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Our Story
Just one lick (no way that's possible) and you'll understand why "heaven" is in our name.
Who really needs another hot fudge sauce? You do. And here’s why:
Most chocolate sauces are made for kids, like Augustus Gloop — a decidedly indiscriminate chocoholic who would have eaten a hornet’s nest if he thought there was chocolate inside. Handmade Heavens to Betsy is an entirely different thing. Depth replaces sweetness, complexity teases your senses and delights your taste buds, and its silky, luxurious texture can only be described as yummmmy.
Fact is, Heavens to Betsy is not just another chocolate sauce. It’s a luscious, decadent, complex dark chocolate hot fudge experience — heavenly, even — intended for the palates of aristocracy, old money and Top Chef winners. But… we make it for everyone.
When we say “handcrafted,” we can actually back that up.
The term “handcrafted” gets tossed around a lot, but at Heavens to Betsy, we really mean it. Betsy’s frustration with typical, excessively sweet fudge sauces sent her on a two year, kitchen-disheveling journey — one sometimes peppered by words that cannot be repeated here — to concoct a recipe for the most sophisticated dark chocolate fudge sauces ever poured, licked, dipped into, or scraped from the bottom of a jar. Laboring countless late nights over a stove, Betsy elevated trial-and-error to an art form, tossing enough rejects to fill a good sized hot tub. Yeah… we’d say “handcrafted” is the right word.
Paris, Zurich, Brussels… Issaquah?
Issaquah is a friendly, frequently chilly and rainy spot nestled against the foothills of the Cascade mountains, about 15 miles due east of Seattle, Washington. It’s known for its quaint charm and bucolic neighborhoods rather than anything specifically related to chocolate.
Instead, Brussels, Zurich and Paris are the places that come to mind when you think of fancy chocolate sauce, usually with names you can’t pronounce. Their fudge sauces are crafted and shipped to America to compete for your taste buds — unfairly, perhaps — right along side Pennsylvania’s finest, from a town named for the confection’s founder. The upside is it’s familiar and easy to pronounce. The downside is that if you’ve already had your twelfth birthday, it probably isn’t what you’re hoping for in a hot fudge sauce.
We think Seattle, and by extension Issaquah, should not be overlooked on the global map of chocolate Mecca’s. Fran Bigelow, for example, founder of Seattle’s Fran’s Chocolates, is considered one of the best chocolatiers in the nation, and has been credited with sparking America’s artisan chocolate renaissance. And Theo Chocolate, a relatively young upstart, was the first organic, fair trade certified chocolate maker in North America.
Made with 100% pure Nacional cacao from Peru.
Issaquah is also home to Fortunato No. 4, from whom we source the 68% dark chocolate that goes into Heavens to Betsy. This is a happy coincidence for us, with a significance measured on a global scale.
The Fortunato family had been farming cacao in Peru’s Marañón Canyon for a very long time. In 2011, the USDA requested random samples from the cacao trees in their region for genetic testing. All the samples proved to be at least 98% pure Nacional.
But, it was the 4th tree’s sample that upset the chocolate cart. That one — surprisingly, amazingly — was 99.99% pure Nacional. Until then, it had been mistakenly assumed that pure Nacional was extinct; wiped out by disease over 100 years ago. Not so, as it turned out. That “Mother Tree”, as it’s rightfully known, flourishes on the Fortunato family farm. And, ever since, Fortunato has encouraged other farmers in their community to clip and cultivate small branches from the mother tree to expand the source of pure Nacional cacao.
Not just “Fair Trade.” It’s equitable, just and honorable, too.
FARMER HOLDING A CACAO BERRY IN PERU. IT TAKES 5-6 YEARS FOR A CACAO TREE TO BEAR ITS FIRST FRUIT.
Today, Fortunato No. 4 buys organically grown, pure Nacional cacao at an average of 10 times Fair Trade premiums from over 500 of these individual family farms in northern Peru. It’s a magnanimous commitment, driven by their goal of creating generational wealth for the local farmers, rather than solely their own financial rewards for building a global chocolate footprint.
It’s this cacao from these farms — the only 99.99% pure Nacional cacao in the world — that goes into every mmmmm-inducing jar of Heavens to Betsy Hot Fudge Sauce. It’s part of the reason there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like a spoonful of perfectly warmed Heavens to Betsy poured over your favorite ice cream, cake, brownies, fruit… maybe even an old tennis shoe.
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