SWEET SUCCESS

Tucked in quaint buildings along cobblestone lanes in the picturesque towns of Europe are confectionery jewels — small chocolate shops. Now Palmer has one of its own.

The building may be a remodeled 20th century structure and the streets are pavement, but the chocolate morsels inside Hot Hot Chocolate Shoppe are made in small batches, by hand, in the style of European chocolatiers.

Owner Tai Duhamel discovered what she wanted to do when the Wasilla native and her husband took six months exploring 28 countries in Europe and Asia — chocolate.

“I need to open one of these when I get back,” Duhamel said she told her husband, Andrew Stevens.

Stevens and Duhamel had been living in California and then Florida. Stevens was in the U.S. Marine Corps and Duhamel went to culinary school in Florida. But they were ready to trade palm trees for Polarfleece.

“When we moved back, Wasilla had changed a lot in those six years,” Duhamel recalled. Instead of settling in Wasilla, they moved to Palmer to raise their family. When the time was right to open the chocolate shop she’d dreamed of, Duhamel picked Palmer.

“I just thought it would fit well,” she said.

She said her customers seem pleased, often telling her, “We’re so lucky to have a store like this in Palmer.”

“Like I am supposed to be somewhere else,” Duhamel said, with a smile.

It may not be far from where Duhamel grew up, but it was hardly a straight line to get there, and European chocolate shops were far from her first magnet for a career in food.

In the late 1990s, Duhamel was a sophomore at Colony High and a disgruntled teen.

“I was not wanting to show up at school,” she said.

So, she transferred to Burchell High. While the schedule was more flexible, the staff made her work and get a job. She was a cook at a sub shop where Bogard meets Seldon today.

“I was a natural,” she said.

She graduated early, married at 18 and moved away. When she came back to the Mat-Su Borough several years later, she was pregnant and didn’t want the long hours working as a chef, so she got a job at All I Saw Cookware in Wasilla, where she could be surrounded by cooking items.

About two years ago, she decided to open a chocolate shop. But before she could secure a loan, the economy went bust and the young, inexperienced entrepreneur was too big of a risk.

Not to be discouraged, Duhamel practiced her craft in her kitchen.

“I just decided to focus on the love of what I was doing,” she said. “That’s where a lot of my recipes come from.”

Her recipes rely heavily on herbs and spices — like ginger, cayenne, tea, rose, lavender and curry — rather than traditional flavorings. She uses cream from Matanuska Creamery and Valley-roasted coffee beans. The result is a sensual experience for the palate that can be at once gratifying and mystifying. Truffles are her hallmark, and the couverture-covered fillings are where she can be inventive.

“It’s fun because it’s just up to your imagination,” she said.

Couverture is chocolate used by chefs that contains at least 32 percent cocoa butter. It is, Duhamel said, difficult with which to work but a completely different flavor experience (“It’s how it’s supposed to taste”) than typical chocolate with its cocoa butter removed.

“It’s kind of a science,” she said of melting the couverture. “It’s been frustrating to learn how to do it.”

One of her other items, drinking chocolate, should not be confused with typical hot chocolate. It is the demitasse of couverture — thick, liquid chocolate.

Duhamel opened the Hot Hot Chocolate Shoppe two days before Easter 2010. The shop is smaller than she envisioned, forcing her to make all of her chocolates in small batches. Everything there is fresh.

“It turned out to be perfect,” Duhamel said of the delay and the downsizing. “It ended up being a blessing.”

Now that she has her shop, Duhamel, who was never much of a chocolate eater, has discovered she is a chocoholic, like her husband and her father, Joe Duhamel.

Duhamel says her husband tells people, “I’m a chocoholic so bad I convinced my wife to open a chocolate shop.”

“Now that I have this store, I feel like I’m his enabler.”

She keeps gluten-free products to dip in chocolate for their sons, who have food allergies. Julian is 3; Sacha, 1. Learning to deal with their food issues, she said, has made her a better chef — just another negative turned into a positive when covered in chocolate.

She said customer response to the shop has been heartening, and she looks forward to expanding her all-chocolate lineup.

“They really appreciate what I am offering,” Duhamel said.

Hot Hot Chocolate Shoppe is located in the Downtown Palmer Plaza, 550 S. Alaska Street, and is open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; 746-7334.