I found a number of these types of pictures on a social media site and contacted each of the photographers  in order to get the rights to use the pictures, so far I’ve only heard back from one.. below is that picture.

The thing you notice first is not the most important thing to us, broken berries can happen for several reasons. Unless we had a whole lot more detail (pictures of the outside of the box, the shipping label and such) we really would not be able to determine the cause of the breaking. The breaking could be caused by dozens of reasons, everything from missing gel packs to carrier mis-handling to the after effects of a bad delivery address, we have no way of knowing for sure. But as we said that’s not the most important thing…

What we see is that the product delivered never matched the pictures on their website, while we know from their ingredient list that the product is not dipped in Milk, White or Dark Chocolate; what we see is no leaves. It’s not just that the leaves were lost on one berry during dipping process but that they were taken off before dipping. While I’m not certain: the removal of the leaves is more indicative of a machine dipped/ conveyor belt type of operation rather than hand dipping.

All of the problem pictures I found for this competitor had the same missing leaves, and that was not what was pictured in their many TV commercials, print ads or their web site. The product does not even match the marketing materials included in the box (as seen below). It’s not the result of an accident in packing,  delivery or customer actions: It’s a very basic change to the product; one that was done on purpose.

Even with the logo that you can see in the marketing materials above: just avoiding that one web site will not keep you from running into other parts of the same company with the same product, they operate under many different names and web sites, they own shopping channels, a  baseball team, TV stations and so much more that it would boggle your mind. The product is also sold by totally unrelated companies, they are so pervasive that it’s hard to avoid them.

Ignore the broken berries for a second: The product in the box does not match what was promised, no leaves, no stems, and not milk, white or dark chocolate. But since their customers are also saying they are involved in the “easy saver scam”:  should it be a surprise that their product looks nothing like their marketing materials?

Of course we sell chocolate covered strawberries so when  you are ready for real chocolate and whole strawberries with the leaves, dipped by hand to order give us a try.

A better way to do individually boxed chocolate strawberries

Occasionally people want to order individually boxed chocolate covered strawberries for weddings or parties. The problem is while they look pretty all sealed up: a lot of packaging has to be used to make sure the berry arrives in perfect condition, the berries need to be packed so they can not move in any direction, and all that packaging does not look as spectacular as it could and only one color box is offered.

Things working against the best possible individually boxed strawberry:

1)Internal packaging: we  have to make sure the berry can’t move in any direction, things can get rough in the UPS/FedEx planes and trucks,  that is a lot of extra packaging & would be most of what the recipient sees when they open the small box.

2)All that extra packaging costs more, foam suppliers actually charge partially by the piece so 12 sets of individual foam pieces cost a lot  more than one set of foam for a dozen berries. Box suppliers also charge by the piece so the foam and boxes cost a lot more.

3)Shipment size, when berries are individually boxed they actually take up more space than if they are in one common box, since FedEx and UPS charge extra for larger sized shipments: individual berries actually cost more to ship.

The prettiest box would have minimal internal packaging (foam) so the person opening the box can actually see the berry, (rather than foam),  you’d also be able to select the color of the box (even if it’s pink polka-dots) to match your event.

There is a very simple solution. Order the berries in bulk and drop them in the little boxes yourself.

This actually ends up being much less expensive, much prettier, and you get to choose a box color & style. Some styles of boxes can’t be used to ship berries but would look much better on a decorated table.

Another option is to put the berries in individual gift bags, they are a lot quicker to pack than the boxes and can look very pretty.

The box size that works best for a single berry is about 3x3x3.. but more on that next time.

Next time we’ll suggest some vendors and packing methods, as well as some hints for making the packing go faster.

Once you rule out the Nigerian fraudsters, free product requests, and those who want us to sell our packaging separately … what type cases does the helpdesk desk get most?

Well there are two definitions of “most” : the most cases and the most time.

As far as ‘the most cases’ it would be address changes or date changes. A lot of people ‘catch’ address errors after they place an order or find out later that the recipient will not be home on that day. We’d much rather deal with these types of changes before the order hits the factory floor than deal with the messy aftermath if the changes are not made in time.

Occasionally we need to reship or refund and those type cases are handled during the business week, it’s rare but happens most often when we are overwhelmed with a major holiday: people who have been working for 20 hours straight make packing mistakes and we refund or re-ship as warranted.

Now the other side of the coin are the functionally illiterate (those special few that don’t understand basic of business hours, the days of the week, or calendars)

Here is an example:

A person places an order after business hours on a Wednesday night and selects the first available delivery date which is a Friday. Based on the delivery date we make the product when we reopen the next day (Thursday) and give it to FedEx/UPS that night, keep in mind that the order was placed after business hours on Wednesday night.

The product is made and shipped as scheduled and delivered on the date selected during checkout. As shown below:

Delivered on time and on schedule

FedEx picks the package up on Thursday and it is delivered, as requested, on Friday.

Being functionally illiterate, the person who placed the order and selected the delivery date said it was not delivered overnight, he ignored the delivery date on the screen, the confirmation screen, his order confirmation email, and shipped email. The package was delivered on the date he requested.

Nothing in the world is going to get a package delivered before the delivery date selected because, for freshness reasons, we don’t start making it until the day we give it to FedEx/UPS. Perishable products have to be shipped with overnight service because if we shipped them with ‘ground’ nationwide it would take several days to arrive and be a melted/rotten mess. For that reason every perishable shipment, no matter how far in advance it is ordered are made and sent so that they should arrive the day after we give it to FedEx/UPS. It is not that complicated.

Some people don’t understand this, but after a while you realize that there are some people who leave ice cream in a car’s trunk for a few hours and then blame the grocery store. Those helpdesk cases are the ones that consume the most time, some people read and learn but a select few are unable to understand the basics, they are the ones who eventually reverse the gift cards when sending packages to both their wife and girlfriends, we let Darwin thin them out, but if they are exceedingly rude we do block them from the site as it’s not fair to the staff or other customers to have our people deal with them when they could be doing something productive.

Helpdesk cases are also handled on a business day basis, like all businesses we have hours that we are opened and closed. It’s just like when you leave a voicemail at a company that is closed for the day: you would not expect an answer until the business reopens on the next business day. Since FedEx/UPS do not have Sunday pickups or deliveries our business days are Monday through Friday: the actual days we can make and ship things for next day delivery. Occasionally our staff will answer some after hours or weekend helpdesk cases from home, it’s entirely up to them, it’s not required, and they do it on their own time.

For some request special authorizations are needed: clearance from the factory floor or refund/reship authorizations have to be approved/processed and those only happen during the business week. Since the banks and carriers are closed on the weekends this actually does not slow anything down. The functionally illiterate don’t understand this and expect that we are going to bring in everybody (and open the banks/FedEx/UPS) just for them, it’s just not the way the world works. Unreasonable expectations are one of the hallmarks of someone who just does not respect other people’s time or normal business operations. These are the people that every sane business would run away from, you see them on the internet trashing companies, exaggerating their order value and basically ignoring the real world. Darwin normally takes care of them. Out of the thousands of customers we deal with each year only a few functional illiterates actually place orders, most end up going with the “easy saver“ companies  which is just fine with us.

How much of what you read on the internet is true? Does anyone even know? What percent of an article is true? If they write an article: it must be correct and fact checked right?

Nope, the sad truth this that most of the articles/blogs your read on the internet are just someone typing away in their underwear. They have the same ‘truthiness’ as a herd of overly chunky 80 year olds calling each other “hot”.  Anyone can start a blog and almost nothing they write actually has to be true, unless it’s attached to a company website: you don’t even know who is really writing it. Just because there is a picture of a 20 something year old cute kid at the top of the blog does not mean that it’s not written by a 60 year old in a wife beater t-shirt and ripped boxers.

We’ve hit on some companies mis-representing their products before, (Ethics, Fake Chocolate, Spotting fake chocolate) so we will not beat a 80,000 lb dead horse, (really.. if you go cheap and buy from them: you will not get any pity from us..and Dr. House probably has a name for you)… but what about the little guys, the personal blogs and recipe sites?

The problem with a lot of the little sites is that they pretend to be experts, when an expert sees these sites their stomach turns. So much bad information .. the general public has no way of knowing when they are being lead down the garden path. (or up Sh*ts creak… with two days of food poisoning)

While the general public really has no way of knowing when they are being feed a line of BS by a self proclaimed expert ; we are going to give you an example, one that fooled the experts at Mars™ and actually showed up as a re-tweet in their twitter feed (until the problems were pointed out), while it was not ‘dangerous: it did have a lot of errors.

Please read through the following article, and then come back to a quick BS highlight: http://industrialstone.com/farmtheburbs/?p=6848

Here is a high level (most obviously wrong) review:

“White Chocolate is not technically one of the types of chocolate” completely false, The FDA in CFR 163 defines what can be called chocolate and white chocolate is defined in CFR 162.124 (Read the Rules here), those regulations have been out there since before 2002, anyone what says white chocolate is not real chocolate is over a decade out of date or just ripping information from an out of date site.

“ large, hard bars, or one ounce squares.” Untrue: you can purchase gourmet quality chocolate as buttons or in small, break apart bars,  if you know where to look.

“Chocolate begins to melt at 90 degrees”, oh come on.. did this person even grow up with chocolate and the US measurement system? Maybe they need to spend a summer in Florida?

“When making ganache and candy, you will need to temper the chocolate”, total BS, since one of the steps in making ganache is pouring boiling heavy cream over the chocolate: that would knock the chocolate out of temper, why temper chocolate when the first step would result in it being knocked out of temper: at total waist of effort based on truly bad advice.

“slowly melt two thirds of the required chocolate until the temperature reaches 110-113 degrees.” Considering that some types of chocolate scorch at 115 and nothing (as far as crystallization & breaking the crystal bonds) happens anywhere near that temperature range: this is a really bad idea, hot spots in your melting will scorch/totally ruin the chocolate and there is no need to go that hot.

“until the temperature is reduced to 95-100 degrees”:  these temps are too high, the chocolate is not in temper. Depending on the chocolate type: chocolate tempering machines will use 87-89 degrees as the target temperature for chocolate after the seed chocolate has been processed/used.

These were only the most glaring problems with the blog posting, unlike a lot of the posts on the internet there was nothing truly dangerous ( the incorrect information in this post will not actually harm or kill you),  but there are a lot of self proscribed ‘experts’ that have no real world experience in what they are writing about, they have no experience, and no stake if the information they give you is seriously wrong.
The object of the above was not to mock the author, but to show that even articles re-tweeted by a trusted source  (Mars™ @Choc_History a  part of a really big candy/chocolate company) can be riddled with errors, to Mars™ credit: as soon as we let them know about the errors the deleted the tweet, though it was still on their Facebook™ page… (for the non-Twitter™ users out there a tweet is a post on the Twitter™ social site and Facebook™ is another social site).

This was just one of millions of posts on the internet, it happened to be a subject that we have a lot of real world experience in,  we could see the errors without having to consult a stack of books.

So the real question to ask yourself: is the article you’ve been reading on dieting, dating or any other subject being written by a true expert?  When they have a addenda or preferences are they clear about it ( as an example: the author of one chocolate review  site really does not like white chocolate, but at least he states that in the post.. he still reviews it,  but it’s obvious that his personal preferences are not with white chocolate..) .

Many sites are written to attract traffic, with little concern about actual truthfulness or safety concerns: you can generally spot those sites by the abundance of paid ads. The truthfulness of the ads is only monitored by the ad network (such as Google), and since the ad network makes money on people clicking on the ads their response to untruthful ad reports has been less than stellar.

While there are rules and procedures for how to deal with copyright violations (people stealing logos, content or pretending to be another company), there are no procedures or methods of dealing with untruthful or even deadly posts. Basically if you pretend to be another company you can be shut down, but if your recipes or ideas are deadly you can post as much as you want.

Of course in the chocolate field deadly recipes are rare, sketchy food safety methods are more common (always wash and dry strawberries, anyone that tells you different should be buried in the back yard with only their head exposed.. and then covered in honey.. it’s the ‘green way’ to solve the problem).

Just like there are so called experts that say “don’t wash strawberries”, there are similar (actually worse) examples on the internet as there is no governing authority. It’s much worse than a bunch of severely overweight 45 year old moms calling each other “hot”, all information you read should be suspect: what is their level of experience?, Are they routing traffic to other sources with paid ads? Does the article look like it was written by a non-native language speaker? (Romanian, Indian, Pakistani….  spam ad sites are very common.. and the pages content is often unreliable.. they are just looking for you to click on their ads).

That some people look to these sites for diet and health information amazes us, as they are often written by people without any valid experience (IE not a real Doctor or anything qualified or reputable), run on servers outside of the US, by people or organizations looking to raise money for causes you would not agree with , and put out there just to push questionable products and ideologies. Some of the sites many actually be being run just to raise funds for terrorist organizations: you have no way of knowing, yet many people go to them seeking “authoritative” information on diets, health care and other possibly critical (deadly if not properly treated)  questions.  Just as a weird example: there are over 35 pages of search results  for  the Google search “insulin smurf” , why would a short blue cartoon character need treatment for diabetes? Do you think any of those search results are correct/safe/reliable? Would you risk your life on it?.  

With all the above being said, we have repeatedly proved to Google that one of the top advertising and ranking companies for ‘chocolate covered strawberries” does not actually use chocolate, yet the paid ads are still out here and Google gets a pile of money from them for the false ads. If you can’t trust the search engines to get something as relatively simple as chocolate right: why do some people blindly trust their health to them?

Just as you’ve seen a huge jump in gas prices: the same thing has happened in the cocoa market. Local conditions are preventing/restricting exports.

Without the cocoa bean there would be no chocolate of any type, it is the only source of cocoa powder, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter. Without the cocoa bean your only option would be the fake chocolaty flavored vegetable oil that other companies try to pass off as chocolate.

The downside to using real  gourmet chocolate is that  it is expensive and has been getting more expensive.

Below is a cropped screen shot taken from the International Cocoa Organization (http://www.icco.org), they keep track of the wholesale prices.

As you can see the cost of the cocoa beans has sky rocketed since 2005, it’s now twice what it was then and while the chart does not show it yet, the prices have continued to climb to record highs, as I write this the price for just the raw cocoa bean is over $3600 a ton.   Prices have changed due to availability, better wages for the growers and speculation by commodities traders. 

It’s really hard to export when people are running around blowing things up and shooting. Chocolate and gas prices have jumped, you’ve seen the effect at the pumps and FedEx and UPS have raised their fuel surcharges to cover their higher costs. That means we pay more for shipping and as a result we have to charge more for shipping.

Packages do not fly around the country without jet fuel, and after they land: the delivery trucks need their fuel as well.  Some chocolate covered strawberry companies have taken to using two day service as the basic delivery method for chocolate covered strawberries, we feel that a product delivered this way ends up with a very short shelf life and is not as fresh, and if anything goes wrong: the product is quickly ruined. You can tell when a company is using these methods by seeing if they charge a rush surcharge for Tuesday delivery or a special surcharge for next day delivery.

Saving a few dollars on shipping costs may look like a bargain, but if the shipment is delayed for any reason (weather, security, the business not opening on time, or a dozen other possible issues) then you are talking about delivering strawberries that were made 4 days before, those berries are going to be pretty rough and most likely ruined. There are no magic gel packs that are going to last 3 days, UPS and FedEx do not offer door to door refrigerated deliveries for any amount that you would be willing to pay for a single box of strawberries, and even if it were available a refrigerated strawberry still has a very limited shelf life.

To deliver chocolate covered strawberries nationwide you have to do some things right, you can’t ship them cross country and have have them show up next week, the best strawberries are delivered after spending a minimal time in transit (next day works best).  So even though you may order today for a delivery next week: we will make them up just before we give them to FedEx/UPS and if everything goes correctly they arrive the next day.  This results in a gift that is fresher than one sent by other methods (such as a planned two day delivery).

Most of the public does not know that parts of the government make rules for what is allowed to be called certain names.  The lawsuit was filed because according to tests the “Beef” didn’t meet the minimum government specifications to be called that name. Did you know “chocolate” has a legal definition? 

So how does that affect you?
Valentine’s day is coming up, and a group of companies are advertising “chocolate covered strawberries” and the product does not meet the legal definition to be called Milk, White, or Dark (bittersweet) Chocolate.

The easiest way to show that the product is not chocolate is to look at the ingredients as cocoa butter is required to be called “chocolate”.  If there is no cocoa butter: it was not dipped in “chocolate”.

But what about “chocolate flavored”?
The term “chocolate flavored” is allowed to be used when the product does not contain cocoa butter but does have other ingredients from a cocoa bean (chocolate liqueur, cocoa powder..), but it must be labeled “chocolate flavored” and not just as “chocolate”.  Since the minimum required 20% cocoa butter is the one and only ingredient in white chocolate that comes from the cocoa bean: once you remove the cocoa butter you cannot call it “white chocolate” or even “white chocolate  flavored”.

But what about Chocolate Cake?
Chocolate cake or even chocolate pudding are what are called a “common sense exclusions” as “the public” knows that a chocolate cake is not a big slab of chocolate but that there are other ingredients in the cake. This common sense exclusion does not apply to “chocolate covered strawberries” because those companies are saying the product is dipped in chocolate , a substance they do not use.

Eventually a law firm will file a lawsuit  and collect some big fees on this type of false advertising as well, as those companies “chocolate covered strawberries” don’t meet the requirements to be called “chocolate” , or even “chocolate flavored” since there is no such thing as “white chocolate flavored”.

Truth in advertising matters to us, as does the correct use of the legal term “chocolate” that is why we dip our chocolate covered strawberries in true gourmet chocolate unlike the companies that we list on our “Wall of Shame”.

It’s really not that hard, you just have to forget about the colorings and flavorings that you find in the grocery store.

Now to be fair we do make great chocolate covered strawberries for Christmas and just about every other Holiday or occasion, and ship those nationwide, but we do get a lot of basic questions on how to work with chocolate or some special work at home and it’s a lot easier to put the information out here than to get hundreds of helpdesk cases on the subject. You’ll see the same concept applied to our stores FAQ section, we try to provide you with as much information as possible so you can help yourself.

So why is the grocery store the wrong place to go? That is because the colorings and flavorings in the grocery store are generally water based, and if you add a few drops of a water based coloring or flavoring you will ruin that batch of chocolate. Water makes chocolate seize (get clumpy and unworkable) and ruins it for dipping.

So how do you color and flavor chocolate?

It’s pretty simple: use flavorings and colorings that do not have any water in them.

So if you wanted to make mint flavored chocolate you would add peppermint oil, there are tons of types of flavoring oils. They are very simple to use, a few drops of the oil and you have a pound of chocolate flavored to taste.

For the colorings you have multiple choices from colored cocoa butter and dry colorants which are fairly expensive to oil based colors which are a lot more economical.

Sometimes you can find a limited selection of candy colors in a craft store, you have to be very careful because the company that makes these colors also makes frosting colors and the packaging is exactly the same, you must read the packaging to make sure it is the oil casted candy color and not the water based frosting color.

In a commercial environment dropping $75 on a set of high end colorants is not a big deal, but for the average hobbyist the minimum quantities would be a bit much. That’s where the oil based colorings come into play, they are a lot less expensive and can be found here. There are other options: you could dip in your tempered chocolate but then use colored sprinkles or a non-chocolate colored drizzle.

Thats the basics.. but what if you want to get really fancy?

By now everyone has seen the truffles and bite sized candies that have a distinctive/pearlized finish.. they look like they have tiny sparkles in the finish of the chocolate. These are a lot simpler to make than you would imagine, all they did was carefully melt some special cocoa butter and wipe the inside of a mold with it (in the demonstrations at candy shows the host just uses his finger), the messy act of just dipping a (clean or gloved) finger in some melted cocoa butter or tinted chocolate and just wiping it in a mold can make really pretty candy, (just don’t stop in the middle of the wipe or you will leave a fingerprint).

Of course not all flavoring has to be in the chocolate, you can get that peppermint flavor just by crushing some of those round peppermints that are everywhere at Christmas. Put some in a plastic bag, wrap it with paper and give it to someone who knows how to use a hammer: far away from kitchen counter tops replace the plastic bag and use them as you would any sprinkles.

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.

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.