Kendra Mackenbach started her part-time Cocoa Euphoria business because she is passionate about chocolate. When Mackenbach opens a box of her chocolates, that passion shows.
She creates more than 20 flavors, including Cherry Blossom, Luscious Lemon, Vanilla Milk, Salted Caramel, Vanilla Lavender and Chai Tiger, to name a few.
The Gingerbread is dusted with iridescent gold paint, the Vanilla Milk is painted with a modern art design, the Salted Caramel has a diagonal of sea salt across it, and the Vanilla Lavender is tinted with purple paints.
They are like works of art, say those who sell her chocolates.
"I love her unique flavors," said Amy Long, owner of April's Garden, one of two stores in Durango that carry Cocoa Euphoria. "The shell of her chocolates are so delicate and amazing. I don't know how she does it. They are so refined and dainty, and then have such a lovely filling."
Mackenbach started her chocolate business 3½ years ago and makes chocolate when she isn't working as chef at Colorado Timberline Academy.
Mackenbach said that when she started at Colorado Timberline Academy, a private boarding high school in Durango,she met Fairlight Whritner, a woman who was a trained chef from the Culinary Institute of America and worked under a French chocolatier in New York.
"She helped me fine-tune all of my chocolate-making," said Mackenbach, who now lives in Mancos. "Chocolate-making really is a science."
Growing up with a mother who was a home economics teacher, Mackenbach has always enjoyed cooking. But it was chocolate making that made her happy.
"Tempering chocolate is the base behind making good chocolates," she said.
You have to take the chocolate up to a certain temperature and hold it there for 20 minutes and then bring it back down to another temperature for 10 minutes and then bring it back up to a working temperature, she said. The temperature changes for each chocolate - white chocolate, dark chocolate or milk chocolate.
"Everyone who tries my chocolate raves about it," she said.
Mackenbach won awards at the Ouray Wine and Cheese Festival and won first-place awards for visual and taste at the Chocolate Fantasia Show in Durango.
Could it be because she grows her own chilis for the Chili's & Chocolate or because all the mint, lavender and coffee in her chocolates are all local? She uses organic cream and butter and fine Swiss chocolate in each one of her creations.
"For the Chai Tiger, I infuse the cream with organic chai tea and Tahitian vanilla bean," she said.
Most of her chocolates are filled bon bons.
"My favorite is the Luscious Lemon. I love the tanginess of the lemon paired with the not-too-sweet dark chocolate," she said.
Mackenbach makes all her chocolates in a commercial kitchen in Durango, usually at night when she isn't working at her day job.
"I've always loved to cook. My mom taught me how to make a white sauce at the age of 4," she said.
If you don't want to make the trek to Durango to purchase some of Mackenbach's chocolates, you are in luck - on Saturday, she'll sell her chocolates at the Dolores River Brewery Holiday Arts and Crafts Show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
A box of 12 chocolates sells for $21. You can buy a box of six chocolates for $11, and Mackenbach also sells them as singles and trios.
A box of chocolates at the newspaper office didn't last long.
One reporter raved, "The peanut butter chocolate, complete with dried peanut butter flakes atop the bite-size candy, included a hardened chocolate shell with a creamy chocolate center. Crunchy and velvety. Ten times better than a Reese's."
Mackenbach, 31, was born and raised in Chicago and moved to Mancos from Durango recently after buying a 73-acre farm.
"We are really into sustainable living," she said. "I love the dry air here, the blue skies and the mountains."
