Devlog 03 > Back to the chocolate (on an iPad)

Craft Cacao has been quiet for longer than I meant it to be.

Frankly, I’ve been conflicted about the long term plan after talking with several of you on the mailing list about what you need the most. I wasn’t willing to build an entire Chocolate Makers Management app. At least not to start.

I’m pivoting from my pivot. classic.

I’m going back to the question that started it. I have ingredients. What can I make with them, and will that recipe actually work in my melanger?

That means the calculator comes first. Put in the ingredients, see the numbers, adjust the recipe, and scale it to a batch you can actually make. Saved recipes and ingredients matter too. I don’t want to do the math, lose the good version, and start again next time. I’ve done enough of that with spreadsheets.

I’m starting with iPad because it gives a recipe room to breathe. I want to see what I’m changing while I’m changing it, with enough space for the ingredients and the consequences to be visible together. An iPhone version is still possible. I’m just not going to pretend I know when it would make sense, or promise a date for any of this yet.

There are other ideas I still care about: sharing what we learn as makers, and tools for the business side of making chocolate. They may have a place later. First I need to make the small, useful thing work well. Apparently “start small” is a lesson I have to learn more than once.

If you use an iPad and would like to help test an early version (November 2026), email the iPad beta group . Tell me what you make and what you use to work out your recipes now. I’d like to hear where the math gets in your way.