What could be better than tasting a variety of chocolates? Making and decorating the treats yourself before savoring the sweet morsels.
Forestville’s newly opened Rainy Day Chocolate hosts classes and tastings at its kitchen and shop tucked into a small strip mall on Mirabel Road.
Inspired by San Francisco’s renowned Dandelion Chocolate, Rainy Day sources cacao from small producers in Tanzania and Guatemala, says co-owner and CEO Jennifer Daly, who founded the small bean-to-bar operation with her partner in both love and chocolate, Chris Sund. The couple started making chocolate together several years ago on a rainy day (thus the company name), selling at farmers markets and festivals before finally opening their brick-and-mortar shop in early March.
Walking into Rainy Day Chocolate feels like entering a tropical forest thanks to the vibrant mural of multi-hued cacao pods growing alongside volcano-backed Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. When Daly and Sund travel to Guatemala, they bring back 100 to 200 pounds of cacao in their luggage.
At a recent weekend workshop, Daly began with a brief description of the chocolate-making process. The colorful cacao pods, which look like small, psychedelic footballs, hold 30–50 seeds that are fermented, dried, and shipped (or hand-carried) from abroad—that’s when Daly takes over.
She roasts the seeds in a convection oven no bigger than what you might find in someone’s home, then “winnows” them to remove the papery shell. The result is cacao nibs, which we taste first. This is 100% cacao that’s crunchy, nutty, and bitter, which makes the 10-year-old girl in the class, Kat, wince. After tasting chocolate ranging from 90% to 69%, each with distinct flavors, such as sour cherry notes, Kat finds a clear favorite in milk chocolate with about 33% cacao that has caramel undertones.
For the finale, Daly brings out chocolate for decorating with “luster dust,” powdered food coloring mixed with vodka. “You get to paint, then the alcohol evaporates and you get beautiful painted chocolate,” says Daly, noting there’s no vodka taste.
Daly sees her chocolate business as an opportunity to support small cacao growers in the developing world while visitors to the shop get to learn something and go home with a delicious treat. “I really just want to make people happy,” she says.
6492 Mirabel Road in Forestville. Book a tasting and decorating class at rainydaychocolate.com.