Dallmann Confections: Candyland in El Cajon

Trying to find Dallmann Confections is a little tricky. Just off the 8 freeway in El Cajon, the little storefront doesn’t yet have any signage to speak of—owner Isabella Valencia’s only been there for two weeks—and the place is set back from the street. But, the location is really more headquarters than retail operation. Valencia has plans to eventually hold chocolate and wine tastings as well as chocolate-making classes here, but unlike other local chocolatiers, she has no plans for opening a café or shop on site.

“This just isn’t the right location for a café,” she acknowledges. “I’d rather wait until I can do it in La Jolla.”

But, having bounced around for the last couple of years in different locations, including downtown San Diego, her new East County workspace is a welcome relief. The garish yellow and turquoise paint on the walls and ceiling will soon be a thing of the past once Valencia redecorates, but in the meantime she’s got a large open kitchen—perfect for hands-on classes and demonstrations—as well as plenty of room for tasting guests to circulate.

You would think the 27-year-old Valencia came to making chocolate as an inevitability. Back in the ‘50s in her native Austria, her grandfather, Guenther Dallmann, ran a much loved pastry shop, which grew in renown and success when her mother and father expanded the business. Their Mozart Travel Cake—remember, this is Austria—is one of their biggest draws. It would have been only natural for Valencia to join the business, but instead it was her brother who went to work for their parents while she continued her education, earning a degree in hotel and restaurant management at The Institute of Tourism & Hotel Management in Klessheim, Austria.

Valencia first came to the U.S. on an internship at a resort in the Poconos Mountains back east. It wasn’t the most exciting place she could have landed but it was there that she met her husband, Alex. The couple returned to Austria for awhile but the Westgate Hotel’s general manager, George Hochfilzer, also Austrian, recruited them to work at the downtown San Diego hotel for 18 months.

“The idea was that we’d go back home to Austria after 18 months,” she says, “but with an American husband I was able to get a green card and I was promoted to manage the gourmet shop.”

Long story short—one day Valencia got a call at work from Mainly Mozart, asking if she knew where they could buy Mozart chocolates, a delicacy that, as it happened, her parents make. Shipping the chocolates from overseas became cumbersome so Valencia decided to quit her job to learn how to make them herself. That was “it” for her.

“It’s like the way nuns say they feel when they explain their calling,” she says. “I felt it was what I was meant to do.”

Three weeks back at home with her family gave her the fundamental skills she needed to get started. She returned to San Diego, told Mainly Mozart she was ready to provide them directly with what they needed—and they told her they weren’t interested anymore.

Fortunately, Valencia was inspired by her new-found passion and, like an Einstein she says, spent her time at home playing with chocolates and ingredients like teas and spices to develop a line of confections. She approached her former Westgate Hotel colleagues, and they became her first customers. Wasting no time getting more accounts, her business quickly grew. Valencia now sells her chocolates to wine bars like Wine Love, Wine Steals, The Cask Room and Eno Winebar; retail stores like Taste, Zanzibar, Orfila Vineyards, Java Jones and the Westgate Gourmet Shop; restaurants like Villa Portofino in Catalina and hotels such as Tower23, the U.S. Grant, W. Hotel Spa, the Westgate and The Handlery.

And now of all things, Valencia’s preparing for the Academy Awards. Dallmann Chocolates will be part of the celebrity swag giveaway extravaganza for three days leading up to the Oscar’s. “I got an email out of nowhere asking me to participate,” she says. “I’ll be with other vendors at the Beverly Hilton in a booth with a display. They tell me that 35 celebrities a day will come to the booth, eat my chocolates and have their photos taken with me.”

Her hope, of course, is that she’ll be able to generate a lot of publicity through the event and even garner some A-list customers.

In the meantime, Valencia is madly whipping up confections for her regular clientele as well as other special events. Stacked on shelves are bags of the Felchlin chocolates that are the foundation of her creations: dark 72 percent, a lighter 65 percent and 38 percent milk chocolate. The Swiss company makes single bean organic chocolate derived from Venezuela.

In the adjoining workroom, drawers are packed with all sorts of fascinating ingredients that she uses in her chocolates. Out came a small bag from Japan containing pearl dust, literally the wispy particles that result from hand grinding pearls. Valencia sprinkles it on her Prosceco and Pearls champagne truffles, a hit at weddings, she says. Then there’s a container of bee pollen and another of royal jelly for her Royal Jelly truffle. Royal jelly, which is secreted from the salivary glands of worker bees, provides nutrition to the larvae in the hive. Valencia uses it in the truffle’s ganache, and sprinkles bee pollen lightly on top. She also has a bag of fine grade macha, or green tea powder, and assorted spices and herbs. Fresh flowers, like orchids and roses, figure in her presentations and dried flower petals often top her candies.

Interestingly, she says she gets many of her ideas for her confections from body shop products, which often contain unusual combinations of ingredients. But, it still takes a lot of fine tuning to be able to turn a concept into a luxurious chocolate bonbon or truffle. One example is the key lime bonbon I tried that morning.

It is a beautiful treat—Valencia uses her thumb to paint the inside of the molds a vibrant yellow and green. The ganache is made with key lime and forest honey. The trick has been just how far to take the lime flavor. Too much and customers will wince at the taste of sour chocolate, so it has to be just enough to develop the flavor and no more. Valencia is just shy of reaching the finish line here, although the bonbon itself is rich and delicious.

On the other hand, the Rose bonbon was perfection and I’m not even a huge fan of rose-flavored food. It reminds me of my grandmother’s strong smelling soaps when I was a child. And, often candy makers are heavy handed with the rosewater. So, I was wary. But, it was a delight, especially the way it infused the caramel filling and contrasted with the bittersweet chocolate encasing it.

The Jasmine bonbon gently stoked my taste buds. The scent of the tea just swam up to my nose while its flavor lingered on the back of my tongue even after I swallowed the chocolate.

The other tea-flavored bonbon I sampled, Macha Passion, was equally well crafted. I love macha tea and I love passion fruit. Until recently, I grew a vine in my garden, always hoping it would bear the small fruit with its sweet-tart syrupy pulp. Valencia uses a passion fruit puree at the base of the bonbon, topped with a gorgeous ganache infused with macha, all wrapped in chocolate. My mouth felt like a happy playground as different flavors bumped up against one another.

The Giandja, a combination of hazelnut paste and Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur, was far more subtle and luxurious. It’s a smooth jazz kind of confection.

The palate is jolted awake, though, with the playful Fleur de Sel, which Valencia says is a customer favorite. The sea salt sits in the center of the top of the bonbon, so no matter where you bite, you get a sensation of buttery caramel and a little kick of salt, snuggled in bittersweet chocolate.

Finally, I got a chance to taste one of Valencia’s truffles, her basic chocolate truffle rolled in cocoa powder. It was dense and dark, definitely an adult confection.

Valencia also has a line of three chocolate bars of varying depths of chocolate. Her smart packaging includes suggestions on the back for wine pairings with the chocolates.

“I love to watch people take a bite of my chocolate and see the smiles on their faces,” says Valencia. “It makes me feel like a superstar on stage.”

Dallmann Confections is located at 780 N. 2^nd St. in El Cajon. You can learn where to find her products on her web site, www.dallmannconfections.com.

Have some thoughts about Dallmann Confections or other artisan chocolatiers in San Diego? Do you have a favorite neighborhood market or shop that carries unique or unusual foodstuff? Let me know or add to the conversation by clicking on comments below:

Print Page

Fancy Food Show in San Diego: A Glutton's Delight

For the first time, San Diego is playing host to the Fancy Food Show and as you can imagine, it is not for the faint of appetite. The show, which started yesterday and runs through Tuesday at the Convention Center, is aisle after aisle of specialty food and beverages from around the world, including for the first time on the West Coast, a Natural & Organic Pavilion.

I attended the show yesterday and while much of the crowd -- and it was a tremendous crowd -- was also fixated on the Chargers game, the aisles were packed with retailers, vendors, event planners and others in the food industry sampling an assortment of products that was simply overwhelming. After an hour or so, I had a moment when I unfocused my eyes and all I saw were mouths chewing and chewing. Gourmet? Yes. But gluttony was rampant -- forget New Year's resolutions and willpower. The Fancy Food Show is an industry chow down.

There were vendors from a number of different countries -- England France, Australia, Canada, Portugal, Spain -- and naturally there was a lot of cheese. I was mesmerized by what I saw from Italy, offerings that ran from pasta, sauces and olive oil to cheeses like Grana Padano, a hard granular cheese which looks much like Parmigiano Reggiano and is made with semi-skimmed cows milk in Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Trentino and Veneto. In the U.S., more people are familiar with Parmigiano Reggiano, but Grana Padano has been around since the 12th century, when Cistercian monks in Northern Italy's Po River Valley processed the milk of their cattle into these large -- 65 pound -- wheels of cheese. It's actually the largest selling hard cheese in Italy and in San Diego you can find it at Venissimo.

There were some sublime offerings in the world of chocolate. A few stood out, including Poco Dolce's bittersweet tiles with sea salt, the single-source Chocolates El Rey, which uses Venezuelan cacao and Schokinag Chocolate, which makes an outrageous hot chocolate. I sampled the Extreme Dark, with a 79 percent cocoa content, and instead of getting what I worried might be a stream of bitterness, instead enjoyed a very adult, very luscious sip of warm cocoa.



Among the more mundane, though tasty, displays was bagged popcorn. This is not something I would normally bother with, but I took a couple of bags from Dale and Thomas Popcorn and popped them open last night. Their Movie Theater Popcorn was surprisingly light and crunchy with just the right amount of salt and butter -- yes, they use clarified butter. And, the Kettlecorn popcorn was almost as good as what you'd find fresh at the farmers market -- that wonderful combo of sweet and salty with a good crunch.


I also had a wonderful surprise with licorice. Black Opal Aussie Licorice has a terrific, thick black licorice that diehard licorice lovers will love. It's chewy and rich and very satisfying. They also make a raspberry flavor covered in dark chocolate which is simply ridiculously divine.


Given the heady world of celebrity chefs, there were surprisingly few on hand. Paula Deen had a booth, but I didn't see her there. Same with Emeril and Rick Bayless (Frontera). A physically diminished Paul Prudhomme was gamely sitting on a mobility scooter, sauteeing a dish using one of his spice blends. The star of the show seemed to be the Barefood Contessa, Ina Garten, sitting at her booth, surrounded by cookie and cupcake mixes and dessert sauces, signing autographs.

I didn't see a lot of local vendors at the show, but I did meet one pair from Encinitas, Judy Nakatomi and Kazuyo Hirose, who own Kanaya Fine Tea. I tasted their "first plucking" Sencha and Hojicha teas, both of which were lovely and smooth. The partners are just introducing organic tea powders that can be used as a quick way to make a cup of tea or add to another beverage or to use for baking or creating sauces. The two flavors, Sencha and Genmaicha, are subtle and filled with the same vitamins and antioxidants you'd find in their leaf tea counterparts. Locally, you can find them at Zinc Cafe and Cardiff Seaside Market.

I know this is a ridiculously short list given the sheer scale of what was available (and I tasted everything from mozzarella stuffed red peppers, smoked sturgeon and brandy-infused caviar to chocolate truffles, duck sausage and at least seven different olive oils) but actually much of what was there is currently on the shelves and in the refrigerated sections of most of your favorite markets--products by Soy Vay, Republic of Tea, Ghirardelli and others that you already know. Others are less familiar but they are stocked in a variety of local shops. I'll be writing about some of them shortly, but in the meantime, the next time you hit Vons or Whole Foods or even CostPlus, take another look beyond what you've spotted on your shopping list. You might see something I tasted at the show that will open up new culinary possibilities for you.




Print Page