Charlotte Flower Chocolates

Changing times

2012-03-12T07:01:00.001-07:00

My last day in Malaysia and Chow Boi has arranged a really interesting trip for me to visit a cocoa farm and meet some interesting industry folk.

We climbed out of Kuala Lumpur – into the Titiwangsa Mountains, home to the Genting Highland resorts. This is a very beautiful drive - wonderful forest in these hills, and cool. We meet up with a whole group of cocoa industry movers and shakers; they are all good friends and associates and have been involved in cocoa for many years.

We head off to a small town and meet Kou – a farmer who is also a trader. We meet him in his ‘shop’ full of cocoa bean sacks, and then head off to see his farm – and end up in a beautiful valley – with forest on the upper slopes, and cocoa and palm oil at the base of the valley. Kou’s cocoa farm is exemplary – he has been farming here since the mid 80s and the trees are extremely well managed and cared for. He can get 3000kg from a hectare through good management – including grafting, pruning, spraying against disease, and good hygiene. He is an innovative and intuitive farmer – taking on ideas from experts and then developing them further to work for him.

However, after 28 years in cocoa, he is about to give this all up and next year will replace the cocoa trees with oil palm. There are many reasons for this; the main one he gave was that he just cannot get the labour needed to work his plantations. Cocoa needs one person per hectare to carry out the intense management needed to ensure good harvest; Malaysians do not wish to work on farms, and so the only labour available is immigrant – but the government manages this very tightly and according to a model based mainly on oil palm – in which one person can manage 10 ha. So Kou finds it difficult to attract labour, train them (tending cocoa is very skilled) and then retaining them. He feels it is time he needs to step back from the farm (he is in his 60s) and so oil palm will provide his pension. Cocoa costs MR6000 a year/ha to produce and sells at only MR7000 a year/ha. The economics of oil palm are very different and earn a great deal more.

Our talk that day was mainly about this – the last death throws of the cocoa industry in Malaysia. The Malaysian Cocoa Board claims that the annual production is 20,000ha, but no-one I met that day could identify where that production came from. Cocoa is disappearing fast, being replaced mainly by oil palm, but also rubber. The talk was about resisting being sentimental about this, but the need to look to the future and the industry’s need to focus elsewhere on securing future cocoa supplies. Hence the industry’s focus on work with small holders in Indonesia, and also on the new ‘wild east’ of cocoa production – Vietnam and the Phillipines.

A school for chocolate

2012-03-08T01:08:00.002-08:00

How lucky I was to come across Mervyn – he seems to be close to the heart of a really exciting movement to raise the chocolate game in Indonesia, and he very kindly arranged for me to meet two of the critical actors in this. William Chuang is one of the Managing Directors of Petra Foods; his father started the company and so he has lived and breathed cocoa all his life, cocoa flows through his veins. It was such a treat to meet someone not only so knowledgeable about the business – all the ins and outs of the international cocoa trade, the many issues facing the industry – but also who really likes chocolate and is as committed to raising awareness about how fantastic it can beas he is to making sure the business runs effectively.

He had a dream to set up a chocolate school and has achieved that – a school where professionals and amateurs can learn more about getting the most out of chocolate. His next ambition is for a chocolate museum – which if the School is a measure to go by – will be fantastic.

The Chocolate School is run by Andy Van Den Broeck, a Belgian chocolate maker who has the fantastic job of both running the school but also consultant to the Indonesian chocolate companies in the Petra Foods family. He kindly agreed to show me the school on Saturday and I had a wonderful indulgent morning – both talking and eating chocolate. The school itself is in a shopping mall, and how different it must be from all other shops for passers by to peer into. When there is a class it must be fascinating and tantalizing viewing, peering through the large windows and watching people create wonderful chocolate delights.

There are many such chocolate schools in Europe; for example, I think there are at least two in Edinburgh – and even occasional workshops in Acharn! This Indonesian school offers the same high quality training – learning about chocolate, how it is made from cocoa, how to handle and temper, how to taste, how to make delicious pralines, how to decorate. In addition it can also offer a day on a cocoa farm and visiting a chocolate factory! Chocolate tourism of the very best quality – I would recommend it to anyone; Indonesia is a fascinating country, and I could see the Chocolate School courses being a must-do visitor activity in Jakarta.

There is a growing interest in high quality chocolate in Jakarta’s top hotels and restaurants and so the school is really responding to that. Most of the domestic market though is for milk chocolate confection – brands Silver Queen and Delfi are all popular brands under the Petra Food company. William’s company works at all levels of chocolate – trading, processing, chocolate making and product retail. They are also distributors for some major brands – such as Japan’s Royce'. Indeed they have just brought Royce chocolates to Jakarta and after our meeting I went down to the basement of the mall we were in to the Food Hall and found the Royce' counter. One of the lines that Royce' make is Nama chocolates; they are amazing – sort of naked ganache – perfect rectangular blocks of cocoa dusted chocolate ganache, with no chocolate shell around them. They are so simple and exquisitely pure.

William’s knowledge of the cocoa world is immense, so our conversation was fascinating. He patiently and very clearly explained to me the way the market works – for once I really think I do understand why commodity futures exist and how they work! But all is not great in the cocoa world; it seems that we are eating more cocoa than can be grown. In fact we consumed 367 million tonnes of cocoa last year and only 366 million tonnes were produced. Production is going down, and demand ever-increasing – which will lead inevitably to higher prices. I hope this means that as people have to pay more they will want better quality!

A glimpse at the chocolate industry

2012-03-05T02:18:00.001-08:00

I had been fortunate to make an interesting contact before I went to Jakarta, Mervyn Pereira, who is very knowledgeable about the industry and enthusiastic about cocoa and chocolate in Java in particular. Mervyn had arranged for me to visit a private cocoa farm east of Jakarta and then meet Ani of Delfi Foods, at their chocolate factory in Bandung.

The trip to the cocoa plantation took us a very dramatic mountain pass above Bogor – the car just kept driving up hill. As we continued up, the vegetation began to change and we entered the land of tea – the tea bushes clipped short by constant picking. Over the pass, and we descended into a lush valley of paddy and banana plantations.

The cocoa plantation was a chance to see a much larger scale enterprise than anything else seen to date. It was large – over 300ha, and quite old – over 35 years. It was very well tended – good clean pods growing on healthy looking trees. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, there was no one there to tell us about it – and it was a holiday and so there was no one around. A young man did turn up and offered to show us around – but as he was in administration – he struggled a little with our questions about the cocoa! He did take us to see the fermentation plant – but did not have the key to the gates – so we had to peer over and through fences to get a look. It was a big set up, and as you can see from the photos, banks of fermentation boxes, stepped so that each day they can be easily emptied into the next box. After six days of fermentation, the cocoa beans are then laid out on racks to dry naturally in the sun.

Ani at Delfi is their Sourcing and Sustainability Officer; she is immensely knowledgeable about the industry and was able to tell us amongst many other things, about the Delfi SEEDS (Social Economic Environmental Development for Sustainability) programme. This is a programme working with smallholders in mainly Lampung and Sulawesi on improving both growing practice and fermentation. The lack of fermentation practice is partly a hangover she said from when cocoa first came to Indonesia; it was introduced from Malaysia and so farmers adopted their practice of not fermenting. One of their biggest markets was the US – and there they make chocolate with unfermented beans – that is how they like it!

Ani’s office is in an annex to the main cocoa processing plant, which we would not be able to visit. At the Annex they receive and sort all the beans – going through the first preparatory stages of the processing by cleaning the beans. Ani showed us the huge warehouse – piled high with stacks of beans from around the world – including Cameroon and Papua New Guinea. As all unloading and stacking was being done by hand, the warehouse was strangely quiet – but for the soft noise of the dry beans shifting in the sacks as they are being stacked; it is possible to tell how well they are dried by that noise we were told.

Ani then introduced us to the lab team who check the quality of the beans; they check density, moisture content, the quality – in terms of percentage of damaged or mouldy beans, and for slaty beans – a term I had heard before but had never physically seen what was meant by it. These are unfermented beans – and there needs to be only a certain percentage of these in a batch, otherwise the beans are difficult to process.

Cocoa and chocolate are big business here – both for export and for the domestic market, Indonesia being the third biggest producer of cocoa in the world. Ninety percent of the cocoa is still produced by smallholders and so working with them to ensure continued supply of quality cocoa is an enormous task. SEEDS is just one of many programmes by both NGOs and the big players – such as Delfi and Mars. There are many threats and problems to future cocoa supply though, and I heard more about this the following day.

Can chocolate save the Sumatran tiger?

2012-03-02T16:53:00.001-08:00

I have just returned from the most amazing trip – all cocoa exploration should be like this! I was put in touch with WWF Indonesia who are working with subistence farmers in the area around the Bukit Barisan Seletan National Park, in south east Sumatra. Sumatra is the largest island in Indonesia and the furthest west. An area of the Bukit Barisan Mountains was declared by UNESCO in 2004 as a World Heritage Site, ‘Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra’. This area is home amongst other things to rare Sumatran tigers, rhinos and elephants.

In 2006 WWF started work with farmers who were encroaching into National Park land; they were clearing forest to plant coffee. Working with farmers in the buffer zone around the Park, WWF are supporting them to develop better farming practices so that they can get better value out of their land and so reduce their dependeny on land and resources within the Park.

One of the crops that farmers are keen to grow is cocoa. Indonesia is the third largest producer of cocoa in the world, and most of this cocoa is grown by smallholders – in Sumatra, Sabah, Sulawesi, Java, Bali, Flores, and Papua.

My trip was facilitated by WWF, and hosted by Koperasi Mitra Tani (KOMIT), a coperative developed by the farmers in the 12 pilot villages that WWF is working with. They have been working with farmers to improve both management of coffee and cocoa on their farms, but also better processing techniques to improve the value of their crops. KOMIT have also gone through a certification process with Rainforest Alliance.

The KOMIT team

With WWF project officer Sutarna, KOMIT head Mamhudi, and training co-orinator Sujarwo, we set off to meet some of the cocoa farmers. The drive from Bandar Lampung went through rich agricultural land – farmed mainly as paddy. There were extraordinary buildings across the landscape though – vast concrete towers, that looked like prisons from afar – but clearly there were far too many of them to be that. They were very fortress like in appearance – no windows and behind high walls. They are infact birds nest farms (for soup!) – great skycrapers for swallows to nest in; the swallows are attracted by the high insect life over the paddy fields and farms, and are a beautiful site in the afternoon, swooping around in clouds. At first I thought they would just be in farmland – but they were also built in villages and town, and often the front facade done up to look like a proper house, with false windows!

As we got closer to the National Park it got hillier and more wooded, until we were climbing up a steep road and suddenly the landscape and vegetation changed and we were in the quiet rich shade of high forest. Fantastic. We stopped at one point to talk to a ranger, and as I emerged from the air conditioned car, a wall of noice hit me – insects and birds – the most fabulous forest symphony. And somewhere, lurking in those trees watchful and wary of us human intruders, are bears, tigers, rhinos and more.

Sumatrans farm in a very ecological way; they have paddy fields of rice and some other crops, but around their houses they have ‘forest gardens’; these are areas of permanent crops – such as coffee and cocoa, grown in a mixture with anything else thrown in – fodder trees and plants for their goats and cows, fruit for the household and market, cash crops such as pepper and rubber. It was often said to me on the trip that this might not be the ‘most efficient’ way of farming – which I think could be challenged. It certainly spreads risk for the farmers: many of these crops are commodities and they are very sensitive to international price fluctuations. Which crop to invest in – you could chose coffee and then that fails for a year or the price sinks. So stick with them all.

Through the cooperative farmers are learning to improve the cocoa crops by grafting; they learn how to manage them and thin out pods when there are too many and so encourage a good crop. They are even experimenting with ‘condoming’ pods – covering them with plastic bags to prevent black pod weevil and other diseases.

And they are encouraging farmers to ferment beans and increase the value of their crop. This though seems to be difficult: farmers have a number of reasons why they cannot be encourage to ferment:

Firstly – they often need the money and waiting a further 5 or 6 days to get a sellable product is too long. The second though and the most significant is that they do not see a great deal of benefit in the differential in price. If they ferment beans, they are selecting the best quality beans, and then they spend 5 or 6 days managing the fermentation process. If they don’t get any more for the kilogramme at the end of this process, why bother? The trading system here seems to work against the farners – very often traders will give only a very small increase for fermented over non fermented.

So, much of our discussion was about this and how KOMIT could negotiate a better deal for farmers who ferment. They are interested in working with me – initially to see if the beans are any good for chocolate. No beans available at the moment, but the first main harvest is in April/May and they will send samples then, and we will test how well they turn into chocolate. If this works out it will be a wonderful product – just think with every bar bought, this supports the farmers and WWF in saving tigers! Hurrah!

a ripe cocoa pod showing the white pulp around the bean

Cocoa farmers - at last

2012-02-22T18:48:00.008-08:00

I was put in touch with an interesting contact here in Bali, and a meeting with the chair of a farmer group was set up for me. There was initially a reluctance to arrange this meeting, as at this time of year there is no cocoa being harvested and the only cocoa pods around might be old or ‘ugly’; no-one wants a visiter to think badly about the quality of their cocoa so with the reassurance that I would understand and not judge them on ‘ugly cocoa’, the meeting was set up.

The usual traffic battle to get there – this time further complicated by an accident. Once out of town and heading west we were on the highway that takes you to the far north west tip of Bali, where this is a ferry to East Java. Slamet, the driver, is from East Java and so knows this road well. He has galaxies worth of patience as well – still loads of cars and motorcars, but now on this important trade road – joined by lorries and buses. The road is quite hilly as well – reminded me of driving in Devon and Cornwall when I was a child – just stuck in endless lines of slow moving traffic. I think Slamet did reach the heady heights of 4th gear once!

As we headed west of Tabanan we began to see more of the countryside; bridges crossed wooded, deep river gullies, we even began to see mountains in the distance. And when we left the main road and headed off to the cocoa village – the countryside suddenly opened up. It was magnificent – beautifully sculptured terraces of young rice, bordered by coconut, banana and cocoa trees! The road meandered through small villages, each gate with a tall bamboo pole outside, decorated with banana leaf and palm frond garlands – looked very festive. As households here are bounded by a high stone wall, and the verges are cropped grass, the village has an English country feel to it.

We were met at the cocoa processing unit by N Wijana, the chair of the local subak abain (dry farmers group – referring to plantations rather than the wet farmers group that co-ordinates rice production), I Wayan Muliasa (Agriculture Extension officer) and Idewa Nyoman Alir Sastrawan (an export trader). To my delight, Wijana spoke impeccable English – learned through his long years as a tourist taxi driver. He is a great football fan – and ‘visits’ the UK every Saturday and Sunday when he watches the football. His favourite team is Man United, and he is eager for the day when Indonesia has a world class team.

Anyway, back to cocoa! The subak is a farmers group that aims to support farmers in getting the best out of their farms. They have been growing cocoa for some years now and traditionally did not ferment the beans. The government have been encouraging farmers to increase the value of their crops – both through fermentation, but also advice on planting, crop improvement and managing diseases. They even provide loans for subaks to develop these production units.

This production unit has been operating since 2007, and they are producing good quality fermented beans – they have always reached the standard required of them. Here they buy pods from the farmer members, ferment and dry them, and then sell them on. I was shown yearly yields from 2007, which range from 5,000 to 10,000kg a year of fermented beans. Due to mobile phone technology – farmers are able to check global cocoa prices when they sell, and so are able to get prices at about 90% of the international price – and are in a good position to hold out for a decent price. However, the price difference between fermented and unfermented is not actually that great, and is often not enough to encourage farmers to put in the extra work to ferment.

The government is encouraging farmers to increase value – but various factors in the market chain keep the fermented price low. For example, to ensure value is added to cocoa within Indonesia – there is a tax on the export of unprocessed beans; so the cocoa industry extracts cocoa butter an d cocoa from the Indonesian crop and there is no tax on the export of these products. However, fermented beans do not count as processed and so when these are exported there is a 15% tax imposed. This keeps the price of fermented beans low, and the differential between the two types too small to attract farmers to change their practice.

We walked through a nearby cocoa grove; no ugly cocoa here thank goodness! Lots of flowers, and Wijana explained the presence of the black plastic bags on the trees. These are full of dry leaves, and encourage black ants to nest in the trees. They then keep the pod borers away – so a simple form of natural pest control. These farms are not yet certified as organic, but are interested as they are reducing their use of chemical pesticides.

So, would they be able to sell me cocoa? Yes – as long as the price is right! They were initially fearful when my visit was first mentioned as they thought I might want far more cocoa than they produce – but relieved to hear that I am only interested in 100kg or so. So come next harvest, they will find a way to send me a sample and we will see!

It was a fascinating morning and my heartfelt thanks to Wijana, Wayan and Nyoman.

A bamboo chocolate factory and no references to Willy Wonka anywhere!

2012-02-22T18:38:00.013-08:00

In Bali, and I am a serious disappointment to the local tourist trade. I don’t want to go to a spa, lie on a beach, sit by a pool drinking cocktails (always seemed so exotic – but when actually offered it, it somehow did not appeal!), don’t want to go to a monkey sanctuary, or an elephant one either for that matter, or ride around on a jetski, or watch civets ‘processing’ coffee beans. All I want to do is meet some cocoa farmers!

I had managed to organise at least two meetings before I came here – one with Big Tree Farms, and the other with Rainforest Alliance.

The visit to Big Tree Farms was my first excursion in Bali, and I must admit I was not expecting the tedious traffic – the distance travelled was not that great, maybe 30 to 40km – but it seemed to take for ever. I don’t think the taxi driver ever got higher than 3rd gear – it was so bumper to motorbike to bumper. The roads were lined with shops, houses and temples – so even if we were travelling through the countryside there was no real sense of it.

The directions we were given were to ‘turn left at the second giant tree’; we were a little skeptical about this at first – how would we know the first giant tree to be able to see the second? What constituted ‘giant’? However, it was very clear when we got there – a first huge beringin or banyan tree (Ficus species) appeared on the roadside and soon after it a second. Down a short track and there was the bamboo chocolate factory!
This is the largest bamboo structure in Indonesia and possibly the world – and very probably the only bamboo chocolate factory. It is a magnificant structure, and well organised inside with warehouse, manufacturing space and packing rooms on the cool ground floor, a whole suite of offices on the first floor and then a wonderful open ‘reception space’ on the second – looking out over farms below. I was shown around by Afi, a fantastic guide – and although only the second week into her job was both knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Big Tree Farms’s programme. One of the aspects of the building design was ‘transparency’ – a founding principle of the company – and so all internal walls to offices, processing rooms, etc are made of glass.

Big Tree Farms, as you can see from their website, work with a number of products – cashew, coconut palm sugar, as well as cocoa. They work with farmer groups and the focus is to increase the value of their crops to improve their livelihoods. They have established processing plants where farmers can bring their pods and learn how to ferment the beans for the chocolate market, thus adding value to their crop. They then solar dry the beans at the processing plants, to the required moisture content and then sell their processed beans on. This programme has been very successful in Bali and they have now extended it to Aceh, far away on the north-western tip of Indonesia.

Afi then showed around the factory. They make only raw chocolate at the moment – this is chocolate made from beans that have not been roasted; the raw food principle is that food should not be heated above 50C, and so fermentation of beans is OK as this is kept just below about 49C, but roasting of beans is not. They have a magnificent melangeur, in which they grind the cocoa beans (having removed the papery skin around them); this sat in the corner churning away, producing a very luscious looking shiny dark brown ‘liquor’. This is a cool process, in line with raw food requirements; the liquor is then transferred to another machine, where sugar is added, and this then continues the grinding process taking the cocoa solid particle size down to about 24 microns. This then is tempered and molded into bars. And there in a corner, was a woman polishing away at the moulds – just like I do!
The raw chocolate was interesting – quite fruity and caramelly in taste, but actually the cocount plam sugar that they use has a very strong caramel taste – so not sure if that was where it came from. The cocoa nibs – just broken cocoa beans, again un roasted, were very good – really nutty and moreish.

So, down to business – would I be able to source some beans from them? It turns out that it is the wrong time of year to find beans in Bali! The harvest period is April through to November – so no Bali beans available. However – they are harvesting in Aceh and they would try and get me a sample of beans from there before the end of the week.

A big thank-you to Afi and Wawan for their time and assistance.

Money, money, money

2012-02-19T03:38:00.001-08:00

A cool million!

I have taken 1,500,000 cash out of an ATM! Never done that before! As they are Indonesian Rupiah - this is equivalent to about 100 quid - so no I have not gone barmy. I am though struggling to keep up with currency! In the last 2 weeks or so, we have used Cambodian riel, American dollars, Malaysian Ringits, Singapore dollars, and now the IDR. We have little bundles of notes and loose change all over our baggage. I started off trying to keep currencies separate, but have had to give up - having run out of little pockets to do this.

The worst though is the mental sums you have to do to work out equivalent value in sterling; 4000 riel to the $, 4.5 MLR to the pound, S$2 to the pound and now IDR 15,000 to the pound. It is better than Sudoku at keeping the brain active!

OK the next blog entry might need to be about all the things I am casually been leaving across the region! Have just taken a photo of a cool million to post here - and realised that I have left the cable for the camera in Kuala Lumpur! So all the pictures for the blog will have to wait until I get back there in two weeks!

Something fermented in the state of Malaysia!

2012-02-17T16:40:00.001-08:00

Not sure why I have got stuck on Hamlet quotes! Just a quick note to report that I have found some Malaysian chocolate – made with properly fermented beans! This is good news – but the bad news is that the two companies concerned source beans from their own plantations.

I visited two chocolate shops today – both actually in the same neighbourhood and both clearly there to meet the needs of the tourist industry. There were busloads of people being shipped in – and I seemed to upset their system as I had come on my own (each bus load got a numbered sticker). It was mad in each shop – chocolates stacked high on shelves and counters; staff filling shelves as fast as they customers were clearing them. Lots of tasters on offer and loads of staff on hand, which was great.

The first I went to was Beryl’s Chocolate Wonderland (ooh yes, I think I will rename my workshop Charlotte’s Chocolate Wonderland); their website said that they only used Ghanaian beans – but infact they do also use Malaysian beans as well – either on their own or blended with the Ghanaian. They had lots of local fruit flavours as well – mango, kiwi, jackfruit and even the infamous Durian.

Everything seemed to be sold in bulk – large bags of chocolate coated nuts and dried fruits, packs of boxed chocolates – and all being sold in large quantities. A good display about origins of cocoa and making beans into chocolate. Really excellent on that front.

The next was The Chocolate Boutique; again using Malaysian chocolates and flavours. In fact the flavours were much the same as at Beryl’s – and the bulk selling. Again, an excellent display about cocoa.

A conversation at dinner one night put me on the trail of a Lebanese chocolate company, Patchi, who have a number of shops in Kuala Lumpur. This was a hard trail to follow – the first shop that I looked for was closed down, and I eventually found them in a shopping mall (Singapore all over again!). Eveything there was shipped in from Lebanon – so no-one was able to tell me anything very much about the chocolates. They were beatifully packaged and presented – and that has given me much to think about – but nothing really to help me on my cocoa quest.

We leave Malaysia today – heading to Bali. The next two weeks of the trip are going to get really interesting – no more malls, I hope, just meeting lots of cocoa people and finding beans, with luck. Have been trying to think of a Malaysian flavour for my selection; we have had some delicious food here – Malay, Japanese, Indian, Chinese. Lovely fruit as well – so maybe that would be the flavour – mango.

To ferment or not ferment – that is the question

2012-02-15T17:19:00.000-08:00

Back in Kuala Lumpur now – we travelled from Singapore on a sleeper train! Most everyone you mention this to automatically asks you why you aren’t taking the bus! Indeed, the berths had seen better days – but it was comfortable and there were very civilized elements to the whole experience that made it very enjoyable. For example, I had never gone over an international border on a train before and had immigration coming through the train checking passports, and so avoided endless queues and electronic gadgets taking photos and finger prints; took me back to James Bond and spy movies of my choldhood set in Europe where this always seemed to be a sticky moment for the hero or villain in some way.

I have been really fortunate to have been put in touch with Chow Boi Yee, here in Malaysia, who has worked in the cocoa industry in this region for years, and I met him to learn more about the cocoa industry in this part of the world. Chow Boi’s experience of the region is really fantastic and I have now a much better sense of what might be possible on this trip. The meeting to some extent settled a niggling anxiety that I have that I might be wasting people’s time – the amounts of cocoa that I would be able to buy and use are so small compared to the scale of the industry here.

There are a number of issues here, and the main one is how the cocoa is processed once it is harvested. When cocoa beans are removed from the pods they are covered in a sweet white pulp that is attached to them. The easiest way to remove this is to let it rot away, and this is done by piling the beans up and letting the pulp ferment and rot away. This fermentation process is also critical in bringing out many of the flavours that we value in chocolate, so managing this and getting the most out of the process in terms of potential flavour is important if you are interested in using the beans for making chocolate.

However, most of the crop in this region is valued more for its cocoa butter – it tends to have a higher melting point than cocoa butter grown elsewhere and so is favoured by the chocolate industry as it means that chocolate will cool and harden quicker - useful on a conveyor production line. The cocoa flavour is less important when it is the butter that is the focus and so the fermentation is less important. Most beans here are therefore termed ‘unfermented’; there has in fact been a 2 day quick fermentation to remove the white pulp before drying the beans for export, but to bring out good flavour, 5 to 7 days of controlling the temperature and the fermentation process is needed.

So the quest will be to find farmers – and the cocoa is predominantly grown on small holdings – who have the skills to do a complete fermentation, and would be able to supply me with 100kg of beans.

Another issue here is that the cocoa industry is on the decline – partly because of some nasty pests and diseases over the last few years – but also because it is easier to make an income from palm oil than cocoa. It takes one person to tend 1ha of cocoa, but that person could tend 10ha of palm oil. Far more cost effective.

Finding cocoa in Singapore

2012-02-15T06:50:00.000-08:00

Reluctantly leaving Cambodia behind we end up in Singapore for a few days; my expectations of finding cocoa here are of course extremely low – after all Singapore is only really famous for growing money and buildings. However, I thought it would be interesting while here to try and explore the local chocolate scene – chocolates are a popular luxury in this part of the world, and I know that there is a growing artisanal as well as factory scale industry in Japan, so maybe here too.

This however, proved really quite difficult. We googled for chocolate shops, and there were a range of results. One that looked really interesting was the Chocolate Research Facility (http://www.chocolateresearchfacility.com) that boasts over one hundred flavours. They have three outlets in Singapore according to their website – but they did not seem to be where they said they would be! Anyone who has been to Singapore will know that it is just a mass of shopping malls, each one a glittering, ice cold maze of marble, glass, shops, fast food outlets, and millions and millions of people everywhere – shopping. Anyone who knows me will also know that I would rather be searching for cocoa in a leech infested backwater than a shopping centre – so although I did persevere in the search – I am mentally and constitutionally inadequately equipped to see something even right in front of my nose in one of those places.

To make matters worse – it was the day before Valentines Day – so when I did find the counters for the various shops, they were mobbed and on the whole empty of chocolate, and the poor shop assistants too weary to answer any of my questions about cocoa bean sources and flavours. This was particularly the case when I found an outlet for Laurent Bernard (http://www.nibschocolate.net/about-us.html), another chocolatier that I was interested in finding. It was just a counter in a department store, and so busy I was only just able to get a quick look at some of their single origin chocolate bars on offer but none of them used a SE Asia grown cocoa. However, on their website they do have Ile de Java and Papousie – so I wish I had managed to find their main shop.

I did find a counter for Royce chocolates (www. http://www.e-royce.com/english/index.html) – these are very beautiful Japanese chocolates that are delicious creamy and rich truffle blocks (about the same size and shape as my own chocolates), with no outer chocolate shell on them. Each box comes with a little fork so that you can pick them up without them melting onto your fingers.

The following day I decided to explore a different part of the city and spent most of the day in the fantastic Botanic Gardens; a really beautiful place – vast, with huge trees, palms, lakes, whole collections of gingers (I learned that ginger and bananas are in the same family!) and insects and birds so loud in places that they almost drowned out the background noice of traffic that is constant there. Just before I left I spotted a rather thin and spindly Theobroma cacao plant, in a section of the gardens dedicated to plants of economic importance. This was a new part of the garden so the trees haven’t really settled in, hence the spindliness – but there were flowers and small pods growing on the stem already. So I did find a cocoa tree in Singapore!

As I walked around I tried to think of a Singapore flavour for my SE Asia selection: would love to do frangipani (a very diverse collection of these at the gardens) but I doubt it would be practical to take blossoms home. We have enjoyed some delicious Thai food here – with coconut, kaffir leaf, lemongrass and ginger’s cousin galangal – so maybe there is a flavour there that I can explore.

Made in Cambodia

2012-02-12T02:37:00.000-08:00

This has been the first part of the trip, and to be honest mainly holiday. Angkor Wat, Mekong Dolphins, river trips, cycling through tropical villages and past paddy fields. Far too short a trip and far too much to explore in this amazing country; all very bussly but relatively little hassle. And wonderful food. An absolute delight. Almost forgot the purpose of my visit; we did look out a little for cocoa – asked a few folk, and various people said that they thought there might be some cocoa grown somewhere in the country, but it wasn’t just here. We came across an interesting bag of coffee in one hotel, a mix of two types of coffee beans and cocoa beans, and the information on the packet vaguely suggested that the cocoa was grown in Cambodia but that was all. Tantalising – will have to come back one day and explore more.

We did though find a Belgian lady, Griet Lorré, who has a chocolate shop in Phnom Penh. In a row of exquisite boutique shops, there was ‘Chocolate, by THE SHOP’ (http://chocolate-cambodia.com/en/home); we arrived bus-weary and hot into this air-conditioned marble tiled chocolate Aladdin’s cave. All ready for Valentine’s Day with ‘all you need is Love’ in large chocolate letters hanging over the counter. Valentine’s Day is very big in Cambodia it seems and a chocolate selling extravaganza, a little like Christmas at home. Griet apologised for the general pinkness of the shop – a Valentine’s must it seems. She generously took some time out from her busy preparations to show me her super-cooled workshop; so cold at 19˚C that she and her assistants wear woolly hats! I am lucky if I can reach that temperature with the heating on in my workshop!

Griet sat us down with a generous plate of samples and very welcome glasses of cool water, and we were all set to try our first Cambodian chocolates. Griet actually imports chocolate from Belgium as none is made in Cambodia. She has a range of classic Belgian flavours and added some real Cambodian twists to some of them. The Kampot pepper was a favourites as was the Keffir Lime leaf. As you can see one of the chocolates looks very similar to mine!

A cocoa innocent abroad

2012-02-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

I have left cold dark February (and I am afraid, Valentines Day chocolates) behind and for the next five weeks travelling in exotic South East Asia. Initially this was a long awaited holiday but given that so much of the world's cocoa is grown in Malaysia and Indonesia it did not take me long to wonder - maybe I could find a source of cocoa, find someone to make it into chocolate, and then be able to use chocolate that I know exactly where it is from and who is involved in making it. With a small grant from a local enterprise fund - I am all set to go. I will attempt to share what I find along the way initially in this blog and then of course on my return with lots of new chocolates. I hope to develop a running menu of flavours as I go along, and then my March selection can be a SE Asia themed one.

I refer to my trip as ‘a cocoa innocent abroad’ as I know that at minimum by the end of the trip I will know so much more than I do at the moment. The cocoa world is vast and in Malaysia and Indonesia very big business. If I can manage to find samples of cocoa beans and have chocolate made from them – well that would be fantastic.

So my trip will start in Malaysia, and include Cambodia and Indonesia as well. In Indonesia I hope to visit Sumatra, Java and I just might have to go to Bali as well. Such is life!

The Dangers of late night multitasking!

2011-07-30T01:25:00.000-07:00

It is a well know fact of our family life that I can and do burn anything - I cannot blame it on encroaching senility, my entire life is a catalogue of not just burnt pans but also molten pots. Things left on the cooker so long that the contents have evaporated, burnt, burst into flames and then eventually the hapless pan just might give up and melt.

This tradition recently took on a 21st century twist. OK, I know microwaves aren't 21st century - but they are to me - I did not get one until a couple of years ago. I have always been a little unsure of the microwave thing - room filling up with wierd waves; when the children were young I would hate them to be in the same room as a microwave when it was on. Clearly I have got vary blase about this and use it quite a lot in the chocolate workshop.

Anyway, late the other night I was melting a large amount of cocoa butter - to flavour with meadowsweet - it was late, I was tired and willing myself to do this one last task before I went to bed. Turned the machine on, thought I would nip upstairs to write a quick email, found my daughter at the computer watching something, sat down next to her to wait for a natural pause in the programme to interupt and do my email, and time just evaporated. Not sure how long this went on for - but I do remember hearing the ping of the microwave turning itself off and being dragged out of my tired state with alarm - 'how long was that thing going?' Got down into the workshop and this is what I found:

The cocoa butter had got so hot that it melted the plastic bowl that it was in - and then just flowed freely out of the microwave (so why don't they make these things water tight?), down the back of the fridge that the microwave sits on and then all over the floor.

The microwave is dead - choked to death with cocoa butter, the fridge is OK, and I have now a very interesting reminder of my negligence. A plastic/cocoa butter fused abstract version of our logo?

Fairtrade Fortnight

2011-03-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

This is Fairtrade Fortnight and as usual there are a number of events in Aberfeldy to promote Fairtrade. I will be doing a workshop in one of the local primary schools on chocolate and the story of how chocolate is grown and transformed from bean to bar. This is a fascinating story and has a fascinating history and eager to learn more I have been reading a book by Orla Ryan called ‘Chocolate nations’. She explores the cocoa industry in west Africa and its relation to recent history in a number of W Africa countries – Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and others. She also looks at issues of slavery and Fairtrade. I am only half way through the book, and have in turns been depressed (do I really want to be part of an industry so exploitative and so open to corruption?) and inspired (most cocoa is grown on small farms not huge plantations, some of the vision of the leaders of newly independent states in West Africa that cocoa could fuel freedom and democracy).

I must confess that I am only half way through the book, but already Ms Ryan is a little dismissive of Fairtrade – she seems to be saying that whilst intentionally good, she is not sure it is really making that much difference. I haven’t yet read enough to know her conclusions and how she would propose to improve the system to make cocoa farming profitable and attractive for West African farmers (after all – we don’t want the supply of cocoa beans to dry up!). But as I read ‘Fairtrade doesn’t really work’, the often heard refrains that follow such a conclusion – ‘therefore it a rip off’, ‘not worth bothering with’, ‘makes no difference’ – come to mind. An interesting observation in her book is that farmers sell their cocoa beans to a range of buyers and not only Fairtrade coops, like Kuapa Kokoo; as the prices offered change. To me that is not evidence that Fairtrade is not working – but that at least there is a coop owned and run by farmers that offers a good and fair price. Farmers have a real choice then and this I would have thought must be good.

The reason I support Fairtrade is because I know no other way to ‘trust’ supply lines. As I am unable to go to West Africa, negotiate with individual cocoa farmers and agree a fair price and then make the cocoa beans into chocolate – I need to trust that others are doing this for me in a way that is transparent and ethical. I would dearly love to be able to do this more directly and look with envy at chocolate makers that describe on their websites their connections to cocoa farms. I know I need to devote more time to sourcing chocolates that I believe are ensuring cocoa farmers where ever they are able to use cocoa to better their lives

The critics of Fairtrade also tend to come from the mainstream companies involved in the sale or production of the commodity; I cannot help but feel that their criticism is based on the fact that they are not prepared to consider that their current model of managing isn’t producing beneficial social or environmental outcomes. Fairtrade is not perfect – but reading Orla Ryan’s book, the cocoa marketing boards, the middle men, the international commodity markets that play poker with commodity prices without a care for the producers themselves – this isn’t working either.

I am always intrigued by the websites of chocolate makers that make the claim that work to the highest ethical standards, have concluded that Fairtrade is not good enough and then claim that they source their chocolate from a ‘lovely man they know in Ecuador’ – but don’t tell us who that lovely man is or what part of Ecuador or how they know that he treats his workers well. They seem to have missed one of the basic concepts of Fairtrade which is that to be sure good practice is happening – supply lines are monitored, made transparent and in the public domain.

I have spent the afternoon trying to research this on the internet – looking at chocolate manufactures websites, at chocolate makers websites, at the Fairtrade Foundations website, at chocolate lovers blogs – and feel more confused than ever! My conclusion is that at all I can do is strive to seek out more information, to find a wider range of chocolates that I can be confident are ethically sourced, strive to be as clear in my own communication to customers as I can be.

Back to Ms Ryan’s book and looking forward to finding out what she proposes to make the cocoa industry work more effectively for West Africa…

the year gone by

2010-12-31T02:35:00.000-08:00

On the eve of the new year, having finally tidied up after the chocolate making marathon that is December, I have been thinking back over the year in general as one does, as well as looking forward to the next.

It has been a strange year - feeling very uncertain in lots of ways. The economic climate has not helped - everyone feeling insecure. The snow has been amazing - but definately limited Christmas sales - we had signed up for loads of Christmas markets, many of which were either cancelled or very poorly attended. The chocolate sector has got busier - lots of new businesses out there, lots of new ideas - all good but means a little more work keeping up with it all!

I did at some point early this year set myself an ambition to 'crack marketing' - well at least focus on it, gets to grips with it, invest in it. I don't think I have been as systematic about that as I had intended - but despite that do feel that I have learned alot and feel I have a clearer direction on this. I have spent a lot of money on advertising in the foodie press and yet to receive one order on the back of that, so one New Year's resolution will definately be to say No to Ad sales people when they phone.

One of the highspots was definately the Perthshire Open Studios week - I really did enjoy that and it opened up relationships and ideas, not least the work with Ruth Atkinson on printing chocolate and then the fantastic work she did on the 12 Days of Christmas images. It also connected me to other craft workers - I hadn't particularly felt isolated before that but it did really feel good to feel part of a group.

Another was a weekend of chocolate making at The Cocoa Tree in Pittenweem; this was great fun and Sophie Latinis prepared the most incredible chocolate themed dinner to round off a busy day of chocolate workshops (and another is planned for February 2011)

Flavour of the year must go to Scots pine - both as a ganache (that won 2 Great Taste Award stars in the summer) and as a thin chocolate - we could have sold a forest of that this Christmas.

And the year coming? I would love to find out more about making chocolate itself and I would really like to develop a link with cocoa producers (this has always been an ambition since I started the business - but I feel unless I start to articulate it and put the idea 'out there' it will be so hidden even to myself that I might miss the seed of an opportunity should it ever arise).

Purposeful walking

2010-12-31T02:27:00.000-08:00

We went to Co Sligo for a week in October and as we wondered around the area and beaches we often saw women (mainly) walking along the roads with intent; sometimes on their own, but also in small groups. They walked briskly and deliberately – either this was a sign of poor public transport provision or a popular keep fit movement. It did not matter if we were on a small road or one of the fast well networked N roads, there they were and we began to refer to them as ‘the purposeful walkers’.

I was minded of them today as I went again to gather beech nuts; my meandering snail pace would have horrified those good ladies – however, it struck me though that although not as speedy and energetic as these ladies might have been, my walk is purposeful in a different sense. One of the reasons that I love gathering wild foods is that it lends a sense of purpose to a walk in the country; I know a walk should be purpose enough itself but my middle class protestant upbringing tends to guilt tinge anything that is as indulgent as ‘just a nice thing to do’; gathering wild food graces it with useful purpose.

Some years ago I was working and living in Nepal and for a couple of years lived in Solukumbu District, the area in which Everest is located. Walking was clearly very purposeful there – you walked to work, to the market, to socialise, to communicate. My work took me on long distance treks with colleagues to villages around the district and I was very privileged to be able to enjoy that breathtaking landscape every day.

One day I met some British walkers in a tea shop; they were the BBC crew that were accompanying and filming a small group of British blind trekkers as they made their way to the top of local mountain. As I descended down the track from the tea shop, I eventually met one of the trekkers on the path and as soon as I had introduced myself she launched into a barrage of questions about the area in which she was walking; what were the smells she could smell, the sounds she could hear? The tastes in the air? Fortunately I was able to answer most of them and as I carried on with my own journey I felt very humbled by the meeting. In a landscape so magnificent as the Himalayas, it is easy for the visual to take over all other senses, and the questions I had been asked made me think more about smells and sounds around me, and after that I often reminded myself to close my eyes and feel the landscape for a while.

In many ways gathering wild foods makes you step back in this way. Highland Perthshire is an amazing landscape and on a frosty November morning such as today, with autumn colours just beginning to fade, but with crystal clear light – it is easy just to focus on the large landscape – breathtaking and heartbreaking in its magnificence. Delving around in the fallen leaves though, looking for beech nuts I am forced to enjoy the small landscape under my hands – the smell of leaf mould, the crispness of the surface new fallen leaves, the cold leatheryness of the soaked ones underneath, the semi rotten ones below that. There are sudden flashes of colour as small green bugs scuttle to find cover, pink brown worms disappear, and there is my goal, a chestnut coloured beech nut. When gathering flowers in the spring and early summer – trying to work out the best way to efficiently collect them, when are they at their best to collect – when fully open or before, the difference in scent after the sun has warmed them, the difference a few hundred feet can make in when things are ready to pick; the beautiful regularity and pattern of plants, the competition with other animals – squirrels and birds. It is all part of the process and links me to the knowledge and folklore of thousands of years of living on this island

Gathering forces me to look at the small and reminds me constantly of the purposefulness of the landscape itself.

Squirrels 2 - Charlotte 0

2010-11-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

The last couple of months have seen me pitted against the nimble pawed wits of the Sciurus vulgaris, red squirrel. And I have to confess that I have more or less been beaten. Gathering hazelnuts is a race against these little darlings and then when it comes to beech nuts, I feel outdone by evolution really.

Between heavy showers this morning I managed to time a walk up the falls behind the house and started to have a look for beech nuts. This takes on the nature of a labour of love really – it took me an hour to gather just over an 1oz (or a good handful), so on a minimum wage this would make them about £84.34 a pound, or £179.70 a kilo. And that is with their shells on – take those off and we are talking caviar prices really!

As I was scraping through the leaf litter looking for the little darlings my mind mused a little. I looked up and caught the eye of a red squirrel in the tree above – not pleased to have competition however inept. Oh, to be able to train those nimble pawed creatures – rather than delve on the ground. A friend came across me gathering beech nuts one year – she was walking her dogs and saw in the distance what she described to be as a ‘scene straight out of a Thomas Hardy novel’. There was this crouched figure, muffled up in an old oversize coat, unrecognisable with thick hat and scarf, on their knees (unable to tell from the distance or even close up! if male or female) scratching around in the leaves. It is cold and damp picking those nuts even on a clear frosty November day. But actually pleasurable and very fascinating. The life under those leaves – small bugs, fungi, worms and then behold – a chestnut coloured nut. Is it empty or not? A quick squeeze between thumb and forefinger will tell.

Yes the squirrels are so much better adapted to this than I! But I have read that in famine years people would rely on beech nuts for food. They are delicious – but I wonder how energy effective it must have been to pick them – you have to pick a lot to make a meal. And timing is everything – so many factors to take into consideration – is it a year when the trees fruit? When will they ripen – when will they fall? I haven’t been able to work out how else to pick them other than from the ground – although I suppose you could put sheets on the ground beneath the trees and hope to catch them as they fall. But that would also make it easier for the squirrels!

Another bravo award!

2010-10-11T15:11:00.000-07:00

We were delighted and slightly astounded to be shortlisted in the Noval Trophy last week - a competition to find perfect chocolates to go with two Noval ports. The judging was carried out at the Academy of Chocolate conference last week in London and we were one of 7 finalists - and the only one from Scotland. So we sent off 100 lovely honey and wild hazelnut chocolates down to London - unaccompanied little babies they were - I felt very guilty - but was unable to travel down to the conference. So they arrived and I am told they looked very smart on the platter. The judging was partly by tastings by participants at the conference and partly by a panel of judges, and so the results were not announced at the conference. But I have just heard this evening that we didn't win - argh! - but the very nice lady who organised it said we came close. But I did get a very gorgeous bottle of Noval port - to help us develop the perfect accompaniment - so I am very happy!

Anyway - although a little sad not to have won, I wasn't really expecting to and when I saw the shortlist of finalised I wasn't at all surprised. Reward enough to be on that list I have to say.

So getting ready now for the next market at Logierait - the last of the year. Also getting chocolates ready for The Cocoa Tree in Pittenweem (www.thecocoatreeshop.com) who are taking a stand at the BBC Good Food show in Glasgow and have very kindly given some space on their stall for some of our chocolates. If you are going - do check them out - they do the absolutely best hot chocolate in the world.

And if you cannot get there, but happen to be around Logierait http://www.highlandlightrailway.co.uk/events.php on the 16th Oct- then come along and have possibly the second best hot chocolate in the world and try out some of the honey and hazelnuts runner ups. (but sorry - the port is all mine...)

Bravo awards

2010-07-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

I spent rather too much of Friday evening last week pouring over the Great Taste Award website, looking through the results to see who had got what and for what and so on (and by the way did I mention that we got 2 Gold Stars for the Scots pine ganache?). Very impressed to see my neighbours Kenmore Bakery got a bouquet of 2 stars - well done Keith and Sheila - and further down the valley, Iain Burnett got a covetted three stars for his Velvet Truffle. A gourmet valley indeed.

This year the Guild of Fine Food have got very clever and you can log in to see the judges comments on your entries. This is wonderful for the terminally disorganised such as myself - last year I never really got my act together to write and ask them for their feedback - but this year they are just there; so grateful that someone else has been so organised and thoughtful.

Anyway, the comments on the Meadowsweet thins that I put in made me smile and think a little. The Meadowsweet thins are really popular - but I think it is one of those things that you either like or you don't. I love them, they are my mother's favourite, and to those that know and love meadowsweet already they are a source of familiar contentment. Clearly though, the Great Taste Award judges have not reached that level of familiarity with the fine herb.

The comments went something like this: 'Presentation is lovely [thank-you] but we felt that the aroma and taste is perhaps too unusual, verging on unpleasant. Bravo for trying something unusual, other herbs or flowers might work better.' I loved the 'Bravo' bit - this sort of feels like an award in its own right. It made me think back to the brave Logierait market customers who took wild garlic truffles in their stride; they certainly got my own 'Bravo' award for that. 'Bravo' for having a go - this is what we say to people who we think are slightly foolish - attempting something foolhardy but interesting. I choose not to read it as a condescending salve, sweetening the rejection of our entry, but rather a good natured 'Good on you girl for trying something new'

Maybe we are flavour pioneers up here - ready to push boundaries and explore. I wonder whether we might be on the forefront of a meadowsweet 'wave'. A couple of years ago, when I first tried sea buckthorn as a flavour - I could not find anyone else in the UK using it as a flavour - not through Google anyway; now - it is an essential must-have ingredient of swanky Edinburgh restaurants, and Likwid Ice cream parlour in Perth serves sea buckthorn flavoured ice cream.

Who would like to join me in a little sweepstake on how many years will it be before meadowsweet is as common as elderflower in the flavour lexicon of soft drinks and posh puddings? 2011? 2012?

sex and the chocolate

2010-06-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

Back from TASTE in Edinburgh but not sure I have yet recovered. It is a fairly full on experience - from the moment they open to some time after each session closes - so about four and a half hours - the stall is busy - offering tastings, talking about the product, trying to stop people eating the demonstration chocolates, making sure they all take a card, wondering who the very gorgeous looking bloke is who asked us if we wanted to have our photo taken with him (we were so surprised and said 'No'! turns out it was one of those celebrity chefs!)

anyway - exhausting and I do not really know yet how successful it was - few people buy at these events and we just need to monitor orders and try and gauge how many came from the event. But it has left me wondering about marketing and how I should do it better. My son made an interesting observation about how others market chocolate - the dark seductive colours used, the images, the language - it is all about sex and indulgence - and not about the taste or the chocolate itself. In my own marketing I have been attempting to portray the freshness and the taste - and maybe this is why people don't respond to it so well - are we programmed in this country to only respond to chocolate as sex and indulgence? the Flake adverts, the 'because the lady loves milk tray' - this must all run very deep.

I began to wonder how chocolate is marketed in other countries and thought of the chocolate shops in Brussels - these are definitely not dark indulgent parlours of seduction - they are bright and fresh - the chocolates sold on their own terms for what they are. Is it only the British who think of chocolate as sinful? When doing stalls at markets, people often recoil with horror when offered chocolates - as if I am offering the hearts of new born babies; often people say things like 'tempt me not Satan', or refer to chocolate as 'food of the devil'. This is all really quite weird! The stall next to me was Cambus o'May cheese - really, really lovely cheese - but I don't think they were ever accused of being the Devil's accomplice! And not sure cheese marketing has ever really used the sex and indulgence tack has it?

Not sure where all this is taking me - I don't think I do want to start 'sexing' up my product - but I know I do need to be more savvy on the marketing front.

TASTE of EDINBURGH, 28th to 30th May

2010-05-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

I am busy doing last minute preparations for this food market in Edinburgh this weekend and have been trying to update my website since last week - but for some reason my computer won't speak to the server or vice versa and I have no time to sort it out! So I haven't been able to put anything on the site about TASTE - so ever the last minute junky that I am - I thought I would BLOG it instead!

I have never done a TASTE event before and am quite anxious not knowing what to expect. There are the other two local Edinburgh chocolate businesses there (CoCO and Chocolate Tree) and I know competition is good but even a confessed chocolate addict like myself wonders if you can have too much of a good thing!

These shows are exhilarating and exhausting in equal measures and as it takes a lot of preparation to get ready for them - lot of toing and froing to be at them, it is a huge investment in time and energy. I never know how many boxes to make - will they sell or won't they? (and what do I do with them if they don't?); will it be so hot that no one even wants to think chocolate never mind buy them (we had a stall at a Perth Race event last year on the two hottest days in July - it was 30C plus each day and we sold one box of chocolates over two days! people couldn't even taste the chocolate - it melted as soon as it left the cool box), or so wet that no-one comes. Will we be tucked away in a corner that no-one goes to? or stuck next to a fairground machine that makes so much noise only 10 year olds can bear it; or south facing so that we have to display our wares at the back of the stall in an attempt to keep the sun off them - and we end up looking like we really don't want anyone to see what we have to sell at all! I think I must be one of the few stallholders at markets that asks for the shady spot; my alert aversion to sunlight must make people wonder if I have vampire connections

And then there is the emotional armour required to carry on smiling all day, when so tired you could cry, and the slightest suggestion that someone doesn't think much of the chocolates - a blank look, a shrug of indifference - can really cut deep and leave you wondering why you are there at all.

But there is much that is fun and uplifting: lots of lovely customers that really do enjoy the flavours - it is such a delight to watch as someone tries a flavour - for example basil - that they have never thought about in connection with chocolate - and they are sceptical but give it a go - and they melt visibly as the flavours melt in their mouths. And their face lights up and it is fantastic. Other stall holders are also great - encouraging, helpful, fun. I always learn a lot at these events and come away exhausted but full of ideas.

Sping at last

2010-05-19T15:43:00.000-07:00

Late May and I have finally managed to start using some great wild flavours; at the Logierait market last week I had Scots pine and Sloe Blossom flavours on offer. People were interested in them - but not as interested as they were about the wild garlic; amazed that folk were asking for these and disappointed that I didn't have any on sale this month.

I am watching the wild mint closely - this is almost ready to pick - but I don't want to leap in too early and just wipe it out for weeks. It is one of the best flavours I think, and hope it will be OK for next week when I am getting chocolates ready for a food show I am doing a stall at in Edinburgh next weekend - TASTE.

Wild garlic truffles? really?

2010-04-19T03:18:00.000-07:00

I had first made wild garlic flavoured ganache a couple of years ago (I really do try everything!); it was interesting - a sort of Heston Blumenthal snail porridge sort of experience (not that I have tasted that) that gets your brain and taste buds going in a way that familiar food just doesn't do - new connections in your brain need to be created to experience a completely new flavour combination and it is really exciting. Anyway, the testing panel here at cocoaflower HQ were split on the original experiment: the panel of three (J, A and R) had various reactions. J just raised eyebrows and would not commit to any opinion; R loved it and claimed it was the perfect combination of two favourite foods - garlic bread and chocolate, and A thought it tasted like cold pizza, and not very nice cold pizza. So, we sat on the idea, and I used the experiment merely to evidence that I would try anything as a flavour.

However, last week with the first Logierait Country Market of the year coming up and uninspired by the late spring and the need to still use 'store cupboard' favours as I call them - I thought it was time to really test the water with a challenging flavour. I made small cocoa powder covered truffles with the wild garlic flavoured milk chocolate ganache, rather than include the flavour as one of the four in the normal selection box. I was curious to know how people would react - both on being offered the flavour but also if brave enough to eat it what they actually thought of it.

My first customers were a group of Japanese tourists who either spoke no English or were so shocked by what they ate that they were unable to speak English. I think they understood chocolate and so eagerly took samples - but at that point communication broke down as they rushed on to the next stall. Not an auspicious start. However, I persevered and to be honest thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. Most of the people that I offered the truffle to eagerly tried it - what a wonderfully adventurous crowd. Only one person used the word 'disgusting' and actually most thought it was 'not unpleasant' just 'strange'. We agreed that the challenge would really be when you would want to eat it - this is no cosy end of the evening treat - more a wake up call to the taste sytem - so an unusual aperitif?

must try harder...

2010-04-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

Well - that didn't go too well did it! Not sure whether to abandon or persevere - and I think will do the latter. I listened to a Radio 4 Food Programme in which Sheila Dillon explored the use of new social media in marketing - and inspired by this and driven by the need to really develop my marketing skills, I established Facebook and Twitter pages. I hope these will not go the way of this blog's last few months - but know that if they are to succeed then I have to work much harder at them than I have in the past

So what have I been up to in the chocolate world since I last posted an entry? Since August I have done a big food show (BBC Good Food Show in Glasgow) which went very well and was great fun (but exhausting!), Christmas chocolates - exhausting and to a degree quite good fun, and then we have had the gentle early year chocolate eating rhythm of Burns Night (I have been trying really hard to develop this as a new chocolate centred occasion - please join my campaign, I feel sure Robert Burns would have approved - he would have written poetry and ballads about chocolate had he been around a century or so later!), Valentine Day, and of course Easter. We had Simply Chocolate workshops - Hearts and Tarts in February and then the Easter one last weekend.

And I went on a great training workshop down in Banbury and discovered a gorgeous walk from the railway station to the Barry Callebaut factory - entirely on canal path, park paths and small back lanes.

So - coming up soon is the first of the monthly Logierait Markets on 17th April - 10am to 2pm http://www.highlandlightrailway.co.uk/events.php

Welcome to my chocolate blog

2009-08-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

Encouraged by other successful bloggers and curious about where this will go, I invite you to my chocolate blog. I have enjoyed, over the last year or so, stories about where my chocolates have got to and their extraordinary adventures; the mountains they have been carried up, the exotic locations they have been carried to, the lovely occasions they have helped celebrate and the excessive heat they have succumbed to. These stories have been received through meetings with friends, at the various stalls I do, over the phone and over the email. I thought it would be fun to try and share some of these with other customers and the blog could be a way for people to contribute their own stories.

I have also learned a lot through other chocolate bloggers - their generous sharing of information has informed many of my recipes and ideas about flavours, as well as helped me work out chocolate technical problems (of which there are many). So hopefully this blog might inspire some other budding small business owners out there. I am often asked similar questions about chocolates and the blog could be a way for those conversations to develop.

I will endeavour not to use it as a platform to rant vitriolically about things (ooh but I love a good rant) or to shamelessly promote other causes - I will try to stay focused as much as I can on the business of chocolate - which after all is a big and rich enough subject to get on with!

Looking forward to hearing from you! Charlotte