On Feb. 15, the weather in Lodi, New York, hovered in the low 20s and it snowed, but that didn’t stop chocolatier Claire Benjamin from setting up a table to greet customers outside her store. Benjamin owns Rue Claire Lavender Farm and Artisan Chocolates, which she runs from a shop her husband built next to their home.
As she had the two previous days, she waited for customers, some of whom had travelled from as far as Rochester and Syracuse, to pick up the Valentine’s Day chocolates they’d ordered online. Between orders, she took refuge from the frigid weather in her car with the engine running.
When her customers arrived, Benjamin served them a crafted blend of hot chocolate and maple sugar, and she chatted with them before they retreated from the cold with their boutique bags.
The Valentine’s Day package, which sold out, debuted two new maple chocolate assortments: a petite bar of cacao bean-shaped dark chocolate with Hawaiian lava salt and local maple sugar and a heart-shaped ruby chocolate; and a hibiscus flower treat, infused with Rue Claire raw honey, strawberry chips and her signature brownie, also sweetened with maple sugar.
Benjamin was recently hired as a contractor by the Cornell Maple Program, administered by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), to develop recipes for making maple chocolate at a commercial scale. Her efforts fit into a much larger mission from the Cornell Maple Program to develop new maple products to grow the $30 million maple industry in New York state and boost rural economies.