O! Royal Oak Chocolatier Wows Fans with Flavor

Among several new vendors at Saturday's Farmington Farmers & Artisans Market, you'll find Royal Oak resident Lynn Fish.

You'll know her Haute Chocolat booth by the "oooooo" sounds coming from it.

"We call it the 'O' face," Fish said, explaining that everyone who tastes her handcrafted chocolate truffle pots has the same reaction. "It's really gratifying for me, as the producer, to watch, but it's hilarious."

The translucent, two-ounce pots contain what is basically the creamy, intensely flavored inside of a chocolate truffle, without the shell, Fish explained. The recipes for the intensely dark, smooth chocolate and 13 unique flavorings are proprietary (we asked, she's not giving it up) and are created with mostly organic ingredients.

There's nothing artificial; the Bailey's Cream pots are made with the liqueur, not a flavoring. It takes Fish three hours to make the caramel for her pots.

"I'm just really a purist when it comes to food," Fish said. "I won't feed anyone anything I wouldn't feed my children."

While she has a culinary background, nothing really prepared Fish for becoming a chocolatier. She first made a batch of pots for a group of friends who met in the summer for movie nights.

"By the end of the summer, I was getting people calling me out of the blue," she said. "Neighbors would stop by and say, 'I need more of that chocolate.' By October, I was getting calls from businesses asking if I would do corporate gifts."

At first, Haute Chocolat flew under the state's radar, which Fish admits "is a really uncomfortable place to be." This year, changes in the state's cottage food industry law allows home-based food producers who gross less than $15,000 annually to cook out of their homes, rather than in a commercial kitchen.

The law isn't crystal clear, Fish said, and "there's always a little bit of fear that we may be screwing it up. Is this the sale that puts us over the ($15,000) cap?"
Still, she adds, "I think it (the law) has made a huge impact, because it allows more of us to jump into the market."

If – or should we say when? – you're sold on the taste, a box of two truffle pots is $6. Four-pot boxes are $12; an eight-pot box costs $24. And you can mix and match among the 13 flavors: Plain, Sea Salt, Mole' Chili, Smoked Cinnamon, Chai Spice, Orange, Peanut Butter, Baileys, Raspberry, Caramel Macchiato, Mocha, Caramel and Creme de Menthe.

Meet Fish and more than 35 other vendors at the Farmington Farmers & Artisans Market 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday at the  in downtown Farmington. Music at the market features Gia Warner, who opened this week for Bob Seger.