Richmond chocolatiers craft edible homage to Lunar New Year red envelopes

A pair ofRichmond, B.C., chocolatiers are putting their own spin on the classic Lunar New Year tradition of red-envelope giving through the magic of chocolate.

The red envelope tradition, calledlaiseein Cantonese,hongbaoin Mandarin, andli xiortien mung tuoiin Vietnamese, is a big part of celebrations. Those who bestow the envelopes usuallyfilled with money are gifting good fortune and prosperityto the recipient for the New Year.

Dominique and Cindy Duby, the owners of Wild Sweetsin Richmond, wanted to pay homage to that tradition in their own style.

"Being based in Richmond, we have a very largeChinese community," Dominique said."We wanted to create something that was Chinese-inspired but sort of like East meets West."

The result? A decadent red cake, with sponge and creme brule layersflavoured with peanut, chestnut, kumquat, mandarin oranges and apricot covered in tempered white chocolate and decorated with gold chocolatecoins, allmade in-house.

Envelope-pushing creative process

The creation is in keeping withthe couple's "envelope-pushing" style. They are two of the few chocolatiersin the region who create chocolate from scratch beginning with cocoa beans.Most chocolatierswork withpre-made chocolate.

But it's not just the raw materials that are the focus of meticulous attention and detail. The Dubys havecollaborated with food scientistsat the University of British Columbia, experimenting with molecular gastronomy the study of how cooking transforms the physical and chemical characteristics of food.

For their red envelope cake, the couple used software to determine what kinds of flavour combinations would work best given their aromatic chemicalproperties.

"What we will do is we will go into the software and build up from there which ingredient would work either with chestnut or with the golden fruit and if it's golden fruit, which oneof those will work [with] the peanut," Dominique explained.

And presentation is also important.Unusually, theDubys work with a graphic designer,Linda Mitsui,to plan out their dessert designs.

"What we do on a regular basis when it comes to either the packaging or the design of the product is all to do with trying to figure out new ways of how to present food and breaking the barriers or the conceptions that people have," Dominique said.

"We always say, 'Why not?' "