The Darker The Better; Chocolate Lock In at Hotel Chocolat

Last night my mother and I went to a Chocolate Lock In event at Hotel Chocolat in Leeds and to say that I was excited would be an understatement. 

Of course, as with most things in life,  events leading up the night didn’t go so smoothly. The numpty that I am first booked the 24th August date and then could’t make it. *insert sad face* 

Happily I was able to rearrange  our Lock In date to the 7th September without a hitch and I wasn't charged again for it #winning

My mother asked me many times that evening whether I knew where the event was, I replied that of course I did, it was at Roast and Conch. Turns out that I was wrong, no sooner had we sat down with our cups of teaolat ( I had the cocoa, chamomile and lemon balm blend whilst my mother had the cocoa and peppermint) than we told that the event was happening at the other store meaning that we had to make a quick hop, skip and jump over to Albion Place and abandon our cups of tea, such a shame because I liked that tea. a lot.

Upon arrival (late, of course) we were greeted by Victoria and Shannon and glass of Prosecco. The secret theme of the evening’s Lock In was ‘The Darker The Better’ so it was all about super -duper dark single origin chocolates. - Hurray! 

Chocolate confectionery has, in general, moved away from the core ingredient; cocoa and relies a lot more heavily on sugar content and other ingredients. Hotel Chocolat wants to change that by placing cocoa at the forefront of all of their products including the truffles, beer and spirits, tea and cooking products. 

A lot of chocolate that you can buy at Hotel Chocolat is made from a blend of cocoa from various origins to give the chocolate a well rounded and balanced flavour yet in recent years they have introduced a range of single origin bars to their collection and it was these that we were going to be trying last night, yet I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Once we were all assembled around the room and filled in on the fire safety procedures, Victoria talked us through the anatomy of cocoa pods, including the process of pod to bean to nib. Magically there just happened to be a nib for us to try. These nibs are  then conched - ground down to a liquor - which are then blended with cocoa butter to make a bar of chocolate. 

When you taste chocolate you use all of your five senses because proper good chocolate is about so much more than the taste:

Sight: the chocolate should be smooth and have a glossy look (if not it may require more tempering) You can read about my failed attempts to make my own chocolate, including the tempering here if you want

Listen: And by this I mean that you should hold your piece of chocolate up to ear where it will whisper sweet caresses.  

When you break your piece of chocolate in two you are looking for a beautifully crisp snap 

Smell: oh yes give that chocolate a good sniff and enjoy the beautifully chocolaty aromas

Feel: As I mentioned in sight, your chocolate should be super smooth and silky. (if it is coarse then the chocolate has not been coached for long enough)

Some chocolatiers/companies use vegetable fat when making up their chocolate but Hotel Chocolate insists on using only cocoa butter. This melts at body temperature which therefore means that yet will start to melt as soon as you pop it into your mouth. Heaven 

Taste: Ok so I know that looking, smelling, touching and hearing was difficult when all you actually wanted to do was eat the damn thing but the time has finally come to pop that scrumptious morsel into your mouth. Don’t bite it though! 

Instead let the chocolate slowly melt in your mouth, moving it around your tongue and explore the taste sensations. 

Every Monday in the Hotel Chocolat office the new recipes of chocolates are tried using the red and green card method. To avoid bias and swaying other peoples opinions, the tasting is done in silence before the tasters either hold up a red card, meaning that they didn’t like the chocolate, or a green card meaning that they did. Only then will they start to discuss the chocolate in question in more detail.  

The best recipes are then passed onto the members of the tasting club (that’s me) and undergo a similar testing process which then determines which chocolates will make it to the shop floor. 

We used a similar red and green card process when trying our selection of chocolates and I was very surprised by the variety of flavours that we came across in our selection of six single origin chocolates. 

To start we tried an 80% blended baton which had fruity and somewhat nutty notes.

The first single origin chocolate on the tasting board was 85% cocoa from Ghana which I felt had an earthy taste. 

Next up was the 85% Saint Lucia chocolate made using beans from Hotel Chocolat’s own Boucan plantation as well as from surrounding plantations. I very much enjoyed this fruity chocolate.

We turned up the cocoa concentration for the next chocolate, it was only a 5% difference but boy could you taste it with this metallic tasting 90% Ecuadorian bar.

One of the stand out chocolates of the evening for all the wrong reasons for me was the 95% Aracataca. This Columbian bar was very sour and had a bitter aftertaste. 

For the last two chocolates in our tasting adventure we went for the whole 100% : 

First up was the 100% St Lucia with enjoyable nutty taste with molasses richness. 

Honduras 100% was particularly memorable, much like the one from Aracataca. This tasted very salty and sour. 

Once we had tried all the chocolates in our selection we went back to the 80% baton, which after the 100% chocolates tasted surprisingly sweet. 

The thoroughly enjoyable evening came to an end with inshore vouchers where I opted to try the newest recipes on offer. 

Thank you to Hotel Chocolat and especially Victoria and Shannon for a lovely event. 

Click here to book yourself onto your own Chocolate Lock In evening

York Chocolate Festival

Easter,a celebration best known for chomping chocolate eggs is the perfect time of year for the York chocolate festival.

The York Chocolate Festival is spread over the whole Easter weekend and today (Saturday) I went to feast on all the Chocolatey goodness.

The chocolate market can be found on Parliament street where a variety of chocolatiers are gathered and wouldn't it would be considered rude not to try their wares?

Duffy's award winning handmade chocolate made in Lincolnshire uses single origin cocoa beans from around the world. This means that each bar has a distinctive and completely unique flavour.

Our next stop was at the Deliciously Yorkshire tent where the Walmgate Ale House were demonstrating their special chocolatey recipes that were only available for this weekend. Including: chorizo and cocoa nib ragu, venison with chocolate oil and red wine jus and last but not least duck confit with chocolate and orange.

Each dish was more delectable than the last and I would definitely recommend a trip there the next time you find yourself in York.

After a quick slice of cake (chocolate of course) and a spot of shopping we ventured into the chocolate tasting tent for a workshop on the art of chocolate tasting.

When you are tasting and judging chocolate you need to use all five sense. Good quality chocolate should be smooth in texture, have a very satisfying aroma, the snap when breaking the chocolate should be crisp, and the chocolate should have a shine to it rather than looking matte as well as being uniform colour. Last but not least when tasting the chocolate you should let it melt in your mouth; experiencing the many flavours  with the chocolate bar or truffle.

That time I made coconutty chocolate

This day has been a long time coming as I have spent the last few months trawling though supermarkets, markets and health food shops alike in the quest to find one key ingredient: coconut milk powder.

When making chocolate at home my preferred method is to use ground cacao liquor. This raw ingredient, often also called cacao mass is the direct result of grinding down the cacao nibs and thus contains raw cacao powder and raw cacao butter. The raw cacao (unlike processed cocoa) contains an abundance of minerals and health benefits such as:

Cacao is also a good source of both sulphur and magnesium, probably why we women crave chocolate during our periods!

Rather than having me preach on at you about the benefits of eating raw cacao take a look here for a more in depth look at this superfood. Now dont tell me that chocolate is not good for me

To make dark chocolate we would require to grind our liquor, conch and temper before putting into moulds to set. Yes it really is that simple! Yet I find that dark chocolate is sometimes too rich and bitter for some people (absolute poppycock if you ask me as plain/dark chocolate is pretty much just pure chocolate and what is the point of eating chocolate at all if you are just going to pile on extra ingredients and dilute the flavour.)  well each to their own.

For making milk chocolate do not just add milk as this will change the consistency and increase the fat content instead you should use milk powder. I had a look to see what the dairy free options for raw chocolate were ( personally I eat dairy but my sister and mother would rather substitute dairy in their diets) and well let's just say there wasn't exactly that much option if you wanted a dairy free milk chocolate bar and if there was it didn't taste all that great. I therefore decided to make my own with coconut milk hence the quest to find coconut milk powder.

The first thing you want to is to grind your cube of cocoa liquor into powdered form.

 Now comes the maths bit.

I have 37g of cacao liquor and will be wanting the same quantity of the milk powder.

37 +37=74

74g=100g right?

Well not quite as to make the chocolate more palatable I needed to add sugar and fat. I therefore worked from the equation:74/80 x 100 = x

This would mean that 100% would be 92.5g and subsequently that my sugar and fat content would be 18.5g therefore 9.25g each…well 9g getting into decimals of sugar is quite hard.

Ok maths over you can come back now.

The next stage on our homemade chocolate challenge is to conch our chocolate. I do not however have a large conching machine that you see at most chocolatiers but I have found that a heated up pestle and mortar does the trick nicely.

Heat your pestle or is it the mortar? The bowl bit anyway in the oven for about 20 minutes. I put the stick bit in as well and ended up having the conch with an oven cloth wrapped around both the pestle and mortar. Not ideal.

Put in all the cacao and grind for about two minutes before removing, adding coconut oil and truvia (sugar from the stevia root)  and replacing into the bowl for more grinding. Conching your chocolate helps to purify acidic compounds and improve the flavour so there are no guidelines for how long to conch your chocolate.

Once happy with your now smooth melted chocolate add the milk powder gradually. I started to panic at this stage as my chocolate looked to be clumping and was similar in texture to burnt chocolate. Luckily I learnt that the milk powder that I was using was just quite coarse and it was this that was affecting the chocolate and I hadn't in fact burnt anything. Panic over.

Temper the chocolate. There a few ways you can do this including a process called 'seeding' for this you melt your chocolate and then stir in commercial chocolate. Yet this would 'contaminate' the chocolate you had made so I prefer the 'tabling' method:

 Pour out the chocolate onto a flat, smooth surface such as marble or a non porous chopping board. With a pastry slice work the melted chocolate quickly around the board. The reason that we temper chocolate is to stop it from solidifying in an unstable form, through tempering solid fat crystals have more of chance to form from its molecules meaning that we end up with a chocolate with a better shine but also longer shelf life.

Place your chocolate in a mould and sprinkle on roasted cashew nuts (optional) before placing your chocolate to set in the fridge for about an hour.