3 Reasons to Indulge in Chocolate

Hope everyone had a great Easter break.  Indulge in some chocolate over the Easter holiday?

dark chocolate at Dello Mano

Just in case, here are 3 great reasons to support your decision to indulge in all that beautiful chocolate.:)
1.    Research and studies have shown that chocolate can help lower the risk of heart disease. In a recent report, it was stated that participants who regularly eat chocolate have about a 37% lower chance of heart disease as opposed to those who do not eat it.  According to the study both milk and dark chocolates when consumed in a reasonable amount on a regular basis help lower the risks of heart disease and stroke.
2.    Premium dark chocolate is a great source of antioxidants which are said to help reduce wrinkles and ageing.  In addition, they help boost blood circulation which is influential in enhancing skin tone and texture.
3.    According to a Swiss study, eating chocolate helps improve  moods.  These studies have shown that high quality chocolate contains certain unique natural substances which elevate the mood and reduce stress levels.

Of course everything in moderation as there always seems to be a report about something to do with chocolate. The above is merely a suggestion for the positives of eating chocolate.

Hope though you did manage to relax and enjoy some wonderful chocolate over Easter – any favourites?

Dello Mano explores how the Easter Bunny come about?

The Easter Bunny - all shapes and sizes

We all know that the Easter bunny is a rabbit that sneaks into people’s homes the night before Easter and hides colored eggs, chocolates and for the very stylish , Dello Mano Luxury Brownies . But questions remain – What does Easter have to do with bunnies ? Where did the Easter Bunny originate from? And  is the Easter Bunny contactable to tell him that Dello Mano brownies as  a great Easter gift and alternative to Easter Eggs?

Here’s the result of the Dello Mano exploration.
Easter is celebrated in March- April and coincides with the to celebration of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The beginning of spring is the season of new beginning and revival. Some texts believe that the origin of the word Easter appears to lie in 13th century Germany, where the spring goddess Eostre was illustrated as a young woman carrying a basket of colored eggs and 2 baby hares. Thus the name Easter originated for the spring festival.
However, the eggs and rabbits are both a symbol of fertility and they have been used as a symbol of the beginning of new life for centuries. According to some researchers, the Persians used to give out eggs to celebrate the arrival of spring. As the hare and rabbit are the most fertile animals, they were used in various rituals to promote and celebrate fertility.
As Christianity spread, Easter and giving eggs were incorporated into the religion as a religious festival. But  our research suggests this symbolization was transformed into the Easter bunny bringing eggs, in Germany in the late 1500s and early 1600s. The Germans introduced the idea of Oschter Haws, which was a rabbit who laid a nest of colored eggs for good children and later sugar and candy bunnies were made to celebrate the holiday. The story goes that when the Germans migrated to the United States and beyond in the 1700s, the concept of Oschter Haws also went along, which later evolved into the present day Easter bunny!

Here in Australia not only was the concept of the Easter bunny introduced but also real rabbits. The rapid rabbit growth soon resulted in them becoming a pest as they began destroying many habitats, causing endangerment to many local animals. Due to this reason, Australians have tried hard to officially remove the Easter Bunny and substitute it with the Easter Bilby.
The Easter Bunny or Bilby, over time has become the most anticipated character after Santa Claus.

Today the much awaited Easter bunny not only brings colored eggs but also goodies like the delicious chocolate and luxurious Dello Mano Belgian Chocolate brownies.

You can contact the Dello Mano Easter Bunny and buy brownies at our store 29 Doggett St. Teneriffe in Brisbane, online or order by telephone 1300 661 682.  A great Easter gift. We happily deliver all over Australia.

Where did the term “brownie points” come from?

Brownie Points - the Dello Mano Way!

Here at Dello  Mano we’d like to think that everyone is striving for “brownie points” – we certainly are!

A client came into our  store the other day and asked abut the term and it got us thinking.

For most of us, the term brownie refers to delicious squares of chocolate heaven but when followed by ‘points’, it implies something totally different. We use the term as an idiom for someone trying to earn favor or approval, “If I do this I might earn a few brownie points”. So what does a chocolate  have to do with earning approval?

Evidently not much.

The phrase brownie points could have originated from a number of sources. In the Australia,US, and the UK it is most commonly associated with girl scouts who are also called Brownies. Girl scouts get badges for a variety of milestones and it is commonly assumed that these badges became the source of the term.

However, there are other stronger influences that probably made the phrase popular. A gentleman called George R Brown developed a scoring methodology for railroad workers in the late 19^th century that became very popular and soon people were referring to their scores as ‘Brownie Points’. Another suggestion is that the term came from the use of brown stamps post World War 2 to encourage customers to shop at grocery stores. The grocers would present customers with brown stamps, which could be exchanged for a gift later on. Finally a publishing house is credited with incentivising its delivery network of youths with brown vouchers for achieving their sales target. These too became known as brownie points.

Any thoughts or ideas about the term Brownie Points? Which do you think seems like the most plausible definition?

If by some chance you are looking to earn a few brownie points then Dello Mano luxury brownies are surely the answer

Dello Mano Brownies Star!

Today there is great excitement in the kitchens of Dello Mano!!!

We just had our new kitchen hygiene and procedures reviewed and we was given our Star Rating for our premises at 29 Doggett St.

Check out this video of the very excited team…. and let them tell you our Star Rating.

Everyone has worked so hard – thanks to the team – great excitement today as we celebrate!

Brownie Passion +

Yes it is true we are absolutely passionate about brownies but for many of you who have visited our Dello Mano store at 29 Doggett St. Teneriffe you’ll know that we too love art. The words  Dello Mano  are corrupted Italian for “of the hand” meaning that we hand make our brownies, chocolates and cookies. As we were fitting out our new Doggett St. store we felt really strongly that our own hands then should be put to work in creating the atmosphere that would be our first Dello Mano store. We started the decoration process with the library wall (to be honest the rest of the store was still being built but we were on a tight schedule ) where I had been determined to use wallpaper. With less than a couple of weeks to opening day,  I scurried down to the local wallpaper store to select, only to find out that the lead time for many of them was about 3 weeks!  With only days till opening and starring at very blank walls, I decided to get creative.  I painted wall paper and then  spent hours matching and assessing the colours and patterns. Nervously I eventually ripped the paper into pieces to create a collage of colour and interest. As I put the wall together there was much comment from many on site   however in the end I felt that we had created something of our own uniqueness,with our own hands and therefore  put a little piece of us (albeit an exhausted us ) into the foundations of the store itself.

Over this last weekend, Adam and Margaret two of our very supportive Dello Mano friends visited the store. Adam is a keen photographer and took this lovely photo of the library collage wall to which I am referring above. Great work Adam and thank you for sharing it so generously with us.

Dello Mano library wall - created by Deb - photo courtesy of Adam

BMW luxury meets Dello Mano luxury brownie

BMW 3 series recently launched with Dello Mano luxury brownies sharing the celebration.

BMW recently launched their new 3 series. Dello Mano was fortunate to attend with our luxury brownies forming part of the “luxury”celebration. The launch was a great success with over 1000 people attending the Motorline BMW showroom at Daisy Hill. Our lovely Jen was there and given a wonderfully warm reception as she sampled the range of Dello Mano Luxury Brownies.

Dello Mano luxury brownies at Motorline BMW

Guests at the BMW 3 series launch were welcome to enjoy Dello Mano brownies and each attendee was given a little piece of Dello Mano luxury to take home and  enjoy whilst they imagined driving the new 3 Series.

Luxury Brownies meet BMW luxury

Dello Mano Luxury Brownie gift boxes were displayed with many guests showing interest in our Dello Mano Corporate Gift options.

Dello Mano Luxury brownies and BMW

Thanks Craig and Aimee for allowing Dello Mano to be part of this wonderful event.

Brownie Love for Chocolate

Over the past few weeks we’ve had the pleasure of Elizabeth visiting our store and sharing some stories about her family history. Since we love a food history story here at Dello Mano,  we thought we’d share it with you.

Elizabeth is the grand-daughter of William Love, a Scottish Chocolatier who settled in and around Woolongong NSW. He was friends with Edwin “Ted” Street (of Streets Ice Cream) and according to Elizabetsh family legend, was in fact the person to teach Ted how to dip his vanilla ice cream heart shapes in chocolate to create the Streets “Heart” Ice Cream.  Ted started his ice cream business in his shed and the two men apparently tinkered around together, each sharing their own knowledge and expertise. In 1946, Ted opened a factory in Turella and launched his soon to be very popular first stick ice cream called the “Heart”. On weekends Elizabeth recalled Ted travelled extensively in the region with  his cart selling ice cream in the streets.

Photo Reference:

Edwin Street (1891-1975), by unknown photographer, 1900-10

Wollongong City Library and the Illawarra Historical Society, P15\P15267 [left]

Today, Streets is Australia’s largest ice cream producer. Today most of the ice cream products are made in Minto a suburb of Sydney and the ice based products are made in Asia.

Streets was taken over by an international company called Unilever in the early 1960′s .  I found a great Heart commercial from the 1960′s on You Tube .

As a girl I am quite positive the Heart Ice Cream was my favourite …or at least on of my favourites .

Thanks Elizabeth for your kind visits and for sharing that wonderful story.

If anyone else has a food history story we’d love to hear it.

Brownies aside for a moment…..

Up until now I’ve been on a mission to make sure I  never ever know how to make a coffee! The reason being, if I learnt how to do it well then I’d need to make it myself. As a mother working and developing a small business it seemed one little luxury that I could hold onto – a cup of coffee and one of our Brownies. However with the forthcoming move to the new Dello Mano home at 29 Doggett St. Teneriffe,  the whole team was going off to Di Bella for extended training. Their excitement was  just too compelling and I found myself at the training session making my first ever coffee:

the first cup of coffee I made!

I know all of the experts out there can probably tell it wasn’t the best cup of coffee and you are so right!  They have all put me to one side now. Of way more talent was our lovely kitchen team – they all did brilliantly.  Don’t they look proud of themselves:

Dello Mano team and John from Di Bella

and of course the leader of the coffee “pack”:

the coffee leader looking rather proud of his accomplishment!

Needless to say everyone is still making me coffee!

I hope we see you at the new 29  Doggett St. Teneriffe store soon!

Unique Colour Chart for Brownies New Home

our unique paint colour chart

We love  doing things a little differently at Dello Mano and really are intrigued by people or things that are not your norm.

We were seriously amused when we met with our lovely floor guy at 29 Doggett St., the new Dello Mano home. We were there to discuss options of vinyl or epoxy on the kitchen floor. Having decided on our floor type, our very friendly and most accommodating floor man asked me what colour I’d like the floor to be. I said  very practically “something easy to keep clean” and he said “well, how about this colour I put down up north last week”. With that he casually kicked up his leg and pointed to a spot on his boot -this was our unique paint colour chart!

We just loved his attitude so much that the blue grey spot on his boot just had to be the colour of our new Dello Mano Brownie kitchen  floor! And so it was…

(and if you are wondering we are still thinking about drawing some inspiration from his socks )

PS : Not only a great man but did the most amazing job of our floor – importantly with such a positive and caring attitude. Lucky us!

Dello Mano Brownies on the Move!

Earlier this year with the threat of water approaching our little kitchen at Breakfast Creek wharf we were given the opportunity to reflect on our growth as a business and our steps moving forward. For a few days we sat and waited for the waters to peak and during that time resolved that it was most probably time to move on from the Original Dello Mano Luxury Brownie home here at Brekky Creek.  As the days passed our first indication that the kitchen remained dry was on the Friday as we watched a News report from a helicopter talk through the damage along the river. We could see our bins were standing still, not floating and could safely assume that the top level of Brekky Creek Wharf had stayed dry. Sadly for many of the other tenants the lower levels didn’t fair as well.

Flood Waters at Dello Mano- Brekky Creek Brisbane

flood damage at the base of the carpark at the home of Dello Mano

Dry the Dello Mano kitchen was but unfortunately the power had been turned off early in the week and all of our product and stock was lost. As we sorted added bag on bag of rubbish to the pile we decided that in the new light we would search for a new home for Dello Mano and our little baby brownies.

the start of the Brownie pile up as we cleaned out our store rooms

We were wounded after the floods but relative to so many others we were dry and decided it was a matter of picking up and getting going. Importantly it was time to assess our business and take the next scary step forward. Having looked around at many places we were called to come and look at a property at 29 Doggett St. Teneriffe. With another place firmly in my mind, we went down to just take a look anyway. There sitting looking back at us was the cutest little corner shop. We were in love. I imagined the doors tall and inviting surrounded by greenery just like the stores we had visited in France. Although I was keen not to recreate a French look alike, this corner had magic and so with this we were swept up in the romance of the little corner store.

The whole building was once a mechanics workshop I believe and the developers had basically deconstructed the building when we came along. The good news for us was that there was the opportunity to have some involvement in the building and the way it would be set out.

Dello Mano New Home at Teneriffe

Work began in earnest planning our new Dello Mano home ( and home for us since we spend so much time with our brownies). Plans were drawn and drawn and redrawn.

As would be fitting, our new Brownie home lease was signed on top of an esky under the canopy of our stall at the Brisbane Farmers Market in Redacliff Place in the city.

Benny signing the Dello Mano lease 29 Doggett St. Teneriffe Brisbane

The fun and hard work was just beginning with a kitchen that looks like this below:

Dello Mano Luxury Brownie kitchen at Teneriffe Brisbane

Small business is a funny thing. We started the year in the mess of the flood and we are finishing it with a building project that took us backward before we can move forward.