Mrs. Cavenaugh's Chocolate Factory Tour

Because I love chocolate so much, I took another factory tour with my family and friends.  This time we toured Mrs. Cavenaugh's Chocolate Factory, a local "Mom and Pop Shop" located in Salt Lake City.

Mrs. Cavenaugh is a real person.  She began making chocolates by simply experimenting with her family's recipes.  After giving them her own unique flare, she began making them for neighbors.  She quickly gained recognition and popularity, so she decided to go for her dream and sell her confections.  In 1964, she took out a $15,000 loan, even though the banker seriously doubted her success.  But she gave him a box of her chocolates as a "token of thanks" (or bribe?).  He opened them at once and proceeded to eat the entire box.  He loved them so much that he became her very first customer, ordering 200 pounds of chocolate when she opened her shop!

Upon entering the factory, we watched Lori hand-tempering some molten chocolate in preparation for dipping almond clusters.

 It was really fun to watch her literally pick up the liquid chocolate and drop it back down onto the granite stone to cool it to the perfect temperature.  Then we watched her mix in the almonds and drop clumps of it into candy papers.

Have you ever seen that I Love Lucy episode, where she gets a job at the chocolate factory?  Yeah, it's just like that...  (Unfortunately, I couldn't find the one of her dipping chocolate, but this part is still really funny!)

The Top 10 Things I Learned:
1.  The factory makes about 100,000 pounds of chocolate each year.

2.  Mrs. Cavenaugh's most popular item is the Mindy Mint, but the Cherry Cordial is the most popular item sold online.

3.  The Aztec Chief Montezuma supposedly drank 50 cups of dark chocolate liquid every day.  Hmmmm... I wonder how much he weighed?

4.  Liquid chocolate is called Chocolate Liquor, even though it is not alcoholic.  Wait!  Maybe that's why I go into a drunken stupor after eating chocolate!!!  Bring it on!!!

5.  I LOVE I Love Lucy (they showed the Chocolate Dipping Episode at the end of the tour).

6.  Cacao is more successfully grown on small farms rather than on large plantations because they can't handle too much sun.

7.  It takes 5-7 days to dry cocoa beans.

8.  The Spanish learned about the warm chocolate liquid Montezuma drank, tried it, took it back to Spain and added milk and sugar to make it more palatable.  Smart thinkin'!

9.  Only 10% of the cacao pods growing on a tree actually mature into "fruit."

Caramel Popcorn cooling on the fourth table from the front

10.  Marie employed all of her kids in the family business and called them "The Youngest Dippers in Captivity."

The original cash register.  Might be a little out dated now...

Question of the Day:

Have you ever seen I Love Lucy?  What is your favorite episode?

Mine:

This was the first time I had ever seen it, but I was laughing so hard I almost fell off the bench I was sitting on!  I'm still laughing about it!