oh my goodness The elegant, handmade creations of Kate and Steve Shaffer’s Black Dinah Chocolatiers bring an unexpected drama to Isle au Haut cuisine

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On Isle au Haut, a winding, scenic dirt lane leads to the entrance of Acadia National Park. Along the way, visitors pass familiar Maine scenes: weathered, cedar-shingled cottages, picture-postcard coves, tall spruce trees and dramatic granite cliffs. From time to time, an old, beat-up car will barrel by – a sight common to the island communities.

Just before they reach the park, though, something entirely unexpected comes into view: a hand-painted wooden sign that reads, “Black Dinah Chocolatiers.” Beneath it, a smaller sign reads, “and caf?.”

Named for the sheer rock face seen from Kate and Steve Shaffer’s kitchen window, this tiny eatery is enough to lead even the most hard-core of hikers and nature lovers astray. Coffee drinks, wireless Internet access and tempting baked goods lure in tourists and locals.

But the real draw is Kate’s handmade chocolates, displayed in a glass-front case like miniature works of art: Crystals of sea salt glisten atop a caramel dipped in Venezuelan chocolate. Dried lavender flowers adorn a lavender-laced truffle. Golden bees and flowers are imprinted on the dark-chocolate surface of a honey-infused confection.

They are as beautiful as they are flavorful, and Kate wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I like to surprise people,” she said on a recent afternoon in her kitchen as she prepared the filling for her Sexy Mexi truffle, which features dark chocolate ganache flavored with ancho chili peppers and cinnamon. “I don’t like to be too heavy-handed, because then people won’t like it, but I do like surprising flavors. Nothing fancy, just surprising.”

Speaking of surprising, Shaffer, 35, doesn’t consider herself a chocoholic. A California native, Kate entertained herself as a girl by reading Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Her first dish was coq au vin.

“It was horrible, but I was hooked after that,” she said. “I made my way through the entire ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” although I didn’t master it.”

She started working in restaurant kitchens when she turned 14, and though she and Steve met in California, the pace and the people of Maine appealed to the couple. “Living in California we never did what we wanted there because it’s so expensive to live,” Kate explained.

“We were working constantly to make the rent payment, make the mortgage,” she said. “When we came to Maine, it felt like we could figure out what we wanted to do. There’s space to figure things out here.”

After visiting Steve’s sister in Gouldsboro, they decided to give it a go, and five years ago, Kate became the cook at the Keeper’s House on Isle au Haut. At first, she lived on the island Monday through Friday, and returned to their home in Bucksport for the weekend. Three years ago, they moved to the island year-round. Shortly after the move, the inn’s owners decided they wanted to retire, so they let the whole staff go.

“I thought, ‘Oh, God, what am I going to do? I don’t have a job anymore,'” Kate said. “Well, you can always cater on the island, but that’s not really my thing, especially the really big parties. If we’re going to stay out here, I’m going to need something that will be able to be shipped off island.”

At the Keeper’s House, her French-style truffles were a hit among the guests, and she always enjoyed working with chocolate. So she did a little catering to earn a living, all the while exploring the possibility of making sweet treats full time. Her quest led her to a workshop in California, and later an online professional chocolatier course offered through a school in Vancouver, British Columbia.

“I started studying it, and the more I learned, the more interested I became in it,” Kate said. “It’s a really chemically complex substance and there’s so much to learn about it.”

During a recent visit, Kate laid out bowls and tools on her kitchen island in preparation for making ganache, an emulsion of chocolate and flavored heavy cream that forms the soft filling in a truffle. On the stove, dried ancho chilies and cinnamon sticks steeped in hot cream – much like a teabag in boiling water.

Soon, she got to work breaking chunks of bittersweet chocolate off a huge slab with an ice pick and setting them aside to be melted.

“The enemy of chocolate is water,” she explained, carefully drying a stainless-steel bowl.

Steve popped his head into the kitchen and asked whether Kate could come out to the cafe for a moment. Through the curtain that separates the dining area from their house, a woman’s voice could be heard.

“Are you the artist?” she asked Kate. “This is a beautiful experience!”

So, too, is watching the artist at work. Her moves in the kitchen are carefully choreographed, precise. When Kate returned, she slowly heated the chocolate in a double-boiler, tempering it to melt the fat crystals. This is delicate science, and she has only one chance to get it right. When the chocolate reaches exactly the right temperature, she pours it onto a slab of Deer Isle granite and begins spreading it with a drywall trowel.

When it cools just enough for “seed crystals” to form, she transfers the melted chocolate back to the double-boiler, adds the strained, flavored cream and butter and stirs like mad. Soon, she removes the mixture from the heat and spreads the hot ganache into a frame, where it will set overnight before she envelops it in dark chocolate.

There are faster, fancier ways of making chocolate – everything from mechanized tempering systems to exact molds for the fillings. But the hands-on, bare-bones approach appeals to Kate.

“I virtually have no specialized equipment,” Kate said. “I love doing it by hand. I love the feeling. I don’t want to lose that.”

And neither do her loyal customers, who have traveled from near and far to seek out her chocolates since she set up shop in July. On this day, a group of local tweens had borrowed money from their relatives to buy chocolate, and they stood in front of the glass case pensively.

“I’ll have one of the white chocolate hearts,” one of the girls told Steve. “I want to come out here and get chocolates, so I try and save up my money.”

Her friend asked about the Earl Grey variety.

“Do you like Earl Grey tea?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ve never tasted it before, but I like hot chocolate.”

Later in the day, as Kate walked toward the town dock to pick up her food co-op order, admirers stopped to offer praise. One couple explained how they ration Kate’s chocolates, while Alison Richardson, a National Park Service employee who lives on the island year-round, extolled the virtues of “The Varietal,” a truffle dusted with organic cocoa.

“She’s really good at making everything beautiful,” Richardson said.

And deliciously unexpected, too.

Black Dinah chocolates are available at Lily’s Cafe in Stonington; The Weatherbird in Damariscotta; and at the Shaffers’ cafe on Isle au Haut. The chocolates will be available for mail order starting in mid-September. For information, e-mail info@blackdinahchocolatiers.com or call 335-5010.