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Store Features Handmade Easter Treats

Posted on: Saturday, 15 April 2006, 00:00 CDT

By Cathy Jett, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.

Apr. 14--Gregory Moore Graves doesn't make the traditional Easter bunnies and eggs for his shop on Gordonsville's Main Street.

Instead, customers who walk into Moore's Chocolates this month will find his dark chocolate truffles decorated with a white chocolate bumblebee. The creamy milk-chocolate ganache filling is flavored with almond extract, which complements the almond slices used as the bee's wings.

"I thought of spring with the bumblebees coming out and thought people would like something cool," said Graves. "The almond flavoring cools you off when you take a bite. It's almost like drinking a glass of iced tea." The 32-year-old Gordonsville native comes up with different truffles every couple of months, then never makes them again. At Christmas, for example, he made some flavored with a promotional bottle of Bacardi's apple rum and decorated with stripes of white chocolate tinted apple green.

"It reminded me of rum cakes, green Granny Smith apples and milk chocolate," Graves said. "It's a little off the beaten path, but it works." The handmade truffles are the drawing card for Moore's Chocolates, but the small Orange County shop also carries a wide variety of treats from other chocolatiers and candy makers as well as bath and body products. And it does a thriving carryout business selling an ever-changing breakfast and lunch menu of homemade soups, salads, sandwiches and baked goods.

Yet Graves, who grew up above the shop where he now works, didn't start out to be a chef and chocolatier. He used to help out in his mother's store, Colonial Florist & Antiques, after school, and considered getting a degree in graphic design.

It wasn't until he got a job working at Foods of All Nations in Charlottesville in 1992 to help pay his way through Piedmont Community College that he began thinking of a career in food. He trained with the grocery store's two chefs, then became the chef at the restaurant for Shenandoah Crossing, a condominium resort hotel in Louisa County.

But carving roasts for guests, he decided, wasn't really what he wanted to do. He went back to work at Colonial Florist & Antiques, then moved to Detroit where he worked in the floral business by day and made chocolates for friends at night.

Big-city life had its appeal, Graves said, but he remained a small-town boy at heart. When he talked his mother, Donna Graves, into downsizing her store, he decided to open up one of his own in the remaining space last October. Moore's--chosen because his middle name has a better ring than his last--was born.

"We opened the day of the street festival because it's such a big deal for Gordonsville," he said. "Hundreds and hundreds of people come. I opened the door not thinking what I was asking for. At the end of the day, the case was empty." Graves's truffles continue to be a hot seller, especially this time of year as people seek out unique sweets to put in Easter baskets.

"I'm almost having to make them to order," he said. "If people want more than a dozen at a time, they have to be ordered in advance. Otherwise, it isn't fair to the other customers." Graves makes the chocolaty confections three times a week in the store's kitchen. He weighs equal measures of high-quality, dark Swiss chocolate and heavy whipping cream mixed with whatever flavoring he's chosen, then boils the cream until it literally starts jumping out of the pan. The bubbling liquid is poured over the chocolate, which quickly melts.

"This is when the magic starts to happen," Graves said. "I whip it for a minute or so, and the product changes appearance totally. It goes from chocolate milk to thick, chocolate syrup. You could write your name with it." Afterward, he adds a little butter to enhance the texture and taste, and lets the mixture set up before adding the chocolate coating and any decorative touches.

"The extracts and the butter are where I can be creative and express myself," Graves said. "I track down extracts from all over, and my combinations are things nobody else does, ever." Besides the green apple rum and bumblebee-topped truffles, he's done an orange- and vanilla-flavored "dreamsicle" truffle inspired by the unseasonably warm weather earlier this year. And he's thinking of creating a peanut-butter-and-jelly truffle next month because children will be getting lots of chocolate eggs with peanut-butter flavored fillings for Easter.

Graves takes the same creative approach to the menus he puts together each week and faxes to 60 companies in Gordonsville and the surrounding area.

Some offerings are inspired by the weather, like Thursday's potato and bacon soup. It was supposed to be rainy, and he thought people would want comfort food. Others are requests from customers, such as the woman who wanted a pumpkin cheesecake roulade.

"It keeps things fresh and new," said Graves, who finds most of his recipes online, in one of his two well-thumbed cookbooks, or makes them up. "If I have a customer who comes in here every day, which I do, they don't want the same banana--nut muffin." It also helps separate him from the local competition, which includes such chain sandwich shops as Subway. And it's drawn requests for him to develop a signature biscotti for a new Louisa tea room and signature cookie for the Keswick Garden Club in Albemarle County.

Eventually, Graves would like to open another store in Charlottesville, then look for other possible locations. The truffles would still be his, but each store would have its own tailor-made menus.

"Each community is different," Graves said. "You've got to work with the people around you."

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Source: The Free Lance-Star

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