Her Chocolate Journey

Posted on June 29, 2018

As Casey Hickey ’89 eased into an armchair in the lounge of Petit Philippe, her family’s wine and confection shop in Charlotte, her popular handcrafted chocolates were displayed like little works of art in a glass case a few feet away.

Hickey says she is a “journey person,” and she had taken a break to recount her path to artisan chocolatier. “It is not linear,” she said, laughing as she began connecting the dots from Carolina to the West Coast to Paris, and back again, from business to baking to her love affair with chocolate.

After the Greensboro native graduated from UNC with a journalism degree, she worked business development and nonprofit jobs, then headed west and became a fundraiser at the University of California-Berkeley. But that was not to be her professional destination.

“I really liked my job, but I didn’t go home at night and read fundraising journals. I went home and read cookbooks,” Hickey recalled. “I hosted dinner parties as an excuse to try recipes.”

She played around with cakes, and friends started asking her to bake for them. Her first big project was her best friend’s wedding cake. “It was a vanilla genoise with a buttercream that was infused with probably Chambord and a bunch of fresh berries on top,” Hickey said. “It was crazy wobbly.”

One job led to another and then dozens. So in 2003, Hickey decided to make the leap from late nights reading cookbooks to culinary school — the renowned Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She thought she would study cake, but a pastry class led her to a revelation about chocolate.

“I knew it as an ingredient, but I didn’t know it as a medium,” she said.

It was hard work, much more difficult than baking, requiring precise mastery of time, temperature and agitation. Hickey was enchanted: “Chocolate is chemistry, but it’s also art.”

At the end of her nine months in France, she returned to America and married fellow traveler and wine aficionado Mark Meissner. She worked various pastry jobs around San Francisco before eventually leaving the kitchen to stay at home with their children.

But she never stopped experimenting with chocolate. “We joke and call chocolate a cruel mistress,” she said, “but it’s one you keep coming back to because it asks something of you.”

In 2010, the couple decided to move to Charlotte to be closer to her family and to open Petit Philippe. Hickey launched Twenty Degrees Chocolates — the name refers to the fact that the cacao tree grows only within 20 latitudinal degrees of the equator — as the in-house sweets purveyor. She quickly fell back into her passion from culinary school. The couverture, or base, chocolate in many of her 30 flavors of confections is the same one she learned with in Paris.

Her caramels are creamy, and truffles burst with fruit flavors such as raspberry and cherry. But Hickey is drawn personally to rich, complex dark chocolate confections. She recalled a time long before her formal, Parisian introduction to chocolate, when her journey probably really started.

“I was always that weird kid that traded my Halloween candy for the Special Dark,” she said, grinning.

— Adam Rhew ’08

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Highlander Pot de Crème

Casey Hickey ’89 says this recipe was inspired by her Highlander truffle, made from Scotch whisky and milk chocolate.

10 ounces heavy cream

5 ounces whole milk

2 ounces Glenmorangie “The Original” single-malt Scotch (Hickey notes: This Scotch has a distinctive, mellow flavor that harmonizes beautifully with the milk chocolate. If you substitute another Scotch, look for one with a fruity or honey flavor profile rather than one that is peaty or smoky. You also may substitute Chambord or another liqueur.)

2 ounces dark chocolate (60 to 65 percent cacao; E. Guittard, Valrhona or other premium brand), chopped

7 ounces milk chocolate (Valrhona or E. Guittard), chopped (Hickey notes: Valrhona, Guittard, Cacao Barry and Callebaut all produce good-quality milk and dark chocolate. Some brands can be found at select Sur la Table retail stores and through online resources, such as chocosphere.com)

5 large egg yolks

2 tablespoons sugar

▶  Place the chocolates and Scotch in a medium heat-proof bowl and set aside.

▶  Whisk egg yolks and sugar in a separate heat-proof bowl and set aside.

▶  Heat cream and milk over moderate heat until bubbles form around edges.

▶  Slowly stream about half of the scalded cream mixture into the eggs, whisking continuously. Pour the tempered egg mixture back into saucepan with the remaining cream and whisk to combine.

▶  Continue to cook over moderate heat, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until it is quite thick (mixture should coat the back of the spoon without running); do not allow eggs to scramble or mixture to boil.

▶  Pour the custard through a sieve placed over the chocolates and allow mixture to sit for 2 to 3 minutes. Whisk mixture, starting in center of bowl and working your way toward the outside of the bowl. Once the mixture has completely combined and is smooth, strain it again through a fine mesh sieve set over a pitcher or other container with a spout.

▶  Pour into 8 demitasse cups or 6 (4-ounce) ramekins, set in a larger baking pan. Carefully cover the entire dish with foil so as not to touch the tops of the custards. Refrigerate at least 3 hours, until firm.

▶  Allow custards to come to room temperature before serving. Garnish with fresh whipped cream.

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