After many months of effort, we finally switched over to our own web shopping cart as of TODAY! Instead of using PayPal to handle our transactions, we have partnered with a Canadian company called Beanstream to set up our own extremely secure online shopping system. Here are some of the new features that you can take advantage of next time you
need to order our products online: 1) Accurate calculation
of your delivery date and shipping costs based on your postal code and the size and weight of your purchase. 2) A new method of payment: We take Visa, MasterCard and Amex on our new web site, but you can also pay Online with Debit/Interac! It is a very secure new way to pay over the internet, connecting you to your Bank’s web site during checkout. We can ship anywhere in Canada, so if you ever need to send someone a gift, just try out our new site.
New ways to stay in touch: Twitter and Facebook.
We just started using Twitter, and we find it to be a very good way to send out updates on what we are doing. If you use Twitter, just click here to start following us! We also have a Facebook page. Please get social!
New retail partners: Planet Organic & Jojo’s Cafe.
You can now find our Chocophilia Bars at Planet Organic in downtown Edmonton (12120 Jasper Avenue) and Jojo’s Cafe at La Piazza Dasee (8004 Gateway Boulevard). Please support these two retailers as well as all of our other retail partners.
We will be at Indulgence. Get your tickets today!
Tickets for Slow Food Edmonton Indulgence 2009 are now on sale, and they sell fast. We will be running a booth there, and we will be offering some unique creations! We will announce our plate soon, but in the meantime, click here for more info http://bit.ly/18Gzbq on how to get tickets.
Easter Egg Hunt Results
Our thanks go out to everyone who took part in the Easter Egg Hunt. It was not an easy one! There were only so many eggs in the wild, and some people started too late and found that they could not get all the eggs they were looking for. We hope you didn’t get frustrated! To give you an idea of how it worked here is what we did:
We started with 96 eggs of 6 different colors. We mixed them up and distributed them to the 10 locations (All of these locations were our partner retailers who sell our Chocophilia products in their stores. All of them are independent and locally owned!)
Over the course of four days 7 people were able to find 6 different eggs and bring them into the store. Only 3 people came in with 3 eggs.
Thanks to everyone who participated. I hope you all had fun! We will try to do more of this kind of fun activity in the future. If you have any feedback, just leave a comment by clicking on the comment button below.
Interviewed in Vagablond
We were interviewed by the cool folks at Vagablond. Read the whole interview!
Follow Kerstin’s Chocolates on Twitter.
Do you use twitter? We do! Our twitter ID is “kerstinschoc“. Please follow us!!!
Kerstin’s Easter Egg Hunt and Easter Specials
Learn about the Easter Egg Hunt and more in our April newsletter!
Eat Local First!
Check out the new web site from Eat Local First. A lot of good information there for all you locavores!
Chocolate lover’s box featured at the Mettera Hotel.
The Mettera Hotel is featuring our products during their Spring Getaway on Whyte. Check out this wonderful promotion.
Chocophilia bars voted one of the top 25 things to eat in Edmonton.
We were very pleased to find out that our Chocophilia bars were voted by an expert panel of local food celebreties as one of the 25 best things to eat in Edmonton. The full list of winners is available here in this article. We appreciate the recognition, and will continue to focus on delivering the highest quality chocolate possible.
The Fleur de Sel bar was listed as their favorite flavor. What is your favorite flavor? Let us know! Comment by clicking on the link below.
New display case now houses truffles, bark and other treats.
We recently added a new bit of furniture to our store: a glass display case. It was custom made to hold our fresh confections as we increase production. It will contain all of our fresh truffles, as well as other fresh confections such as our peanut butter cups, coconut cups, dulche de leche cups and others. It will also contain chocolate dipped dried fruit, chocolate dipped candied ginger, and many flavors of chocolate bark. All of these products are sold by the gram, so after you chose which ones you would like, we will weigh them and then calculate the price.
To find out what types of truffles, fruit and bark are available, please call the store at 780-990-0011. We also hope to have this info available on this blog soon. Also, let us know what kinds of fresh chocolates you would like to see in our shop, and we will add them to our to-do list!
Chocophilia Spiced Drinking Chocolate: A truly grown-up drink!
In this entertaining article in the Edmonton Journal, Liane Faulder had two pre-teens test our four types of hot chocolate. The kids found our drinking chocolate to be a little to spicy, but Liane said that she “loved the Chocophilia, which is best in small doses, like caviar. Thick and slightly bitter, the drink spread a warm tingle through the back of my throat and made me want to sigh with pleasure, and gratitude.“
We could not have said it better!
Steaming machine speeds up production of drinking chocolate in shop!
We recently got an Astra steamer. It creates steam (no coffee, just steam.) Not just any old steam, but an enormous amount of beautiful steam with a good pressure! We use it every day in the front of the shop to whip up our Chocophilia Drinking Chocolate. We have found that it much faster than our old way of making it, and the drinks taste better than ever!
We use two pitchers, one for the Spicy, and one for the Dark drinking chocolate. If you haven’t tried our Drinking chocolate before, come in to the shop and taste some. It will be ready in a flash!
February Newsletter is out.
Here it is! There is info about two big events before Valentine’s Day, our new products and much more!
Mention in the Calgary Herald.
We were mentioned in an article last week in the Calgary Herald entitled “Pairing whisky and chocolate.”: click here to read it!
Health By Chocolate by Victoria Laine
I am getting into this book lately, as part of my resolve to eat wholesome, real foods without a lot of additives, preservatives and alien sounding ingredients. I mean, let’s face it: I love chocolate and I refuse to ever cut it out of my diet, so I might as well work with it, enjoy it and not feel guilty.
That said, I already eat a lot of chocolate, (that’s just what happens when your sister owns a chocolate shop) and I am always happy to try some new chocolate related recipes. This book lets me experiment with some guilt-free and nutritious recipes that feature chocolate. A nice combo, right?
Now, these recipes aren’t low fat, let’s just get that straight. They are full of nut butters and almond flour, chocolate and sesame seeds. But they are real, wholesome ingredients with healthy fats and lots of non animal protein and natural sweeteners, which makes them very satisfying. I recently made pudding from tofu, cocoa powder and dates. Sounds kind of gross, right? But it was sooo good. Very creamy and chocolatey, it tasted decadent, but was simple and healthy. I also recommend the ‘eatmore’ bars. Puts the candy bar version to shame!
New Cardamint recipe
After more experimentation, I’ve decided to change the Cardamint recipe. I felt that it was unbalanced, with too much cardamom at the onset and only a subtle mintyness. Since I am a big fan of mint, I decided to make it more minty. Now it tastes like a really good mint chocolate with a hint of cardamom. I think it’s better. I hope others agree!
The December newsletter is out.
Click here to read the newsletter!
A description of one of our tastings.
A very nice person named Marianne came to our chocolate tasting event on Dec 10th, and she wrote this description of the proceedings.
Gourmet goodies to satisfy holiday appetites.
We were covered in the Edmonton Journal last week, in an article entitled “Gourmet goodies to satisfy holiday appetites”. Please check out the article.
Recipe for Candy Cane Truffles featured in Food For Thought Magazine!
We were featured in an article in Food for though magazine. Here is a link to the article and the recipe that was included.
If you have trouble seeing the article, let us know.
We have a new radio ad on CJSR 88.5 in Edmonton.
We made an ad for our local independent radio station, CJSR, and we hope you all like it. If you would like to hear the ad right now, click here.
Reminder: Bring the kids to The Cocoa Room before Halloween!
Bring in the kids for some special free treats this Halloween.
We are launching a new line of fun chocolates for kids this month. Until Oct 31st, come down to The Cocoa Room (in costume or not), and each child will receive a free sample bag of PokeyPines (a milk chocolate and puffed rice confection).
The October Newsletter is here!
Please click here to see the October 2008 newsletter!