A Legal woman has been crowned one of North America's chocolate champions this month thanks to some fashionable treats she whips up in her basement.
Jacqueline Jacek, owner of Jacek Chocolate Couture, was named one of North America's top-10 chocolatiers by Dessert Professional magazine, an industry publication with some 32,000 subscribers. Jacek's gem-like chocolates beat out about 100 of the top chocolatiers in Canada, Mexico and the United States, says editor Matthew Stevens, including master designers from major producers like Mars. "This is high-end, quality chocolate."
But what put Jacek over the top was her unique approach to chocolate. Stevens says she's a self-declared "cocoanista" (chocolatier plus fashionista), and is using fashion techniques to make chocolate chic.
"She's coming at chocolate … from a direction that I think is incredibly beneficial to the chocolate industry."
Enter the cocoanista
Born and raised in Legal, the 30-year-old Jacek carefully stirs a small vat of rich dark chocolate in a double boiler in her Sherwood Park home. The enticing smell fills the spic-and-span industrial kitchen, which is complete with white shelves, marble countertops, and seven types of raw chocolate.
Chocolate is an ingredient to be respected, Jacek says. "If you just melt chocolate and use it, it'll never harden and get that beautiful smooth look."
This particular dark chocolate has to be heated to 50 C, cooled to 28 and heated again to 32. If you're off by as little as two degrees either way, the chocolate will melt in your hand instead of your mouth.
And with beauties like her designs, that would be downright criminal. Jacek's chocolates are less fatty brown lumps and more smooth polished stones — reds, greens, blues and whites are all present in eye-catching combinations. Some, such as the raspberry ruby item, look less like candy and more like blood-red versions of the planet Jupiter.
The insides are just as unique, fusing multiple flavours and sensations into each bite. The aforementioned raspberry ruby starts with a hard chocolate shell, for example, that releases a shock of fresh, tart, puréed raspberry at first bite, and closes with a smooth base of caramelized white chocolate.
"The way I do my chocolate is like fashion," she explains: each piece is designed like a dress with a specific shape, feel, colour, taste and technique in mind. She also releases a new line with each season. Her current winter set is dubbed "ruby and gold," and favours rich looking, and tasting, items.
Jacek says she spent the first 15 years of her life in Legal, getting her first taste of design when she helped her grandparents, Lucien and Lucienne Montpetit, make pinecone jewelry. After her dad, Tom LaBerge, finished his time as town mayor, the family decided to move to New Zealand — a country famous for its fresh food scene. "That's where my love of food came from."
A lover of fashion, food and design, Jacek says she wanted a job that pooled all her likes into one.
"To me, chocolate is a perfect canvas [on which] to be creative."
She earned her degree in chocolate-making, moved back to Canada, and started life as a chocolate artist two years ago.
Jacek says she's always on the lookout for new ideas, drawing inspiration from everything she sees.
"I'll probably go through about eight or nine recipes before I'm happy."
Once she has a set in mind, she and two others crowd into the kitchen to churn out 2,800 chocolates a week. Although some pieces can take 24 hours to complete, they usually average one every 2.5 minutes. Each piece sells for about $1.60, she says.
Jacek says she was ecstatic when she heard she had made the top-10 list. "They told me it wasn't about the size of the business; it was more about the quality of the product and the technique."
Chocolate is not as appreciated as wine, Stevens says, which means people are more reluctant to splurge on it. Jacek is the first chocolatier he's encountered to meld fashion and chocolate in this manner, an approach that could raise the profile (and price) of chocolates.
Jacek says she's now finalizing the designs for her next chocolate set (it's based on teacups), and is looking to set up shop in a commercial kitchen. She's also hoping to expand into St. Albert.
She does taste-test every batch, she says, but never pigs out on the stuff. "I love quality over quantity."
Dessert Professional's top-10 list comes out later this month.
