Chocolatiers sate town's sweet tooth

Middlebury is home to an array of unique shops and restaurants, but for several years now it has been missing a small-town staple: the candy shop.

Stephanie and Andy Jackson would like to change that, not with just any old confectionary — with chocolate. The new owners and operators of Middlebury Chocolates moved to Middlebury just two weeks ago from Asheville, N.C.

“This was just the place we knew we needed to be,” Stephanie said.

“We just kind of picked up and left. Asheville was getting too big and it wasn’t where I wanted my kids to be growing up, either. We like the community about Middlebury, and the smallness.”

Back in Asheville, Andy ran his own wedding cinematography business while Stephanie stayed at home with their two children, Azrael, 4, and Aria, 14 months, and roasted small batches of coffee. Chocolate did not motivate the move, but the entrepreneurial and culinary-minded couple was happy to find a niche to fill once they arrived.

“We’ve always been into cooking and culinary stuff, but never really on the selling end of it,” Stephanie said. “When we got up here, we just needed a chocolate fix, and when we saw the community interest and the need for it, then we started thinking , ‘Oh, we could do chocolate.’”

Andy and Stephanie now turn out a variety of truffles in 100-count batches from the commercial-grade kitchen in their new home, but each of their chocolates is made to follow the same, simple philosophy.

“There are so many chocolate places and candy places that are good, but you eat one or two and you feel like you’re done for the day with sweets,” Andy said. “Our philosophy on the chocolate-making front is to try to not make an overindulging sweet; [chocolate] is more than that. We just want to keep it really simple, no filler ingredients — just pure, simple goodness.”

The simplicity of Middlebury Chocolates’ truffles stems mainly from its all-natural, mostly local ingredients.

The Jacksons use no refined sugar — only Vermont maple syrup and honey as sweeteners, and most of the truffles are made with coconut milk for a smoother texture and a lower dairy content so that they are more agreeable with dairy-sensitive diets like Andy and Stephanie’s. Most truffles need butter, however, so the Jacksons still pay homage to the local dairy industry.

“They’re not completely dairy-free, but the dairy quality up here is so high that we can handle it a lot better, actually,” Andy said. “We also want to keep everything incredibly fresh and just nurture the natural flavors, and the best way to do that is to keep things as local as possible.”

A little balsamic vinegar and more salt than perhaps most other chocolate contains creates a distinctive truffle made even more special by the unique variety of flavors Andy has come up with, including plain, salted, cardamom vanilla, a series of coffee-based truffles and a surprising hot pepper trio for the more adventurous.

More flavors are on the way as soon as the Jacksons can pin down their recipes.

“[Andy] is really good with flavors,” said Stephanie, “and he’ll come up with these off-the-wall creations that are incredible, but that we can never repeat because we never write them down.

Now we write them down, but we’re also having to say,

‘Oh, we did this once. Let’s see if we can do it again.’”

For now, the actual chocolate involved in Middlebury Chocolates comes from the organic selection of Callebaut chocolate at the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op, but the Jacksons hope to eventually roast their own cocoa beans.

“We really want to roast our own beans and create our own flavor of chocolate, to really individualize it,” Stephanie said. “We also want to make some fully raw stuff too.”

Raw chocolates involve completely unadulterated, unheated ingredients that, in keeping with the Jacksons’ flavor and goodness philosophy, retain more of chocolate’s natural antioxidants and subtle tastes.

Before they move on to new endeavors, however, the Jacksons have other difficulties to address.

“What we’re doing doesn’t feel like it’s challenging, but it’s the looming possibilities that seem challenging,” Andy said. “We’ve never done a retail space before, we’ve never done dealing with a lot of businesses in this way before. In that regard it’s challenging, but it’s forcing us to do things we should do anyway, and we love it — it’s fun. It’s kind of what we always wanted to do, immerse ourselves in a community-based food business because it just makes people happy.”

Their plans include local distribution until they can purchase a small storefront, preferably something downtown and “loungeish,” Stephanie said, and they will soon start taking custom orders through the still-rudimentary Web site they have already set up.

In the meantime, for their first full week up and running the Jacksons have signed on with John Melanson, owner of Carol’s Hungry Mind Café, to sell their truffles in his front display case.

Curious café-goers can also try free samples at the register, but be forewarned: trying the Jacksons’ chocolate will almost certainly lead to buying it.