Photos courtesy of Cocoa Tree Chocolates

Abby Mandel has a taste, and a true talent, for chocolate.

“I have been obsessed with sweets for as long as I can remember,” she shares. “As a child, I spent many hours in the kitchen experimenting with cakes, candies and chocolate. By the time I was 10, I was making fancy three-layer cakes with marzipan figures and chocolate decorations.”

Her obsession continued throughout high school and college, but when faced with the decision to go to pastry school or graduate school, she opted for the latter.

“I ended up getting a PhD in Taste Perception Science from Cornell University through the Division of Nutritional Sciences,” says Mandel. “After working as a scientist for several years, I moved to the Roaring Fork Valley about seven years ago with my husband and small children. Two years ago, I started making chocolate truffles as holiday gifts and had so much fun with it; I started experimenting with molded, hand-painted truffles. After a year of trying out various flavor combinations on my family, friends and co-workers, we decided that it was time to start a real business.”

It was last September when she made the leap to launch Cocoa Tree Chocolates. The chocolates are made fresh, without preservatives, so they need to be consumed within two or three weeks.

“These are definitely not chocolates that can sit on a shelf for months,” she says. “Why would anyone want to eat those anyway?”

Everything is made in small batches, and some of the herbs Mandel uses are picked from her own garden. Everything, from the marzipans to the jams, are hand-made and hand-painted.

“We spend a lot of time brainstorming about flavor combinations and developing recipes,” shares Mandel. “I focus a lot on the overall ‘experience’ of eating each truffle — what flavor reached the palate first, how the different textures hit at different times, how the final bitterness of the dark shell plays into it. I make sure that each combination is totally balanced in terms of sweetness, texture, etc. As a result, our flavors tend to be very bold and not overly sweet.”

When Mandel worked as a taste perception scientist, her area of research focused on individual differences. What she has found with SPOKE+BLOSSOM 25 her chocolates is that there are many differences with how people perceive them.

“I always have six to 10 people try out a flavor to make sure it works for most tasters before it can be launched as a new flavor,” she explains. “For example, with one early flavor, Peppered Apricot, I found that only half the tasters could actually perceive the pepper. The ones who could thought it was amazing, but the other half thought it was terrible. That one didn’t make the cut.”

Mandel gets inspiration for new flavors from many different sources, and she says she thinks about it pretty much all the time.

“I read cookbooks and cooking magazines constantly — both sweet and savory — and also troll the grocery stores and spice websites, keeping an eye out for fun or interesting ingredients to use,” she says. “Those trips usually end in one of our more creative combinations. For example, I just received some beautiful caraway seeds and am now trying to figure out how to incorporate them into a truffle — who knows where it will lead. This is definitely my favorite part of the whole process.”

For their more traditional flavors, she often takes a classic dessert that she loves, like Sachertorte or banana bread, and figures out how to shrink it down into chocolate form.

“The classic Austrian Sachertorte,” she explains, “which combines flourless chocolate cake with marzipan and raspberry or apricot jam, is a dessert I have made for many years. It was quite fun figuring out how to shrink it down, and it tastes just like the cake.”

Cocoa Tree Chocolates can be found at a number of retailers in the Roaring Fork Valley, including True Nature, The Launchpad and Landmark Cafe in Carbondale, Meat & Cheese and The Aspen Art Museum in Aspen. Mandel also takes online orders at CocoaTreeChocolates.com for hand-delivery throughout the Roaring Fork Valley and priority shipping for orders further afield in Colorado and across the country.

For more information go to cocoatreecarbondale.com

Originally published in the Summer 2020 issue of SPOKE+BLOSSOM.