By Lynn Blamires feature writer for My Local Utah
Mrs. Cavanaugh’s chocolate story has two sections - the historical backdrop of chocolate and how the Cavanaughs utilized family recipes to develop their own business. Notwithstanding, their story is an augmentation of one that returns millennia to the Maya, Toltec, and Aztec societies.
The Olmec, perhaps of the earliest development that lived in the southern piece of Mexico, was quick to transform the cacao plant into chocolate. They drank this severe old chocolate beverage during ceremonies and involved it as medication. Olmecs involved it as a state-of-mind enhancer and it was saved for high society rulers, ministers, and champions. The Maya believed chocolate to be the food of divine beings, held the cacao tree to be sacrosanct, and covered dignitaries with bowls of chocolate.
“Chocolate” is followed back to the Aztec word “xocoatl.” The name for the cacao plant, Theobroma cacao, signifies “food of the divine beings.” Yet before chocolate turned into the sweet overall peculiarity we know today, Mesoamerican societies made harsh beverages with the cacao bean.
By the fifteenth 100 years, the Aztecs utilized cocoa beans as money. A jackass, for instance, may be purchased for 50 cacao beans. They accepted that chocolate was a gift from the god Quetzalcoatl, and drank it as a reviving drink, a love potion, and even to plan for war.
Spanish Conquerors found chocolate while looking for gold in the mid 1500s and carried it to Europe. Montezuma imparted a chocolate to Cortez when they met. It is accounted for that Montezuma kept an enormous store of chocolate and drank upwards of 50 cups per day from a gold drinking cup.
Cortez carried chocolate back with him and it became famous among the well off classes in Spain. Albeit still utilized as a beverage, it was blended in with sugar and honey to weaken the severe taste and to make Spanish chocolates.
In a marriage between Lord Louis XIII of France and Anna, the girl of Spanish Ruler Phillip III in 1615, examples of chocolate were brought to the wedding feast. The preference for chocolate before long spread all through Europe and nations set up their own manors along the equator.
Cocoa beans have just been effectively filled in a tropical belt inside 20 degrees on one or the other side of the equator. 90% of the world’s cacao is developed on little family ranches.
Chocolate in Europe was all the while being delivered by hand in these early days, which was a sluggish and relentless cycle. In 1828, the development of the chocolate press changed chocolate making. This creative gadget could press cocoa spread from broiled cacao beans, leaving a fine cocoa powder behind. Cocoa powder is an unsweetened chocolate item that adds profound cocoa flavor to sweets and refreshments.
The formation of the principal present-day chocolate bar is credited to Dutchman Joseph Fry, who in 1847 found that he could make a pliant chocolate glue by adding dissolved cacao spread once more into Dutch cocoa.
As of now, it is critical to comprehend the distinction between cacao margarine and cocoa spread. Cacao spread is gotten by chilly squeezing crude cacao beans while cocoa margarine is acquired from simmered cacao beans. Temperature is likewise the contrast between cacao powder and cocoa powder.
In 1868, boxed chocolates were being sold by a little organization called Cadbury. Milk chocolate was crafted by a Swiss chocolatier, Daniel Peters, in 1876.
Today chocolate assembling is in excess of a 4-billion-dollar industry in the US, and the typical American eats a portion of a pound of chocolate in its different structures each month. Clearly, the world’s adoration for chocolate will keep the business fit as a fiddle.
The historical backdrop of chocolate carries us to the start of the narrative of Mrs. Cavanaugh’s chocolate. George lived on a farm in South Dakota, and Marie lived in Wayne District, Utah. It accepted the open door of advanced education presented by Brigham Young College to unite these two individuals. They met, wed, and moved to George Cavanaugh’s home on the farm in Gettysburg, South Dakota.
In 1964 there was a need to raise assets for their congregation. Marie explored different avenues regarding a family recipe for a walnut roll she figured she could sell. The outcomes were astonishing and the pledge drive was a triumph.
At the point when the pledge drive finished, the longing individuals had for Mrs. Cavanaugh’s walnut rolls didn’t. While her prosperity began with the walnut roll, she before long fanned out into an assortment of hand-plunged chocolates.
Her prosperity energized her fantasy about opening a treats store. With a one-pound box of grouped chocolates, she and George went to the bank to apply for a credit. During the advance application, the financier was inspecting the chocolates. He was so dazzled with her item that besides the fact that he gave them a $15,000 credit to begin the business - he provided them a request for 200 boxes of chocolates with similar combination as the container they brought to the bank to use for security. They left the bank with a credit and an unfilled box.
Their most memorable store was in their little town of Gettysburg, however remote business and Marie’s craving to get back to Utah carried them to Bountiful in 1972 where they opened a store on Orchard Drive.
They presently have a chocolate manufacturing plant in North Salt Lake. Anybody who has taken Highway 215 to the air terminal from where it starts on the north end will have seen the enormous Mrs. Cavanaugh’s Chocolate Plant sign on the north close to the Redwood Street exit. It is as yet a family-claimed and worked business currently in its third era of Cavanaugh’s.
Yet again strolling into the store before the chocolate plant resembles leaving the rest of the world and every one of its considerations and being a youngster in a sweets store. There are chocolate pleasures shown in an enticing cluster and in a wide assortment. Every sort of treat requests a moment of consideration as you move starting with one then onto the next settling on the choices considerably more hard to make. Try not to be shocked on the off chance that an example is presented for you to attempt.
In the store, there is an enormous window to the side of the presentation case. You can watch the nut cups being made. Two chocolatiers recline across from one another at a thick marble table with a tank of chocolate warmed to 110 degrees in a square opening in the center. A part of the chocolate is scooped out onto the marble section. The individual works with it as the marble cools the chocolate to 84 degrees in a cycle called treating.
I was entranced as I watched individuals work the chocolate. They would smooth it around on the marble, take a small bunch, raise it up, and let it tumble from their shut, clenched hands. At the point when it falls as lace, it is drawing near to the right temperature. The strips of chocolate tumbling to the table were the most amazing aspect of this experience. In the wake of checking the chocolate with a temperature gun, nuts were added. I watched as the perfect proportion of chocolate and nuts was gathered up and dropped into a little paper cup. This takes practice on the grounds that the chocolate nut cups were incredibly steady.
I pulled myself away from this hypnotizing experience with a desire to meet Mike Wall. Mike was wedded into the Cavanaugh family by marrying Colene, Marie’s little girl. Colene was conceived the year the primary store was opened in Gettysburg.
Mike has an abundance of data on everything chocolate. Here are a few things I learned:
Chocolate is bought in ten-pound blocks from select sellers to have the best fixings
Temperature is a significant part of making chocolate. It is gradually warmed to a fluid state at 110 degrees and afterward tempered to 84 degrees to frame the chocolates
Open copper pots are utilized to warm the chocolate in light of the fact that the copper warms uniformly with no problem areas
In the event that the chocolate is too cold when the candy is framed, it will have a dull finish. Excessively hot and it will have a white, powdery look
The enrobers are the main mechanical piece of making Mrs. Cavanagh’s chocolates. The nougats, creams, caramels, and different treats are passed on through an enrober with a strip of tempered chocolate tumbling to cover every piece.
The stamping of each piece and bundling is finished the hard way
Little groups are a piece of value control. Each sort of treat offered has an alternate group size to safeguard the steady quality
Every sort of chocolate has a different enrober - milk, dull, white, and sans sugar.
The enormous days for chocolates are Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day. I haven’t figured out why Father’s Day isn’t on the list.
Mike’s granddad was a chocolatier with advanced chocolate and frozen yogurt education. He cooked at the Bluebird Creamery and in light of his ability - frozen yogurt was added to the menu in Mrs. Cavanaugh’s stores in 2013. This offering immediately turned into a hit with clients. I think their range of flavors is astonishing, in any case, I for one can’t see a justification behind the air pocket gum flavor.
Their plant in North Salt Lake offers visits to the general public. Call (801) 677-8888 and plan your own chocolate experience. There is an expense of $5, which incorporates a $4 coupon for use in the store.
Mrs. Cavanaugh’s chocolates and frozen yogurt can likewise be seen in Abundant, Layton, North Ogden, Orem, and Spokane, Washington. Try some of Mrs. Cavanaugh’s chocolate. It very well could make you a more pleasant individual.
