Chocoddity 2012
Single Origin chocolate and unusual flavour pairings (2012 flavours)
When I first started developing my own chocolate flavours, I really wanted to push the boundaries. I sought to establish a standard “range” of chocolate that I could give friends and family, but I still wanted to develop ranges that were for the more adventurous. I also became more interested in the unique flavours of single origin chocolates, and thought about combining single origins with unique flavour pairings to yield a completely different experience to any other chocolate.
As my passion in chocolatiering is developing new flavours, I decided to yearly devise a collection of very unique chocolates both in terms of the actual chocolate origin and the flavour pairings combined with it. Single Origin chocolates retain the unique flavour profile of their region and conditions of growth, flavours which are lost or diluted out in standard blended chocolates. That is not to say that blended chocolates are of a lower quality, rather that origin chocolates simply have a more distincitve flavour profile.
By retaining the cocoa from a single region or even plantation, flavours such as fruits, citrus, coffee, caramel, smoke, woody tones and many more can come through making each origin chocolate taste very different to the next. By using one particular type of cacao bean, we can vary the level of acidity and powerfulness of the cocoa meaning that even at 70 or 80% cocoa solid content, we can have a very mild tasting chocolate with a fruity profile, for example.
So I decided to term these ranges I created “Chocoddity.” Chocoddity chocolates are ones that I take unusual, or “odd” flavours to combine together and mix them with an origin chocolate in order to create a finely balanced tasting experience like none other. To enhance this experience I decided that whenever I served these chocolates to include a small taster bar that allows you to experience the chocolate first on its own, and then see how it works in combination with the unusual flavour pairing. Thus you get the flavours of the chocolate first and then you can see how it pairs with the other complementing (but unusual) flavours. I felt this was quite a novel approach that I had not seen before and it certainly is popular with my more adventurous of friends and family!
Price: The Choc Doc is not trading to the public and the following is for information purposes only
Two of these chocolates were granted Great Taste awards (one gold star) in 2013. Please check back regularly as at some point I will be posting some of these recipes for others to try making themselves!
