The shelves just inside the glass door at Peter’s Chocolates are bare, the Easter bunnies having scampered elsewhere to avoid the sun streaming in.

“Chocolate and the sun are not friends,” said Seth Steinheiser, owner of the establishment on West Jefferson Street.

The rest of the shop, like other area confectioneries, is filled with treats for this busiest of holiday seasons. From the looks of it, county residents have one large sweet tooth.

The air inside chocolate shops can smell overwhelmingly sweet to anyone not around it every day.

“I don’t even smell it anymore,” said Steinheiser, who has run Peter’s since 1998 with help from his family.

Wafting from the back room, the aroma arises as employees mix and pour, melt and mold certain ingredients according to secret recipes, a little like Willy Wonka’s factory.

The recipe book at Barkus Chocolates is “well protected” said owner Amy Barkus. Her father started the line at his bakeries in 1953. Now 18 employees create candy at the Barkus shop in the Point Plaza Shopping Center in Butler Township, and another location opened in October on Route 19 in Cranberry Township.What lies within those well-guarded pages? More than a few smudges, and the recipes for whatever the company creates. “There’s 52 years worth of recipes in there. Everything is written down,” Barkus said.The accumulation of notes is like a diary, she said.“Things change; things are always changing. When dad started, there was no such thing as a chocolate-covered pretzel and that’s huge now. ... It’s because of the customers that things change. It’s what they want.”Recently, what customers have been buying more of is the dark chocolate.“There are many more antioxidants in the dark chocolate than in the milk chocolate,” Steinheiser said, hence the darker version’s growing popularity.“In the last year, we’ve seen people have been changing to dark chocolate. It’s really been in the news,” Barkus said. “We didn’t really make so much before and now we’ve been making bigger batches.”With more than 27 different kinds of plants that produce cocoa beans in the world, one of the biggest challenges is making chocolate with a consistent flavor day after day, Steinheiser noted.“What the blend is, ahhh, no one knows. It’s a secret,” he said. “But the chocolate tastes the same year to year.”Naturally temperature makes a difference.“If you take chocolate home and put it in the refrigerator, it will taste different,” Steinheiser said. Room temperature below 80 degrees is usually OK, he said.

Chocolate is first melted to certain temperatures, called tempering, to obtain the outward shine. “Unfortunately people sometimes mistake that shine as the use of wax,” Barkus said. “Commercial makers have to do that to be able to ship it. We don’t do that here, no paraffin here.”Then the chocolate becomes all manner of shapes and coatings. Bunnies stand out, but planes, trucks and motorcycles join the usual ducks and crosses.At the Candy Bouquet on Hansen Avenue, instead of making chocolate, owner Linda Cipolla buys it from Germany, France and Italy.“We say it’s chocolate from around the world. We also do chocolate that people want to eat,” she said, as in the Hershey bars enclosed in personalized wrappers.Probably the most popular product at the franchise, Cipolla said, is called a “chocolate bomb.”At its base is a chocolate candle with white, dark and milk chocolates built up from there.“It’s just full of chocolate,” Cipolla said. “People love chocolate.”

A specialty at Wilma’s Candy, Route 228, Saxonburg, is fudge — melt-in-your-mouth squares with a wavy texture in flavors like chocolate cheesecake (I’ve enjoyed this one) and turtle, a chocolate fudge topped with a layer of caramel and pecans.“Flavors vary,” said Carla Pflueger, owner along with her husband, Harold. “We’re going to be making chocolate mint swirl here soon because of St. Patrick’s Day. We don’t have it all the time. It’s whatever I’m in the mood for,” she laughed.A specialty of the house at Peter’s is a whipped chocolate truffle, a combination of three different kinds of chocolate. A newer addition is the triple chocolate egg, a confection whipped in the middle and “enrobed” in chocolate. Tiny sugar flowers bloom from behind the box’s cellophane windows.Chocolate-covered strawberries have their season, especially around Mother’s Day, Steinheiser said.“They’re very perishable,” he noted. “I pick the strawberries myself. Cordials tend to stay a little bit longer because they’re more preserved.”Along with strawberries, raspberries and caramel apples are dipped in chocolate for the Barkus shop. Popular there are the pecan caramel turtles slathered in chocolate, Barkus said.“Tons” of candy, the exact number Steinheiser wouldn’t say for the sake of competition, are processed through his store alone over the course of a year.“This is a business that people come into and they’re either in a good mood or maybe they’re not in a good mood and they buy a product that makes them happy. If it’s a gift, it’s going to make someone else happy,” Steinheiser said.

Candy shops produce other sweets besides chocolate. Peter’s makes a pecan caramel egg with not a whip of chocolate in it.“It’s surprising the people who come in who don’t want chocolate,” Steinheiser said.There are sugar-free versions of popular treats as well.“The busiest time of year is Thanksgiving through Easter,” Steinheiser said.“When it’s 90 degrees out in the summer, who’s thinking about chocolate?”Me!

MYTH: There is too much caffeine in chocolate.FACT: It takes one dozen Hershey bars to equal the caffeine in one cup of coffee.MYTH: Chocolate has way too much sugar in it.FACT: There is more sugar in one Slim Fast drink than in a quarter cup of M&Ms.MYTH: There is no protein in chocolate.FACT: A 3.5 oz. bar of fine chocolate has as much protein as one pound of beef or six eggs or three glasses of milk or one pound, 10 ounces of fish.MYTH: Chocolate causes acne.FACT: There is no link between acne and eating chocolate.MYTH: I can’t eat chocolate because I am allergic to it.FACT: Less than 1 percent of the world’s population is allergic to chocolate. In double blind studies, no allergic reactions have ever been found.MYTH: Chocolate is bad for my cholesterol.FACT: Chocolate contains stearic acid, which helps to reduce cholesterol. Milk chocolate levels have an equalizing effect (doesn’t help lower or raise levels). Dark chocolate, however, is rich in stearic acid and helps to reduce levels.MYTH: Chocolate won’t harm dogs.FACT: Chocolate is definitely not good for animals. About two ounces of milk chocolate can be poisonous to a 10-pound dog and more than that can be lethal. The stimulation of the cardiac and nervous systems caused by chocolate is too much for dogs to handle. The same goes for cats and other pets.MYTH: Chocolate causes hyperactivity in kids (so much sugar).FACT: This is kind of an old wives tale, but not really true. According to numerous studies, sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. Among others, studies at Vanderbilt University, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 1994 found absolutely no evidence that sugar and hyperactivity were linked at all.MYTH: Chocolate is addictive.FACT: Chocolate (the cacao) does contain stimulants: theobromine and caffeine.Theobromine is a mild stimulant that occurs naturally in many plants, including cocoa, tea and coffee. Theobromine is similar to caffeine except it stimulates the nervous system about 10 times less.And caffeine, as many coffee drinkers will attest to, is mildly addictive.Researchers have reported that cacao consumption stimulates a mild “marijuana like” effect. It is however a harmless euphoria and does in fact help to reduce stress.The fact is many people regularly eat chocolate and don’t become addicted.A University of Pennsylvania study that tested so-called chocoholics found that the cravings might not lie in chemistry at all, but the melt-in-your-mouth texture of chocolate.The study found that addicts preferred chocolate bars, even white chocolate bars which don’t contained any chocolate at all, over capsules of cocoa powder full of chocolate’s active ingredients.SOURCE: Candy Bouquet in Lyndora