would have called me with kindly contempt, working domestic magic when I could have wielded marvels. But I like these people. I like their small and introverted concerns. I can read their eyes, their mouths, so easily- this one with its hint of bitterness will relish my zesty orange twists; this sweet-smiling one the soft-centered apricot hearts; this girl with the windblown hair will love the mendiants; this brisk, cheery woman the chocolate brazils. For Guillaume, the florentines, eaten neatly over a saucer in his tidy bachelor's house. Narcisse's appetite for double-chocolate truffles reveals the gentle heart beneath the gruff exterior. Caroline Clairmont will dream of cinder toffee tonight and wake hungry and irritable. And the children... Chocolate curls, white buttons with colored vermicelli, pain d'épices with gilded edging, marzipan fruits in their nests of ruffled paper, peanut brittle, clusters, cracknells, assorted misshapes in half-kilo boxes... I sell dreams, small comforts, sweet harmless temptations to bring down a multitude of saints crash-crash-crashing among the hazels and nougatines....”
― Joanne Harris, Chocolat

“Kee Li Tong was one of my favorite chocolatiers in New York. Years earlier, I had a fleeting addiction to her otherworldly crème brûlée truffle, a dainty yet dangerous homemade bonbon that you have to pop into your mouth whole, or suffer the consequences of squirting eggy custard all over your blouse. Now, I discovered, she was handcrafting macarons in wild and wonderful flavors like blood orange, sesame, and rose. How did she create her recipes? What inspired her expanded repertoire? And how did hers compare to Paris's best?
Emboldened as I was by my new French history lessons, I asked Kee in her Soho boutique: why macarons?
"Because they're so pretty!" Kee laughed. "They're so dainty. I think it's the colors." And, standing as we were above the glass display case, I had to agree. Her blueberry macarons were as bright as the September sky. The lotus flower was the kind of soft pink that's the perfect shade of blush. Kee's favorite flavor, passion fruit, was a snappy corn husk yellow. These were surrounded by greens (lulo and jasmine green tea) and purples (lavender, which was dotted with purple sugar crystals) and some neutral shades as well (white truffle oil and mint mocha).”
― Amy Thomas, Paris, My Sweet: A Year in the City of Light