VOA常速英语:仅有一个人的巧克力工厂的成功

So once the beans are cracked in the winnower, the nibs, which is the meat of the bean, goes into the grinder.Two big stone reels in it.And it just spins round and round and grinds the nibs into liquid called coco liquor.To that I add sugar, that is all of my chocolate is.Just coco beans and sugar, that’s what’s in here right now."

That ingredient may be simple, but making a good craft chocolate is anything but.

What you’re eating is the result of the chocolate maker’s creative choices.How they process that could be how they roast it, how they grind it, how they conche,how they do all of these myriad things that go into the flavor of the chocolate.So my chocolate is a direct expression of my taste in my creative process,which is distinct from other people’s, even if we use similar equipment."

For Ben Rasmussen, his chocolate love started about eight years ago when he tasted a sample of gourmet dark chocolate.He said he fell in love with it instantly and he started learning to make it by himself.

I learned how to make it just through the internet and through trial and error and kind of teaching myself on reading old books, study and just doing it,got some used equipment and started messing around with it, fell in love with the process,and that’s basically how it started."

In very short order, his company, Potomac Chocolate, was born.The bar from that first batch of chocolate he made in his kitchen was a finalist in that year’s Good Food Awards,which is based out of San Francisco.

That bar also won an Academy of Chocolate Awards in 2011.I won a couple of Academy of Chocolate Awards and a few International Chocolate Awards for four different bars."

Winning those awards led to a high demand for his chocolate,and soon he moved his production out of his kitchen and to his basement, where he makes the chocolates now.Rasmussen also has built most of his own equipment by himself.But chocolate-making is not his full-time job.

I’m a Linux system administrator, a computer nerd, and keeps me busy.So finding out how to balance the work at my day job and chocolate is a real struggling,especially considering the fact that I’ve got a family, four kids; So I am a busy guy."

The busy guy makes about 140 kilos of chocolate every couple of weeks,and sells them online and in high-end gourmet specialty stores.

The craft chocolate market is really exploding, and I make all of the chocolate myself.So it’s a very small company, but it continues to grow.Every year has been better than the year before, last year was the best by far.”

Rasmussen says he constantly strives to be better today than he was yesterday, and to make the best chocolate he can.

For producer June Soh, I’m Carol Pearson, VOA news, Washington.