Colleen Heidecker
Master Chocolatier
How did Dolphins and Deserts lead to Desserts and Deliciousness? That's Colleen's story. :)
Dolphins. Growing up in Edmonton her love of animals led to a BSc in Zoology and Animal Behaviour at the U of A and working with the Dolphins at WEM. She expanded to training and researching bigger cetaceans and other exotic animals as she moved around Canada and then the world including the Bahamas, Florida, Las Vegas, and Denmark before she came back to Edmonton to be with family.
Deserts: It was while working in Las Vegas that Colleen became fascinated by the extreme conditions of the Mojave Desert and their impact on the health and performance of athletes. While organizing Adventure and Trail Run races, her creativity took over when she sensed a need for nutrient dense, superfood laced performance snacks that were also great tasting. But she soon wanted to diversify and create snacks and desserts for everybody.
Desserts: When she took an opportunity as the Lead Dessert Chef at Edmonton's Noorish Conscious Eatery she began using her extensive superfood knowledge to make sure immuno-compromised or allergy sensitive people had choices too. To sharpen her business skills she took a manager's position at a health food store in Sherwood Park which led to a stint as the manager and Executive Chef designing recipes at a Raw food Cafe. But she soon thought, "What food is more super than Chocolate, right?"
Deliciousness: Throughout all her experiences and recipe building with chocolate one thing was becoming obvious: Colleen was a supertaster. So she felt her next obvious step to capitalize on this was to attain Master Chocolatier status (through Ecole Chocolat) and then attend Melissa Coppel's Atelier to polish her craft.
Voila!! Colleen's Chocolates was born!! The recent economic climate has pushed her into cyber-entrepreneurism with www.colleenschocolates.com where she focuses on keeping her online shop tidy, posting up-to-date social media links, and giving you the all important information about where to find her next show or Chocolate tasting event.
So what’s in it for you? Well, the culmination of all this is that Colleen wants to bring everybody an easily accessible, fantastic chocolate experience in every bite! She strives not only to hand-craft each one of those super tasty chocolates (conscious of including Vegans and allergy or food sensitive people) but also to share and teach her passions openly (with no "secret" recipes) by offering virtual and "real-life" classes and chocolate tasting events. So pop by her site and treat yourself or someone you love, AND just for reading this far - use the coupon code BIO for a little surprise. ;)