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In this episode, I will be talking to my good friend Trevor Fast on why he likes chocolate so much and what happens when you follow your passion.
About Dandelion Chocolates:
Dandelion Chocolate is a bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the Mission District of San Francisco.
We opened our workshop out of a lifetime love of chocolate. Our friends often said that given enough time, it seemed inevitable that one of us would open a chocolate factory. They watched as we experimented with growing small cacao plants in our apartments, pan roasted beans in the oven, and ate our way through the many of the chocolate shops of the world.
In early 2010, we decided to share our craft chocolate with our friends and family and have expanded since. Currently, in our factory in the Mission district of San Francisco, we roast, crack, sort, winnow, grind, conch, and temper small batches of beans and then mold and package each bar by hand. By sourcing high quality beans and carefully crafting tiny batches, we try to bring out the individual flavors and nuances of each bean.
We’re excited to bring artisan bean-to-bar chocolate back to the bay area. Like many, we miss Scharffen Berger now that they moved east to join Hershey’s. We lost our local source for cocoa nibs and some of our favorite bars of dark chocolate. We hope and aspire to take over where others have left off and bring quality, local chocolate back to the area.
About Trevor Fast:
This interview within Dandelion speaks for itself:
We’d like you to meet Trevor, one of our lead chocolate makers who has an endless supply of corny jokes and puns that we never hesitate to steal and use as our own.
Q: What is your superpower?
A: The ability to tell jokes.
Q: Tell me your best joke.
A: How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh?
Q: How many?
A: Ten tickles.
Q: (pause) That’s your best joke?
A: No. It’s one of my best jokes.
Q: How many do you have?
A: Infinite.
Q: That’s a lot of jokes.
A: Have you ever seen an elephant hiding in a tree?
Q: No.
A: That’s because they’re so good at it.
What We Talk About:
Dandelion Chocolate
Chocolate Process
Winnower
Melanger
Bean to Bar
TonKatsu
Learn by Doing
Cal Poly Food Science Program
Cal Poly Chocolate Program
Dandelion in Japan