If you're anything like me, you're probably really wondering about the name of this blog. Chocolate-My-Heart. Grammatically confusing? Check. Oddly, un-Neha-like, whimsical and romantic? Check, Check. And what does it mean??
Well to take it back to high school awkwardness for a bit (everything seems to lead back to high school awkwardness), I decided to get a tumblr account in 2008, when I was 14. My best friend and I both had chocolate related AIM usernames (oh the 2000's), and she suggested "Why not Chocolatemyheart?". I wasn't crazy about it, but I'm terrible at names and titles, and wanted to get on with it, so ChocolateMyHeart it was! And then tumblr ended up being the first place I started food blogging, even though the audience for it was terrible.
Flash-forward to my internship at the Public Defender's office this year, and I started to show the lawyers and other interns my stuff. Only to realize that one should never have a portfolio alongside their diary. So my friend, Carinna, who I have to thank for her incredible faith in me, decided to start pushing me into developing my talents into a business and creating real social media and professional-standard portfolios.
She originally wanted me to make her wedding cake, and while that didn't pan out, she thought "ChocolateMyHeart" was original and perfect for a wedding cake designer. And I mentioned that I'm terrible of thinking up names and titles in general right?
As unusual as the name still seems to me at times, it's oddly fitting. To say that I love chocolate is an understatement. I'm constantly doodling ways (see: my poli sci lecture notebooks) to manipulate it, use it as decoration, mold it to add that extra "oomph" to whatever I'm planning on making. It was my first introduction into blending art and food together, and as corny as I feel admitting this, it captured my heart and hasn't let go ever since.
But back to the pictures, I remember reading about the technique used to make chocolate leaves before leaving to go run errands, and my family was barely out of the garage before I had already raced back inside the house to start these up. They're really simple to make, just melt some chocolate (temper it preferably), and then use a brush to spread it onto a clean leaf. Leave it (leaf, haha get it) to dry and then peel the leaf off of the chocolate. I like to fill the veins with white chocolate or brush them with luster dust.
Happy Hunting!
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