Journey Shannon

I love to create, build, grow, make pretty and share. Chocolate and Pastries is my form of arts and crafts. It’s amazing seeing the raw ingredients of cacao nibs, flour, eggs, vanilla beans transform into something so edible, wonderful, that we all love and often believe we need. I love sugar. It brings me happiness, inspires my dance, widens my smile.

 Sugar is my friend.

My mother is Creole, from Lafayette, Louisiana. Inside me is history, spices, stories, foreign language, spells and recipes. Noir d’Ébène Chocolat et Patisserie is French, meaning Black of Ebony Chocolate and Pastries.

I studied culinary arts at the Illinois Institute of Art and The French Pastry School in Chicago, Illinois. My shelves hold over 100 pastry, chocolate, baking and culinary books. The journey to perfecting this craft is long, inspiring and delicious.

Travel is an additional pleasure that gets my juices flowing. Oahu, Hawaii with its tropical fruits, exotic beaches and surfing, taught me chocolate. There I met Madre Chocolate and Manoa Chocolate, both making chocolate from scratch from bean to bar. These companies showed me the magic of turning cacao beans, once currency, into the sweet, bitter creamy concoction that we know. I’ve been importing cacao beans and making chocolate from scratch from bean to bar since 2012.

 You gotta share your knowledge and power. Give it to others. I created Sugar In the Class, an educational program for grade and high school age students. We teach the history of chocolate and how to make chocolate and pastries. Students enhance their team building, reading, writing, math and comprehension skills.

 I love arts and crafts, sugar, pastries, cookies and chocolate. I love being around others and learning, sharing. I love to travel, it’s relaxes me and inspires. I love to love and I care about our existence, joy and piece of mind. I love creating and sharing my gifts.

Your Chocolate Artist,

Journey Shannon