Products
Fresh from a trip with Barry Callebaut to Ghana, where she discovered the first stages of the cocoa-to-product process, Lisa Jenkins talks to some of the UK’s best chocolate manufacturers, pastry chefs and chocolatiers about upcoming flavours and trends for 2015
Cocoa power B
y the time Switzerland-based pro- ducer Barry Callebaut has mixed up the languid ribbons of the silky liquid we might recognise as chocolate, it’s already over five years into a global journey that will result in exquisite chocolates, cakes and pâtisserie being created worldwide. Since being harvested from the cocoa trees of Ghana, having taken between three to five years to grow as beans in cocoa pods, this opulent chocolate liquor has travelled 4,000 miles and been through at least eight labour-intensive steps in a farm-based pro- cess that includes handpicking, fermentation, drying and bagging. Following quality checks and sizing, it then returns to Barry Callebaut and is transformed into a chocolate liquor for transportation, before being shipped around the world to be made into the solid product we all know today. But should we all be better informed about the chocolate process and pay more for our chocolate products in the UK? It’s important to consider that world chocolate yields continue to fall and consumption continues to increase, particularly in China and India.
Cocoa seedlings 56 | The Caterer | 31 July 2015
Lessons learned Thomas Leatherbarrow, who won one of two places to visit Cacao Barry in Ghana in Callebaut UK’s ‘For The Love Of Chocolate’ challenge, thinks so. “Seeing the cocoa plantations, schools and villages in Ghana completely exceeded my expectations and has raised my respect for chocolate as a raw product,” he says. Leatherbarrow entered the competition to create an imaginative twist on one of the nation’s top-five chocolate desserts: brownie, cheesecake, cake, pudding or ice-cream. His take on a chocolate brownie, which consisted of Callebaut dark chocolate (70%) and Calle- baut white chocolate (28%) with smoked sea salt and whole pistachios served with vanilla cream and candied kumquats, reflects a grow- ing nostalgia trend in all sectors of hospitality. Leatherbarrow has worked as a pastry sous chef at Tom’s Kitchen in Canary Wharf and Pollen Street Social, London. He’s also recently set up his own company, Pastry Development, where he is head development chef.
www.thecaterer.com
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