It is
fairly unusual to experience two 21st birthdays in one lifetime but
I had the special joy of being able to do just that on Wednesday afternoon.
We held a
media workshop to celebrate achieving 21 years in business.
Devonport
Chocolates was born sometime in September 1991( the actual date has been lost
in the mists of time) and since we are
still going strong it is a milestone to
celebrate.
Julie le
Clerc, Food Editor, Next magazine;
Marnie Hallahan North Shore Times;
Heather Vermeer Channel Magazine; Rachael Barrett from Chelsy and Get
Frank; Maire Veith, Flagstaff News; and Lisa Morton of Dish all helped us to
celebrate.
Assisted by
the Devonport Chocolates team they tempered chocolate, made ganache, rolled
truffles, dipped truffles and made chocolate shoes.
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| A photo of the participants in the inaugural media workshop. We had such a great time we are going to repeat the occasion annually. |
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| Julie carefully painting her chocolate shoe mould with tempered coloured cocoa butter – decisions, decisions - stripes or spots! |
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Julie’s finished shoe
delicious stripes of yellow, teal and red
|
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| Rachael is guided by Rachel, our chocolatier, as she fills her painted shoe mould with chocolate |
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| Rachael’s finished shoe a symphony of spots and swirls. |
The danger
of painting the shoe moulds is the addictive nature of it. As soon as I finish
one I want to do another to experiment with different finishes and colours. I
like to be quite outrageous with colour and texture happening on the surface of
the shoe.
We have
some chocolate shoes in our shops that are quite traditional and we also have
another collection that are what we have called the Fantasy Collection. They
are more experimental in finish and texture.
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| A bevy of experimental handmade shoes all packaged up ready to go home with their creators. |
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| Miok,our chocolatier, showing Lisa Morton the fine technique of using a hairdryer to warm the chocolate moulds. |
Some of our equipment is high tech with imported
machinery from Italy
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| Rachael and Marnie, with Tammy’s help, have made a bowl of chocolate ganache and are ready to pour it into a tray to set. |
The fine
art of chocolate making with tips and
techniques from professional chocolatiers
gave us all a greater appreciation of how skilled our staff are and we
appreciated the participants being such good sports and being prepared to try
everything out!
Thanks to
you all for such as great afternoon and making my second 21st such a
great event ( It was definitely more fun than my first 21st. It is odd
how with life experience I feel it would be great to be 21 again as long as I
could still know what I know now.)
Watch this
space for more 21st events and competitions in our stores and online
starting 2nd of October 2012
