Meet the Staff--Lisa Mickey

-What is your favorite thing about working at Cocoa Dolce?

My favorite thing about Cocoa Dolce is its fun and unique work environment. The Cocoa Dolce atmosphere encourages its employees to learn and grow individually while empowering them to work as a team to contribute to a blossoming and ever=growing business. It is a great fusion of fun, spunk and professionalism  p truly a special business to be a part of. 


It is an environment where you can learn several different techniques and develop a style of your won.  It is also conducive to creating and refining one's palette in the chocolate world.  In the day-to-day operations, I see a great variety of confectionaries travel in and out of our production facility. 

Here are a few things I see every day, helping the me continue to grow and love what I do each day.

Casting a bar mold, getting ready to make filled bars.

Hand-tempering some Fortunato #4 for the day!

 


Checking over a tray of Lemon Chocolates before they head over to the store.

Making some yummy Caramel for the Day

   That's me, hand-tempering for a class!  It's a technique called Tablering.

--Do you have a favorite chocolate to make?  Why?

        
 I have several things that I continually make on a day-to-day basis. Some of the popular items that I make are not chocolate confections. You can always see me making a batch of Vanilla Bean Marshmallow, or English Toffee (which I love to eat!) or Sunflower Seed Brittle. Those are the things that are different to make and are some of my favorites---if I had to choose J The list will always grow, but I like making just about anything.

--Do you have a “most memorable” moment with your time at Cocoa Dolce?

 
I have several “most memorable” moments at Cocoa Dolce and with the friends that we have become over the years! I always like doing events that are off-site and seeing people’s reactions to our chocolates! I also think it is fun when we release new items and seeing them fly off the shelves! We tend to always have fun doing launch days and events!

On the macaron launch day, all of us production workers took a group photo with our matching shirts and coordinating macarons!

Beth and Kelly Peterson displaying a tray of macarons a few days before the official launch! They are so delicious.

Here is a picture of our booth at Death by Chocolate. Kelly Peterson and Shelby White helped all of us win the People’s Choice Award for Cocoa Dolce! It was a fun night for everyone!

This was probably one of my favorite trips with my Cocoa Dolce family! We went to Washington D.C. in hopes to receive the Dream Big Small Business of the Year Award with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It was lots of fun seeing the city and most of all it was an honor to see so many people in love with our chocolates!

--If you weren’t working at Cocoa Dolce, what would your dream job be?

 

If I was not working at Cocoa Dolce, my dream job would be a chef or sous chef in a restaurant. I have always had a passion to go to culinary school and pursue more advanced schooling in the cooking world. Hopefully I could bring my chocolate life to another realm of the restaurant business!

 


 

Pate de WHAT??

There is a new product making its debut on July 11th at Cocoa Dolce.  But what is Pate de Fruit?

Pate de Fruit are recognized as one of the widely known confections around the world.  You can find this confection through chocolatiers around the world or high end gourmet shops.  They are described as bite sized pieces of jellies and covered in sugar.  The process of making these is far more intricate than it might seem.  Since this is a sugar-based confection, temperature, texture and finished appearance is much different for each flavor and completely opposite of chocolates.  So, it has been a true learning experience for all of us.

Pate de Fruit (pronounced “Pat-day-fwee”) translates from French to fruit paste.  The intricacy of this confection is the creation of the base, created mainly from fresh fruit purees. 

The kitchen at Cocoa Dolce has been busily creating these amazing fruity confections all summer.  Are you ready for Black Cherry, Wild Strawberry, Mango, Blood Orange, Lime and White Peach? Check out our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter page for picture updates.

Don’t forget to pick up your box this Thursday, July 11th!