At the annual Curry Clash fundraiser for Lincoln’s Asian Community and Cultural Center, 2019.
Cacao trees in rainforest farm in Belize for Maya Mountain Cacao tour, 2013.
Rebecca’s been making some form of chocolate since 2010! Along the way she’s made it on her mom’s home juicer, in various rooms and apartments (once peeling beans by hand in her spare-room apartment they liked to call the “tool shed” when she taught English in Paris), as a full time chocolate maker for Cultiva Coffee in Lincoln, NE for over seven years, and now the owner of this revamped petite project.
What is this project now, though? Currently Rebecca is not making chocolate, but may revisit that in the future in a teeny capacity for the love of it. Instead she is preparing for a new phase in life, and dreaming up the rest of the Sweet Minou Mystery.
But a little bit about what Sweet Minou used to be…
Her chocolates were made fresh with homemade chocolate (“bean-to-bar”) with premium cacao sourced through Uncommon Cacao, a Transparent Trade company she has been working with since 2013! She started with one 60 kilo burlap sack of cocoa beans from Belize after she attended an origin trip with Taza Chocolate, and through the years has worked with cacao that Uncommon sources equitably from Haiti (PISA), Belize (Maya Mountain), Bolivia (Alto Beni, wild Beniano, wild Itenez), the Dominican Republic (Öko Caribe), Guatemala (Lachua, ADIOESMAC/Cahabón, Monte Grande), and Uganda (Semuliki Forest). Her chocolate made with the ADIOESMAC beans won prestigious international awards from the Academy of Chocolate in 2019 and 2020! :)
Rebecca worked to remove plastic from her packaging and in her regular prep usage. This led to some interesting wraps and containers! (remember the single truffle cups? :) ), and had come to be known for her creative praliné and gianduja using local and/or thoughtful ingredients.
Rebecca pulled away from chocolate a few times, and returned with the rights to Sweet Minou as a small cottage business, making chocolate out of her apartment kitchen and having her hubby deliver them (he still has one of his old delivery route lists Post-it-ed to his dashboard!) to their beloved local clients. Last year she moved back to Cultiva Labs and rented space there while she tried her hand at the local Sunday Farmer’s Market, and had a blast there hawking chocolates with her dad (Thanks, dad!!). Thank you for all the memories!
