Delysia Chocolatier founder Nicole Patel shares some of her seasonal specialties, from a chocolate advent calendar that highlights 25 different Christmas carols, to savory chocolates that evoke the flavors of a holiday meal. Plus, she shares how she went from an engineer with a chocolate allergy to becoming an award-winning chocolatier and small business owner.

Wake Up With Cheddar

Blending Savory and Sweet Holiday Flavors with Delysia Chocolatier

you know the holidays are officially here Shan and thanksgiving and christmas just around the corner and award winning chocolate here. Nicole Patel is here to share some of first seasonal delicious chocolate specials with us? Good to have you here. Nicole thanks so much for getting up early with us. So tell us about some of the chocolate you brought here for us today. So we have our holiday assortment. We have an advent calendar that is inspired by your favorite holiday songs on your playlist for your december, which is all Mariah Carey. Anyway, we couldn't find a flavor to match one of her songs. But yes, yes, the Queen of Holiday Music, we have our nutcracker collection that is featured by flavors from the ballet and our taste of taste of winter and a winter wonderland. And these look like they make great gifts as well. But you know we want to taste some of this beautiful of course what is the proper way to taste because you don't just dig in. It's almost like when you do a wine tasting chocolate wrong. Never look at it the same again. I'm gonna give you this one. So you just simply want to start first with smelling the chocolate. So you want to take just a piece out that the whole thing just sort of looking for what I'm smelling it. So you want to smell the bottom of the truffle that's closest to the ganache center and the truffle is a thin chocolate shell on the outside and it is and then a blend of chocolate and cream in the center. How do I know if it's good or not based off of those smells, The smells, just priming your taste buds, getting you kind of familiar with what you're gonna start tasting. Taking a bite. Here's some tasting tips on the screen in case he's got his first bite in. What do you think baker? I'm loving it. But it's interesting cause you want some of the different flavors so just let it sit your tongue. I swallowed it all down. Okay. This, the urge to chew, that's gonna be the hardest thing you do to develop new flavors for this kind of stuff. So I can't actually eat chocolate chocolate and you can't eat chocolate, explain that. I figured that out after we were a few years in business, couldn't figure out why I kept getting headaches. Um, and so we isolate it down to chocolate but thankfully I have this knack for being able to smell the ingredients blending into the chocolate. So I develop all of our flavors simply on my sense of right. That is really impressive skill by the way you have a ton of traditional holiday flavors, The pumpkin, the mint. Are there any unconventional flavors out there? Are we are known for pushing kind of savory too. If you want to try looking for the pumpkin unconventional. The unconventional one is the one with the presence right there and it makes it unconventional. What is it? It is a prime rib truffle, So a little bit of salt and it does sort of have like a feeling that you're having like a steak, there's very savory for a little hint of like, wait a minute because it's the saltiness that you would get almost like from a stone, a glass of red wine with that is amazing. We've been celebrating holiday traditions here all week at each other, starting up kicking it off first. So we're glad you're here. So what is your favorite holiday tradition? My favorite is our advent calendar. You know, as my kids get older, we don't get as much time during the day with them. So having that nice little sweet treat at the end of the day to spend a little bit of time again. This one is inspired by your holiday music. So you have a little card inside each box that gives you a playlist. That and lyric from the song helps. What's your favorite song? We're all rocking Mariah Carey right now. You know, my favorite is the all I want for christmas is a hippopotamus. Oh, that's why you have kids. My carrie by the way wasn't able to trademark the queen of christmas, but do you think that's a title we should give her. I think so. I understand she's going to bring santa down the parade route this year? Oh yeah, that's pretty impressive. So you're an engineer, You started out making chocolates for families and friends. What's your advice to anybody hoping to sort of turn this hobby that they might have into a small business. You know, a couple of things passion. That's, that's what's going to keep you going because this will be the hardest thing you probably ever do in your life outside of raising kids, I would say, I think just being true to yourself and true to the quality, like don't shortcut things because that's just going to, it's going to be a detriment to all of your hard work. So I think, you know, customer service and and having a really, really high quality product is what I would recommend. Well your product is definitely high quality and you definitely love it because you started your company right before the financial crisis and then you survived the global pandemic. A lot of companies did not. So how do you got a small business through these tough times and people out there saying, I don't know if I can make it, Yeah, it is, it is very tough and we are very fortunate to have survived both of those. Being an engineer. I think we had a good foundation, definitely had a financial foundation allowed us to be able to invest in ourselves when a lot of banks weren't giving loans out to small businesses and then with the pandemic, it would've been really easy, just kind of sit it out and wait and see and we just decided to be nimble. I think that's the most important thing too, is kind of kind of listen to what what the client, what the client needs, what the market needs and and kind of fluctuate and move along with its cold new york. We need some of this. Yeah, well I'd love to have hot chocolate too. Thanks again to Nicole Patel from Galicia chocolates here. Be sure to check out all of their seasonal sets for the holidays.