Flying Noir’s Candies Are Principally Mini-Work

Few chocolatiers promote their chocolate bars as “canvases.” However, then once more, few chocolatiers labored as painters earlier than moving into the sport. Karen Urbanek, proprietor of Berkeley’s Flying Noir chocolate, could be the one one within the Bay Space who minimize her enamel as a full-time visible artist. However now, whereas some artists paint portraits of their favourite eating places and cafes, Urbanek creates edible work on the identical confections she makes to eat. “I put candies collectively by composition, simply as I might a portray,” Urbanek says.

It’s all about textures, tastes, and colours — then, these creations are organized in a field, banded collectively by an unique portray by Urbanek. That presentation is simply as essential because the chocolate itself, the flavors of which embrace tea-infused oolong and pu’erh bonbons and truffles laden with Aleppo chiles and pistachios. The colours on the candies are pure dyes; mica mineral-based colours give the bonbons a metallic sheen that may additionally serve to increase the shelf lifetime of the sweets. Urbanek is an professional in pure dyes from her days working as an artist in Mendocino, and that stage of craft and nuance is mirrored within the creations themselves. “I just like the candies to undergo a succession in style as they sit in your tongue,” Urbanek says.

Urbanek is not any stranger to native chocolate-making. She simply acquired again from a swanky fundraiser in St. Helena firstly of November, the place quite a few Bay Space companies arrange stands to generate cash for UCSF Benioff Kids’s Hospitals. Fellow Bay Space chocolatiers Socola, Cocotutti, and Jade Candies all labored the ground alongside Urbanek. She’s been quietly working for some time now, although she acquired her flowers and as soon as ranked the primary chocolate possibility within the nation by Forbes. “I’m not the brand new child on the block anymore,” Urbanek says. “However I set my course at first to have my creativity and artwork within the chocolate.”

She makes her creations out of chef Angela Pinkerton’s Pie Society kitchen at 2533 Seventh Road in Berkeley, a relationship constructed out of overlap at a pop-up occasion within the East Bay. Equally, Urbanek constructed relationships with chocolate producers and patrons from around the globe for her small enterprise: she will get chocolate from Jenny Samaniego’s Conexion in Ecuador and Dick Taylor’s Maya Mountain Coop in Belize to call a couple of. It’s a one-person present, although associates assist out right here and there; on the Golden Gate Honest Constructing’s Chocolate Salon, Urbanek and her aiding good friend Leah Vass had been nicknamed “the women within the black berets.”

The entrepreneur began the enterprise when she turned 60 years previous, then a painter dwelling in Mendocino. That was a nice option to pay the payments till the recession hit. “The artwork market simply fell aside,” Urbanek says. She’d at all times made bonbons for her openings, and determined she might give {that a} go full-time. It took a couple of years of strong follow till she felt like she was any good at it; she accomplished on-line courses from Ecole Chocolat identical to East Bay modern Daniel Korson at Coracao. And dealing as a lady in a male-dominated business — and an older individual at that — means she will be able to get ignored inside the chocolate business at occasions. She says she doesn’t really feel like she’s skilled as a lot issue as some, however she admits she tends to remain centered and deflect any potential difficulties. “I’m form of invisible a number of the time,” Urbanek says. “I overheard at one of many chocolate salons somebody saying ‘it’s good to see a little bit little bit of cleavage.’ However I would like the chocolate to talk for me.”

Catch Urbanek portray candies at Pie Society (2533 seventh Road, Berkeley) from 10 a.m. to five p.m., seven days per week till the vacations are by, and her hours will change. You may order your chocolate on-line to rearrange a time for pick-up, too.