Making a Hash of It

Disclosure: A publicist invited SLM staff to the Mavrakos re-launch party, held October 20 at the Missouri Athletic Club.

Full disclosure: If there had been a ticket price, I would have paid it.

My mom used to joke away Freudian scar tissue by saying, “I’d sell my mother for chocolate.” If her secretarial job looked wobbly, she’d cheer herself up by saying, “I’d rather be dippin’ chocolates for Mavrakos.”

In both cases, she meant it.

I didn’t inherit the sweet tooth. My first act of magnitude was fishing all the Snickers out of my Halloween pumpkin and grandly bestowing them upon my mother. (She took them.)

But years of conditioning conspired with puberty, and by the time I hit my teens, a tugged-off, gooey strip of Mavrakos Heavenly Hash merited its name.

For my mom, it was “broken milk.” That abbreviated, near-poetic phrase was all she needed to say. We knew the next time we went grocery shopping, we would find long rectangles of Mavrakos pure milk chocolate, indented into raised triangles and coyly wrapped in brown paper, stacked on a table in front, under a big SALE sign. This happened in autumn, as I recall, and was always followed by a period of calm, an almost Zenlike savoring of the present moment that lasted until the candy ran out.

Then we waited for Easter. Easter was the pinnacle. Because at Easter, there were Heavenly Hash eggs. Take anything of a certain size that’s wonderful and blow it up bigger. The effect’s magical. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Big Bird. Cookie cakes. Giant schnauzers…

I’m sitting at my computer riffing on all this, and I realize it’s already 3:30 p.m. The re-launch runs from 3 to 5 p.m., downtown at the MAC. I speed down Forest Park Parkway and arrive in such haste, I try to crank a penny into the parking meter.

The publicist greets me deftly and gives me the day’s big news: Today, by mayoral proclamation, is Mavrakos Day. She presses a folder in my hand, explaining that Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate has had the recipes for 25 years and is now re-launching the original candies, made in their original, pure formulae, sometimes even on original equipment.

I glance longingly at the bunny-mold memorabilia, the sealed display boxes with the familiar logo, as I talk to Dan Abel Jr. His father, who started the Yum Yum Tree that turned into the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Co., grew up on the same street as Tom Wotka, the last Mavrakos owner. “They were friendly competitors—my dad was at his wedding,” Jr. confides. “So when Mavrakos sold in 1984, they gave my dad the recipes rather than hand them to Fannie Mae.” There were maybe 200 or 250 time-tested recipes, recorded in a leatherbound book worthy of a Dan Brown novel.

Abel tells me about the regular, chocolate, and raspberry caramels, but I brush the news aside. I’m eager to get to the Heavenly Hash (now prosaically renamed Marshmallow Pecan Bars). Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate has been making a candy that’s about 80 percent the Mavrakos recipe, but with almonds. “John Mavrakos buttered, salted, and roasted their pecans,” Abel says, “and they whipped the marshmallow more. So now we’re going to do that, too.”

A cataract of saliva gushes into my mouth, but I gulp it down and dutifully ask a question for my best friend. She swears to this day that Mavrakos used to melt the leftover Heavenly Hash into special batches with less marshmallow and more chocolate and pecans. Personally, I’ve always thought it her own private urban legend—but Abel confirms it. Sort of.

“That’s kind of like a candy-maker’s secret,” he says. “We used to make a scrap fudge, ourselves. Before computerized inventories.”

What I’m wanting right now is that big ol’ egg. Or a dark chocolate Mavrakos Molasses Puff. I glance around nervously at the remaining stragglers, willing them not to eat all the dark chocolate Molasses Puffs.

People drift toward the door. And as Abel tells me how pure the recipes are—heavy cream, real butter, real sugar and none of that high fructose corn syrup stuff—I see movement out of the corner of my eye. The MAC’s ubiquitous waiters are carrying away the silver trays of samples.

Panic rises.

Abel’s telling me the “turtles” that got me through high-school trig were actually called Pecan Burrs. Whatever. Are there more samples somewhere? I glance wildly toward the periphery of the room, where the waiters are now wheeling away the water glasses. All the guests have left but me.

He’s talking about the fondant Bonbons now, and the Coconut Crescents. “I was told, ‘If you are going to recreate Mavrakos, you better have a Coconut Crescent in the box,” he says. “It was the hardest to recreate—the center always fills. No! It’s not a donut!” He chuckles indulgently.

I can’t stand it anymore. Sounding a bit like Piglet, I say, “C-c-could I have a s-s-sample?”

He brings me two caramels.

Trying to look gracious, I chew strenuously so I can thank him. He hands me a demure white cardboard box to take home.

I feel its heft, do a quick mental calculation. Two inches square. Too small for hash. Too light for a turtle.

I’m going to the grocery store.

Mavrakos, as you no doubt already know, is on sale at Dierbergs as well as Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate and mavrakos.com.

—Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer