Mackenzie Rivers, the maker behind Map Chocolate

from zero to chocolate

Before my first-ever batch what I knew about chocolate was bars snuck into movies, or handfuls of tiny chips nibbled while baking cookies, or big blocks whittled into slabs for campfire s'mores. A lifelong love for baking (and a brief stint as a pastry chef) meant I knew it as chopped + melted +swirled, and licked from my fingers when the boss wasn’t looking.

Like most people who love it, I knew end result without having a clue of the why or the how. Just bars, chips, chocolate kisses.

I've flipped sourdough pancakes on the banks of rivers, pickled grape leaves in the Grand Canyon, baked a cake on a sailboat, made foraged-apple butter when I should have been reading my law books, checked a wedding cake on a Southwest Airlines flight, and cross-country skied cheesecakes to a yurt, but until a chance visit to a cocoa bean warehouse I never knew there was such a thing as making my own chocolate.

you never forget your first batch

It did not taste like a chocolate kiss, a Mars bar or any chocolate I’d ever had. What it tasted like was my chocolate worldview shattering, my cartoon brain skyrocketing chocolate fireworks, and a few Homer Simpson duh!’s thrown into the mix. Also, it had the clean + heady bite of a series of questions, of how and what, and who knew?! Each new question became a destination I began aiming for on my chocolate Map.

Which, as my loyal Map friends & customers have come to know, where I invite you to go through my chocolate is most likely nowhere you’ve ever ventured before.