Santa’s Chocolate Boot (or St. Nick’s??)

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Natalia
Chocolate Santa Boot

Our Chocolate Santa Boot

This may be Santa’s boot to many of you, but to me it is St. Nick’s boot. Growing  up in Croatia, St. Nicholas was the only one that brought gifts. Maybe because Santa was too busy working in the U.S.!

On the night of December 5th, my brother and I would search for our dad’s largest boots and place them outside our bedroom window. I would nicely polish my boot because I knew that St. Nicholas brought more gifts to good children and my dad seemed to encourage that thought. Now that I think about it, he wanted clean boots! Continue reading →

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Chocolate Covered Marzipan – “European Style” Chocolates

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Natalia

This is the first of a series of posts we’ll write about what makes Sweet Designs’ chocolates “European Style”. We are often asked, what does European style mean? It is actually a combination of the technique used to make the chocolates, appearance, types of ingredients, and taste.

Marzipan is a sweet confection made from finely ground almonds. It has the consistency of a dense cookie dough. While somewhat common in its plain form, it can be hard to find good chocolate covered marzipan outside of Europe.

At Sweet Designs, we make two varieties of chocolate covered marzipan, pistachio and fruit. The pistachio marzipan is the more popular of the two and we offer it in a bar form or a bite size ball. It is decorated with toasted green coconut. The fruit marzipan also has a loyal following and contains finely chopped pieces of orange peel and glace apricot inside.

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Hazelnuts and Chocolate: A European Tradition

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Natalia
Hazelnut Cluster

Chocolate Hazelnut Clusters

Hazelnuts…

With or without chocolate, I’ll choose them any day over any other nuts.  But what is it about hazelnuts that makes them less popular compared to almonds, cashews, pecans and peanuts? Over the years we noticed that they always sell less and that customers will get a box of mixed clusters, but tell us to skip the hazelnuts. Is it a European thing? It must be! Growing up in Croatia, every dessert, cookies, ice cream and chocolate was made better with the addition of hazelnuts. Other flavors do not even stand a chance! It is great that they grow in my grandma’s back yard and every summer I visit, our fun family activity is to crack the hazelnuts together. Continue reading →

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Wedding and Bridal Shower Favors

Posted on June 1, 2011 by admin
2 piece clear favor box

Mini Clear Ballotin

Have you ever been to a wedding where you forgot the favor on the table or reluctantly saved it in a drawer full of other such trinkets? The purpose of wedding and bridal shower favors is to thank your guests for sharing the joy of these special moments in your life. There are usually many things to be planned for your special day, and favors may be one of the last decisions you make without putting a lot of thought into it. Continue reading →

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The Stories Behind the Chocolate High Heel

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Natalia

Last year, I wanted to create something special for Mother’s Day. What do Moms like? Chocolate of course! There aren’t many women I know that don’t like shoes also.  A few years ago, a friend brought a mold for a chocolate high heel to make for her daughter who is a fashion designer. We made the shoe in milk chocolate and filled it with nonpareils and it was perfect for her fashion show. Although the shoe was difficult to make, we decided to offer a few for sale, but after a couple of weeks there was no interest in the shoe, and the only shoe mold we had mysteriously disappeared. The only person that knew where the mold was in hiding was my aunt, the owner of Sweet Designs. Continue reading →

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Why Sweet Designs Chocolate?

Posted on April 12, 2011 by admin

chocolate discsA lot of people ask us what makes Sweet Designs chocolate different from other chocolates. The story goes back 15 years to when Ines created the blend that we still use today. Growing up in Europe, Ines developed a taste for high quality chocolate. It wasn’t until she began blending samples of different types of chocolates that she found the taste she was looking for.

So what’s the secret recipe? Well we can’t give that away, but we can tell you that there is a little bit of dark chocolate in our milk chocolate and a little bit of milk in our dark chocolate. This makes a milk chocolate that is not too sweet with a rich chocolaty flavor. Likewise, our dark chocolate is a lot smoother than other dark chocolates without the bitterness or unpleasant aftertaste. In fact, our plain dark chocolate discs are one of our best selling items.

So why choose Sweet Designs Chocolate? Because it tastes good! We invite you to stop by and try one of our chocolate discs to taste the goodness for yourself.

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Welcome to our Blog

Posted on April 11, 2011 by admin

Welcome to our new blog, ‘Chokolada.’ Chokolada is derived from the Croatian word for chocolate: čokolada. The ‘č’ makes a ‘ch’ sound in English.  This blog will cover all things chocolate; from stories and information about Sweet Designs Chocolatier that you may not know, to general chocolate making and other fun chocolate stories.

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