Chocolatier Susie Norris

The best thing about working with chocolate? “Creative expression,” says Susie Norris, chocolatier, pastry chef/instructor, TV producer, and author of Chocolate Bliss.

One way Chef Norris expresses her creativity is developing new flavors, which are offered through her online artisan boutique, Happy Chocolates. She started the business in 2001. “I was a little ahead of the curve and was lucky enough to ride the artisan chocolate wave,” she says.

Her inspiration comes from farmers markets and other food that comes into her culinary life. Recent flavors include Wasabi Bliss, dark chocolate with wasabi-spiced ganache and crunchy green pea; Passion Fruit Giraffe, passion fruit and dark chocolate from Tanzania; and Catwalk Crunch, cheetah-patterned dark chocolate blend and peanut crisp.

One of her best selling chocolates is the Massachusetts Maple, a 72 percent dark chocolate filled with maple sugar fondant, salty peanuts, and a splash of rum. A white chocolate leaf decorates the top. Her favorite, Mocha by the Sea, is a dark chocolate from Ecuador with coffee caramel and cocoa nibs. “I have to have one every day for the rest of my life,” she says.

Chef Norris suggests chocophiles hold a comparative chocolate tasting at home. She advises starting with darker chocolates and moving to milk and whites. “It’s fun. Tasting chocolate is just a matter of training, listening for flavors,” she says. “While the language used to describe chocolate–red fruit, yellow fruit, earthiness may sound complicated–it’s not. Small bits of couverture chocolate are very powerful because they’re made from high quality beans, fermented and roasted carefully.”

One reason she wrote Chocolate Bliss (Crown Publishing, 2009), she says, “is to celebrate the dynamics of chocolate. I also care about the source of food. We still have a long way to go. The solution is to buy Fair Trade chocolate, which guarantees farmers a minimum price for their crops. Currently only one percent of the world’s chocolate is certified fair trade with most of the big companies.”

See Chef Norris' recipe for Dangerous Date Dots and Black Forest Cupcakes.

Chef Norris is a graduate of Epicurean School of Culinary Arts and Barry Callebaut Chocolate Academy.

Visit www.happychocolates.com.

Patricia D. Sherman is Editor ChocolateAtlas.com

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