MAGAZINES 
Creamy, Dreamy, Love
Why are women so wild about chocolate?
It happened to Sarah Amorese inside a small shop in Zurich. That first sensual encounter. Amorese was already a worldly woman—well traveled, independent, talented and pursuing a career as a graphic designer. But what life is worth living without a love affair, a full-on, senses-awakening, world-altering love affair? One bite into a small truffe du jour in a Swiss chocolate boutique and Amorese fell in love.
“I stood there and bit into this chocolate; I noticed the smell, the crack of biting into the shell, the taste—and I was transported to another world for a moment,” she says. “I was standing there experiencing it until this guy bumped into me and brought me back to earth. I realized I went somewhere for a minute based on my palate.”
Years later, Amorese earned the nickname Madame Chocolate, a nod to her reputation for creating dazzling chocolate wedding cakes for clients in Boulder. In 2011 she made a deeper commitment to her chocolate love affair when she opened Piece, Love and Chocolate, a store just west of the Pearl Street Mall that specializes in unique handcrafted truffles, chocolate drinks and cakes.
A savvy businesswoman, Amorese knows her target market—30-to-55-year-old women. “I believe that women are more sensory than men,” she says. “No offense, but I think that things that appeal to all of the senses appeal to us more. And the thing about chocolate, for women: It’s happiness, it’s pleasure, it’s giving, it’s receiving.”
LEFT: Everybody knows that women are a soft touch for chocolate—but why? Owner Sarah Amorese, center, with Piece, Love & Chocolate colleagues Genevieve Fetherston (left) and Heidi Lewis, thinks women are simply “more sensory than men.” A sensuous “truffle encounter” in Geneva showed Amorese what a dependable partner chocolate could be. Women 30–55 are her target market.
EASY PLEASURES
The thing about chocolate. Whether it’s gently poured, hiding in a bright wrapper, smuggled neatly in the bottom of a purse, boldly displayed in a crystal dish, finely crafted into a ganache-filled goodie or dropped into your hand from a corner-torn bag you bought at a 7-Eleven—does it really matter?
Chocolate is about pleasure. And, maybe, for women, it’s about giving yourself permission, especially in a culture where skinny is always in. “If you give yourself permission to eat the chocolate, you’re also inadvertently saying ‘I give myself permission for pleasure,’” says Jenni Skyler, Ph.D., a sex therapist and board-certified sexologist who runs The Intimacy Institute in Boulder. “It says, ‘I’m not going to follow the social script that says women have to be skinny and not eat chocolate, not eat sugar or fat. I’m going to indulge in this.’ And that permission for pleasure carries over into the bedroom.”
But does chocolate contain or stimulate chemicals that lead to pleasure? Studies are mostly inconclusive, Skyler says. Many that suggest that chocolate is the great aphrodisiac are sponsored by the chocolate industry. Some less biased-seeming research, however, shows that eating dark chocolate boosts serotonin—the “happy” chemical—in the brain. And in the mid-’90s, a handful of government-sponsored studies made headlines, and made millions of people happy, when they confirmed dark chocolate was actually good for us as an antioxidant.
“It’s hard to say, when the chocolate food industry comes in and pays for the studies,” Skyler says. “The hard-core studies that are not tied up with businesses show the benefits of chocolate are more fleeting. They’re there, but there aren’t the long-lasting benefits where it’s the aphrodisiac. It’s a more ephemeral feeling. That said, I see a lot of benefits of chocolate. I think it does something for serotonin.”
ABOVE LEFT: Making Sun Cups, the specialty of Seth Ellis Chocolatier. The company’s three male co-founders assert that men love chocolate just as much as women do. Chocolove founder Timothy Moley (right, examining cacao pods in the field) says he eats “more chocolate than any five women I know.” The company—Boulder’s first large-scale chocolate manufacturer—makes chocolate bars, each packaged with a love poem on the wrapper. Its biggest buyers are in the 30+ age group, but teenagers express the most enthusiasm. Moley takes that to mean that “our local youth, at least, prefers real chocolate over candy.”
GOOD ENOUGH FOR CASANOVA
And what about the legends? In 16th-century Mexico, the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II was said to consume dozens of goblets of cacao drink each day for health and strength, and to enable him to please his harem of women. Two hundred years later, the renowned Venetian paramour Giacomo Casanova indulged in chocolate before delighting his lovers in bed, and the Marquis de Sade requested his wife to send chocolate cakes to his jail cell.
Maybe that’s evidence that chocolate’s mysterious powers are gender blind. David Lurie certainly thinks chocolate appeals as much to men as to women. He started Seth Ellis Chocolatier in Boulder with two other men, brothers Neil and Rick Levine, in 2006. Today, Seth Ellis (the company name combines Neil’s and Rick’s middle names) produces Sun Cups, a high-quality candy made of chocolate and roasted sunflower butter, and other related products.
“We’re three partners who all love chocolate, and we’re all male,” Lurie says. “There’s a lot that’s been said about chocolate and women. I don’t subscribe to any of that, except for the fact that chocolate has always been a feel-good product used in the gift-giving world.”
Timothy Moley, owner of Boulder’s Chocolove, a large-scale producer of chocolate bars, says be believes “men and women like chocolate equally but women crave it more. I think more women than men have a genuine need to eat chocolate on a regular basis.” But, he adds, “some men crave it too. I am a man and I eat more chocolate than any five women I know—on average a pound and half a week.”
In Chris Widlar’s experience, the difference is in how men and women express their feelings about confections made from the cacao plant. Widlar opened her chocolate business, Concertos in Chocolate, in Boulder 12 years ago. The company creates truffles, barks and other confections for sale in area stores, and it supplies specialty candies for private and corporate events.
“I’m not sure women have a different relationship with chocolate,” Widlar says, “but I know they express their love for chocolate more than men do. Very few men seem to get as excited as women do about chocolate. Many more women admit to the fact that they love chocolate.”
Concertos also sells bulk chocolate-making ingredients from its kitchen, located in Gunbarrel. Widlar says the number of people who purchase those ingredients from Concertos is evenly split between men and women, but the men make less of a fuss about their chocolate. “It’s probably another hormone issue,” she adds. “Women need something to pick them up and make them feel good. A little bite can do that.”
People can be fickle or moody. Chocolate devotees know where to turn when they need a reliable lover.
“Chocolate is always dependable,” Amorese says. “Even bad chocolate is pretty good.”
Mark Collins, a freelance writer who lives in Boulder, loves chocolate. He’s learning how to express that love.
TIPS ON TRUFFLES
Sarah Amorese, owner of Piece, Love and Chocolate, shared some tips with Boulder Magazine for making a simple chocolate truffle.
1. Use a high-quality dark chocolate.
2. Take equal parts by weight of cream and chocolate.
3. Chop the chocolate into small slivers and pieces.
4. Slowly heat the cream to boiling.
5. Gently pour the heated cream over the chocolate, cover it and let it sit unstirred for 2 minutes.
6. After 2 minutes, gently stir with a whisk to create an emulsion.
7. After the chocolate bits have melted and the smooth emulsion is created, spread it onto a pan and let it sit until it stiffens.
8. Dip out portions with a melon baller and gently roll by hand into small truffles.
9. Roll the rounded truffles in cocoa powder or powdered sugar.
This type of truffle will last 5 days before it needs to be refrigerated.
— Mark Collins
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