My artisan chocolates and chocolate lollipops, a great memory.

One of the most beautiful memories that I have is my mini artisan chocolates enterprise. For them I have to go back to 2017.

I remember that in addition to teaching computer and painting classes, I had an inspiration to learn how to make chocolates and sell them to my students.

At that time I had about 30 students a week, and then there were the painting students.

It was a great opportunity as I knew a lot of people and they had their families and acquaintances. All this made it a good environment to market my product.

That's why I started to research the materials, the right chocolate, how to mould it, how to temper it, how to work it to achieve a quality result.

It wasn't until I was well prepared and knew all the details that I launched my venture, which, although it started in 2017, the preparation began much earlier.

I remember my family telling me to practice and that they would taste the chocolates and they laughed. They were my product tasters.

First I started by finding out prices and qualities, but not only of the chocolate but also of the fillings, because I wanted them to be filled and with a great variety.

There were several flavours to choose from, but first I started with the most classic ones. I also had to learn how to fill them and make them look aesthetically pleasing and very professional. For that I watched a lot of tutorials on YouTube.

I did some research on moulds, first I bought some plastic ones, but they broke easily, so I preferred to upgrade to silicone moulds that would last forever, even if they were more expensive.

Learning the right temperature of the chocolate to mould and place it in the moulds was also a task to develop. And not only that, but also how to fill them and then place the chocolate layer to seal them and make them perfect.

That took me a lot of practice, but I finally did it. The flavours I chose were: mint, praline, dulce de leche, almond, peanut, tiramisu and red fruits.

But my challenge went further, I wanted to make liqueur chocolates and that took more study because the liqueur burns the chocolate and melts it so it was complicated to make them.

The solution I found was to mix the liqueur with the dulce de leche, so the liqueur didn't melt the chocolate and the bonbons were perfect.

I had a different mould for each flavour. That way each mould shape corresponded to a type of bonbon and when it came time to sell them I would not make a mistake.

Another important issue was packaging, presentation and everything that has to do with it.

Taking advantage of the fact that I knew graphic design, I designed some bags and boxes in thick sheets of paper that would resist the weight of the chocolates. I bought transparent bags for their packaging, as the client could choose a variety of chocolates.

Many of my students ordered boxes of chocolates for gifts or presents.

For this reason the presentation was very important and had to be very delicate.

The boxes were all the same but the bags were made in different colours so that people could choose.

I had to research the prices, because I knew different fillings and each one had a different value, so I had to know what price to charge.

It took me a lot of research and practice for this venture, but I was happy to see it through.

I also prepared a specific place to store them, although I did not make large quantities for the same reason and many were made to order.

All this in turn was later complemented with chocolate popsicles for children's birthdays, as most of my students were grandparents and there were always grandchildren, so I had the right clientele to develop this added product as well.

I have beautiful memories of all that learning, the mistakes I made and how much I learned until I perfected it.

At that time I didn't take many photographs, so I was able to take very few of this enterprise, but for some unknown reason I brought back to Spain the moulds with which I made the chocolates and lollipopsticks, so I was able to take photographs to better illustrate this experience.

The happiness of my students for being able to find something handmade without additives, natural and knowing that I was making it in hygienic conditions and with excellent preparation, due to how much I had learnt. I was very happy to offer a quality product and above all a very tasty one.

Thank you all very much for reading and watching this far, I have enjoyed very much telling this great and happy memory, but also a great experience with all of you.

Best regards and see you next time.
Amonet.

_{All photographs are my own.
Separators created by me in Photoshop.
Used translator Deepl.com free version.}