San Diego Magazine / July 2007 / For The Love of Chocolate

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For The Love of Chocolate

A local chocolatier goes big.

"Forget love... I'd rather fall in chocolate!"
— Unknown

Chocolate: the word alone can evoke an emotional response. There are few foods in the world that people crave, yearn for or desire more than chocolate. For admitted chocophiles, finding new and interesting ways to satisfy the sweet tooth can be a daunting task. Sure, Hershey and Nestle are good for a quick fix but sometimes you just want something out of the ordinary. Luckily for San Diegans, when it comes to chocolate, one doesn’t have to look far to find a bit of the exotic. San Diego is home to two chocolatiers who are thinking outside the chocolate box—Michael Antonorsi of Chuao Chocolatier and William Gustwiller of Eclipse Chocolat. While Antonorsi has found larger-scale success with retails shops in Carlsbad and Encinitas (as well as other Southern California locations), Gustwiller (for now) is keeping his vision smaller. He fondly refers to his confections as “boutique chocolate.” With the exception of his two big accounts—the W Hotel and the Torrey Pines Lodge in La Jolla—his chocolate is featured most prominently in smaller specialty and gourmet shops such as Taste Cheese and Artisan Foods in Hillcrest and India Ink Papers in Little Italy. His consumers are often unconventional and possess more adventurous and eclectic palates.

For Gustwiller, the reward comes in the journey rather than the destination. “I have always enjoyed the process more than the end result,” he said, sipping an iced tea at Cream Coffeehouse on Park Boulevard, another retailer who carries the Eclipse brand. “I approach the chocolate-making experience as an artist; it's all about the concept, even more than the product.” Gustwiller is a concept man—he not only developed the flavors and textures of his chocolates but also conceived and designed the chocolate molds as well as the packaging. He uses only quality Belgium chocolate and uses no oils, flavorings or extracts.

So how does a promising sculptor end up making chocolates for a living?

“Chocolate-making and sculpture are similar” Gustwiller says. “You take raw ingredients and create something from them.”

It just happens the sculptures he creates now are edible. It was in 2002 that the admitted foodie bought a chocolate tempering machine for $120 and began “goofing” around with chocolate. Months of tinkering and experimentation combined with an artist's intuition yielded countless unconventional taste experiences.

“Some flavor combinations worked, others didn’t,” Gustwiller says. “In the beginning it was a hit-and-miss proposition.”

Fortunately, by the time he received his Master’s degree in Sculpture from SDSU in 2004 he’d gotten the hang of chocolate making and began successfully infusing chocolate with exotic herbs and spices. He used family and friends as taste subjects and even catered his own reception for his SDSU sculpture gallery exhibition.

“The food was more memorable than the art” he chuckles.

Encouraged by positive feedback—and a $10,000 loan—he launched Eclipse Chocolat in the fall of 2004.

“I didn’t have any real business sense so I knew nothing of things like the cost of packaging or marketing; it’s been a real learning experience . . . and I’m still small, so everything is very much hands on, from mixing the flavors to the hand molded bars and truffles to hand wrapping each individual chocolate bar.”

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Types of Chocolate

(More at CacaoWeb.net)

Milk chocolate
Sweet chocolate, which normally contains 10 to 20-percent cocoa solids (which includes cocoa and cocoa butter) and more than 12-percent milk solids. It is seldom used for baking, except for cookies.

Dark chocolate
Sweetened chocolate with high content of cocoa solids and no or very little milk, it may contain up to 12-percent milk solids. Dark chocolate can be sweet, semi-sweet, bittersweet or unsweetened. If a recipe specifies dark chocolate you should first try semi-sweet dark chocolate.

Sweet dark chocolate
Similar to semi-sweet chocolate, it is not always possible to distinguish between the flavor of sweet and semi-sweet chocolate. If a recipe asks for sweet dark chocolate, you may also use semi-sweet chocolate. Often contains 35-percent to 45-percent cocoa solids.

Semi-sweet chocolate
This is the classic dark baking chocolate, which can be purchased in most grocery stores. It is frequently used for cakes, cookies and brownies. It can be used instead of sweet dark chocolate. It has a good, sweet flavor. Often contains 40 to 62-percent cocoa solids.

Bittersweet chocolate
A dark sweetened chocolate, which must contain at least 35-percent cocoa solids. Good quality bittersweet chocolate usually contains 60 to 85-percent cocoa solids depending on brand. If the content of cocoa solids is high the content of sugar is low, giving a rich, intense and more or less bitter chocolate flavor. Bittersweet chocolate is often used for baking/cooking. If a recipe specifies bittersweet chocolate, do not substitute with semi-sweet or sweet chocolate. Make sure to buy the correct type! A European type of bittersweet chocolate usually contains very large amounts of cocoa solids and some of them have a bitter taste.

Unsweetened chocolate
A bitter chocolate which is only used for baking. The flavor is not good, so it is not suitable for eating. Use it only if a recipe specifies 'unsweetened chocolate'. It contains almost 100-percent cocoa solids, about half of it might be fat (cocoa butter).

White chocolate
Chocolate made with cocoa butter, sugar, milk, emulsifier, vanilla and sometimes other flavorings. It doesn’t contain any non-fat ingredients from the cacao bean and has therefore an off-white color. In some countries white chocolate cannot be called 'chocolate' because of the low content of cocoa solids. It has a mild and pleasant flavor and can be used to make Chocolate Mousse, Panna Cotta and other desserts.

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Eclipse Chocolat

(eclipsechocolat.com)

Owner & Chocolatier: William Gustwiller

Age: 28

Number of Years In Business: Two

First Big Account: The W Hotel, San Diego

Favorite Flavor Chocolate Bar/Truffle Flavor:
My favorites are Sea-salt Nib bar and the Lavender Sea-salted Caramel. I am a sucker for the salty ones!

Are there any plans to open an Eclipse Chocolat store in the future?
Yes, hopefully within the next 3 months.

What’s the best part of being a Chocolatier?
"It’s exciting to see how my academic background creeps into the design process, even if only inadvertently. It is definitely with the intuition of an artist that I hope to create a complete concept, wrapping flavor profile, romanticism, and design into a complete product."