Spoon & Pod is the heart and soul of why I became a professional bean to bar chocolate maker: I’m a bean to bar chocolate maker who isn’t in it for the chocolate bars, who prefers her chocolate stuffed into cookie dough, swirled atop a cake, ribboned through vanilla ice cream. If this reads like a confession, it is, and I feel wonderfully relieved for outing myself with you.

Spoon & Pod is where I write about my experiences and ideas for stepping aside from the grocery aisle standard-issue chocolate, and insights on using craft, bean to bar chocolate for baking. I write from the perspective of someone intimate with chocolate who has baked with it professionally, but more so, from someone who loves baking with it at home.

All this is written from my tiny home in Oregon, where I teach bean to bar in a 70 sq-foot chocolate cottage out the back door. She shed? girl, I have a chocolate shed.

What I brought to chocolate, and what I’m bringing here to Spoon & Pod, is the third-grader who’d rather squeeze key limes grown in her grandparent’s backyard over watching cartoons so she could make pie; the high schooler who stayed home Friday nights to knead bread dough and bake cookies. The Grand Canyon river guide who hauled sourdough starter downriver for pancakes. The law student who foraged apples to make apple butter when she should have been studying, the girl who baked cheesecakes she then delivered on skis to a restaurant in yurt.

Inside me there is a food lover who prefers licking the chocolate batter from the spoon to those lovely fancy bars she crafts for a living.

You can also find me at my one-woman-show chocolate company Map Chocolate, teaching bean to bar at my chocolate school The Next Batch, on Instagram at mapchocolate and thenextbatchschool

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Mackenzie Rivers