So what is real chocolate?,
We’ll use white chocolate as an example. Below is the pertinent section of the regulation on White Chocolate (from http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=163)

“White chocolate contains not less than 20 percent by weight of cacao fat”

Cocoa fat is what the FDA calls cocoa butter.

Below is an example of a sample of partof an incorrect ingredients label from a competitor.

Look at it closely, there is no cocoa butter in the definition of any of the chocolate types.

As you can see there is no cocoa butter in any of the so called “chocolate”, yet the company that makes and sells the product continues to advertise “chocolate covered strawberries”.  All the mislabeled ”chocolate”  above is partially hydrogenated oil based, there is zero cocoa butter.

Our Chocolate Covered Strawberries are made with real gourmet chocolate and all have cocoa butter just like you would expect from a gourmet gift.

Some flowers are very fragile but not all are fragile in the same way. The shape of the flower also comes into play, as a large flat flower, such as a sunflower or a daisy, would need different protection than an aster or pom.

The picture below is an actual shipment in the mist of being unpacked.  No professional photographer was involved. You can see some of the special protection for individual stems below. The yellow flower heads are individually wrapped  which keeps the peddles from catching on the other flowers during the vibrations that come with nationwide transport. The protection on the purple aster is a flexible net that closes the flower just a little bit and also protects the delicate pedals.

Picture of a floral shipment showing extra protection

Some sturdy flowers don’t need individual protection. For example our rose bouquets are shipped with the roses, ready to bloom, packed in two layers (one row of blooms above the other), so the blooms are held in place by each other having no space for them to get into trouble.

Protection of the individual flowers, when needed, are not the only steps taken. Below is an example of the pack-out for our wedding  package.

Wedding Package example of floral packaging

You’ll note that the bouquets are supported by cardboard inserts,  these prop up the heavy bouquet tops to prevent stem breakage. The bouquets are also tied down to these cardboard supports which prevents the bouquets from shifting or crushing the flower heads on the sides of the box. If you look closely at the bouquet on the right you can see where it’s tied down near the two visible holes. The corsages and boutonnières  are individually boxed to the left.  Currently we only offer this collection in white but we plan to offer it with other rose colors in the future.

You can tell from the pictures that the bouquets are going to be beautiful, but like with anything “nice” you have to take care of it correctly in order to keep it that way.  Each of our packages come with care instructions which include when and how often to cut the stems, change water and  to keep them in a cool place (and not to freeze…)

Call centers are used to take orders and for customer service in many large companies. Today I saw the following: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100530/pl_nm/us_usa_outsourcing  regarding call centers and customers being transferred outside the US. Basically the proposed law would require two new things:
1) that you get notified when your phone call  is transferred to a call center outside the USA and
2) that the company transferring the call outside the US to pay a fee.

While big business and special interest groups will fight this, we support this idea.

Companies using non-US based call centers affect us all, not just in jobs and taxes shipped overseas but in data security. Do you really want to give your credit card number, billing address and card security code to someone who makes a few dollars a day in a foreign call center?

A well designed web site (one that does not keep the credit card and security numbers) is actually more secure than anytime a person is involved. An outsourced call center, as used by many major corporations, is a huge security risk, as you never know who you are talking to, what their intentions are or even what country they are located in. You can’t even always tell by the accent as some companies are training their people to speak without a discernable accent and to identify themselves with American sounding names.

Some people may be saying “wait a minute the credit card information is being sent over the internet isn’t that a security problem”?  The truth of the matter is that every credit card transaction, whether it’s placed online, over the phone or in a department store, is transmitted over the internet at one time or another and in some cases multiple times, as the internet is used for authentication and the collection between the merchant, and the multiple  banks involved.   The biggest risk to internet security is the setup on the customers personal computer.

Things you can do to improve your personal online security:
1) when entering credit card information make sure the URL begins with “https” this is the secure “encrypted” connection that keeps your card information from being intercepted online.
2) Beware of “toolbars”, small tools that install functions on your browser as they bypass all normal security and can intercept and transmit your credit card information and other entries without your permission at any time: even when the URL is “https”. The toolbar installed may have nothing to do with shopping, anytime you install one you run the risk that it will self install a new version which can then transmit your credit card, email addresses, passwords, and address information without your consent. Toolbars are always a very bad idea.
3) Always keep your security software up to date and running.
4) A group of companies in the gift/flowers/strawberry industries have used their checkout process to sign customers up for a third party “savings” program, some customers have said they were signed up for those programs without their consent. While the big check off box may say something like “xxx discount program” the small print and end result is that the customers get signed up for a program that charges them every month for what seems to be little reward. The site that the customer places the order on actually passes the customers credit card information to the third party site.
How we handle things differently
1) We don’t employee any outside call centers (either inside or outside the US)
2) We don’t pass your credit card number to anyone except the bank
3) We don’t keep a copy of your credit card number, when you place your order we send it to the bank and it is not saved.

http://www.flowercomplaint.com/uploads/proflowers_2nd_amended_complaint.pdf

It certainly is an interesting read, even if you don’t make it all the way though the document.  The document lists the addresses of those invloved (like the attorneys that filed it http://www.hpolaw.com/ ) .

 Based on the specifications it looks like they are going after everything short of a civil RICO action, hopefully the customers that were involved with this will get more than just a discount coupon.

Caramel Apples
Large Granny Smith apples hand dipped in thick rich caramel, them dipped in our gourmet chocolate. You even get to select the chocolate types and decoration/toppings.

Chocolate Covered Caramel

Caramel Apples, Chocolate Strawberries and Flowers

New Floral/Strawberry Assortments, for more details see the product by clicking on the pictures. 

Mother's Day Floral and Chocolate Covered Strawberries

Easter Flowers and Chocolate Strawberries

We’ll be adding more new assortments with chocolate covered caramel apples and floral assorments as the year progresses.

How to save

1. The final checkout screen (the ‘thank you’ screen) has a coupon code for strawberry and floral orders that you place the same day.  Think about your other gift needs:  a birthday or long delayed thank-you gift.. use the code on the final checkout page to send upscale gifts at a discount.
2. Combine your orders with others, your friends co-workers..  (one shipment to a single location) and you’ll save a lot over separate shipments
3. The 2, 4 and 8 dozen gift sets are packaged in one dozen boxes, do the math… we’ll wait.. yep that’s a huge savings (combine with #2)
4. When Possible avoid Saturday delivery, it’s a lot more expensive. (we don’t make money on shipping so if you want to go ahead)
5. The bulk rose shipments are also a great way to save money, just pick up your vases locally and save a ton, if you look around the house you probably already have a vase or two. (combine your rose needs with the other people you work with to get the deepest discount on long stem roses) . Again do the math.. look at the 100 rose package and divide by 8 (that will give you the price for a dozen roses… you’ll see it’s about an eighth of what some florists (local or online) will be selling roses for, that’s a huge savings.
6. Get your orders in early, our suppliers pass the rate increases on to us and there have been crop destroying freezing in Florida (Strawberries and Flowers) and South America (Flowers), they have agreed to honor the current pricing on the orders we have in-house when the rates go up
7. Join our newsletter, it always has the best coupons and discounts.
8. Don’t wait till the last minute, there is a limit to how much we can make and ship in a day, if you wait till the last minute we may be at capacity and not taking any more orders and you may end up shelling out a huge amount for something from someone else at the last minute.

according to the research the UPromise toolbar can send your credit card information over the Internet, to third parties, without any encryption at all.

That’s a huge violation of the customers privacy  and really bad for the safety of your credit card information.

below is the source article for this
http://www.benedelman.org/news/012110-1.html

Some of the same fake chocolate strawberry companies that have had problems (class action lawsuits) in the past are involved with this mess.  For security purposes you might want to rethink any toolbar that you have installed as they can access any data on your system without restrictions.

Chocolate Marshmallow Brownies

Preheat oven at 350°
Pan size 13×9, prep pan with parchment paper or by greasing using the butter wrapping paper.

Beat  4 eggs well
 2 cups sugar
Add  4 squares chocolate (melt butter and chocolate together first)
 1 cup butter
Mix in 1 ½ cup flour    (mix the following in slowly, do not beat)
 1 t. baking powder
 ½ t. salt
 4 t. vanilla
Bake for 45 minutes at 350° .  When a toothpick comes out ‘clean’ they are done.
After 45 minutes put 1 cup of the small marshmallows  (I put in a little more) and return to the oven for 5 minutes. (if you don’t have small marshmallows you can cut up the big ones with a scissors.)
Frosting:
 2 T. Butter melt with
1 square chocolate
Mix in  ¾ box of powdered sugar (or the whole box if you are like me and really have no use for ¼ of a box of powdered sugar laying around) and add enough milk to make it spread easy.

Spread the frosting while the marshmallows are hot. Let cool before cutting.

While the original recipe called for walnuts, I’ve never had them that way, they really would not add much.
I’ve taken the brownie base and used it in other custom desserts.
In one case the brownie was surrounded by a open topped chocolate shell and topped with raspberry moose with a little raspberry puree on the side.

To understand what is happening you have to look at how they are shipping it and what they are shipping.

For the first example lets look at a purchase of a book. A book it not time sensitive, it can take a week or two to get to where it needs to be and it’s still a book. Places like the larger book stores have warehouses around the country and the book is shipping using the least expensive way possible. In this case the shipping may actually be less that a dollar, no big deal.

Next lets look at a clothing purchase, some jeans, a few t-shirts… again it is not time sensitive, it’s shipped by the least expensive method possible and the shipping was probably less that you would have gotten last year with a discount coupon.

So basically shipping things by slow/ground methods are pretty inexpensive but it’s not for time sensitive items. Perishable items need to be shipped so they arrive before they melt or go bad and that pretty much rules out the really cheap shipping. You could guess what a shipment of ice-cream would look like if it took a week to arrive.

All the ‘free shipping’ offers have created the impression that all shipping should be free, but when you are comparing ground (slow) and express(overnight) the shipping is not in the same class. When you ship a package using an overnight service it is sent by air and jet fuel is not cheap.

In an age when the airlines are charging $50 to check luggage, the undiscounted rate for sending a package cross country is about the same. If you ship a lot of packages (like we do) you get a discount from the base rates, but past a certain point there are no more discounts from the carriers.

Everybody has heard the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, and in the case of overnight shipping and perishable products it’s true. In the perishables industry the various companies are “simulating” free shipping in one of three ways:

1) Raise the prices, yep when the cost of the product price has been raised to cover the cost of the shipping the shipping is then ‘free’. You actually don’t save any money this way, it may even cost you more because now that the product cost includes the shipping you may end up paying tax on the price including shipping.

2) Cut the cost of the product, packaging and the shipping cost by using a 2 day service rather than an overnight one. Cheaper ingredients and shipping so that it arrives later gives the product a extremely short shelf life and no ‘cushion’  in case of carrier or weather delays.

3) Changing the product mix or limited item free shipping, the ads say ‘free shipping’ but it’s on limited items, those items may only be shipping by the less expensive methods or already have the cost of the shipping built in.

When shipping chocolate covered strawberries you need to protect the product from heat and keep them chilled to keep them fresh. Some companies are leaving out the gel pack and shipping the strawberries using a 2 day service. Leaving out the gel pack reduces the shipping cost in two ways, the weight is less and the box does not have to be as big. Without a gel pack to keep the box chilled the strawberries are going to start to go bad very quickly. Would you want to eat strawberries that have been sitting on the kitchen table for two days? Of course not, but that is what 2 day shipping without gel packs is.

So you  can see that ‘free shipping’ really’ is not free someone always pays the UPS/FedEx bill.

And it’s not just a blogs, I was reading a candy making book in the “for dummies” line and it was the worst of all.

The culprits? Washing and drying the strawberries. One candy shop owner actually said not to wash them. A blog entry said to just wipe them down.

 Both are really bad advice for the same reason: strawberries are grown outside… outside with the birds, wild animals and bugs. Strawberries are not grown in an hermetically sealed environments. They are gown in fields, in dirt, with chemicals (natural or man-made) to control the bugs, with birds dropping things on them from above.

I’ve washed and inspected pallets of strawberries, and I’ve seen what gets washed off of them. The amount of just dirt in unbelievable, but everything that is grown outside is visited by things that live outside and sometimes those things (the little ones) hitch a ride on the strawberries.

Does organic make a difference? Only as far as some of the pesticides go, birds, bugs and dirt are still the same.

Strawberries must be washed thoroughly and then dried completely. Washing them under cold running water for several minutes will do the job. (don’t spray too hard.. you don’t want to pulverize them, and hot water will cook them). Make sure you flip the berries to get complete coverage and rinse out under the leaves.

Drying the berries is important since any water in your chocolate will cause it to seize (get clumpy). When I’m doing a lot of berries at home I line a cookie sheet with a clean towel, or lots of paper towels, and put the freshly washed berries on the sheet. Then I put another layer of towels on top of the berries, lightly pushing down the towels between the berries. I then take the whole tray, towels and all, and put it the fridge for at least a half hour.

Just before I start dipping (while the chocolate is being tempered) I remove and hand dry each berry, with a paper towel,  putting them on a separate tray. Swap your paper towel with a  dry one as needed. Make sure there is no moisture hiding under/in the leaves as it can ruin your day.

If you look at the older posts you’ll see how to temper chocolate at home.. with this info and a little practice you’ll be dipping line a pro.