This workshop, run by Seventy Percent in London, shows you how to properly taste fine chocolate so that you can distinguish the good from the not-so-good. According to Martin Christy, founder of Seventy Percent: ‘fine chocolate is a new world of tasting and appreciation similar in complexity and nuance to the world of fine wine’.

You don’t need to spend long on the Sweet Sensations site to realise that healthy eating is pretty important to me. However, I didn’t have the space in the last blog post about the workshop to cover some of the health aspects of fine chocolate, so I’m going to do so here.

Fine chocolate is a hugely growing field, and deservedly so – the quality of the chocolate is excellent, and it also lends itself to small-scale ethical, sustainable production, which the chocolate industry badly needs. But how healthy is it?

 
Organic

Most fine chocolate is not organic. Some exceptions are Grenada, IQ and Pacari. The latter not only produce organic bars, some of them are even biodynamic, which is the crème de la crème of organic (think planting by the phases of the moon and mixing natural fertiliser in bull’s horns – sounds far out, but it works).

Willie Harcourt-Cooze, whom you may remember from his TV series a few years ago, ‘Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory’, says on his website: ‘No pesticides, fertilizer or chemical of any description have ever been used on our cacao trees’

Martin Christy of Seventy Percent says that organic cacao used to be of very poor quality, so it was considered very second class in in the fine chocolate world. However, things are changing, and the top two bars from the 2012 awards  - Pacari Raw and Michel Cluizel’s Los Ancones – were both organic.

Martin said that whilst some farmers are too poor to afford pesticides and chemical fertilisers, meaning that their cacao is in effect organic, even though it can’t be called that, many of the ‘higher end’ plantations do use them. However, as the quality and therefore the reputation of organic cacao continues to improve, it is likely that more and more bars will be produced organically.

Nutrients 

In fine chocolate, the  ingredients ARE without doubt subjected to a lot more heat and processing than ‘raw’ chocolate, which will of course kill off a significant proportion of the antioxidants and other nutrients. However, they are processed with great care, and even chocolate that has been heavily heat-treated still contains significant quantities of nutrients, since chocolate is such an antioxidant-rich food.

A notable exception is again Pacari, which offers a range of very carefully crafted and highly regarded raw chocolate bars within their larger range (their 100% Raw Chocolate Bar is stocked in the Sweet Sensations shop). Scotland-based IQ are a recent addition to the origin raw chocolate bar scene.

Ingredients

Fine chocolate typically contains very few ingredients: cocoa mass, cocoa butter, sugar and maybe soya lecithin and/or vanilla. This already gives it a HUGE head start on mass-produced chocolate in terms of healthfulness.

Soya lecithin is not regarded as the healthiest form of lecithin, but unless you are sensitive to soya, I don’t personally think that this is a major issue (I actually take soya lecithin as a health supplement). And some fine chocolate manufacturers like Pacari and Duffy Sheardown use sunflower lecithin instead.

Sugar

So to my mind (though you may disagree), this only really leaves the sugar, which can be a problem if you are trying to eat a healthy diet.

Eating chocolate slowly, which is what Martin Christy advocates in order to really taste it properly, is a good way of cutting down the amount of sugar you eat – I find that the more slowly I eat chocolate, the less I eat of it overall. I guess this is something to do with the fact that when you eat it slowly, really paying attention to what it tastes like, it is much more satisfying.  So if a little bit of the white stuff isn’t an issue for you, this is certainly one way to go.

Eating a bar with a higher percentage of cocoa solids to sugar is another option – obviously you will be eating much less sugar with a 90% bar than with a 60%.

You could also purchase a 100% chocolate bar, ie one with no sugar in it at all – the raw Pacari bar stocked on this site for instance, and eat it as is, if you can take it so hard core. Bonnat is another chocolatier that makes a 100% bar. Another option is to  melt down a 100% bar and add your sweetener of choice.  Check out how to do this at the bottom of this page.

Duffy Sheardown of Redstar uses organic cane sugar and Pacari sometimes use evaporated cane juice. These are at least steps in the right direction, but I’m not really convinced that raw cane sugar and evaporated cane juice are much, if at all, better for you than common or garden sugar.

It would be great if more fine chocolate producers were to start to work with healthier natural sweeteners. A couple of years ago I visited a French chocolatier in Lyons who made chocolate bars with organic chocolate and maple syrup, so it would seem that it’s certainly possible. And IQ make their raw chocolate IQ Superfood Bar with coconut sugar – more evidence that it is surely entirely possible not to use cane sugar.

Here’s hoping!

It certainly was, though we reeled in shock when we were told at the beginning of the day that we wouldn’t actually be tasting any chocolate until after lunch. Was this some sort of cruel joke?

Instead, we spent the morning learning lots about chocolate (I was astonished to hear for instance that we know so little about cocoa that we still don’t know which insect or insects pollinate it in the wild).

And of course, we learned all about HOW to taste chocolate, first concentrating on our sense of smell, which is so much more sensitive than our sense of taste. We enthusiastically sniffed dozens of pots containing items as diverse as raspberry jam, rum and burned toast so that we could develop our aromatic skills (try tasting chocolate – or anything for that matter – whilst pinching your nostrils together, and you’ll understand how crucial the sense of smell is for tasting anything).

We also drank various liquids in order to distinguish between the five major tongue ‘tastes’: salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami (savoury). So, lemons are sour, quinine (a.k.a tonic water) is a good reference point for bitter, and umami is a meaty, yeasty taste – think marmite – that is often added to our food in the form of MSG (in chocolate it may mean that the beans were over-fermented during production).

The workshop was run by Martin Christy, founder of Seventy Percent. Martin is an absolute mine of information on everything to do chocolate, and possibly, just possibly, eats more chocolate than I do.

One of Martin’s aims is to educate the public about fine, origin chocolate, so that we can learn to discern the good from the bad. The world of fine chocolate has absolutely exploded in the last few years. However, there is still an awful lot of poor quality chocolate around (some passed off as good quality), and it can be hard to tell the difference without a bit of tuition. When you ‘get it’, which I first did towards the beginning of 2012 at one of Martin’s chocolate flavour evenings in London, it’s truly eye-opening. (And bear in mind that I’m someone who already knows a fair amount about chocolate, having been involved in raw chocolate for several years.)

Together with other individuals and organisations, Martin is also working hard on making the world of cocoa production more sustainable and ethical. This a subject that is close to my heart and I look forward to seeing developments in this area. Fine chocolate by its nature has to come from good quality cocoa beans, grown in well-managed, sustainable, small-scale farms by people who earn enough to give them a good reason to care about standards. Cacao trees are much more suited to conditions that mimic natural rainforest-type growth rather than monoculture plantations as, for instance, they need to co-exist with other taller trees that provide shade. So, along with the fact that we are beginning to care more about things like ethical trading and sustainability, there are plenty of reasons to hope that the chocolate industry will  be sharpening up its act over the coming years.

In case you’re wondering, we did actually get to taste quite a lot of chocolate in the afternoon. I can’t tell you how much fun it was: detecting aromas, flavour notes and sensations, and getting to know some really good chocolate such as Pacari, Amano and Michel Cluizel. There’s loads more out there to try though……

Altogether, a fascinating workshop that comes highly recommended by yours truly. Visit www.seventypercent .com for more info.

Equipment
food processor or nut grinder

Ingredients
100g brazil nuts
40g chocolate powder (either raw chocolate powder or cocoa powder)
2 Tbs (30ml) syrup (agave, sweet freedom, maple or coconut nectar etc)
2 Tbs (20g) coconut sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt (optional)
pinch chili or cayenne powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1.5 tsp orange zest

Method
Process the brazil nuts for about 10-15 seconds until they are like breadcrumbs (alternatively you can grind them in a nut grinder and then mix everything together by hand).

Add the rest of the ingredients and process again till everything is combined.

Press the mix into a square or rectangular tin to about 1 cm deep, then cut into squares or rectangles and carefully turn out.

Note: if you omit the orange zest, cinnamon and nutmeg this is still a delicious brownie recipe and suitable for any time of the year

Lucuma is a fabulous and sadly under-used ingredient; coconut oil is a medium chain saturated fat that is said to be more likely to increase your metabolism than be laid down as fat or cholesterol; whilst coconut palm sugar is a delicious caramel-tasting, low GI sweetener. You could use yacon syrup or any other liquid sweetener instead – they’re equally delicious, it’s just that I really like the crunchy bite that coconut sugar gives.

BUTTERSCOTCH ‘NOT-CHOCOLATE’ RECIPE

Ingredients
40g coconut oil (or liquid sweetener to taste)
25 g lucuma powder
10g coconut sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla powder (optional)
pinch of salt (optional)

Method
Melt the coconut oil.

Measure the lucuma and coconut sugar into a bowl, and add the vanilla powder and salt if using.

Add the melted coconut oil and mix everything together.

Pour into a mould and place in the fridge or freezer to set.

Variations
1) Brazil Nut Crunch: chop up some brazil nuts and place in the mould before pouring in the butterscotch mix

2) Chewy Toffee: place some or all of the following into the mould before pouring in the butterscotch mix: goji berries, dessicated coconut, chopped nuts, whole hemp seeds, sunflower seeds,  pumpkin seeds

To purchase any of the ingredients, click here to go to the Sweet Sensations shop

This is a great recipe for the blackberry season – the apple and walnut give it a distinctive end of summer taste.

INGREDIENTS

50g walnuts, soaked for 2 – 4 hours
110ml (1/3 cup + 2 Tbs) water
85g blackberries
30g chopped apple
3-4ml vanilla extract
sweetener to taste – I used 3 Tbs (40g) xylitol but agave, sweet freedom, coconut nectar, honey or maple syrup should all work if you add them in whatever amount suits your tastebuds

METHOD

Blend the walnuts with the water then pass the resulting milk through a nutmilk bag or piece of muslin.

Clean out the blender and pour the milk back in.

Blend in the blackberries..

Add the apple, sweetener and vanilla and blend again.

Ice cream maker version: process according to instructions then either serve or store in the freezer until required (will keep for a few days).

Freezer version: pour into a shallow dish and place in the freezer for a couple of hours. Take out and stir thoroughly with a fork to break up the ice crystals. Place in the freezer for another couple of hours and stir again. Let it set to ice cream texture in the freezer and either serve or keep in the freezer for a few days.

Essential oils add fabulous flavour to your chocolate making, as well as being really easy to use. This is a guide on how to use them in your raw chocolate recipes.

How to use them
Use good quality oils from reputable suppliers (see below).

Essential oils are the last ingredient I add to a recipe – this way I can add exactly the amount required to get the right taste. Some recipes only need a couple of drops, whilst others might need as many as fifteen, so it’s best to start by mixing in one or two drops, having a taste, adding a couple more drops if necessary, and so on. Remember: you can always add, but you can’t subtract!

Are they safe?
Most essential oil bottles have a warning on them to not take them internally. However, numerous chocolate makers and chefs regularly use good quality essential oils in their food prep. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility and decide for yourself, exercise sensible caution (for instance where children, the elderly and the pregnant are concerned), and also avoid really strong oils that you wouldn’t use on your skin, such as cinnamon, basil, thyme etc.  If you are at all concerned, you can buy excellent food grade essential oils from companies such as Rosa Medica and NHR Organic Oils.*

Some suggested essential oil flavours:

PEPPERMINT: my favourite! There is nothing like that combination of rich, dark chocolate with the fresh crispness of peppermint.

The essential oil has a vastly superior taste to any peppermint essence I’ve tried. Having said that, it can be hard to find a peppermint oil that gives exactly the right flavour for use in chocolate recipes. I love the one from Rosa Medica – it’s superb flavour means it is the only one I ever use and I always keep a bottle to hand in my kitchen cupboard.

Peppermint works best with dark chocolate, although it can also work well in white chocolate recipes, particularly if you add some dark in there. For instance, in the White Chocolate recipe in my chocolate e-book, I recommend adding both cacao nibs and peppermint oil to the recipe.

I also love to combine the taste of peppermint with some crunchy texture: dehydrated buckwheat is fabulous for this, but if you don’t have access to it then try coconut sugar, or xylitol, or even chopped nuts (I like almonds).

ORANGE: orange and chocolate are of course a match made in heaven, so orange essential oil is another kitchen cupboard essential for me. Again, it can be a little tricky to find one that gives you exactly the right taste you’re looking for, but when you do….mmm!

Tangerine and mandarin are similar oils that are equally delicious in raw chocolate making.

LEMON: not perhaps the most obvious flavour to add to chocolate, but a surprisingly tasty option when used with dark chocolate. Also try lemon and raspberry together (use lemon essential oil with the raspberry powder or whole dried raspberries from the Sweet Sensations shop).

LIME: this works well with both dark and white chocolate. I recently made some lime-flavoured white chocolate truffles dipped in dark chocolate – they were pretty damn good!

BERGAMOT: this oil is from the same plant as earl grey tea. So if you like earl grey tea you are pretty sure to LOVE bergamot flavoured chocolate. I don’t even like tea but I adore bergamot chocolate!

LEMONGRASS: another unusual chocolate flavouring choice but utterly delicious. I tend to use it to flavour the centres of dipped chocolates. It’s strong, so don’t add too much!

CARDAMOM: a classic flavour partner for chocolate and it also helps to subdue the stimulating effects of raw chocolate. Ground cardamom has too mild a taste for most chocolate recipes (you have to add so much to get any taste at all that it starts to affect the consistency of the recipe). So cardamom oil is an excellent alternative.

GINGER: you can use ground ginger, freshly juiced ginger or ginger essential oil in chocolate making. All are delicious but the essential oil has the edge in terms of ease. One of my favourite flavour combinations in chocolate is ginger with cinnamon powder.

So there you have it, a summary of the use of essential oils in chocolate making!  I hope you have fun experimenting. Do let me know what your favourite flavours are!

*Please note that Liz Bygrave and Sweet Sensations are unable to accept responsibility for the choices you make regarding using essential oils in food preparation, including following any of the suggestions outlined in this blog post. You are advised to consult qualified practitioners in the appropriate disciplines if you want advice on this subject.

Raw chocolate is loved by many, but is also well known for its rather over-stimulating properties. I’ve lost count of the number of sleepless nights I’ve had, wishing I’d been able to resist that last raw chocolate treat….

In an ideal world it’s probably best to keep raw chocolate as a ‘sometimes’ treat, eaten in small amounts earlier rather than later in the day. But if you don’t always manage this, what’s the answer?

Amazing Cardamom
Some years ago I read that cardamom is used in ayurvedic medicine (the traditional Indian natural health system) as an antidote to the stimulating effects of coffee. It seems that cardamom ‘detoxifies the caffeine in coffee’. It got me thinking – if it works for coffee, would it work for raw chocolate as well?

What I found was that ‘eating’ cardamom on days when I was also eating a lot of raw chocolate REALLY helped to reduce the stimulating effects of the chocolate, and enabled me to get a relaxing night’s sleep.

Medicinal Properties of Cardamom
Interestingly, when you look up the medicinal properties of cardamom, nowhere does it say that it has relaxing properties. The closest thing you find is that it helps reduce stress caused by depression or overwork. There is also the occasional reference to the fact that it can help lift your mood, which is also said to be true of raw chocolate (due to PEA – aka ‘the love chemical’ – and anandamide – aka ‘the bliss chemical’ – both of which are present in high quantities in raw cacao).

For several years now I have shared this useful piece of information about cardamom antidoting the stimulating effects of raw chocolate in my workshops. One participant, of a considerably more scientific frame of mind than myself said that it all made perfect sense as cardamom does indeed contain a constituent well known for its relaxing properties.

How To Use Cardamom
I find that the way to use cardamom as a raw chocolate ‘antidote’ varies from person to person.

Chew on the seeds – I myself have to take it to fairly extreme levels and chew on some cardamom seeds three or four times that day to get a result. For speed, I tend to put about six whole cardamom pods in my mouth, chew on them and then spit out the husks. It’s not the most pleasant way of ingesting cardamom, but rather that than a night of tossing and turning!

Essential oil or tea – other people don’t find it necessary to resort to such full on measures – perhaps just adding some cardamom essential oil to their chocolate recipe (yummy), or drinking some cardamom tea, will be enough for them.

So you may have to experiment to find your level, but to my mind it’s well worth it – a good night’s sleep is a precious thing!

Over to you…
Have you tried cardamom as an antidote to raw chocolate and if so, how do you take it and does it help?

Many people are confused about the difference between coconut oil and coconut butter, so here’s a few facts so that you know what sets them apart from each other.

Coconut oil, which is solid when cold, and liquid when warm, is the fat extracted from the coconut. It is the safest oil for frying, aside from rice bran oil, as it’s so stable.

Coconut butter is the pulverised whole coconut meat, made from both the fat and the fibre. It is not extracted like coconut oil, just pureed. Coconut butter has a harder texture than coconut oil, although when you buy them some brands are very similar in texture.  Don’t fry with coconut butter as it burns easily.

The Differences:

In chocolate bar recipes coconut butter sets faster and makes a bar that’s a little more resistant to melting than when using coconut oil.

Coconut butter burns more easily and therefore, when making raw chocolate or desserts, needs to be melted at a very low heat. So a dehydrator or a bain marie are ok, but a food warmer (my favourite way of melting fats because it’s so convenient) is too hot. In contrast, coconut oil is fine over a food warmer – however long you leave it, it won’t burn.

The easiest way to tell the difference between coconut butter and coconut oil is to melt them: coconut oil is transparent when melted, whilst coconut butter stays a creamy white.

My guess is that raw coconut butter is probably made by a similar process (but of course raw) to the creamed coconut blocks you find in the supermarket, which are used in cooking. I have made chocolate bars and truffles with both raw coconut butter and creamed coconut and you handle it identically – ie it burns easily, and makes a similarly firm-textured end product.

Check the labels carefully when you want to buy coconut butter, as some companies are still calling coconut oil ‘coconut butter’ . If it’s made from the fat, it’s coconut oil, if it’s made from the whole coconut flesh, it’s coconut butter.

So there you go, a brief low down on coconut oil and butter. I use both, but get through much more coconut oil as it’s more versatile and easier to use. I hope this blog post helps you decide which you want to use in your own kitchen!

We don’t yet stock coconut butter, but click here to buy coconut oil from Sweet Sensations.

You can drink almond milk straight, sweeten it, use in in cereals, add fruit to it, use it to make raw soups creamier etc etc.

HOW TO MAKE IT:

Ingredients:
1 cup (c. 250g) raw whole almonds that have been soaked for about 8 hours*
2 cups (c. 1/2 litre) of water

Method:
Drain and rinse the soaked almonds to get rid of the soak water and place them in a blender.

Add the water and blend for about 30 seconds.

Separate the milk from the pulp – you can do this by placing a sieve over a bowl and pushing the milk through with a spoon. But you will get a smoother milk if you have a nutmilk bag (or even a clean stocking) – place this over the bowl and pour the milk into the bag. When it’s about half full, close the top and squeeze the milk into the bowl (somewhat reminiscent of milking a cow).

That’s it – it’s absolutely delicious just as it is, but if you want to you can add a bit of your choice of sweetener – agave, sweet freedom, coconut sugar, yacon, xylitol, stevia etc – and some vanilla (vanilla powder is gorgeous).

If you want to add some fruit, rinse out the blender, pour the nut milk back, add the fruit and whizz up.

*Soaking the nuts first decreases the enzyme inhibitors they contain, making the nuts more digestible, as well as increasing the nutrient content. It also makes the milk taste milder, which most people prefer.

Did you know? Almonds are the only nuts which alkalise the blood.

For more free recipes by Liz visit http://www.sweetsensations.uk.com/freerecipes.html

Now, bear in mind that I’m a recent convert to this, so no expert. However, the process is so easy that I am going to share it with you, and then point you in the direction of the experts. Please excuse any mistakes or misapprehensions I may make along the way due to my inexperience. However, this is the process I use and it works absolutely fine:

1) Chop up some vegetables, roughly or finely it doesn’t matter. Include either cabbage and/or cucumber as these two vegetables have the bacteria you need for the fermentation in abundance. Whatever other vegetables you use doesn’t really matter: broccoli, kale, daikon, basil, celery, tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, courgettes, carrots, onions, garlic, beetroot etc etc. The world of vegetables is your oyster. One of the things that I like about this process is that it’s a brilliant way of eating seasonally. I do however like to add some chopped or grated ginger, as this adds to the zinginess of the end product.

2) Put the chopped vegetables into a jar and press them down with a tamper of some description – a narrow glass, a pestle etc etc.

3) Make up a salt solution using the ratio of 1 Tbs salt to ½ litre of water. It doesn’t have to be exact – I was originally doing it with ¼ tsp of salt to ½ litre of water and it still worked. (If you’re concerned about all that salt, remember that the bacteria eat the salt so there is none left when you come to eat it.)

4) Pour the salt solution over the vegetables. Any excess air will escape naturally. Press the vegetables down again, place two or three cabbage leaves over them, and weigh the cabbage leaves down with a couple of small weights or stones, to keep the vegetables below the water line. This is because any veggies that are above the water line may go off. No worries if they do – when you come to eat the pickled veg, just scrape off any ‘bad’ ones, the ones under the water line will still be fine.)

5) Put the lid on the jar and leave it for four days. Once a day or so, you might want to loosen the lid to let out the excess CO2 (just to avoid the very unlikely risk of the jar shattering). You might also want to put the jar in a bowl as sometimes excess liquid seeps out of the jar. After four days you can either eat the vegetables, put the jar in the fridge and help yourself at intervals, or leave it out to ferment for longer. Once in the fridge I have heard the experts say that the vegetables will last for six months.

You can get very creative with your pickled vegetables, from plain old cabbage sauerkraut or pickled cucumbers, to various yummy crunchy combinations of vegetables.

More info:
There is lots of info online but check out this youtube video by Matt Monarch and Angela Stokes with Wendy Valley for starters:

If the link is still live, listen to the 16 April 2012 edition of Radio 4′s The Food Programe – The Fermentation Revival