By Susan Swagler
Show some love to those you care about and to local women-owned businesses this Valentine’s Day with artisanal chocolate of all kinds. We spoke to three women, Kathy D’Agostino, above, Geri-Martha O’Hara, above right, and Susan Notter, right, all known for their bespoke sweets about what they’re offering right now.
Elizabeth Moore Chocolates
Pastry chef and chocolate shop owner Susan Notter (pictured) has worked all over the world but lives in Birmingham. She’s the pastry coach for the U.S. Culinary Olympics Team, and she’s a gold medalist.
She spoke to us from Germany, where the team is competing in the 2024 Culinary Olympics and where she is judging regional teams at the competition. The IKA/Culinary Olympics is the world’s largest, oldest and perhaps most multi-faceted culinary art exhibition.
Notter grew up in Birmingham, England, and attended culinary school there before living, learning and competing in pastry challenges all over Europe. She came to our Birmingham in 2001 to start the baking and pastry division of Culinard, the culinary program that had been at Virginia College.
She opened Elizabeth Moore Chocolates in April 2022, taking the name of her new endeavor from her middle and maiden names. This retail chocolate shop in Pelham offers fine chocolates, truffles, bon bons, bars, signature chocolate wafers and other treats.
She favors ethically sourced, single-origin chocolate from a company based in central Switzerland.
“They produce to the highest quality, and every ingredient is important – no cost-cutting or compromise. I also work with fruit purees that come from France. I make everything by hand, and it’s all created in my store,” she said.
“For Valentine’s Day, we are working on heart-shaped bon bons with fillings such as passionfruit, bourbon, raspberry and dark cherry as well as single-origin bars and truffles. I am also making chocolate boxes made of solid chocolate and decorated with chocolate roses.
“I have some beautiful packaging from Canada and gift baskets filled with chocolates, cookies and bars. We will have dipped strawberries on (Feb.) 13th and 14th – dipped in pure chocolate, of course!”
Notter’s usual offerings include chocolate-covered almonds, cashews, hazelnuts and pecans; single-origin bars and truffles; and chocolate wafers, white from the Dominican Republic, milk chocolate from Ghana, 65% dark from Venezuela and 70% dark from Madagascar and Ghana.
“We work with Baba Java on pairing our chocolate with their coffees, and these are available at their store,” she said. “We also work with Auburn University and their fine-dining restaurant, 1856. Our bon bons are on their tasting menu.”
You can get some of her chocolate wafers at the retail shop and download her guide for chocolate tastings and pairings with your own coffee, wines and spirits. She also offers classes on working with chocolate at her shop.
A culinary artist for sure and a teacher at heart, Notter keeps her competitive spirit alive. In addition to competing on various U.S. Culinary Olympics teams over the years, she appeared on the Food Network with the winning team of the first season of “Halloween Wars.” She said she enjoys sharing her knowledge and her passion for pastry with students and other pastry professionals and with her customers.
Consider pairing a gift certificate for one of her classes with a chocolate gift for Valentine’s Day. Her Tempering Chocolate 101 class will be held Feb. 24, from noon to 3 p.m., which also offers instruction on creating molded Easter eggs. Stop by her shop or call 205-358-7352 for more information or to register.
Elizabeth Moore Chocolates
2742 Pelham Parkway
Pelham, AL 35124
elizabethmoorechocolates.com
205-358-7352
Chocolatá
Chocolatá combines passion and curiosity and a certain positive energy with beautiful, delicious chocolates.
Owner Kathy D’Agostino (pictured) uses single-origin chocolate that is ethically sourced from Latin American farms in her sweet creations that she said “are unique in many ways.”
“We source the finest chocolate and ingredients to make our recipes that are all exclusive to Chocolatá,” she said.
D’Agostino learned the art of chocolate when she was a young girl working her first job at a chocolatier around the corner from her family’s home. She went on to a career in merchandising and design but kept thinking about the joy she felt working with chocolate. So, with her creative energy guiding her, she found her way back to it.
“I started experimenting in my kitchen a year before opening (Chocolatá) to develop recipes based on the flavor profile of the different chocolate origins and what ingredients would complement them,” she said. “We continue to develop new recipes seasonally for our bon bon selections, bars and specialty items.”
D’Agostino’s background in design is evident in some of her more recognizable products such as her mystic eye bon bons, which are as lovely and intriguing as they are delicious. The dark chocolate evil eye contains coffee and Bailey’s; the milk chocolate version is filled with chai tea ganache.
“All of our products are handmade, and we wrap everything in thoughtfully designed packaging that makes the presentation perfect for gifting,” she said. “We are excited to have so many great options for Valentine’s Day.”
These include:
• My Valentine, which is nine seasonal bon bons in a red crocodile-textured gift box.
• 4 My Valentine, which is four bon bons in a French paper box – simple and sweet.
• Cupid’s Crave, which is a seasonal bark created for Valentine’s Day only. This is a dark-milk blend of chocolate with strawberries, crunchy cereal and peanuts drizzled with strawberry white chocolate and chocolate crisp pearls.
• The eXXtra Special Gift Set, which must be ordered by Feb. 7. This three-tiered gift set, tied with a red velvet bow, contains a 15-piece assortment of chocolates, the nine-piece Valentine’s assortment and four Chocolatá medallions in a variety of flavors.
You’ll always find a large selection of seasonal bon bons in the store’s case.
Chocolatá also offers several signature “inclusion bars.” The Soma bar, with its bright, medicinal ingredients inspired by the Indian recipe of Golden Milk, features single-origin white chocolate from Ecuador along with turmeric and dried ginger. Summer Nights combines 71% dark chocolate with sunflower seeds, candied oranges, lavender and blueberry sea salt.
Specialty products include Lunar Landing – a chocolate bark collaboration with Birmingham-based and woman-owned Bronnie’s Brittle – as well as Goddess Bark, Chocolate Comet Popcorn, hot cocoa mix, beautifully detailed chocolate owls, chocolate charcuterie and dark chocolate-dipped candied oranges. Orders are requested for the specialty items.
For Valentine’s Day, pre-ordering on the website is recommended; you can select a pick-up date between Feb. 7 and Feb. 14, and the shop will have it ready for you.
“Our online shop does not include some items that are available in-store only,” D’Agostino said. “We encourage people to stop by our location in the Forest Park/Avondale area to see our full selection.”
Chocolatá
701 37th St. S, Suite 5, in the Highlander Building
Birmingham, AL 35222
chocolatachocolate.com
Big Spoon Creamery
This homegrown ice cream shop does a big seasonal business with their chocolate tacos.
Geri-Martha O’Hara, (pictured) who founded Big Spoon Creamery with her husband, Ryan, said, “Our choco tacos are specialty items. We bring them out around the holidays, and we will have them featured for Valentine’s Day this year.”
“The Valentine’s Day version is cake batter ice cream with Valentine’s sugar cookie dough, dipped in white chocolate and finished with sprinkles and more cookie dough,” O’Hara said. They are available on a first-come-first-served basis for Valentine’s Day. You can find them Saturday and Sunday and then again Feb. 14.
“We will also be offering our Big Spoon bar with strawberry ice cream dipped in Valrhona dark chocolate,” she added.
O’Hara and her husband started Big Spoon in 2014 as an artisanal ice cream pop-up with a deep freeze on their driveway in their suburban neighborhood. This evolved into an ice cream cart, a truck and in 2017 a brick-and mortar location in Avondale. Today, Big Spoon also has a location in Homewood and another in Huntsville.
Both O’Haras have culinary backgrounds. She trained as a pastry chef with award-winning pastry chefs such as Johnny Iuzzini, Dominique Ansel and Michael Laiskonis in New York City and with James Beard Award-winning chefs Frank Stitt and Dolester Miles at Bottega in Birmingham. The couple met at Bottega. Ryan O’Hara worked there before being promoted to sous chef at Stitt’s French bistro, Chez Fonfon.
Big Spoon offers a rotation of seasonal flavors that celebrate local, high-quality ingredients. From The DeCarlo, which features ricotta ice cream and rum-soaked chiffon cake made in-house, to Honeysuckle Blackberry, which incorporates wild-foraged local honeysuckle, this is inventive ice cream made with intention.
From their first day at the first location, the O’Haras have featured a signature Valrhona dark chocolate ice cream, which blends 40% Jivara milk chocolate and 66% Caraibe dark chocolate.
Big Spoon Creamery
bigspooncreamery.com
Homewood: 927 Oxmoor Road, (205) 637-0823
Avondale: 4000 3rd Ave. S., (205) 703-4712
Huntsville: 201 Jefferson St. N., Suite J, (256) 945-7223
