Gaylene Steinbach: The Art of Lulubee Chocolate

Episode Summary

Gaylene Steinbach was a dental hygienist for seventeen years before her mother gave her a box of chocolates so beautiful she couldn't stop thinking about them. Today she runs Lulubee Chocolates — named for her two daughters — and her bonbons are some of the most quietly artful things made in Lincoln.

About Gaylene Steinbach

Gaylene Steinbach is the founder and chocolatier behind Lulubee Chocolates, a small-batch chocolate shop she opened in 2015 and grew into a brick-and-mortar location at 56th and Pine Lake in November 2020. She has no formal training in chocolate or business — what she has is a precision honed over years of fine clinical work, a deep respect for the science of her craft, and a willingness to fail her way into mastery. Her bonbons, toffees, sea salt caramels, and seasonal collections are sold at the shop and through select wholesale partners — including The Coffee Roaster, one of her very first accounts.

About the Conversation

This is a conversation about making something with your hands and your full attention. Gaylene walks the hosts through how a bonbon is actually made — the polycarbonate molds, the colored cocoa butter, the twenty-five seconds the chocolate sits before you tip the rest out — and somewhere along the way it stops being a chocolate-making lesson and becomes a meditation on craft, patience, and the kind of small business community that makes Lincoln feel like Lincoln.

She talks about opening her storefront in November of 2020 (a sentence that needs no further explanation), about the Lincoln neighbors who walked in determined to buy local that season, and about what it means to be part of an informal web of women business owners who text each other on snow days. The hosts taste a key lime pie bonbon on air, which sets a fitting tone for the whole episode.

Conversation Highlights

• The box of chocolates that started everything
• Why a dental hygienist's training translates surprisingly well to chocolatiering
• A walk-through of how a bonbon is actually made, from mold to ganache
• Why chocolate and water are sworn enemies — and what humid days look like in the kitchen
• The story of opening a brick-and-mortar shop in November 2020
• Lincoln's small-business ecosystem, and the friends who answer the phone on snow days
• Lulu B.'s summer 2026 soda-shop bonbon collection (malted milk, cherry-lime, orange-sicle, turtle sundae, banana split)
• The brown butter caramel customers will not let her stop making
  

The Mug

Gaylene brought a large mug given to her by her dearest friend, Heather. It reads: "We'll be friends until we are old and senile, then we'll be new friends." Twenty-plus years of friendship in a single line — and, she'll tell you, a coffee cup that holds enough.