Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, November 14, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - "We call this Spanky," said Leanne Tait, one half of the management team at Yellowknife's new chocolate confection store, The Chocolatier, of the white spoon she's using to whack a chocolate-covered tray to extract fresh truffle shells.

"It's not exactly a technical term."

Emily Pollock, left, and Claudia Richea, right, are in production mode at the YK Centre's newest addition, The Chocolatier. Richea extracts fresh chocolate truffle shells from a tray, while Pollock gently lays out finished truffles for the display window. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Tait and her business partner, Claudia Richea, wearing white aprons splattered here and there with dark spots of chocolate, are in the middle of production - calmly working their way through a stack of trays housing gently-prepared truffle shells.

Tait takes a tray that's been sitting for 30 minutes, and holds it high in the air, like a photographer holding up a photo to the light.

"We want to start seeing a little bit of light through the shells, because we want to make the shells as thin as possible," said Tait.

"The thinner the shell you have, the higher the quality of truffle. You don't want the shell to overwhelm the filling. If you make the shell too thick, you're essentially just getting a chocolate bar with (filling) inside."

By the time they make their 60th tray, they'll have made more than 1,000 truffles, minus a few cracked casualties, which ultimately serve as customer samples.

"The truffles move quickly," said Tait.

The same could be said for The Chocolatier itself, which only a year ago was a mere idea hatched by Tait and Richea, who work together at Tait Communications.

"Claudia and I went to 'chocolate school' this summer," said Tait. "We spent some time in Ontario with a French-trained chocolate maker of 15 years, Marc Forrat. It was an intense two weeks."

Richea says the store is meant to fill a void in the community.

"Yellowknife is growing," she says. "The customer base here - they like their luxury items. But one thing we thought was missing here was fresh chocolate."

The store is already setting its sights on the future.

The women plan to inaugurate a chocolate fountain during their official grand opening in early December.

"We're going to put things like Rice Krispies squares, marshmallows and oranges on sticks - and then the kids, and the kids at heart, will take their stick, put it into the chocolate fountain, and be able to sample," said Tait.

Tait and Richea also plan to introduce a new type of truffle every month and expand the store's chocolate confection line, says Richea, adding, "We'll be making hot chocolate once it gets really cold.

"The possibilities are wide open."