A product is only as good as its worst ingredient. That was one of the over-arching ethos of The Choc Doc when I started off making chocolates and it is why I still try to use the best quality ingredients available to me when I make chocolates. To me it is important to use high quality couverture chocolate and combine this with fresh cream and other high quality ingredients. If you take this approach, it can result in chocolates that are a true pleasure with each and every bite. Anyone with a keen interest in creating their own food can learn this process and reproduce such results at home. Impress your friends and family, produce truly unique gifts that people cannot obtain anywhere else as they are your own creations! Or maybe you want to pursue chocolate as a business. Hopefully you can find some useful information here and I can pass on what I have learnt in my time spent teaching myself how to make exciting and tasty chocolates.
I originally took up chocolatiering when I was coming to the end of my post-doctoral research grant in cancer research. By trade I am a PhD-level educated scientist and working with chocolate is very scientific so it automatically appealed to me. I did not take a single course nor did I have any qualifications in food – I was completely self taught. I invested a huge amount of my spare time and efforts in perfecting my tempering and ganache formulation skills. I read everything I could and constantly was thinking of new ideas!I developed a brand, The Choc Doc and developed chocolates which from 2012-2013 won 7 regional and national awards. If I can do that I think anyone with an interest and passion for food making can.
I am very passionate about every chocolate I make, right down to the last detail. I believe that the experience of tasting firstly begins with your eyes, so when I make things for others, whether it is cooking a savoury meal or making a chocolate, creating a visually pleasing food is hugely important to me and for producing fine chocolates.
Tasting handmade chocolates should be about experiencing something unique. That is why I have always had a passion to create non-traditional chocolates in their flavours. I also like to push boundaries but not at the cost of taste, and encourages you to throw off any preconceived judgements about unique flavours and try this approach yourself. It is liberating to create something with an unusual flavour that most people say in theory should not work, but it does work!
However I still have a passion and love of what I was trained to do as a scientist, and my day job is my priority. I am in an exciting place with great opportunity ahead, working with a company at the absolute fore-front of developing effective cancer therapies which are the future of cancer treatment for sure. Thus The Choc Doc has returned as a hobby of mine, but I hope to pass on my passion and somewhat limited knowledge and experience to others, in the hope that you may also be inspired to create something new and that I can help others better their own skills as chocolatiers whether that is as a hobby, developing a business or even beyond. Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments you may have and remember to always enjoy fine chocolate in liberating amounts!