Saturday, August 18, 2007 Convulsive over Choco By Mayette Q. Tabada
SOME great things result from the unintended.
The 24-year-old manager of the Butterbean Cookie Factory recalls that, while other kids were addicted to cartoons, he grew up watching every episode of Wok with Yan, a popular 1980s television show that featured a wok- and pun-wielding Cantonese-speaking cook.
“Seeing that I enjoyed watching these shows, my sister Marjorie decided to teach me how to bake.” Brian recalls that, after college, he wanted to enter a business he felt passionate about. He even made a weekend hobby of creating pizzas.
There followed two years of tinkering with the recipes given by his sister, experimenting, studying, traveling and product-testing.
But it was only when he, some family members and friends got together that their chocolate cravings combined to come up with the first Choco Loco, plain in its roundness and flatness but all pluperfect in its chocolateness—soft, chewy and bittersweet.
Did you expect anything less from choco maniacs?
Brian and his business partners opened their first stall in April 2006 at Ayala Center Cebu. A few months later, in October of the same year, SM City Cebu gave them an opportunity to branch out.
“Basically cookies, brownies and other premium sweet treats” is Brian’s prosaic way of describing Butterbean’s line of products. But a paroxysm of sensations bursts in one’s mouth when every sweet bit dissolves on the tongue, clings to every oral crevice, or lingers as a powerful fantasy-inducing memory.
Science confirms what choco addicts have always known: chocolate contains 300 distinct chemicals, including a neurotransmitter called serotonin that brings about feelings of well-being.
For a cake that a careless baker neglected so it failed to grow, Butterbean brownies, cookies and other sweets contain generous dollops of chocolate. The bestselling Chocolate Craze has chunks of chocolate embedded, not just sprinkled, on its wrinkles and cracks.
Brian says Butterbean responds to their customers’ cravings, whipping up super premium brownies that are made-to-order, and launching the sugar-free Chocolate Chunk, with macadamia and walnut.
Some versions, like the pecan-sprinkled Dynamite, have nuts to balance the sweetness, Brian says.
Although they taste no different, the sugar-free brownies look smooth, free of the cracks and wrinkles that, fans avidly attest, is part of the brownie’s legendary goodness.
Although his family has been in the food business for 20 years, Brian looked for a passion of his own after finishing his Business Management studies at the Ateneo de Manila University.
“They always say that if you love what you do, you won’t have to work another day in your life. And that’s how I feel about Butterbean.”
