Classes

with Madre’s chocolate experts

Learn about the plants around you, some local, some tropical, but always delicious!

We’re teaching many exciting chocolate classes in the coming year in Hawaii, including at Lyon Arboretum, Kapiolani Community College, and University of Hawai'i Manoa. Stay tuned here or follow our Twitter feed to find out where and when the classes are happening. Here are some classes we have taught in the past on chocolate and foraging.

There are some great reviews of our previous classes:

“...learn about chocolate from the masters Nat and Dave themselves--an informative and fun way to spend a few hours” - Kahakai Kitchen Blog

Gussy Rose Blog

Mother’s Day Chocolate Truffle Making Class
Sunday, May 12th, 1-4 pm

Madre Chocolate Shop in Kailua

This event is for mom's who love chocolate, and lets be honest, what woman doesn't love chocolate? Come learn how to make some beautiful chocolate truffles with your mother on her special day! This 3 hour truffle class led by our flavormeister, Dr. Nat Bletter and cacao wrangler, Kristina Swenson, will lead you through three delectable recipes step by step so you can tackle this seemingly difficult chocolate confections with ease in your kitchen.

Not a mother? Not a problem. All thats required for this class is a love for delicious delectable chocolates! Some of the recipes will include caramelized banana coconut almond butter sesame, and mint truffles, all made with our award-winning Hawai’i grown chocolate.

Students will go home with the three recipes we teach in class and a gift bag with each of the three flavors of truffles

20A Kainehe St. & Kailua Rd • Kailua • $50

May 12th

Make your own Hawaiian Chocolate Bar
Every Thursday & Friday • 11:30 AM-12:30 PM

Learn about the origins of chocolate and how it is made bean-to-bar in Hawai‘i by tasting it in 3 forms: the delicious lychee-tasting fruit juice of cacao, a fresh roasted cacao bean, and a flight of 5 of our most popular chocolate flavors. Finally, make your very own chocolate bar using Hawai‘i grown and made chocolate, choosing from a delicious selection of fruits, nuts and spices to flavor your bar, from toasted coconut to spicy chipotle pepper or Hawaiian sea salt. You will get to try Oahu’s award-winning chocolate and see how we make it, in this delicious, informative tour!

20A Kainehe St. & Kailua Rd • Kailua • $25

Every Thursday & Friday

Whiskey and Chocolate pairing
Friday, May 24th • 7:30-8:30 PM

OK, you’ve paired chocolate with wine, cigars, coffee and just about everything under the sun. Now, what’s left? Whiskey, of course! The caramely sweetness and peaty smokey flavor of the world’s best scotches, bourbons, and whiskeys make a great match for the complexity of chocolate, especially some of our robustly flavored chocolates like Chipotle Allspice, and Hamakua Pink Peppercorn and Smoked Salt. Nat & resident Scot, Joe of Madre Chocolate will guide you on which whiskey origins go best with which chocolate origins, while tasting some of best whiskeys available on O’ahu with Madre Chocolate's fine chocolate bars. It’s sure to make a fun & merry evening.

20A Kainehe St. & Kailua Rd • Kailua • $25

May 24th

Bean-to-Bar Chocolate-Making Class
Sunday, May 26th • 1 p.m. - 4 p.m.

Our shop in Kailua, O’ahu

Learn a little about the history of chocolate, enjoy a chocolate tasting, and find out how chocolate is made. Covers the many varieties of cocoa beans and chocolate, Aztec and Mayan uses of chocolate, and how to make your own chocolate bars from the bean. Varieties of chocolate bars, whether milk or dark, raw or roasted, single origin or blended, and fruity or nutty are increasing exponentially. Learn how to look at the ingredients and sort out the tasty healthy ones from the rest. Everyone participates in making delicious chocolate bars from scratch in the class. Take recipes and a bar of hand-made chocolate home with you. Contact us with any questions about the class and register below for your selected date.

20A Kainehe St. • Kailua • $50

May 26th

Madre Shop Pau Hana
Last Friday of every month • 4:30-6 PM

Next Pau Hana is May 31st.

Have you ever wanted to see behind the scenes, taste what the mad scientists at Madre Chocolate are up to, see what new chocolate origins and flavors they are dreaming up in their Kailua shop? How about asking any question about chocolate pairing? Every last Friday of the month we are hosting a Pau Hana chocolate event where all you chocolate lovers are invited in for free to our Kailua shop to taste limited editions of the new single origin chocolates we have been working with like Indonesia, Vietnam, Venezuela, Waiahole, and Kona. We will have samples of new inclusion bars we are experimenting with like jaboticaba, jaguar cacao, and calamansi lime and if you bring in something you want to pair with chocolate (juice, wine, beer, whiskey, cheese) we would be happy to taste it and discuss with you which chocolate would taste great in combination with it. It is sure to be a fun, Friday post-work time to chat with your friends, eat great local chocolate, and explore new possibilities of chocolate combinations. Bring your friends, bring your family, bring a date!

20A Kainehe St. • Kailua • Free • No registration needed

O’ahu Cacao Farm & Chocolate Factory Tour
Sunday, June 2nd & 16th

Windward O’ahu Cacao Farms & Our shop in Kailua, O’ahu

If you've ever wanted to see the entire process of chocolate making from start to end, this is the exact tour for you! We’ll take you to local organic cacao and diversified ag farm just 30 mins from our Kailua shop to see how the beautiful cacao tree produces its pods right off the trunk, learn how to tell when they’re ripe, taste the fresh sweet cacao pulp, help harvest cacao, and see how it’s fermented and dried. Then after an hour break for lunch at one of Kailua’s many great eateries, we’ll welcome you behind the scenes at our shop to roast, crack, & winnow your own cacao to make a traditional Mexican chocolate drink, grind and temper chocolate into bars for you to take home or dip delicious local fruit in our rich dark chocolate to eat on the spot. You’ll be ready to start your own cacao farm & bean-to-bar chocolate shop after this tour! Kids are very welcome on this educational & inspirational tour! Contact us with any questions and if you would like to arrange a tour for your group on another date. We are happy to plan school class tours by special arrangement. Lunch & transportation not included. We work with 2 cacao farms on Oahu, one in Waiahole that is beautiful and quite rugged and we don’t recommend for people who have trouble walking, and one on the North Shore that is further away from our shop, but is flat and more accessible. Each date lists which farm we will visit. Register below. Once you register, you will receive an email a couple days before the tour giving you directions and timing. We spend about 1 hour on the farm, then give you a 1.5 hr break to drive from the farm to our Kailua shop (30-45 min) and time for lunch. Please provide your phone number in the registration comments for last minute updates.

20A Kainehe St. • Kailua • $40

June 2nd, Waiahole, 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.

June 16th, Kahuku, 10:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Chocolate Tasting Tour of the World

Thursday, June 13th, 7:30-8:15

Learn about the origins of chocolate and how it is made bean-to-bar in Hawai‘i by tasting it in 14 forms. Learn the history of cacao & chocolate in Central America and Hawaii, and how this blossoming crop in Hawaii is creating some world renowned chocolate being bought up in Belgium, Holland, the mainland, and all across the state. After a brief history, we’ll run through a tasting of 14 chocolates in flights of percentage, single origins, and flavored chocolates from around the world that Madre Chocolate has to offer.

20A Kainehe St. & Kailua Rd • Kailua • $20

June 13th

Experience Hawaiian Cacao & Chocolate Week on Oahu
7 days in mid-July 2013

Windward Oahu cacao farms, research stations, & chocolate shops

Do you love chocolate and thirst to learn more about how cacao is grown and made into chocolate? Never tasted the delicious lychee or mangosteen-flavored pulp of the cacao fruit? Want to see how the days-long process of fermenting cacao affects the micro-terroir of the chocolate flavor? This is the perfect tour for you! We’re having a cacao boot camp of sorts in July with everyone from Hawaii, mainland, European, and beyond chocolate makers and chocophiles coming out here to experience and learn cacao planting, cultivation, harvest, and fermentation and chocolate making for 5-8 days.

We’ll introduce you to the cacao growers and fermenters throughout Oahu, an area we call the Napa Valley of cacao due to the amazing diversity of cacao flavors and microclimates in each valley up and down Windward Oahu and the North Shore. Each day we’ll visit, learn, and participate in a different aspect of cacao growing and processing with expert farmers, fermenters, agroforesters, university researchers, and chocolate makers in Hawaii’s burgeoning chocolate industry. In the only place in the US where cacao grows, you’ll have beautiful accommodations near the beaches of Lani Kai and Kailua, and you’ll be driven between each of the spots each day, with time off in the evenings to enjoy all the amazing local food that Kailua and Honolulu has to offer.

There will be a 3-day add-on option to do an intensive bean-to-bar chocolate making class where you can learn to to make chocolate at home from the cacao you’ve helped with all along the trip. Your expert guides Dave & Nat have traveled and tasted and researched cacao all across the Hawaiian Islands, Bali, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil over the past 16 years, working with cacao growers, chocolate makers, and chefs. Through this experience they will give you direct insights and connections with the people who make chocolate part of their lives everyday. Come experience the history and creation of chocolate as you never thought possible.

Price: about $2500 for hotels, food, & transportation excluding airfare. Please sign up for our international mailing list to be notified of final tour dates.

Design Your Own Chocolate Class

Having something you would love to know about chocolate? Want the perfect holiday or birthday gift? For a minimum of 10 people or $500 we can put together a custom chocolate class for you at our shop in Kailua, O’ahu or at your home on O’ahu or Hawai‘i. We have done private classes for bachelorette parties, wedding parties, local ag events, and children’s school groups. We can cover topics from wine, beer, whiskey, coffee, & cigar pairings with chocolate, delicious local chocolate truffle & bon bon making, chocolate history, single origin chocolate tastings, chocolate drinks from around the world, and bean-to-bar chocolate making. Turn all of your friends & family into Willy Wonka for an afternoon! Please Contact us with any questions and to setup a class.

Quotes from happy customers:

“Everyone had a fantastic time and several of them told me they thought it was a great and creative way to do a bachelorette party.”

“We had such a great time and I really appreciate what you all have done to execute such a wonderful evening for my sister and her friends.”

Madre Chocolate Gift Certificate for any occasion

Good for any chocolate or classes we offer

Not sure what your favorite chocolate lover might like or when their available for a class? Just get them one of these convenient gift certificates that will allow them to pick out exactly what they want. After purchase you can enter their email and have the certificate emailed to them so they can use it online, or you can print it out so you can hand it to them personally. Make a your chocophile’s imagination run wild with possibilities of bars they can sample and classes to teach them the ins and outs of chocolate making. Get a $25 certificate so they can get a selection of our different delicious origin chocolates, get a $50 certificate so they can sign up for one of the great bean-to-bar chocolate making classes we offer every month on O’ahu, or get them a $100 certificate so they can have a class and a chocolate sampling!

Available for anywhere from $5-1000, selectable when adding to cart

•Pick the “Email Gift Certificate” on the left if you want to print the gift certificate yourself to send to someone or have it email to them.
•Pick the “Hardcopy Gift Certificate” if you want us to print and mail a hardcopy of the elegant certificate for an additional $5.

You're welcome to post this on any lists.

If you want to see a preview of our teaching, please check out these videos and interviews:

Foraging in the Lower East Side.

The strange effects of the Miracle Fruit on your taste buds.

Interview on KCRW's Good food radio show about chocolate making, 44 minutes into the show, if you want to learn more about the process.

Upcoming Classes:

Mother’s Day Truffle-Making Class, Sunday, May 12

Make Your Own Hawaiian Chocolate Bar, Every Thursday & Friday

Whiskey & Chocolate Pairing, Friday, May 24

Bean-to-Bar Chocolate-Making Class, Sunday, May 26

Madre Shop Pau Hana, Friday, May 31

O’ahu Cacao Farm & Chocolate Factory Tour, Sunday, June 2 & 16

Chocolate Tasting Tour, Thursday, June 13

Explore Hawaiian Cacao & Chocolate Week, mid July

Our registration policy is that we offer a full refund minus a $5 booking fee per ticket if you need to cancel at least 2 days before the class date, otherwise we offer to rebook for another date or apply your credit to chocolate. Please include your phone number in the buyer’s notes on your purchase so we can call you with same-day updates.