First Fridays at Lula's

Lula’s Chocolates has coordinated a new event at their retail store in the Crossroads Shopping Village in Carmel, off Rio Road and Highway 1. “First Fridays at Lula’s Chocolates” will feature a ‘flavor-of-the-month,’ and showcase local artists‘work.

Each first Friday of the month, a reception from 4-6 p.m. will treat guests to taste-test one of Lula’s newest creations. Lula’s chocolate artisan, Scott Lund, will answer your questions about the process of making chocolates. This month’s featured flavor is hot chocolate and marshmallows; just in time for those chilly days. November’s featured artists are Tim and Rose Sloan showing a selection of their beautiful local landscapes in watercolor, acrylic and oil.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Cooking for Solutions 2009

Hi everyone, Victoria here! I had so much fun attending the Monterey Bay Aquarium Cooking for Solutions that I thought I would share about the fun night.  Food Network’s Alton Brown hosted the event and Scott was lucky enough to get a picture with him. It was a great fundraiser for the Aquarium and we were happy to support.  The event helped to bring awareness that our choices in what we buy and eat have a great impact on the environment. Many great chefs came to show how we can help protect the health of the soil, water, and ocean wildlife. They had great sushi and seafood that and I enjoyed sampling. Our booth was located right next to the great people at Scheid Vineyards (one of the wineries used to make our wine truffles) and was right in front of the Jelly Fish for a beautiful backdrop. It was a very successful event and everyone enjoyed our Sea Salt Caramels and Truffles. We hope to be invited back next year! 

Winner at the Santa Cruz Chocolate Festival

by Aaron Davidson


Wow, how time flies. Last month we sponsored a table at the Santa Cruz Chocolate Festival and we met a lot of wonderful people and gave out a lot of chocolate. We had a drawing for an 18-piece box of our Sea Salt Caramels Collection and the winner of the box was Brianna Murtha. Congratulations!!!

For those of you in the Santa Cruz area, you can now buy our chocolates in the following locations:
Shopper's Corner - 622 Soquel Ave, Santa Cruz
Aptos Natural - 7506 Soquel Drive, Aptos

We hope you enjoyed our chocolates as much as we enjoyed meeting you. We'll see you next year if not sooner--hopefully sooner.

How to make the Perfect Gourmet S’more

by Aaron Davidson

The perfect s’more has always been an elusive creation to make on a consistent basis. Sometimes you make one and it turns out great; other times they are OK, and other times they are just burnt.

I’ve finally found a way of making one that is perfect every time. The only hitch is that they aren’t made the way most folks think nature intended them to be made—over the campfire. These s’mores are made in your own kitchen.

The one main ingredient, of course, is with a fist-size chunk of Lula’s Chocolates’ Aloha Rocky Road. You can use either the dark chocolate or milk chocolate, but I, personally, prefer the dark chocolate.

The first step is to pick a healthy chunk that you can cut off, so that at least two of the marshmallow chunks in the bar end up in your s’more.

The next step is to place the cut piece between two halves of a graham cracker. You can use any graham cracker, but keeping with tradition, I use Honey Grahams—I grew up with them, and I still love them.

The third step is to place the uncooked s’more in the microwave and cook it for 8 to 12 seconds. Each microwave is a little different, so watch for when the marshmallow starts to expand. You should allow it to expand for a few seconds. You may have to experiment a little for the perfect timing. But that’s the fun part, because if it doesn’t quite work right the first time, you get to say, “Dang, that didn’t quite work right—I’ll eat this one and make another one for you.”

When hosting a s’more party, you might want to even make sure you mess up on the first couple—that way, you’ll get the first ones, instead of getting so busy making them that you don’t get any.

After you pull the s’more out of the microwave, the fun part comes. Now: smash it down a little so the marshmallow is distributed evenly over the graham cracker.

Oh, did I mention—there is an even more fun part. Now you get to eat your perfect creation, or, if you’ve been cooking them up for others, you get to enjoy watching them eat your perfect s’more creation.

So, what did you think? Give it a try and let us know how yours turned out. Was that perfect or what? Enter your comment to this blog or send us an email at feedback@lulas.com.

Thanks for the Apple Pie

By Aaron Davidson

Lula’s Chocolates has some great employees. One of our chocolate dippers, I won’t mention who (Nanette), wished me a belated birthday yesterday and brought me in one of my favorite treats, home-made apple pie. I couldn’t wait to dig into it, but I did anyway because I just had to take a photo of it in my dining room with the morning sun. I guess that makes me a photo freak. I got in a little late today because the clouds were out and I had to wait until the sun barely peeked through the clouds so I could get just the right light. I had to wait so long that I didn’t have a chance to eat any, but there’s a silver lining to that though…I have something to look forward to when I go home tonight. Thanks again Nanette for being great and for the apple pie.

Concours Weekend Photos

by Aaron Davidson

One of the great advantages of living and producing gourmet chocolates in Monterey is that we get to be here every year for the Concours. At the end of each summer, some of the most exotic cars ever produced converge on Carmel and Pebble Beach for a week of gawking and admiring automobiles that others may never see in the quantities and styles that appear on the roads here.
The price tag on these works of art may put them out of my reach right now, but taking photographs of them is not. I spent several hours on Saturday walking the streets of Carmel, taking pictures of some of these beauties.

On Saturday, many of the cars are just parked along the streets of Carmel. This is not one of the scheduled events, but that is what I like about it. It’s just the drivers of these exotic cars, wanting to hang around Carmel and let normal people gawk at their cars as they stroll Ocean Avenue. I like this environment because there are not as many people looking at the cars, so you can get better pictures, and sometimes you even find them in motion rather than just parked. I took around 200 pictures (I just love digital photography—it costs almost nothing to take a photo), and I posted what I thought were the best 35 on flickr. Please enjoy the pictures, even if you were not able to enjoy the event.

After Seattle

by Scott Lund

Thank to everyone that came out to visit our table at the Seattle Chocolate Salon. It was a great time and met some wonderful people.

At the table we had contact cards that I said we would be doing a drawing from. The lucky winner would receive a $100 gift certificate, and that winner is Carla D.! We will be contacting her in the next week to inform her of the prize.

Again, thanks for coming to the salon and hope that you loved Lula's as much as we enjoyed meeting you.