Chocolate Rocks

Designer Michal Avraham en Chef Borch Socher zijn niet alleen een mooi stel om te zien, samen zijn zij ook het creatief brein achter ‘Chocolate Rocks’, deze vrolijk gekleurde Amsterdamse pralines zijn niet van échte mineralen te onderscheiden. Het betreft hier échte chocolade stenen voorzien van natuurlijke pigmenten met gedroogd groente en fruit. Deze eetbare stenen in combinatie met de ontwerpen van graphic designer Marta Veludo ( heeft klanten als: Adidas, Reebok, Lego, Rituals, Heineken etc. ) zorgen samen voor één geheel om intens van te mogen genieten. Dit begint al bij het openen van de verpakking: direct springen de felle kleuren van diverse spikkels je tegemoet. Zodra het doosje open gaat en jij één, drie of vijf ( net welke keus je hebt gemaakt ) design pralines aantreft ben je verkocht! Helemaal niet zo gek dat dit product aanwezig was tijdens het ‘Dutch Design Week’. – This is chocolate heaven; and you are invited!

INTERVIEW || CHOCOLATE ROCKS

Captain of Goods mocht het tweetal achter Chocolate Rocks interviewen:

1 || A product designer and a chef … how did you two meet each other and what is the story? || We’re a couple now. Living and working in Amsterdam. But that’s not how we met. We met when we were both participating in events for the bookstore project. This project is a community of artists and designers that live close together in anti-cracking houses and organize a wide variety of events to enhance neighbourhood cohesion. Borch didn’t live himself in one of the houses but he helped to organize pop-up dinner events for the project. Here he made very affordable restaurant quality dinners for people with not to much money to spend. All in one long table so people from the neighbourhood could get acquainted without money socially segregating them. Michal was living in the project (were now living together somewhere else) and was also participating in a lot of events. One of her projects involved creating a tension between our instincts and our mind. It came to the idea what it would be like to eat a rock. To bite into something that our body tells us is not edible and then to be able to enjoy it a lot. The idea was great but the execution was challenging. When we got in touch, our collaboration gave the concept its current form. Borch helped Michal to get the production stable and develop natural pigments so we needn’t work with chemical artificial food colourings. Michal perfected the looks of the rocks and the packaging. We first went public in Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2015. There it became clear to us that people were really enjoying the chocolate rocks. To look at but also to eat. There we decided to take the project to the next level and go professional.

2 || You create a unique kind of chocolate that looks like minerals, how did this idea came in mind? || This is really Michal’s idea. In her previous work she had tried to duplicate rocks in different materials. Her field in design really revolves around materials as a starting point. She made rocks from acrylic, epoxy and plaster. She made floating rocks and she experimented with taking a natural shape from a rock and duplicating it industrially. So the step to Chocolate Rocks was only small, but the idea behind it very different.

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3 || Do you already hear people say; “it’s too beautiful to take a bite from”. || Yes, actually we hear that a lot! Also people tell us that it is a great way to diet because its so hard to eat it and make it disappear.

4 || What is the reason Chocolate Rocks is located in Amsterdam? || We both live and work in Amsterdam. Borch is also chef in a restaurant based in Amsterdam and our studio is also located Amsterdam. It is in Krux, one of the many broedplaatsen that you can find in the city. Krux is specifically for product designers. But you can find plenty of those here. Their aim is to bring young creative people together and let them help each other in a well equipped co-work space.

5 || Who of you two got the most passion in getting things done? || Michal is very visual, neat and has a great eye for detail. She really developed the look of the product and is the bridge into the world of design. Borch has a lot of experience in working with food. He developed most of the production process and the pigments. He is always trying to look for new flavours for the colouring and of the chocolate.

6 || What are the ambitions of the both of you? || We would really like to expand the company and try to provide the chocolate rock experience of tasting, looking and smelling in as many places as possible. We like it the most when the location is not one where you expect to find food as in most design oriented events. Like this September we exhibited in Diest in Belgium in an exhibition called ‘Occasionele Ontmoetingen’. This event aims to blend young talent and established designers together into the same environment. Not the kind of occasion where you would expect to find food or even any edible stuff. And exactly this makes people enthusiastic about our stones when they first see them. So don’t expect to find them in too many food related environments.

7 || Are there other passions / dreams beside chocolate? || We would really like to continue to experiment with food. To take it out of context and make you really think about what you eat and why it is there. Maybe our next project will be made out of edible foods, but not meant for eating. Something in that direction. Who knows! In Amsterdam there are so many cool people doing cool things with food and being successful with it. From roasting coffee, making sausage or brewing beer. You can find it all here. It would be really a dream of us both to start a kind of broedplaats like Krux that will focus on food. So all the new talent will have a place to develop their creative ideas.

8 || You are located in Amsterdam, are you also at the Origin Chocolate Event? || Unfortunately we will not participate but we definitely attend.

Maar hoe smaakt het

Van Chocolate Rocks mocht ik het volgende uitproberen:

Three rocks in a box || € 20.00

De smaaktest || In eerste instantie vond ik deze chocolade mineralen eigenlijk te mooi om op te eten. Had daardoor zelfs bijna geen zin om aan het artikel te beginnen. Waarom? – dan moet er namelijk geproefd worden; en tja, dan zijn deze pracht exemplaren toch echt weg. Beetje zonde wel! Enfin, er is helaas een deadline waaraan men moet voldoen. Voor mij liggen drie prachtige chocolade pralines welke mij terug doen denken aan een jeugd waarin ik behoorlijk wat edelstenen- en mineralen om mij heen wist te verzamelen. Daarnaast had ik ook nog eens een abonnement op ‘Schatten van de aarde’ ( Treasures of the earth ), om er alles- en dan ook écht alles over te weten te kunnen komen. Op dat punt in mijn jeugd had ik nooit kunnen raden dat ik ooit ‘mineralen zou’ gaan eten.

Hier zit ik dus, achter mijn laptop met slechts één project in het vooruitzicht: ‘the moment of truth’; alle dagen van mineralen verzamelen hebben mij uiteindelijk tot dit zeldzame moment in mijn leven gebracht; het genieten van ‘Chocolate Rocks’. Voorzichtig neem ik mijn eerste hap, alsof ik één van de duurste stenen in de wereld voor eeuwig ga verwoesten. Een gevoel van ‘exitement’ en tegelijkertijd ‘guilt’ overschaduwd mij.

Eenmaal over de streep neem ik rustig nog een hapje, daarop volgend nog één. Net zo lang tot het hele steentje voorgoed achter mijn alles vermalende kiezen verdwijnt. Uiteindelijk kan ik één uitspraak in alle gerustheid doen; “This is the best guilty pleasure I’ve ever had“.

En bij deze voor de mensen achter Chocolate Rocks: excuses dat ik zoveel schoonheid niet durfde te verwoesten.

Waar te bestellen

De volgende ‘guilty pleasures’ zijn in de webshop van Chocolate Rocks verkrijgbaar: