People at Work: Local chocolatier cooks up major step for family business

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Molly Cook, the chocolatier behind Marble & Steel Craft Chocolates, a chocolate company she owns and operates with her husband, John Cook, is preparing a big step for her local business.

“We are building our shop in South Asheville there on Hendersonville Road across from Publix,” said Cook. “What we’ve been doing has just been blowing up to where we don’t have room for anything, and we just wanted to be able to have our community here be able to shop with us more frequently and have more products to offer.”

The shop is tentatively slated to open in mid-April. The move will mark the first brick-and-mortar location for Marble & Steel, which Cook has operated out of her home since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, producing bonbons, chocolate bars, cocoa bombs and flavored chocolates of all kinds, all while raising two kids.

“I built a commercial kitchen in our house,” Cook summarized.

(Courtesy: Molly Cook)

(Courtesy: Molly Cook)

(Courtesy: Molly Cook)

One of the chocolate shop features Cook brought to her home was a marble-top table. The tables have a practical purpose, allowing chocolatiers to easily temper chocolate on the smooth, cool surface. For the Cooks, theirs had an aesthetic one, too.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen our logo, but we have a steel scraper as the logo icon. In the business, at least where we worked, we called it a steel,” Cook explained. “So, I was thinking like, husband and wife team, you have to use a marble top table to table tempered chocolate, and you gotta grab your steel to move it around. Two hand-in-hand things that goes into making the product that we have, and kind of a nod to the team of chocolatiers making it.”

Suddenly, Marble & Steel had a name.

Chocolate has been a family business for Cook even before she set up a chocolate warmer in her kitchen. Her maternal grandfather was a 3rd generation owner of a chocolate business, a family legacy Cook revisited at culinary school.

“I loved all the chocolate stuff we were doing, so I did my internship at a chocolate shop in Fort Myers, Florida, which pretty much specialized in the type of chocolate that I make now,” Cook said. “Airbrushed, colored chocolates with really fun fillings and a lot of good caramel and ganache-based stuff. I worked there for almost 10 years and I was a sous chef before we left.”

The Fort Myers shop was where Cook met her husband, John, who presently works as pastry chef for the Omni Grove Park Inn. Pastries are one of the biggest product expansions the couple hope to offer at the brick-and-mortar Marble & Steel.

While those expansions are coming, Marble & Steel already has a huge variety of chocolates for sale. With so much to choose from, even Cook has a hard time picking her favorite.

“It’s kind of a hard question for me because I designed all the flavors, so they’re all like my little babies,” Cook admitted. “It kind of depends on the day. But I would say, like, tried and true, I love a salted caramel, which is probably one of our best sellers. And generally, if I’m at another chocolate shop, I’ll get a caramel. If people can do caramel really well, that’s usually a good sign.”

For shoppers who would like to try Marble & Steel caramel – or any other chocolate, for that matter – for themselves, Cook offers pick up and shipping options at www.marbleandsteelcraftchocolates.com.

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