creativity and the chocolate maker

beauty and the new bar idea beast: yes, there's a method to my madness

hello everyone! in this week’s post I share an idea-creativity generating tip called the Bad Idea Method (!), and if you’ve ever looked at my chocolate and wondered what the heck was she thinking? I offer a peek at how I came up with two of my new bars in Map Chocolate’s fall collection.

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I don’t read that often about making chocolate. This might seem odd, from a self-professed believer in continuing ed about our craft, no matter how long we’ve been practicing it. It’s not that there’s not a bunch of folks writing about chocolate in one form or another, or offering their opinions through social media comments, or writing marketing content that’s masked as writing “about” chocolate. There’s all that.

I do however read about food; pastries, preserving, fermenting, wild-yeasted bread baking, cooking from the garden, etc. This reading might not ever make it into a batch of chocolate, but it 100% informs and inspires me as a craft maker.

I’ve mentioned seasonal crafting before, and this is where that comes in. There’s a reason our customers walk past the single origin dark bar and reach for the pumpkin spice one in fall, and why they stop craving peppermint mocha bars come January.

I also read about the other craft I practice, which is writing. That’s how today, when I sat down to write about the ideas and how-to’s behind my recent bar collection, thinking if I shared my thought process it would be helpful, I was immediately distracted by the post of a writing teacher I subscribe to, about something called The Bad Idea Method.

Here’s why I’m sharing it here, before giving you a peek inside my creative process for chocolate.

Most new makers, and many seasoned makers (who really should know better), often ask me for a recipe. It goes something like this: I want to know how to make a peanut butter milk chocolate. What’s your recipe? Or, they’ll ask, which xyz did you use? how much?

PLEASE do not read this as don’t ask Mackenzie any questions. I welcome questions! It’s why I created this Substack publication! It’s why I stepped aside from making chocolate full-time and threw my heart and soul into the Next Batch school: so.many.questions in my DMs and emails.

Back to just hand over the recipe. I believe anyone, and I see this as a positive, can make a 70% dark chocolate. Heck, without taking a lesson even (hello, that’s how I did it). The math is easy (70% cacao + 30% sugar), the steps are well-known and easy: roast, crack, winnow (or buy nibs that are ready to go), add to a melanger and refine until ready, then temper and mould.

Some of you (many, I’d guess) are shaking your heads thinking she’s finally lost it, that I’d say this, given what you know from first-hand experience. What you know is that there are many layers to each of those steps, and a few more that arise before roasting and long after tempering. Layers that come to light the more we practice our craft. Many we will wish we had understood earlier but couldn’t have grasped until we were ready. The truth is,

Making chocolate from bean to bar is a thought process.

It’s a way of thinking about chocolate that from the get-go doesn’t see chocolate as a finished product, or a ready-made component of a work in progress.

The steps are one part of our thinking. I need beans: where will I find them? what flavor personality do I want to highlight? how will I begin the flavor transformation? what methods and equipment will I use? how will I know how much of this ingredient vs other ingredients to use? and so on.

Our thought process breaks it down and reconstructs it into a finished bar. In creative crafting we take this thought process and break down an idea or even a whisper of an idea, and figure out how to get this idea to become chocolate. This is where the Bad Idea Method can be helpful. The following quote with how to use this method is from Jane Friedman (for the full article click her name for the link). I’ve edited it by switching writing prompts to chocolate.

The Bad Idea Method is simple. Give yourself 10 minutes to write down 25 bad ideas. Depending on the creative challenge you’re facing, these could be 25 bad opening lines for a novel inclusion bars, 25 bad character traits plant-based milk chocolate bars, or 25 bad article topics ideas for any bars or chocolate products.

Writing down bad ideas can feel a little awkward at first. You may not make it to 25 every time, but that’s OK. Do what you can. One of the biggest barriers here is letting go of your quality filters. Have an idea that doesn’t seem bad enough? Write it down. Too embarrassing? Write it down. Too boring? You guessed it, pen to page.

The perfectionist inside all of us will try to be picky and come up with “the best” bad ideas (whatever that means) or the bad ideas that are secretly really good ideas.

Like most things the more you exercise this muscle, the more effective it will be. A helpful key is to define what makes an idea bad for you. Start with two categories: the obvious and the absurd. Both are valuable for brainstorming, though it can feel unnatural to write them down at first.

Great ideas exist between the obvious and the absurd.

Why does this work? How does the Bad Idea Method help?

It works because there are so many benefits:

• Bad ideas are easier to come up with, so you get started faster

• Bad ideas open your mind, giving us a larger variety of connections to work from

• Bad ideas lead to good ideas (absurd idea A leads to interesting idea B leads to great idea C)

• Bad ideas augment other ideas (obvious idea A + absurd idea B = great idea C)

• Sometimes a bad idea is actually a good idea (A=C)

I hope you’ll give this a try the next time you’re stuck or coming up blank when thinking about a new bar, or a whole collection of bars. Or, of course, bonbons, truffles, drinking chocolate.

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The thought process behind two new bars

That fig leaf bar: an idea for an ingredient came to life

toasted fig leaf chocolate stuffed with pecan toffee buttercrunch; both the chocolate and the toffee are plant-based.

A few years back I came across fig leaf ice cream. I grabbed some fig leaves and toasted them, but honestly the flavor was underwhelming. But I kept thinking about working with fig leaves. This year I googled “baking with fig leaves” and found several informative blog posts from pastry chefs. I test-batch roasted some leaves, and because I followed their insights (time + temp etc), this time the aroma was compelling. I harvested a lot of leaves, toasted them, then pulverized them into a lovely green powder.

Thought n1: I wasn’t sure how much flavor/aroma the fig leaves would impart

Thought n2: Cocoa butter can and does (even deodorized) impact aroma/flavor, so I’d need to balance that

Thought n3: I wondered if I should infuse the cocoa butter or grind in the powdered fig leaves

Thought n4: Green that’s not matcha? would it be too odd?

Thought n5: Running low on cocoa butter (my preferred supplier is out, and they don’t know when they can afford to stock it again, due to the crazy high cost) so it would need to be a 4-ingredient batch (cb, fig leaves, sugar, alt-milk) as the alt-milk would help add to the batch and create creaminess.

Thought n6: I wanted to use cashews as the alt-milk but I already had two nut-containing bars in the collection, plus a sesame.

Thought n7: The bar by itself was intriguing but if the flavor was assertive it would benefit from “something disrupting it” such as a flavor pairing and/or texture.

Thought n8: Something about a pecan toffee buttercrunch paired with the fig leaf’s coconut aroma sounded good.

Thought n9: Everything (from bar to toffee) should be plant-based because nothing says vegan friendly like a green bar, lol.

Thought n10: make a buttercrunch toffee by substituting vegan butter for the dairy butter.

That pumpkin blondie bar: this one was all about my constant craving

pumpkin chocolate with dark chocolate chunks and spiced chocolate chunks.

Thought n1: I love pumpkin and this is my season

Thought n2: Should I bring back one of my earlier pumpkin bars?

Thought n3: The word “bar” made me crave a brownie. Don’t ask, ok, yes I did.

Thought n4: What if I played off a blondie, those baked good bars that are like a chocolate chip cookie in bar form, that have chocolate chunks?

Thought n5: What if I made the blondie part pumpkin, since I love pumpkin bread with chocolate chips or chunks in it?

Thought n6: Add the spice to the pumpkin?

Thought n7: What if I made a batch of spiced chocolate and a batch of dark chocolate for the chunks?

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Of course, I had to create my batch formulations/recipes, I had to “make the chocolate” (roast, winnow, refine, temper, etc etc) plus make cocoa butter (roast, winnow, run nibs through my press), and so forth.

I used the same thinking process for my latest packaging design.

For me the truly beautiful thing I’ve come to recognize about making chocolate is that it’s like any craving: the more we think about it, the more we want it. With chocolate I think this means the more we think it through, the more ideas for it we’ll have.

Happiest crafting,

Mackenzie

ps: thank you in advance for sharing, or telling me with the ❤️ button you enjoyed this.